LITMIR.BIZ

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squared her shoulders and purged her voice of the terror raging inside her. “I have to go to work.” She hurried toward a courtroom that she knew had just adjourned. She slipped into the milling crowd and headed toward a side exit. When she looked over her shoulder, she couldn’t see Elwood among the throng of people. Working her way through the labyrinth of the courthouse, she took a circuitous route to the side street where her car was parked. The winter cold chilled her skin as she got into her car. She hadn’t had time to get her coat or her purse, but was glad she had shoved her keys into her pants pocket. Her heart raced as she slipped in behind the wheel and started the car.

      Her only clear thought was of her nine-year-old son, Jamie.

      When she pulled out, Rochelle checked her rearview mirror to make sure she wasn’t being followed. She tried to formulate a plan as she drew closer to Jamie’s school. Corben knew where she worked, but maybe he didn’t know where she lived. Why else would he have come to the courthouse instead of her home? She’d hidden away cash at her house in case this day ever came. First she’d get Jamie and then the money. Rochelle feathered the brake as she turned a corner onto a busy street, knowing she needed to slow down or she’d end up on the sidewalk.

      She wove through the heavy traffic. Her car fishtailed on the icy road. A horn honked. She gripped the wheel a little tighter. For sure, Corben didn’t know about Jamie, and he wasn’t going to find out. Yet another reason to get out of town quickly and not go to the police. If she lingered here in Discovery, even if the police could protect her, Corben would find out he had a grandson. She couldn’t take that chance. Elwood wasn’t capable of loving family members. She knew that all too well.

      Rochelle tensed as the images from ten years ago assaulted her mind.

      She’d only been sixteen when she’d fallen in love with Corben’s son Dylan. Though Elwood Corben walked around with a smoldering rage, she hadn’t understood the extent to which he was involved in illegal activity until she heard Dylan arguing with his father one night. Dylan insisted he was not going be a part of the family’s import/export business because his father often operated outside the law.

      She’d come to the balcony of Elwood’s house and listened to the heated discussion.

      Dylan’s voice held conviction. “I want a legitimate life, Dad. I want to marry Megan.”

      The silence that followed caused her to hold her breath. From her vantage point she saw only Dylan’s back and part of Elwood’s arms and upper body.

      “You are my son and you will do what I say.”

      The barely contained rage in Elwood’s words made her shiver. She saw Elwood’s fist swing out and strike Dylan, who crumpled to the floor after hitting his head on the counter. She could have viewed Dylan’s fall as an accident brought on by Elwood’s out-of-control anger, for Elwood hadn’t known Dylan would hit his head. But as she watched Elwood stare down at his son and do nothing, she saw him for the murderer he was.

      Blood spread across the tile. In the moment that life left Dylan’s body, something died inside her, too. Though she’d been in rebellion from her Christian upbringing when she met Dylan, she had loved him.

      She must have screamed, because Elwood stomped across the tile and glared up at her where she stood on the stairs. Murder glistened in his eyes. “What did you see?”

      She shook her head, unable to stop staring at Dylan lying motionless on the floor. Knowing that Elwood intended to kill her for what she’d witnessed, she’d fled from the house. He’d caught up with her before she could get to the police station, threatened her life and her family’s. She’d managed to escape his grasp and taken the first bus out of town. Two days later, when she’d made it to Discovery, she found out she was pregnant. Up until that point, she had intended to go back and talk to the police. Once Jamie was born, though, she knew she had to protect him from Elwood ever finding out he existed. Elwood would hardly be the doting grandfather. If Dylan had been any indication at all, Elwood sought only to control family. When he couldn’t control, he killed. She couldn’t risk Jamie being a party to that.

      Not wanting her family to be harmed or Corben strong-arming them into saying where she was, she’d cut off contact with them, as well.

      Rochelle stared through the windshield at the icy road as her heart pounded out a wild rhythm. Her arm muscles tensed as she gripped the wheel. She was less than two minutes away from Jamie’s school. She pressed the accelerator and swerved around a slow-moving car.

      The car that hit her came out of nowhere. She didn’t even have time to touch the brake before she heard the crunching of metal. Her body swung back and then forward. Glass sprayed across her field of vision.

      As her world went black, all she could think about was holding her nine-year-old son and making sure he was safe.

      * * *

      Paramedic Matthew Stewart felt a tightening in his stomach as the sirens of the ambulance he was driving wailed. He maneuvered around the stopped traffic.

      His partner, Daniel, leaned forward in the passenger seat as they got closer to the scene of the accident. “This doesn’t look good.”

      Up ahead, Matthew could see that a truck with a dented passenger-side door had been pulled to the side of the road. A compact car with a crumpled front end sat in the middle of the street.

      His neck muscles tensed.

      This was the first serious call he’d been out on since Christina Johnson’s suicide, and his adrenaline was mixing with his anxiety. A neighbor had phoned that he’d found Christina unconscious with a broken ankle. When she came to, she said she’d fainted and twisted her ankle when she fell. The ER doctors had signed off on her after they patched her up. But Matthew’s instinct had told him something more was going on. Yet, he’d done nothing about it. Christina hadn’t acted like a suicidal woman. No one thought to question her fainting story. A week later, they were called back to her house. This time, she’d taken enough pills to kill an elephant, not just pass out and fall down. He couldn’t sleep at night because he kept going over and over in his head why he hadn’t trusted his gut, and he vowed next time he would.

      As the crowd of gawkers parted, he killed the siren and parked the ambulance. He pushed open the door and grabbed the C-collar and the backboard from the back bay. An older man ran up to him.

      “The guy in the truck is okay.” The man pointed at a twenty-something man who was rubbing his neck. “The woman is in real bad shape, though.” The older man indicated the compact car.

      Daniel patted Matthew’s shoulder. “I’ll have a look at him and then come help you.”

      Matthew drew his attention toward the car in the middle of the street. The front end had been completely pushed in and the windshield had been smashed. He couldn’t tell the condition of the driver from this far away. In the distance, he heard the sound of the police sirens headed toward them.

      As he stepped toward the car, he saw the woman’s head rested against the driver’s-side window. He opened the door slowly and began his assessment. Despite the winter chill, she wasn’t wearing a coat and her eyes were open but unfocused. Blood dripped from the gash on her forehead. She was pretty, probably in her late twenties. She looked vaguely familiar to him.

      He knelt and spoke softly. “Ma’am, you’ve been in an accident.”

      She shook her head. The glazed eyes told him she still wasn’t tracking with him. “I have to get to the school...for my son. Please...I have...to leave town.”

      Why was she thinking about leaving town? Not a normal response for an accident victim. She wasn’t making much sense. She might have a head injury. “Ma’am, can you tell me what day it is?”

      She met his gaze. A light came into her eyes. “Do I know you?”

      He studied her more closely. “I think we might be neighbors. Do you live on B Street?” He’d seen her playing in the yard with her son and getting in her car in the morning dressed in

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