LITMIR.BIZ

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headed straight for Hudson and Becca. “I’m Dr. Millay,” he introduced himself. He was tall, somewhere in his sixties, with the build of a runner. “I understand you’re Renee Trudeau’s brother?”

      “Hudson Walker. Yes. How is she?” he asked, but the doctor’s somber expression said it all.

      “I’m sorry. We did everything we could.”

      Becca’s knees nearly buckled. What? What was he saying?

      The blood drained from Hudson’s face as the doctor went on, “Your sister’s injuries were extensive. Broken clavicles, ribs, crushed pelvis, perforated lung…” In medical terms he described a body crushed from impact, but only a few of the phrases stuck in Becca’s brain. “…deep trauma to the chest and abdomen…heart and liver damage…unable to stop the internal bleeding…unconscious throughout…little or no pain…no response…” then finished with, “Ms. Trudeau died on the operating table. We called her time of death at 9:23 am.”

      Hudson continued to stare at him. “Time of death?”

      Becca squeezed his hand hard. Her heart started pounding in her ears so loudly she could scarcely hear.

      Hudson seemed lost in another world. Becca pulled him unresistingly back to a chair but he sat on its edge, searching Dr. Millay’s craggy face for answers. The surgeon, who’d delivered the news quietly and without emotion, touched a hand to Hudson’s shoulder and said with a measure of kindness, “You can see her when you’re ready.”

      Hudson rose to his feet like an automaton. Becca stood up as well, but he turned to her and said, “I want to see her alone.”

      “Are you sure?”

      He nodded jerkily and left with the doctor and Becca stared after them, feeling caught in a vortex that was pulling her down. Ever since the discovery of the bones at St. Elizabeth’s, death and tragedy had dogged their footsteps. How could this happen? Renee had been so vital. Such a force of nature. And now…and now she was dead?

      In her mind’s eye Becca saw Jessie again, standing high on a cliff, near the ocean, the very ocean into which Renee’s car had plunged.

      The ocean…

      Through glazed eyes she watched as Deputy Burghsmith waited outside the inner sanctum doors. She realized Renee’s body would be moved to the morgue very soon.

      A strange sound erupted from her own throat. A cry of anger and disbelief. The deputy came her way. “Are you all right, ma’am?”

      “The car went over a cliff,” Becca said, as if committing it to memory. “Renee’s car.”

      The deputy frowned. “Yes.”

      “On Highway 101, and the car went into the ocean?”

      “Yes, ma’am. Your friend was life-flighted to the hospital.”

      “She lost control of the car because…someone pushed her over the edge on purpose?”

      “We don’t know all the circumstances. The accident scene is still being reconstructed.” He glanced at his watch. “Well, they’ve probably about finished up by now.”

      “But you believe someone ran her off the road,” she said again, though whether she was talking to herself or the deputy she wouldn’t have been able to say. She was lost in her own memories of another accident, where she’d been forced off the road by a hit-and-run driver and her car had plunged into a deep ditch, smashing into huge rocks that formed one side, crumpling the front of her car like weak cardboard. She’d been trapped inside for hours. Had to be freed by the Jaws of Life, though she remembered none of it. All she recalled was the horrific awareness that her baby was gone. She was empty. And she cried herself to sleep for weeks afterward and relied on medicine to dope her up and help remove the pain.

      And now someone had run Renee off the road and she’d lost her life. She wasn’t alive anymore. Becca couldn’t quite grasp it. Hudson’s sister, the only family he had left, was gone. The vibrant dark-haired reporter with the feeling she was being persecuted was gone.

      She was about to follow after Hudson despite what he’d said when he came back through the doors, his face pale. She wanted to gather him in her arms and hold him tightly, but he seemed somewhat distant, clearly still unable to process all that had happened in such a short time.

      “I called Zeke,” he said in a strange voice. “He was the only one I could think of to call.”

      “I’m so sorry.” Becca’s eyes burned.

      “I don’t believe she’s gone, Becca. I saw her. I saw…the body. But I still don’t believe it.”

      Then she wrapped her arms around him and he pressed his forehead to hers. She felt the shudder go through him and squeezed her eyes shut on her own teary emotions. She wanted to be strong for him. She wanted to help.

      “I’m going to the crash site,” he muttered, pulling away. “I want to see where it happened.”

      “You’re sure?”

      “Yes.”

      Becca followed him out to his truck. “You okay to drive?”

      He nodded, got into his cab, pulled back onto Highway 101, and drove south, past the turn to 26 and inland. It was a spot they hadn’t passed on the way to Ocean Park Hospital, but it was definitely on the way to Deception Bay, the small town near where Renee had been staying.

      It was a surreal trip. Neither Becca nor Hudson said much. The day had been surprisingly nice with the sun gaining control of the clouds, not the other way around, though now the early evening shadows were stretching inland and the sun was descending toward the sea.

      And then they were there. A section of guardrail was twisted back, the metal hanging over the edge of a cliff. A gaping hole. Gravel had been stained with differing colors of spray paint, evidence left from the team reconstructing the accident.

      Hudson pulled the truck to a stop, and he and Becca sat and stared at the break in the rusted metal rail far above the ocean. Then they climbed from the vehicle and Hudson walked to the edge, but Becca hung back, feeling queasy and strange. She stayed by the truck, one hand on the front fender, while Hudson went to the rim and looked over, his hair ruffled by spurts of wind, the sleeves of his denim shirt pressed against his arms from its force.

      Becca couldn’t move forward. Logically, all she had to do was put one foot in front of the other but there was a barrier she couldn’t see, holding her in place. An oppressive, invisible wall. And then she heard the dull roar that heralded a vision, the sudden blindness, the building headache. “No,” she pleaded, although it could have been in her mind.

      Ringo whined at her from the car. One of her hands was still on the hood, and she concentrated on it with all her strength, turning toward the vehicle for support before she was completely taken over by the vision.

      She expected to see Jessie but instead she was in a vehicle herself, spinning the steering wheel, screaming, desperately trying to gain control. Trees and brush flashed by as her car plunged off the road and down the embankment. Her car. It was her car! Her accident! Instinctively Becca cradled her abdomen, protecting her baby. She could hear the rush of the engine from the car behind her, the one that had forced hers over the edge. In a panic she glanced back. She saw him driving away, heading like a maniac away from the scene of the crime.

      And then blackness. Nothing but blackness.

      Hudson scanned the accident scene. He was sick with grief and it had driven weariness into the marrow of his bones, but he couldn’t stop. Couldn’t let this terrible nightmare become a reality.

      “Who did this?” he whispered. He didn’t believe it was an accident. Someone had purposely run Renee off the road. And the colored paint on the asphalt road and gravel shoulder told him the sheriff’s department agreed.

      Why?

      He tore

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