Road Rage (3 page)

“Yup.” She mimicked his super-hero gesture. “Root beer and ice cream awaits!”

* * * *

“Night, Haley-girl,” Derek said with a kiss on her forehead. “I love you.”

“Night, Daddy-man. Love you, too. Sleep tight.”

“You sleep tighter,” he said, closing the door to the office-slash-guest-room, where she slept on a futon on Friday and Saturday nights.

Normally he’d stay up for a while and watch the end of the A’s game or a boxing match, but an uncharacteristic fatigue dragged at his limbs. He didn’t even feel up to his usual bedtime workout. Instead, he pulled on some old sweats, took a beer to bed with him and listened to the A’s on the radio.

The accident had replayed in his mind all evening, distracting him from Haley’s enthusiastic stories about her week. She hadn’t seemed to notice, but the memory had kept him from fully enjoying his girl on one of the two precious nights per week he got to spend with her. Taking a swig from the bottle, he wished that frigging timid driver were here so he could give him a piece of his mind. That’s what the problem was; he was a verbal kind of guy, and he hadn’t been able to tell that asshole off. If he’d had that chance, he’d be over the inconvenient memory by now.

Sometime after the start of the ninth inning, he nodded off. He hardly ever dreamed, but tonight, he got a front-row seat to the accident. Only this time, he found himself behind the wheel of the Honda.

He sat rigidly forward in the bucket seat. His hands clamped the steering wheel like they were welded on. They looked unnaturally small to him but he couldn’t think about that now. He had to merge or he’d miss his exit and be extra late getting to Mrs. E.

Mrs. E? The only Mrs. E he knew had been his second grade teacher, Mrs. Espinoza. He had one of those moments where he knew he was dreaming, but for some reason, the knowledge didn’t relieve the anxiety bunching his muscles and fraying his nerves. Nor did it quiet the refrain of,
Stupid, stupid, stupid, what was I thinking?
going through his head.

His gaze darted between the mirrors. He craned his neck to check his blind spot again.

Did he have room to merge, or not? That black car looked to be coming too fast. Better to play it safe and wait.

Okay, the black car passed. Now? He checked his blind spot again. Another car surged forward. Why was everyone going so fast? Wasn’t the right lane supposed to be the slow lane?

A flash of white slid in front of the windshield, blocking out the highway. The blue oval of a Ford logo looked as big as a road sign. It couldn’t be more than a couple of feet from his bumper.

Oh, God! It’s too close!

A scream caught in his throat as he tapped the brakes, but adrenaline made the tap more of a stomp. The front end of a Jeep zoomed up to fill the rear window.

Crash!

The wheel jerked in his hands. His car skidded sideways into the fast lane.

Terror flooded his mouth with the taste of pennies. He should have known better than to take the highway. He didn’t belong here, in this fast world of dangerous moving metal.

Crash!

The world turned upside down. Screeching brakes raked his ears. White stars filled his vision as the airbag hit him in the face. Something hard and heavy smashed into his head. Pain lanced his skull. Deafening crashes punched into his consciousness, one after another as the car rolled.

Dizzy. He was so dizzy.

Someone shook his shoulder. He swatted the hand away, frantic, afraid. Then he was alone, his body strung tight and covered in sweat.

He was sitting up in bed, propped up with pillows. An ad for one of those second-rate insurance agencies grated from the radio. Someone was breathing heavily nearby. He turned his head toward the rasping sound.

Haley. Pale. Eyes wide.

He clicked off the radio with a shaky hand. “Hey, honey,” he tried to say, but the terror of the nightmare made his throat tight.

“Who was she?” Haley asked, her voice a scared whisper.

He licked his lips. His cheeks flushed with embarrassment as he became aware of the empty beer bottle between his thighs. He’d promised Deidre he wouldn’t drink in front of Haley. He really ought to start setting a better example for her.

He put the bottle behind the lamp. “Who was who, honey?”

“The woman who tried to wake you up.”

He frowned. “Just a dream, hon,” he answered automatically. Yes, that sounded right. Haley must have been dreaming, like he had. “Just a dream,” he repeated, finding comfort in the words as the echoes of groaning metal and crunching glass faded away. He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Want me to tuck you in again?”

She nodded. “Why were you crying?” she asked as she took his hand and pulled him from the bed.

“I was crying?”

“Uh huh. Like a little girl.”

“Hey, you’re not allowed to say that. You’re a little girl.”

She stuck out her tongue. The nightmare faded. He could almost convince himself he hadn’t had it, and hadn’t glimpsed rich waves of auburn hair and concerned, ocean-blue eyes when he’d woken.

* * * *

Fog. Nothing but cottony, silent fog.

When she tried to remember where she ought to be instead, she came up blank. Before panic could do more than flash her skin with the briefest chill, the fog rolled away to leave her standing in the corner of a softly-lit, unfamiliar bedroom. The radio was playing a commercial, and a man she didn’t recognize sat up in bed, whimpering and thrashing his head from side to side.

Forgetting her own predicament, she rushed to help him, finding him in the grip of some terrifying dream. She shook him by the shoulder until his eyes flew open, pupils drowning all but the barest sliver of warm brown irises.

A creaking sound made her look toward the door. A girl of about ten or eleven gaped at her.

Afraid the girl might suspect her of attacking the man, she let go of him and raised her hands to show she meant no harm. The girl blinked and looked all around as if she’d lost sight of her.

“I’m sorry,” she said as she backed away from the bed. “I was trying to help.”

But the man and the girl talked over her as if she weren’t there.

“Hello? Can you hear me?” She waved her arms. “Hello! Who are you people?” For that matter, who was she? She couldn’t remember her name or anything about herself.

They continued to ignore her, talking back and forth as they left the room.

She put her hands on her hips. “Okay,” she said to the empty room.

Was she dreaming? Maybe, but how weird to have a dream about waking someone else up from a dream. Psychotic episode? Doubtful. Didn’t crazy people usually believe they were someone famous or important like Jackie O or Jesus? She might not know who she was, but she had no delusions of grandeur. Dead? Ugh. She wasn’t prepared to go there.

She glanced around the room, hoping for enlightenment. Hardwood floors, off-white walls, white plaster ceiling and a bare window made up the unimaginative shell of a Spartan space containing a king-size bed with no headboard or footboard, two simple end tables, and a matching dresser with a calendar pinned to the wall above it. The only personal item was a baseball mitt on the dresser. No family photos or artwork on the walls. Nothing to help her place this room, and no clues as to why she was here.

Should she make a break for it? Try to run from the house while the man tucked his daughter back in? If she did, where would she go? She wracked her brain for where she might live or who she might turn to for help, but no names, faces, addresses or phone numbers came to her.

She couldn’t even remember what she looked like. The mirror on the closet door offered no help. She stood right in front of it and only saw the reflections of the rumpled bed and the window behind her. She wiggled her fingers experimentally, but the reflection didn’t so much as waver.

“Creepy.”

Looking down the line of her body, she at least knew she was slender, on the busty side and wearing a dark blue sleeveless top, white shorts and flip-flops. Fingering her hair, she could feel thick layers a little longer than shoulder-length. When she lifted the tips to the lamplight, the strands winked various shades from strawberry blonde to deep auburn. It smelled like melon.

Before she could decide what to do with herself, she heard the man say, “Goodnight, Haley-girl,” through the wall.

“Night, Daddy-man.” The sleepy reply made her smile.

The man padded toward the bedroom.

She stiffened. The impulse to hide made her grab the closet doorknob. The brass felt cool and solid in her palm, but it wouldn’t turn. Wouldn’t even wiggle.

Her heart hammered with the fear of being discovered. It might have been smart to dive under the bed at the last second, but in a panic-induced fit of optimism, she kept yanking at the closet door. It wouldn’t budge.

The man came into the room, and she froze with both hands on the knob and one foot on the doorjamb. He didn’t spare her a glance as he shuffled in her direction, stopped a pace away, and peeled off his t-shirt to toss in the hamper beside the closet.

Ah. Mystery solved. That torso was the stuff of dreams.

The man’s chest looked like molded armor covered with tawny velvet. Soft-looking hairs nestled in the cleft between his pecs made an inviting trail to the waistband of his sweats. His stomach was firm with muscle, but a healthy layer attesting to a moderate appreciation for food and drink muted the six-pack that might have doubled as a cheese grater ten years ago. He was probably in his thirties, which appealed to her. That narrowed her age down to somewhere between twenty and Cougarville.

She released her chokehold on the doorknob and stood there stupidly, staring at the masculine perfection an arm’s reach in front of her. The man swiped a left hand with no ring on it over his stubbled jaw and yawned. He made an adorable, unselfconscious sound. His exhalation lifted a lock of her hair and smelled of earthy hops and sleep. Lightly-creased eyes looked through her to the bed, and she glimpsed some heavy burden in his gaze, something darker than the memory of a nightmare. An urge to shine a light into that darkness eclipsed her fear.

He moved toward the bed, and she had to suck in a lungful of air and flatten herself against the closet door to avoid a collision. The fresh bite of Irish Spring soap wafted by. Her skin zinged with the nearness of a man so stunning and haunted.

He clicked off the lamp, casting the room in orange-tinged darkness, care of the streetlamp outside. The moment his cheek mashed into the pillow, he began breathing in the deep, regular pattern of a heavily sedated rhino.

“Now what?”

As far as dreams went, this one could use more action. The thought of crawling into bed with the attractive, single man and turning it into one of
those
dreams would have had some merit if a child hadn’t been sleeping in the next room.

For lack of anything better to do, she tiptoed to the cracked-open door, planning to snoop around the man’s house, maybe go outside and check out the neighborhood, see if anything triggered her memory. But like the closet, the door wouldn’t budge. Not even when she wedged her foot in the crack and pulled on the handle with all her might.

Her fear threatened to kick back into action, but she held it in check long enough to cross the room and try thumbing the latch on the window. It wouldn’t move.

“Okay. Not going to panic.” But her shaking hands didn’t get the memo. She was trapped in this room by some strange object stasis. Did the phenomenon only apply to means of egress? She squared off with the baseball mitt on the dresser.

“I am going to pick you up,” she informed it. She reached out and grasped the soft leather. Despite its worn appearance, the supple glove wouldn’t dent under her fingers. She could feel the texture of the leather, the roughness of every stitch. When she squeezed the woven netting, the edge abraded her skin. But she couldn’t move it or change it in any way. It might as well have been a bronzed display fixed to its pedestal in the Baseball Hall of Fame. She couldn’t lift it off the dresser or even slide it a millimeter in any direction.

She couldn’t open drawers. She couldn’t leave a smudged fingerprint on the mirror. Fear slithered down her spine like trickles of ice water.

Beside the hamper, a crumpled sock collected dust. With a sinking feeling in her stomach, she nudged it with her toe. It wouldn’t move. Crouching down and fighting tears, she curled her fingers in the oddly-stiff ridges of cotton and pulled with everything she had. She pulled until her shoulders creaked and the cotton cut into her hands. And still, the darn thing wouldn’t move. The world was frozen to her. Like a movie on pause. She could feel, but she couldn’t be felt.