Read Love Inspired Suspense December 2015, Box Set 2 of 2 Online
Authors: Margaret Daley
Love Inspired Suspense December 2015, Box Set 2 of 2 (34 page)
Acknowledgments
My stories would fall flat without real-life people sharing their experiences with me. They are the true heroes behind the stories. I want to especially thank Dennis Theodore Swols, SSG United States Army. His honesty in answering my many questions about post-traumatic stress disorder as well as the amazing service dogs that have helped him in his daily life are what brought the emotions to the page. Thank you, Dennis, and thank you to your dog, Ben, too. What a blessing you have both been to my story and my life.
CHAPTER ONE
“I
n point two miles, your destination will be on your left,” the GPS's mechanical voice spoke into the tension-filled interior of the old Honda Beat roadster. Lacey Phillips stole a quick glance at her rearview mirror. Blinding headlights from the car on her tail suggested she might not make it those point two miles. If this guy came any closer, she could be spending her Christmas Eve in a snowy New Hampshire ditch instead.
Not what a born-and-bred Southern girl was used to.
Lacey had nothing for warmth but a blue-jean coat and her brother's army beanie hat.
Check that: her
deceased
brother's.
“Stay on the road, Lacey,” she said aloud, and tightened her hold on the wheel.
She could almost hear her brother whisper the same words to her. They'd been each other's spotter on the racetrack for so long, guiding each and every lane change from mouthpiece to earpiece, guarding against unforeseen hazards on the road ahead. Now it felt as though he guided her again. And it all started when Jeff had left her an envelope with nothing in it but a name and a key. Oh, how she wished there had been a warning of danger inside it, as well.
The car behind pulled up. For the past half hour it had kept the same taunting pace with her as when she'd spotted it outside the small town of Norcastle, New Hampshire. She'd thought it curious when they'd both took the cutoff to ascend these secluded mountain roads. Twenty more minutes of being tailgated through twists and turns and more cutoffs had caused her curiosity to change to full-on alarm.
Lacey wondered how long the car had been there before she noticed it. With her one-track mind on the sole purpose of this trip, it could have pulled up the moment she'd left work at her dad's South Carolina reconstruction race-car shop seventeen hours ago.
Get the answers
was as far as her thoughts had gone when she'd found the envelope in her brother's office at the shop. Now, with her unwanted company coming up the rear, she probably should have put a little more planning into her mission. After all, her brother was dead, and she didn't believe it was an accident, as the stamp on his military file implied. How far would someone go to keep that little detail under the rug?
Lacey accelerated, hoping to find the driveway her GPS alerted her to. Somewhere in these twisty back roads and walls of thick trees was the entrance to the home of her brother's friend, Captain Wade Spencerâthe name her brother had left in that envelope.
Lacey's tires slipped beneath her as the car hit ice, something she was not used to. A yank of the wheel and a downshift freed her from the skid, but she realized this two-seater Beater was not the car to take north in the beginning of winter. Reason number 345 she would never make a good wedding planner like her wise and detailed-oriented, Southern-genteel mother. It was just one more disappointment for Adelaide Phillips to lecture her daughter about when Lacey returned home.
If
she returned home.
Lacey looked in the rearview mirror again and breathed a little easier with the little extra space between her car and the one behind her, but with the thoughts of her mother permeating her brain now, it wasn't too much easier.
What would Adelaide do when she heard her rebel daughter had raced off to places unknown to investigate her brother's death?
Lacey revved her engine, just as she typically did to tune her mother's sweet-as-sugar voice out of her mind. Then she floored the pedal, and her tires squealed beneath her just as they would on pit road on race day.
She had a mission, and Adelaide would just have to accept it. Lacey took some solace, though, knowing she didn't completely go alone. She believed she could step out, or drive out, as the case may be, in faith because God always went with her.
Lord, right about now, I could use a little of Your guidance and maybe some more space between me and the car behind me. They're getting awfully close again. Please, don't let them interfere with my goal. I have to make things right. Stay with me, and please cover for me with Mama, and
please
help me find this Wade guy's place.
Lacey scrutinized the dense forest ahead of her but still saw no inclination of any living being this far out from town.
Talk about cutting yourself off from the world
, she thought.
What kind of person was this Wade anyâ
Lacey jolted. The car behind her had tapped her bumper! Was he playing some kind of game?
Back home on the track there might have been some words hollered out, or at the very least, an issue of a challenge for such behavior, but she didn't think for a second this guy cared about his bad sportsmanship. So what
did
he want? To stop her from getting her answers was all she could fathom.
But she needed these answers for Jeffrey, Lacey reminded herself. She wouldn't give up until her brother's life was honored, not locked up in a confidential file somewhere in DC.
The car bumped her again.
Lacey's stomach squeezed with trepidation. Never did she think she would need an exit strategy. It had always been get the answers and go home. In and out and home by Christmas dinner. End of mission.
She squeezed her steering wheel tighter and jerked when the car bumped her a third time. How she wished she'd been able to equip the Honda Beat for racing already. If she wasn't stuck in the shop working other drivers' cars, the Beat would have included at least a roll cage of tubular steel by now. Her ability to fight back would have put an end to the cat-and-mouse game this guy was playing. What was the point in tapping her bumper? Did he want her to move over?
Or to go home?
Not a chance
, Lacey thought. She knew a few racers who used bullying tactics like this guy was doing. One tap meant “I'm behind you and want to come up.” Two taps meant “move it, or I'll move you myself.” And three taps meant “you've been warned.”
So was that her third warning?
“You don't know who you're tapping, pal,” she spoke into her quiet cabin. “I don't play the game for them, and I'm not playing it for you.”
“Your destination is on your left.” The GPS announced her arrival and Lacey flinched. Then she cringed. Apparently, she only talked big.
The GPS repeated the instructions, and Lacey flicked her blinker on. The next second, the car behind her jammed the Beat's rear bumper at full force.
The impact wrenched Lacey's neck as her head whipped back into her headrest, but she felt nothing because the looming dark abyss coming at her took precedence.
Crunches and squeals resounded as she slammed on the brakes to fight back with the car plowing her to the edge of the road. Her car turned to the right under the pressure from behind. Then before the edge neared, the strain lessened up. The guy backed off, but probably only to save himself from going over with her.
The Beat was already in a full spin. Coupled with the messy roads, the world for Lacey kept swinging round and round as she careened toward the unknown.
She gripped the wheel with one hand as she downshifted. Her headlights came back around to show a drop-off into a black void that would most likely send her down some ravine to be lost until spring.
Maybe never found at all.
Go left.
The familiar voice of her brother came from the recesses of her mind. After years of his training with go-carts when she was ten years old, and cars at sixteen, she knew exactly what he would say.
One hard crank of her wheel pulled the car out of the spin and sent her back around, but unfortunately, it sent her in a skid in the opposite direction, straight at the thick, impenetrable tree line she'd been searching through before. The one with no opening, as far as she had been able to tellâand the thick tree trunks with their tentacles of bared branches coming at her said things hadn't changed. But her headlights showed something was different than before.
Where there was no sign of life before, now a dog ran straight for her, emerging from the forest.
A quick glance behind it and she caught sight of the driveway she'd been looking for. The sharp angle of Captain Wade Spencer's property was invisible to passersby, but his golden-red Labrador retriever had revealed its opening to her now as her car took aim to gun it down.
Her brake pedal plastered to the floor. The tires' skid locked their direction on their target. Lacey could do nothing but cry out to God to intervene and save the dog barreling forward.
As if by command, the animal abruptly came to a stop and satâdirectly in the car's path.
“No!” Lacey shouted. That was not what she meant by intervening! At least if the dog was still running, there was a chance of it moving out of the way before impact. Now things could not get worse.
Tears blurred Lacey's vision, and wails of protest erupted from her lips. She did not want to kill this dog.
Then things got worse.
In addition to the sitting dog, a man now raced out from behind the trees, straight for the canine.
Lacey screamed louder than ever. The skid moved as if in slow motion. The whole incident couldn't have taken more than a minute from the first bump to this final skid, but in that minute she saw the devastation her impulsiveness was about to cause. If only she had thought this trip through. If only she had been more like the wise Adelaide Phillips.
If only.
Lacey closed her eyes, unable to watch the outcome to her choices, a prayer of forgiveness on her lips and regret in her heart.
* * *
Head. Check.
Feet. Check.
Arms. Check.
Wade Spencer lay in a cold, snow-filled ditch between the trees where he'd landed when he saved his dog from the out-of-control driver. All was negative with his self-exam, a routine that four tours overseas had formed into a habit. His next exam consisted of judging the well-being of Promise, his faithful dog.
Wade lifted his hand to look her over. He burrowed his fingers through her snow-covered fur for injuries. She jumped to all four paws without any problem and shook off the white flakes with little effort. His battle buddy would live to serve another day.
Now, as for the driver, he should be serving, too.
Time.
Wade gained his feet and trudged through the knee-deep snow of the ditch. He stomped up onto the road where the car spun out and came to a haltâright where Promise had been sitting under his command.
If Wade had known a car had been aiming for her, he would have commanded Promise to run, not sit. Out of the hundred and fifty commands the dog knew, any of them would have been better.
At the top of the driveway, he'd heard the car spinning out. His mind had gone to one of the many dark places of his tours where mishaps had been deadly. His feet had responsively set out to be of help in this mishap. Promise had kept up at her place beside him, but she must have thought they were playing, because she'd quickly raced ahead of him. All Wade could do was yell for her to sit. Being the good service dog she was, she didâright in front of the car.
Wade faced the hood of the heap of rust now and heard the words, “You have arrived at your destination” coming from the mechanical voice of the driver's GPS. The message nearly knocked him over again.
The driver meant to stay?
“I don't think so.” Wade approached the driver's side. “This is
not
your destination. You can keep right on driving.”
A woman in her late twenties sat stock-still behind the wheel, her window blown out from the tree branch she'd collided with. She wore a jean coat and a knitted cap, and her long hair, smooth as liquid chocolate, spilled out from beneath it. The GPS repeated its words again, but all Wade focused on was the terror in the woman's saucer-size eyes.
Wade pulled the car handle and swung the door wide; the tinkling of falling glass fizzled his tension a bit. The cabin light illuminated the fear in the woman's face, a pair of brown eyes shimmered and a tear spilled down her blanched cheek. He let the rest of his anger go on a grunt. “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head, but her lips trembled in silence. She squeaked out, “Are you? Or the dog? Did I k-kill the dog?”
Wade gave two sharp whistles, and Promise sidled up beside him with her tail wagging, her bushy eyebrows bouncing up and down as was her typical inquisitive way. “See for yourself.”
A wail escaped the woman's lips, followed by a bucket of tears.
Wade sighed and reached for her hand to pull her out.
“I'm so sorry,” she cried. “I didn't see... The car was in a skid.”
“Your South Carolina plates give away your knowledge of the winters up here in New Hampshire, so I'll cut you some slack, butâ”
“And someone was following me. They nearly killed me when they banged into me.”
“Banged into you?” Wade searched up and down the empty street. He dropped her hand to step to the back end of the car. The dent proved her statement. “Which way did they go?”
“I don't know,” she cried. “I was too busy staying on the road and not going over the ledge.”
“Ledge?” Wade snapped his attention from the dark road to the very ledge that had brought the endless tunnel of darkness to his whole life. An image of another woman, his mother, dead, her neck twisted, flashed in his mind. Just one of the many images of dead people his mind remembered on a daily basis. His breathing picked up.
“Yes, the ledge. I thought I was going over it for sure.” She pointed to it then grabbed her head, pulling the cap off in her anxiety. “I can still see it coming closer and closer.”
Wade nearly grabbed his own head, knowing firsthand the terror she spoke of.
Except, he'd actually gone overâand lived to remember every horrifying detail.
“I need to go,” he said quickly, needing to get away. “You need to go. I can't help you. Side, Promise.”
He didn't need to command. Promise already stood by. Wade grabbed the bandanna tied to her collar. She should have her leash on, he admonished himself for his gaffe. The leash was his lifeline to her. Through the leash, Promise could get a read on his physiological well-being. She could sense his heart rate just by his tugs and pulls. But he'd left her leash at the house in their rush to get some fresh air away from his sister. Now he willingly rushed back to Roni's never-ending pleas for him to retire from the military and move back to New Hampshire. He'd endure her plights.
