AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She saw no incriminating piece of her car in the darkness behind her, but would she? Of course not. Unless it reflected off that hellish glow from the fire . . . oh, God, she thought she might be sick.
The car is not falling apart. You’re just freaking out, imagining it, making things worse by your stupid imagination. Stop it. Get a damned grip!
The front right tire careened into a rock and something—some kind of scrub brush—scraped the side. She heard another thud. Told herself to keep driving, to quit imagining that her sturdy, vintage Caddy was losing pieces, and to try not to think of the child she’d left with Brett.
Oh, Lord. Her baby. Her sweet little baby. “Ariel,” she whispered, gasping and sobbing. She couldn’t stop the tears nor the shaking. Terror and self-loathing roiled within her as she drove. Why had she done this? Why? For a few lousy bucks? A quarter of a mil? Or to get even with the hustler who’d gotten her pregnant? Why? Her baby . . . nothing was worth her baby’s life!
Cigarette forgotten, she found a new mantra and started spewing it out loud, as much to drown out the demons in her head as anything. “Don’t think about it. It never happened. Don’t think about it. It never happened. Don’t think about it . . .”
Just go, go, go. Ooh, sweet Jesus, God, no. Don’t think about it, don’t think about it . . . Oh God, oh God, oh God.
Heart thudding, she thought she heard the first sound of sirens wailing in the distance. Heading this direction? Or to some other catastrophe?
Didi Storm couldn’t take the chance.
Despite all of her guilt, she couldn’t, wouldn’t, let the police and the world know what she’d done.
She pressed her foot harder still on the accelerator, and the power of over two hundred horses responded, racing beneath the hood of her prized car, propelling them forward toward the incandescence of Las Vegas.
CHAPTER 5
Something was very, very wrong here.
Watching her mother return to the car through the peephole in the back, Remmi bit her lower lip, her mind racing.
Adam? Didi brought Adam back?
But not Ariel?
Didi left the girl dressed in her brother’s clothes with her “daddy”?
That’s how it appeared. Once the transfer for the briefcase had been made, Didi had sauntered back to the car, tossed the case onto the front passenger seat, strapped the baby carrier into place on the wide back seat, then climbed in and began driving. Fast. Somehow managing to light a cigarette. What had just happened? And what was in the briefcase?
Money.
Of course.
With a sinking feeling, Remmi knew.
Her mother had sold her child. The baby had been born with a price on her head.
Remmi thought she might be sick and was only vaguely aware of the sound of a motorcycle’s engine revving nearby and her mother muttering a loud “Idiot!”
The exchange of cash for an infant was unthinkable, even for Didi Storm.
Remmi decided she could hide no longer; she had to find out what was going on. No more conjecture. Maybe there was a plausible, even reasonable explanation. She pounded on the back of the seat just as an explosion rocked the car, the Caddy shuddering and groaning as a burst of light was visible in the rearview. With a scream and some unintelligible words, Didi floored the monster of a car, and Remmi was thrown back, her head striking the roof. She moaned, blinked, and thought she might throw up as the big car raced across the uneven canyon floor. One of the car’s tires struck a pothole or a rock or something. Remmi was tossed around in the tight space and bumped her shoulder.
Damn!
Reflexively grabbing hold of a bar that held the hidden props in place, she clung for dear life.
Something had gone horribly wrong out here. She knew that much. Now, Didi was fleeing, but what had happened to Ariel?
And what was that blinding flash, that explosion that had spooked Didi?
Not the other car. Please, God, not the other car!
But what else would blow up like that in the middle of the Mojave?
