AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Nancy said nothing. I could see the play of emotions behind her eyes, like some dark personal torture that wrenched at her conscience. She held my gaze for long seconds, and then looked away.
“I can’t,” she said with defeat and despair choking her words. She nodded her head slowly, like she was listening to the beat of a heartbreaking ballad. “Because you’re right about me…” Nancy gave me a lopsided smile and squeezed my hand. She let out a long sigh of breath and within the sound of it was a shudder of acceptance.
“Still friends?” I asked.
She nodded. “It was great while it lasted… but it was never going to last for long, was it?”
I said nothing, because there was nothing left to say except ‘goodbye’.
Chapter 40.
We drove towards Nancy’s apartment complex in the quiet cocoon of the car while the city drifted silently past the windows. Nancy sat small in the corner of her seat with her eyes fixed on the road, but her thoughts far, far away. I wondered if she was thinking about her new job in New York, or maybe playing back over the time we had shared, questioning herself, and her needs as a woman.
“I’m going to miss you,” she said softly at last as I slowed for a set of traffic lights. She never turned her head, but merely spoke the words as if she were talking to the windshield.
“No you won’t,” I said kindly. I felt buoyed by a vague sense of relief – a feeling that a burden had lifted. It was like stepping out of shoes that were too tight – perhaps a metaphor for the relationship.
“You will be too busy with your new job to give me a second thought,” I went on. “I can see you now sitting across a desk from twenty-six rugged guys who are all knowledgeable in the lifestyle. You’ll be like a girl in the world’s biggest sexual candy store.”
She laughed - a light tinkle that sounded just a little hollow. She shook her head and turned her face towards me. “No,” she said earnestly. “There’s only one Jericho James. I’m sure of that.”
The lights changed. I eased through the intersection. The night fog was thickening. It blurred the lights of approaching cars and cast the outside world in a mysterious ethereal haze. Traffic was light, but there were still clusters of dark-coated pedestrians clustered in groups at the corners. A cop car went racing past us, lights flashing and the siren wailing as it sped into the distant eerie half-light of the night.
“Maybe Sondra could call you – when she gets lonely,” Nancy said. “You know, for old times sake.”
“We haven’t been together long enough to have any old times,” I quipped. “But of course Sondra can call the program. It would be interesting to hear some of the things that fill your fantasies once you reach a new city.”
More silence. I turned right, off the main road and the street narrowed.
“Jericho… if you ever change your mind…”
I nodded. “Thanks,” I said.
“I mean it.”
“I know you do.”
Nancy nodded. She sat back in the seat and closed her eyes. “I’m still your boss, you know,” she said, her voice drifting out of the darkness.
“I guess you are,” I said.
“I can still call you every week when your ratings slide and kick your ass.”
I smiled. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
The conversation became desultory because we had run out of things to say – or perhaps because we had reached the point where to say any more would lead to dark places neither of us was willing to venture.
I slowed the car at another set of lights, but as I started to brake, they turned green and I cruised through the intersection. I flicked the indicator to turn left.
“Let me give you my temporary address,” Nancy said suddenly. “I’ll be there for the first few weeks – at least until I can find a place of my own.” She leaned forward at the waist and reached down into the foot well to rummage around in her purse for a pen and a business card…
At the moment I committed to the corner and began to turn the steering wheel, a sudden dreadful chill of premonition washed over me – a single instant of foreboding that made me wrench my head around.
Too late.
A vehicle came roaring through the red light, a set of headlights spaced wide apart and high above the ground so that I knew it couldn’t be a car. My last thought was that maybe it was a pick-up truck, but by then it was too late to react or respond.
The truck came blasting through the tendrils of misty fog, its engine howling. I cried out to Nancy – a sound of shock and alarm that was incoherent. I turned my head towards her, and felt my whole body clench to brace for the impact. Instinctively I jammed my foot hard on the brakes and heard the screeching shriek of juddering rubber.
Nancy’s face became a pale white mask of terror – and then the truck collided into the side of the car with the crushing roaring impact of tearing metal and catastrophic collision. I flung an arm out to hold Nancy, but I was hurled sideways against the restraint of the seatbelt and heard the sound of the windshield shattering, a million shards of broken glass fell like rain.
Nancy was heaved out of her seat and flung hard against me. I heard the scream torn from her throat as the car was lifted up onto two wheels and shunted sideways. Smoke and fumes filled the air. Nancy slumped forward against the dashboard, limp as a rag doll. There was blood everywhere – splashed across my shirt and spattered in my face.
The roar of the collision faded until all I could hear was the echo of each sound, like a nightmare. All around me was the crumpled metal wreckage, pinning my legs, collapsed like a steel coffin around the steering wheel. I shook my head. My ears were ringing. Everything was hazed in a dripping mist of red, and I realized it was blood filling my eyes.
Through the haze and the horror I saw dark figures moving on the sidewalk – pedestrians gathering in small shocked groups, and others spilling out onto the street. There were shouts and cries of anguish, but the sounds were muted and strangely distant. I tried to call out, but the words were nothing more than a croak in the back of my throat.
I choked out a sob of breath, felt a white-hot lance of pain shoot up my thigh. Dust and smoke swirled in the air. I blinked blood from my eyes and saw Nancy’s crumpled, broken body. She wasn’t moving. There was blood in her hair, her body limp like she was asleep…
…and then the world disappeared into a void of dreadful darkness.
Chapter 41.
I woke to white walls and the smell of antiseptic.
Everything was smudged, softened to a blur.
I could hear the muffled sounds of voices and the incessant beep of hospital monitors.
The beatific image of an angel with a pale face of concern and a mane of fire for hair leaned over me.
“Jericho?”
My vision cleared. April’s worried face emerged. Her eyes were red-rimmed with tears. I felt her seize my hand, but my fingers felt stiff. “You’re going to be okay,” she said. Her voice cracked with raw emotion. “Just rest. You’re going to pull through.”
* * *
When I woke again it could have been a minute, or a week later. I felt drowsy, my eyelids leaden. I blinked into the harsh overhead lights and then slowly turned my head. April was sitting beside the bed. She looked haggard, strung out and ashen-faced with concern. She was staring out through a window as if sending out a silent prayer. She must have caught the movement of my head from the corner of her eye. She leaped to her feet and thumbed a buzzer by the bed.
She smiled with relief and pressed her face close to mine.
“Hospital?” I croaked.
She nodded her head and tears began to spill down her cheeks.
“Bad?”
She shook her head but I saw the lie behind her eyes. “You just need some rest.”
“Nancy?” my voice was barely a rasped whisper, each word a fresh pain.
April blinked, then bit her lip. “Jericho, she died in the crash,” April said through sobs of anguish. “Gr
over too. They both died before paramedics could arrive.”
I felt a white flush of shock drain the blood from my face.
“Grover?” I wrenched the word out.
April nodded her head and then the tears fell like summer rain. “He was the driver of the pick-up truck,” she said. “The police say he deliberately went through the intersection. They think he had been following you, Jericho… stalking you.”
I felt myself reeling. My vision seemed to fade in and out, and I could feel a simmering fizz of rage so that I felt beads of perspiration blister across my brow.
April shook her head like she was grappling with things she couldn’t understand. “Why was Nancy in your car?”
I lifted my eyes to April’s slowly. There was a lump of emotion in my throat so that the words were thick.
