August Unknown (2 page)

He ran up the sandy incline to the asphalt. A glimpse of white
in the salt grass on the other side of the road was gruesome proof this wasn’t
a waking nightmare, but horribly real.

The
whump
of the passenger door closing registered
dimly.

“Jocelyn, stay back.”

Jocelyn climbed over the ruined fence and stopped by the
corner of the car. Silhouetted by the red glow of the taillights, she looked
like a phantom.

“Is she dead?”

“Stay there!”

Geoffrey held his breath, praying for movement where the body
lay on the sandy shoulder. Beyond the dunes, the town was still invisible. For
all he knew, it had vanished. The night had turned terrifyingly unreal.

The woman lay crumpled on her side, her face hidden under a
mass of long, wet hair. One arm protruded from beneath her body, the fingers of
her limp hand slightly curled. Her delicate wrist was exposed where her blue
and white striped sweater had inched up her arm. Blood spattered the band of
white.

Geoffrey knelt and felt for a pulse. Her skin was so cold that
for a horrifying moment he thought she
was
dead. Then he found it: a
dull throb, weak, but steady. He held his breath, making sure.

She wore white jeans and white sneakers. The reflective
clothing had saved her life.

Jocelyn lingered near the car, gripping her hands together in
front of her heart. Already the rain had soaked her. Strangely, Geoffrey didn’t
feel cold or wet himself.

His hand went to his hip. His phone’s holster wasn’t there.
He’d dropped it in the center console when he’d gotten in the car.

“Get my phone from the car,” he shouted through the wind.
Without a word, Jocelyn disappeared around the passenger side.

He brushed the hair from the woman’s face. Dirt and blood
matted a nasty gash at her hairline. Driving raindrops hit her, making the
blood dance grotesquely. His stomach flip-flopped. Geoffrey swallowed back a
suddenly watery mouth.

Her eyelids fluttered and she moaned.

“It’s all right. You’re going to be all right,” he said in a
shaking voice. It felt like a lie.

She gave no indication she heard.

“The battery is dead!” Jocelyn’s thin voice carried back
through the storm.

What else could go wrong? Geoffrey knew he shouldn’t move her,
but he couldn’t leave her lying in the sand. As gently as he could, he turned her
onto her back and hefted her into his arms. The movement caused her to cry out.

He saw her face for the first time as her long hair fell away.
Her lips parted, so pale they were nearly blue. Long, dark lashes, wet and
clumped, fanned across deathly pale skin.

“Open the back door,” he told Jocelyn. She raced around the
car and pulled it open.

“Is she gonna be okay? Uncle G?”

“Yes,” he said in a firm voice, trying to convince himself as
much as Jocelyn. He slid the woman across the back seat and secured her with
the center belt. “We need to take her to the hospital. I want you to ride in
back with her. Can you do that?”

“Uh huh.” Jocelyn slipped into the seat by the woman’s feet
and secured her own seatbelt without being reminded.

For a frightening moment the car stuck in the sand, its tires
spinning uselessly. Then they caught and the BMW shot backward onto the
blacktop. One headlight had been smashed on the fence.

He drove faster than he should along the dark road, worried by
every second that ticked by. Numbness fought to take hold, pulling him back
into that nightmarish, alternate reality.

“How are you doing, Lyn-Lyn? You okay, sugar plum?” He didn’t
dare take his eyes from the road to glance in the rearview mirror. He could
sense Jocelyn leaning forward, her damp golden hair shining in his peripheral
vision like the last ray of hope on this God-forsaken night.

“’kay,” came the shaky reply.

“How’s your nose? Are you still bleeding?”

“My nose is bleeding?”

The wind threw a gigantic palm frond into the side of the car.

“What was that?” Jocelyn wailed.

“Nothing, honey, just a branch. We’re almost there.” With only
one headlight, the night was impossibly dark, and Geoffrey had trouble
focusing. In his mind’s eye, he kept seeing the white-clad figure mixing
hellishly with visions of his past.

Once inside the city limits, they were no longer the last
people on earth. The hunched shape he recognized as Russ Pearson from the
library ran along the sidewalk, collar pulled up around his ears. As they raced
past Newell Street, he glimpsed the flashing red and blue lights of a police
car at the end of the street.

All the traffic lights were out. The danger of driving through
blackened intersections at this speed was not lost on Geoffrey, but he had only
minutes to save her.

I won’t let you die, Christina
.

Panic welled in his chest until he wanted to shout and pound
the steering wheel with his fist.

A gust of wind buffeted the car. Geoffrey tightened his grip
on the wheel, fighting to keep the BMW in his own lane. Finally, the glowing
red sign of Pacific Communities Hospital Emergency loomed in the darkness, a
reassuring beacon in an otherwise deathly-dark town. The building was dimly
lit, running on emergency generators, but even those pale lights were intensely
comforting.

Geoffrey hit the horn twice before he jumped out and ran to
the emergency call button outside the door. Jocelyn slipped out of the back seat
just as two orderlies ran out with a stretcher, followed by Dr. Carlson.

“What happened?”

“She was in the road; all the lights were out. I tried to
swerve around her but the roads were slick. God, it all happened so fast...I
knew I shouldn’t move her but my phone was dead and I didn’t know what else to
do—”

“Geoffrey.” Dr. Carlson placed a hand on his arm. “You did the
right thing.” He and the orderlies crowded in the BMW’s rear door to examine
his unconscious passenger. They lifted the woman onto the stretcher and hurried
her into the emergency room.

As if the storm realized it had lost its grip on its
mysterious victim, the rain turned to a drizzle and a sudden lull in the wind
turned the night eerily still.

Jocelyn waited in the hospital entry’s glass foyer while
Geoffrey parked the car. She watched him run across the parking lot, her
expression solemn. Though a preemie by two touch-and-go months, she had always
been a fearless little girl, smarter and stronger than most kids her age. But
tonight, she looked small and sick like she had when she was an infant.
Geoffrey hoisted her onto his hip and took her to the registration desk.

“She was hit in the face when the airbag went off. Can someone
take a look at her nose?”

The nurse’s brows drew together. “Toddlers aren’t supposed to
ride in the front seat. They can be seriously hurt or even killed when an
airbag deploys.”

“I’m not a toddler,” Jocelyn shrieked. “I’m almost eight.”

Geoffrey’s guilt deepened. He silently berated himself for
even taking her with him on a night like this.

With her lips pinched together in a tight line, the nurse
stood and rounded her desk. “Come on, sweetie, let’s put you in examination
four.”

“No.” Her lower lip jutted. “I’m okay, Uncle G. I just want
the lady to be all right.”

“No arguments. Your mother will never forgive me if I don’t
get you checked out.”

The nurse held out her hand. “Don’t-cha want a lollipop?”

“I’m too old for lollipops,” Jocelyn mumbled. She scrunched
her face into an exaggerated pout, but allowed herself to be led away.

Geoffrey lingered in the wide entrance to the ER. After what
seemed like hours, Dr. Carlson emerged from the first bed. Geoffrey caught a
glimpse of pale white skin before he pulled the curtain back again.

“How is she?” He fell into step with the doctor.

“Hard to tell. Have you called your brother-in-law?”

Geoffrey’s heart dropped into his stomach. “Good God, you
don’t think she’s going to die, do you?”

“No-no-no. Her vitals are strong, but her arm is broken and
she’s got a nasty bump on the head. You never can tell with head injuries like
this. But regardless of the severity, all accidents need to be reported to the
sheriff. You know that.”

Geoffrey let out his breath and nodded. “Of course.”

Dr. Carlson stopped at the registration desk. “Any idea who
she is?”

“I’ve never seen her before. Thank God she was wearing white,
or I wouldn’t have seen her at all.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Jesus. I
was driving so slowly.”

Dr. Carlson placed a hand on his shoulder. “It was an accident.
The lights are out all over town.”

As if to mock him, the main lights buzzed and the hospital
brightened as the power came back on.

Geoffrey shook his head. “I couldn’t bear knowing I killed
another human being—”

“You haven’t killed anybody. I’ve ordered a CAT scan to be
sure, but other than the broken arm, it looks like those are her only injuries.
That, and exposure to the elements. She’s hypothermic. We’ve got her on heat
coils right now. Where did you say this happened?”

“Outside town on the coastal highway, near the old fisheries.”

Hypothermia? How long had she been outside in the storm? No
wonder her skin felt like ice. Had she started walking toward town when the
power went out?

Jocelyn burst from the examination room and ran down the hall.
Geoffrey picked her up and settled her on his hip.

“All fixed?” He forced a smile while inside, the contents of
his stomach felt like month-old milk.

She nodded, happily sucking on a lollipop. She pulled it out
of her mouth and stuck out a green tongue.

“Lovely. Come on, let’s go call Uncle Mike.”

“And Gran Millie, too?”

He nodded, feeling the weight of this horrible night settling
over his bones. “And Gran Millie, too.”

* * *

Geoffrey glanced at the SUV’s dashboard clock. Eight fifteen
a.m. He was probably wasting his time. Visiting hours weren’t until ten, and he
wasn’t even a relative.

After finally arriving home at midnight last night, he’d
tossed and turned until he got up around four a.m. and tried to do some work.
He couldn’t get the accident, or the poor woman, out of his mind.

Over and over, he’d rehashed the scenario until he was
convinced he could have avoided it a hundred different ways if he’d just
reacted a little faster. If he’d been paying attention a little harder. If he’d
had both hands on the wheel. If he’d been driving a little slower.

He’d nearly killed a person. She might even have died since
they left the hospital last night. Dr. Carlson hadn’t yet established how
serious her head injury was.

A dramatic sigh emanated from the back seat of his father’s
SUV. “Why do I hafta ride back here?” Jocelyn demanded.

“I told you,” Geoffrey answered without taking his eyes from
the road. “It isn’t safe for you to ride in the front seat if there’s a
passenger-side airbag.”

She’d been dressed and watching cartoons in the living room
when he’d tried to sneak past at eight. There had been no escaping her then,
and Geoffrey never could say no to Jocelyn.

“I hope she’ll let me sign her cast.”

More reminders of the damage he’d done. Jocelyn had no idea
the emotional turmoil he was going through.

“You can ask once, but don’t pester. Okay?”

“I don’t pester!”

“That’s right, what was I thinking?” he teased. The effort
took everything out of him, and sounded phony.

“Uncle G!” Jocelyn’s giggle fluttered from the back seat like
flower petals on the wind. God bless that little angel.

Though occasionally a fluffy white cloud with a dark center
passed in front of the rising sun, the bright morning held little evidence of
the viciousness that had passed through last night. Broken tree limbs lay in
the rain-soaked streets, but otherwise, Newport had fared well.

He parked the car in the hospital’s main lot and took
Jocelyn’s hand. He slowed his pace to match hers as she stared morbidly at the
double glass doors of the main entrance.

“I hate hospitals,” Jocelyn said softly. She had been
unusually quiet all morning. Maybe she was more upset about the accident than
he’d realized.

“Well, you were in them a lot when you were a baby.”

“They stink.”

Thankfully the attending nurse was not the same woman who last
night had looked at him like he was the worst adult in history to let a child
sit in the front seat of a car with airbags.

“We’re here to see the young woman brought in last night.” He
swallowed past a sore lump of guilt. “The car accident victim.”

“I’m sorry, visiting hours are ten until seven. Are you a
family member?”

Dr. Carlson emerged from the office area. His face was etched
with fatigue. “It’s all right, Helen. I’ll take them in.”

Geoffrey picked up Jocelyn and followed him down the hall.
“Tough night?”

“There were four separate car accidents and Roberta Norton
slipped on her front stoop and shattered her elbow. Two broken arms in one
night. I thought I moved to a small town to avoid all this.”

“The first storm of winter always sends people slipping and
sliding all over the place.” As soon as he’d said it, Geoffrey’s chest
tightened. Christina’s accident had happened just as the first rain of the
season sprinkled over Newport in early October of last year.

Dr. Carlson hoisted Jocelyn onto his hip. “Hiya, Pumpkin.
How’s that nose?”

“Fat,” she said with a frown. “I look ugly.”

“The swelling will go away soon.” He chuckled. “And you could
never look ugly.” He stopped at the elevator banks and hit the call button. “We
moved your Jane Doe upstairs last night.”

“How is she?” Geoffrey asked, even though he was almost afraid
to hear the answer.

“We set the arm and stitched up her head. She came to for a
while, but she’s confused.”