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“Okay. Please just get out of there, Sierra.”
“I’ll leave soon,” she promised. “I’ll call you when I get to town.”
He wanted her to come now, not soon. He still fretted, itching to turn this damned car around and drive straight out to her house. Then he looked at the clock on the dash and swore under his breath. He was already running late to meet the other cops. Time to get his head back into the game, start to see the bigger picture again. A little girl’s life may depend on how they handled this investigation. On how well he did his job. But even as he continued down the road toward Penneshaw, his mind refused to concentrate on what he needed to do next. Instead it kept drifting, seeing Sierra’s face, pale and lined with worry, staring out the big, glass window of her house toward the unforgiving ocean.
* * *
Sierra hurried from the front door of her house out to her car. It was now two hours after she’d talked to Reed, and she needed to get into town. She typed out a quick text to let him know she was leaving now and slammed the car door shut.
She’d spent the last few hours making phone calls, interspersed with periods of peering out the picture windows at the front of her house and constantly checking that her doors and windows were all still securely locked. Common sense told her whoever had committed that abhorrent act in her back yard wasn’t still lurking around. They were long gone. Her nerves had slowly settled as she talked on the phone, and her confidence grew with each call she made. That, and the idea of seeing Reed again soon had her almost back to normal. But she hadn’t dared go back outside. Her poor girls. Their little feathery bodies would have to lie there in the dirt until she could get the courage to go out and retrieve them. Give them a proper burial.
Bastard. How dare he hurt her innocent pets. What a fucking coward. Her blood had begun to boil the more she thought about his gutless act.
At least that rage had given her the impetus not to take no for an answer when she finally made the phone calls. And she thought she might have found something important. A breakthrough, perhaps. A tiny bit of information from the cop who’d been first on the scene when the girl had disappeared three years ago. Something that wasn’t in any of the reports she’d read so far. But it had been filed away as evidence, even though the cop thought it was probably useless. She couldn’t wait to hear what Reed thought of the new information.
In the end, she hadn’t needed to call Jen, which was a good thing, because if she found out about the chickens then she would completely freak out. And that was the last thing Sierra needed at the moment. She’d packed an overnight bag, not sure if she wanted to come home tonight. But also not sure where else she might go. Sam and Debbie hadn’t answered her frantic phone call, which probably meant they were in an out-of-range spot on the island, already out searching for the missing girl again. She wished she didn’t have to rely on the older couple quite so much. The isolation and beauty of this area was what had attracted her here in the first place, but she was now seeing it also had its drawbacks.
She started the car and set off down the driveway. As she picked up speed along the gravel road out of Snellings Beach, she noticed a strange vibration in the steering wheel. Bloody hell, her car might need a wheel alignment, or perhaps there was something wrong with her shock absorbers. It was a good thing she was heading into town today. The vibration remained as she turned onto the main highway toward Kingscote, but it wasn’t getting any worse, so Sierra decided to keep going. Her mind was swirling with all the implications of what the guy on the phone had told her, and all she wanted to do was get to town. Talk to Reed.
There was a sharp bend in the road coming up, so she slowed the car and dropped down a gear, driving on autopilot, her mind still engaged elsewhere. But as she came out of the bend and headed down a steep hill on the other side, the car began to shake violently. What the hell was happening? She touched the brake, and suddenly she was no longer able to control the car. The steering wheel wasn’t responding at all. The car bucked and bumped. She tried to yank the car back into a straight line, using all of her brute force against the unresponsive wheel, but it was no use. Strangely, she didn’t panic. Instead, a kind of calm descended over her, and it was almost as if she could see herself from outside. Still holding on to the wheel with one hand, she began to quickly shift the car down through the gears, slowing the car’s headlong flight. Thank God this part of the road had straightened out, but the car was still drifting toward the gravel edge. She knocked it down another gear and then gingerly tried pulling on the emergency brake.
The car was definitely slowing, but she had no control over where it was headed. The left wheel dropped off the bitumen and into the gravel. This part of the island was sheep country, and as such, the road was edged by low, rolling hills of pasture. Scrubby bushes flew past the passenger window, getting closer and closer. But at least there were no large trees edging the road. If she hit a tree at this speed…
A large drainage ditch opened up in front of her, but there was nothing she could do except scream. The car nose-dived into the large trench and came to a crunching, bone-shattering halt. Glass from the broken windshield flew through the car. Air bags deployed all around Sierra as she was thrown forward, and her seatbelt bit painfully into her chest. Then everything became dark.
Sierra lifted her head and opened her eyes, dazed and confused. It was eerily silent. She thought she might’ve blacked out for a few seconds. Her head hurt. She did a mental scan of her body, checking for injuries. The dashboard was jammed up against her right knee, but she could still move, even though it hurt. And her chest and shoulder ached, probably from where the seat belt had cut into her.
She needed to get out of the car. The urge was overwhelming, and she scrabbled for the door handle, suddenly desperate. Her hand shook so much she had to pull the handle three times before it gave. But the door wouldn’t open. It had to be warped by the impact. Jammed shut. Panic flooded through her. She was trapped in here. A scream rose in her throat. She rammed her shoulder against the door. Once. Twice. Then with a screech of metal on metal it gave way, and Sierra tumbled out onto the ground. The mud was cold against her cheek, but she welcomed the feel as she lay there, collecting herself.
Gingerly, she levered herself up onto her knees, wincing as pain sliced through her leg and then her chest. Using the car to grab onto, she pulled herself to standing and surveyed the mess in front of her.
The hood of her poor car was crumpled beyond recognition, the windshield completely shattered. The front right-hand wheel was hanging off at a ninety-degree angle. If she didn’t know better, she would’ve sworn a couple of the lug nuts were missing from the wheel. Had her car been tampered with? A shiver of pure fear ran though her. Could the same person who killed her chickens have actually gone that far? Surely not. That would be murder. She suddenly felt extremely cold. Stop it. She shook her head to dislodge the terrible thoughts. She was alive. She was okay. And it could’ve been so much worse. If she hadn’t managed to slow the car down or if the road had been lined with trees when she veered off, she could’ve very easily died.
The sight of the destroyed car and the idea someone had meant her harm was too much and she had to sit down in the grass by the side of the road before she fell. Her whole body was shaking now, and even though she knew it was the effect of the adrenaline leaving her body—she was probably going into shock—she felt useless and helpless. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she couldn’t even find the strength to lift her hand to wipe them away.
As she sat there, memories from a day ten years ago overwhelmed her. Memories of the last time she’d been involved in a car crash. Sierra wrapped her arms around her body, trying to stay focused, but the impressions came howling back.
Grace was singing. The babbling, high-pitched warble only a nine-month-old was capable of. The Wiggles were on constant repeat in Sierra’s car, and they were both belting out Grace’s favorite, the Hot Potato song. Sierra’s heart lifted at the sound of her daughter, happy and giggling.
The girl at daycare had told her that Grace had a fairly good day and it seemed her little girl might finally be settling into the new routine, after Sierra had returned to work last month.
The traffic light was red, and as she waited for it to go green, Sierra did the actions from the song while Grace giggled in the back seat. The music was turned up loud, and Sierra didn’t care that other people in the cars around her might overhear her terrible crooning. As long as her daughter thought it was funny, then that was okay with her.
A car flashed through the intersection in front of her, going way too fast, and Sierra turned her head to watch it for a second. Stupid idiots, speeding through the intersection, they were going to kill someone. But Grace wasn’t to be distracted and so Sierra took up her singing again a few seconds later.
The lights went green. Sierra put her hands back on the steering wheel and moved off.
Her world turned into a sudden, blinding, crunching sphere of pain and deafening sound.
Sierra didn’t remember a lot after that. She knew she screamed and screamed, a wild animal sound, until her throat was hoarse. People ran from all directions and huddled around her. She kept screaming for her daughter.
The doctors told her she’d almost died that night. And sometimes she wished she had. Had taken the place of her daughter. If only she could’ve given up her life to save Grace, she would’ve done it in a heartbeat.
But nothing could bring her daughter back. She had to live with that reality every single day.
She’d been put into an induced coma for nearly two weeks. By the time she woke up, her husband, Jake had already arranged Grace’s funeral. She didn’t even get to say goodbye to her beautiful daughter.
Tears were streaming freely down her face now, accompanied by snot and saliva too, as Sierra howled in anguish. She hadn’t cried like this since the day she’d found out her daughter was dead. Instead she’d kept it all bottled up inside. This crash had brought it hurtling back to her as if it happened yesterday. She sat in the long grass, crying and wailing, beating the ground with her fist, over and over. It wasn’t fair. Life wasn’t fair. She missed her daughter so much.
Sierra didn’t know how long she’d been lying there on the cold ground. Her grief had finally run its course and now she gave the occasional, hiccupping sob, but the tears had abated. She felt completely washed out. Scoured and raw. Empty. But also clean. Like a blank page. As if this breakdown might actually have been a breakthrough.
She put one leaden hand on the soil beneath her face and levered herself up to a sitting position. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see her hair was festooned with leaves and sticks from where she’d lain on the ground. With a superhuman effort she pushed herself up to standing, swaying for a second until she regained her balance. She probably looked horrific. But there were more important things than wiping the snot and tears from her face. She needed to get out of here.
Sierra took an unsteady step back and cast a glance up and down the road. Not a car in sight. But that wasn’t unusual, this end of the island was isolated. Sometimes, only a handful of cars used this road on any given day. She might be waiting quite a while for someone to come and rescue her.
Limping around to the other side of the car, she managed to pull the door open. The contents of her handbag were scattered all through the front of the car. It took her a few seconds to locate her cell phone. The glass front was cracked and for a second she panicked until she hit the button and the screen lit up.
Hallelujah, there was reception. It was weak, but it’d be enough to make the call. There was only one person she wanted to talk to. One person she trusted enough to come and rescue her. Reed. She dialed his number and let out a gasp of relief when he answered.
