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Suzanna looked to the right and wondered if Enclave had a single high-speed internet connection anywhere. She could dream. If they did, maybe she’d stop there and stay for a time. Glancing at the smoke still drifting from beneath the hood of her car, she realized stopping for a while was likely exactly what she had to look forward to.
Luckily, she was ahead with her various work projects. She’d turned in several book edits for the e-publisher the other day, and had finished the work on the article deadlines for the e-magazine at home that last night before her plans had drastically changed.
She had been serenely drinking a cup of hot tea with real sugar as a reward. Just before the pounding on her front door rattled the hinges. Just before the shouting and accusations started. Just before the humiliating slap that brought immediate tears to her eyes and spun her head to one side, eventually sending her on the run.
Suzanna pushed that scene out of her head, thinking instead of the scenes in the romance novels she’d recently edited inside her mind. The romantic stories she read regularly fueled her imagination of what love should be but had never been for her. Illustrating very clearly the reality that rich, gorgeous, and completely honorable, fictional romance heroes were just that—fictional.
The deep roar of a powerful engine in the distance distracted her from her dreaming. She straightened and walked to the center of the road. On a straightaway in either direction for several miles, she knew that, whatever vehicle was about to come into view, she wasn’t in any serious danger of not being seen. Even if it did sound like a racecar was about to zoom in and appear at any moment.
A few minutes later, the vehicle came into sight, traveling from the same direction she’d been going. The moment the road smoothed out and flattened, she heard the driver gun the engine and speed up. The speck at the edge of the horizon got bigger and bigger.
Debating whether it was a good idea to be standing in the middle of the road as a speeding car approached, Suzanna took a small step toward her car. The prospect of being mowed down was second only to the sudden fear bolting down her spine at the possibility it was Marcus chasing her down as he’d promised to do if she ever tried to break up with him again, or worse, tried to hide. His overbearing attitude and physical anger after the tame, almost sycophantic way he’d treated her up until two days ago had been an utter surprise.
She lifted her sunglasses to her forehead as the car approached, squinting to see what color it was. If she saw fire-engine red, she was going to make a run for it. But then another look around in the circle of her immediate location made the idea of running a very foolish endeavor. There was nowhere to go. The flat, dry grass virtually everywhere wasn’t even tall enough to hide her laptop, let alone her.
Bending forward slightly, hand to her brow as if that might help her see better, Suzanna focused on the speck growing larger. After a few moments, she saw blue or black, possibly blue and black, but definitely not red. That was a relief. Her whole body sagged as the tension escaped. She put her sunglasses carefully back in place on her nose, lifted one arm, and started waving.
Suzanna called up any cheerleading DNA that might reside in her body, likely not much. She raised her other arm up and started scissoring them back and forth as if flagging down an approaching jet plane.
When the car didn’t seem to slow down, she added some vertical motion to her movements, jumping up and down as she waved her arms ferociously above her head. The car didn’t slow. She added some vocals to the ridiculous jumping-jack dance she was doing in the middle of the road.
Nothing fancy, just, “Hey, slow down, and help me,” but as the speeding car grew bigger and bigger, she also added a sincere, “But don’t run me over!” to the litany of her screaming.
When the vehicle got to within a football field’s length away without seeming to slow down, Suzanna suddenly feared that Marcus had tricked her and borrowed one of his friend’s cars to track her down, and then run her down.
With her hands waving in the air, she moved in the direction of her still-smoking car and watched warily for the littlest hint as to the identity of the driver. She abruptly realized with alarm, if this person wasn’t Marcus, he or she would be a complete stranger.
