“Hey, Grace,” Ashleigh said. Her face was pale and her usually flawless makeup was smeared and tear-streaked. “You know this is a waste of time, right?”
“I don’t mind wasting my time,” Grace said lightly. “Why don’t we go over and sit in my car and talk?”
“Nuh-uh,” Ashleigh said, shaking her head vigorously. “I like my car just fine.” She patted the leather-upholstered passenger seat. “You can sit here.” She reached down to the floor and pulled up a full key-lime-flavored wine cooler. “Look, I bought one for you. We can have a party. A pity party, right?”
“Um, I’m not really thirsty,” Grace said. “Come on, Ashleigh. You’ve had too much to drink to be driving. Let’s go sit in my car, and I’ll drive you home. You can plot revenge against Suchita tomorrow.”
“No effin’ way,” Ashleigh said. “Tonight’s the night. That bitch is going down!” She tossed her blond hair defiantly over her shoulder. “And if you’re gonna be such a buzzkiller, you can just go on to your divorce meeting. Because I’ve got stuff to do. See ya around, Grace.” She rolled the window up.
“Wait!” Grace said, pounding the BMW’s roof. She looked over her shoulder, hoping against hope to see Wyatt’s truck. Ashleigh was definitely drunk, and in no mood to be reasoned with.
The window slid down again. “You comin’ or not?” Ashleigh held up the wine cooler. Grace sighed and took it, crossing to the passenger seat.
Ashleigh popped the lock and Grace moved the empties aside before sliding into the passenger seat.
Ashleigh watched her expectantly. Grace uncapped the bottle and took a sip of the ultrasweet cooler.
“That’s more like it.” Ashleigh cackled. “Par-tay! Woo-hoo!” She threw the car into reverse and just as quickly into drive.
“Wait,” Grace said, the back of her head slamming against the headrest. “Ashleigh, no! You’re in no condition to drive.”
“Don’t be such a nag. I’m fine!” Ashleigh countered. She looked both ways, then zipped out of the parking lot and onto the highway, narrowly avoiding a collision with an oncoming white sedan before crossing the median into the far westbound lane.
Grace glanced over at Ashleigh, who looked back and laughed. “See? I told you. I’m fine. Those wine coolers have almost no alcohol in ’em, and anyway, I’ve got a really high tolerance. I can drink, like, half a dozen margaritas and not feel a thing. We’re just a couple of girls, out cruisin’, just like in high school. Didn’t you and your girlfriends ever get a little buzzed and go cruisin’?”
“You’re not fine,” Grace said, groping for her seat belt. “And we’re not in high school, and you’re past being buzzed. Anyway, I thought we were just going to talk. Ashleigh, if you want to drive drunk, that’s your decision, but I do not want to go along for the ride.”
“Too bad,” Ashleigh said. “I keep telling you I’m not drunk. Okay? You wanted to talk, let’s talk.”
Ashleigh wove the BMW in and out of traffic, twice coming so close to clipping another car, Grace finally just squeezed her eyes tightly and prayed, because she was too nervous to watch where Ashleigh was going.
“I want you to turn around and take me back to that gas station,” Grace said through gritted teeth. “Or just pull over and drop me off. This isn’t funny, you know.”
“You’re right; it’s not funny. It’s fuckin’ tragic is what it is,” Ashleigh said. Her eyes brimmed over with tears. “I tried calling Boyce while I was waiting for you. The number I had was disconnected. He just called me on it, like this morning. She did that. I just know it. One of her spies probably told her Boyce took me to lunch today. But what she doesn’t know is—I’ve got spies of my own.”
She fumbled in the center console of the car and came up with her cell phone. “Here. Grab the steering wheel,” she told Grace.
Grace reached over and took the steering wheel with her left hand, grateful that the heavy flow of traffic on Manatee meant that Ashleigh was only doing about thirty miles per hour.
Ashleigh was squinting down at the list of contacts on her phone, scrolling down, looking for something.
“Who are you calling?” Grace asked.
“Here it is!” Ashleigh said triumphantly. She tapped the number and waited, and then frowned. “The bitch won’t pick up. I bet Boyce told her not to talk to me.”
“Suchiiiiita.” Ashleigh’s voice was low and spooky. “Pick up the phone, little mama. I’ve got a message for you. No? You don’t wanna talk to me? That’s okay. Cuz I’m coming for you, bitch. Remember? I know exactly where you live. And guess what? You can run, but you can’t hide.”
She disconnected the phone, dropped it into her lap, and took the steering wheel again.
Grace’s mouth felt dry, and she felt beads of perspiration popping up on her forehead, despite the chill from the BMW’s air conditioner. She glanced in the rearview mirror, but there was no sign of Wyatt’s truck. She felt in the pocket of her shorts for her phone, found it, and slid it into her lap.
She had to call Wyatt, try to let him know what Ashleigh intended. Maybe he could call Boyce Hartounian and warn him that Ashleigh was on a rampage. She glanced over at Ashleigh, who seemed to be watching the road. She managed to thumb down her recent calls and tap Wyatt’s number, but then the BMW suddenly swerved into the far left lane and, seconds later, without signal or warning, made a sharp left turn, crossing two lanes of oncoming traffic, earning her a blast of horns from the cars she narrowly avoided T-boning. Grace’s phone flew out of her hand and slid down between the seats.
“Ashleigh!” Grace cried. “What the hell are you doing?”
The driver shrugged. “Sorry. Guess I cut it a little close, huh?”
“You nearly got me killed,” Grace said angrily. “If you want to kill yourself, that’s your business, but I want out of this car, right now. Pull over, dammit.”
With her left hand, she tried groping the area beneath her seat, but the small phone eluded her grasp.
Ashleigh laughed. “Don’t be such a chickenshit, Grace. Look, I’m barely doing thirty now.”
It was true. They’d turned onto a quiet, treelined residential street. It was narrow, and cars were parked along the curbs on both sides, dictating a slower speed. Grace wondered if she’d managed to connect the call to Wyatt, wondered if he could hear them right now. She prayed it was so.
“What is this neighborhood?” she asked loudly.
“It’s Newtown,” Ashleigh said. “The bitch lives right around here, but I can’t remember the name of the street. I’ll know it when I see it, though.”
She was scanning both sides of the street, looking ahead at the street signs.
They were going just slow enough, Grace realized, that she could escape the car without risking her life. She snaked her right hand over toward the passenger door, her fingers clasping the handle.
Click
. Grace tugged at the handle, but it was too late.
Ashleigh laughed. “Childproof locks. Great invention, huh? Come on, Grace. Why do you wanna jump ship? I thought you were gonna be my wingman on this mission.”
“I don’t want anything to do with this,” Grace said. “You’re scaring me now, Ashleigh. Just pull over and let me out, okay? Or let me drive. You’re in no condition to be behind the wheel. You’re going to do something stupid and dangerous and end up in real trouble.”
“Trouble?” Ashleigh glanced over at her. “What? Stackpole is gonna put me in remedial divorce counseling? Sentence me to community service again? You don’t get it, Grace, do you? I don’t give a rat’s ass about any of that. I just want to give that bitch what she deserves. Once she’s out of the picture, Boyce will realize what he’s been missing.”
Grace clamped her lips together. Finally, the reality of the situation dawned on her. Nothing she could say would sway Ashleigh’s resolve. She glanced again in the rearview mirror. Was that a flash of red, a block back? Wyatt’s truck? She said another silent prayer.
Ashleigh drove one block, turned right, drove two more blocks, and turned left. The truck sped up and seemed to be closing the gap between it and the BMW, but then it was forced to come to a halt as an enormous SUV backed slowly down a driveway and into the street, totally blocking it.
Come on, come on, come on,
Grace chanted silently.
“This is her street!” Ashleigh muttered. “I knew it was around here.” She made a sharp left and slowed the BMW to a crawl, craning her neck to see the numbers on the mailboxes.
If she hadn’t been so thoroughly terrified, Grace might have been craning her neck, too. The street was lined with moss-draped oak trees, lawns with thick green grass, and neatly tended beds of flowers. The homes were cozy stucco and wood-frame bungalows built in the twenties and thirties, with welcoming porches and gabled roofs.
It was a storybook street, but Grace had a feeling that this story would not have a happy ending.
“Oh, yeah,” Ashleigh said softly. “This is the right block.” She glanced over at Grace. “You see this neighborhood? I checked—the cheapest house on this street sold for 377,000 dollars. And I’m living in a dump condo that rents for eleven hundred a month. Ask yourself how a twenty-eight-year-old drug rep affords a house here. I’ll tell you how—she hooks up with a rich plastic surgeon and makes him her baby daddy.”
She pointed to a house at the end of the street. “That’s it. That’s her place.”
“What … what are you planning to do?” Grace checked the rearview mirror. No sign of the truck.
“I’m just going to talk to her, that’s all,” Ashleigh said, her voice singsongy. “Make her see that she needs to step away.”
But as they were talking, they saw a silver Audi back swiftly down the driveway. They were three houses away. As soon as the Audi was on the street, it accelerated so quickly that the tires screeched on the pavement.
“That’s her!” Ashleigh said. She sped up, but the Audi zipped through the next intersection without slowing down.
“She knows what my car looks like,” Ashleigh muttered. She accelerated, closing the gap between the two cars.
The Audi made two quick turns, and Ashleigh stayed close, flying through stop signs. The Audi managed to stay two car lengths ahead, and never slowed down before making a left.
They were back on Manatee again, heading west. The Audi sped through the thinning traffic, darting in and out of lanes, but Ashleigh gripped the steering wheel and kept on the car’s tail. They were doing sixty miles an hour now, somehow managing to make all the green lights. Grace kept looking in the rearview mirror, and when she glimpsed the red truck again, she began daring to hope. Wyatt was there, not far behind. He would think of some way to stop this crazy race.
The Audi sped up again, and Ashleigh did the same. They were only a car length behind now, and the BMW’s speedometer was inching over seventy miles per hour.
The
GULF BEACHES
sign flashed by. “She’s headed for Boyce’s beach house on Anna Maria,” Ashleigh said. “Like he can hide her. Dumb bitch.”
Grace saw the fringe of Australian pines, white sands, and the glint of sunlight on the sparkling water of Palma Sola Bay. The Audi was still a car length ahead, but Ashleigh stomped on the accelerator, and the speedometer needle jumped. They were doing eighty-five now. The Audi wove in and out of traffic, and the BMW stayed right with it. They flew over the first causeway, and Grace held her breath, terrified Ashleigh might somehow send them both flying over the concrete bridge embankment and into the waters below. Her fears eased momentarily when they were over the bridge and into another stretch of causeway, lined on both sides by sandy beaches and the shallow waters of the bay, but not for long.
A lumbering dump truck loomed ahead of them in the right-hand lane, forcing the Audi to slow considerably. Ashleigh veered into the left lane and passed the dump truck. She slowed, waiting for the truck to pass on the right, and laughed triumphantly when she came alongside the Audi.
Grace glimpsed the driver as they pulled alongside the Audi—a long curtain of dark hair, and when the woman looked over and saw who was beside her, her face mirrored the look of shock and horror in Grace’s own face.
“Gotcha!” Ashleigh screamed. She jerked the BMW’s steering wheel hard to the right, but just as she did so, Grace heard the squeal of the Audi’s brakes. The BMW veered off the road.
Grace had the sensation of time slowing. She heard screams—her own, Ashleigh’s? She’d never be sure. She was aware of the car slamming through an expanse of corrugated metal fencing, of the windshield shattering, of the splintering of wood on metal as they glanced off a pine tree, and, moments later, of the rush of water.
And then it was quiet.
67
Wyatt pushed the old truck’s accelerator all the way to the floor once he heard the one-sided conversation on Grace’s call. He shuddered at the sound of Ashleigh’s slurred speech. She was drunk, deranged, out of control. And Grace was strapped into the passenger seat right beside her, helpless.
As he closed the gap between the racing cars and his own, he saw Ashleigh’s frenzied pursuit of the silver Audi, guessing the driver was Suchita, Ashleigh’s romantic rival. He didn’t have a clear idea of what he’d do if and when he caught up to the women, but he knew he would have to do something. He wondered, fleetingly, if Ashleigh had a gun. The only gun Wyatt owned was Nelson’s old service pistol—but it was kept under lock and key in the file cabinet in the office. And what if he did have the gun? How would he use it? Shoot out the tires of a moving vehicle? Ridiculous.
A dozen awful scenarios flashed through his mind as he struggled to keep pace.
He wondered if the same scenarios occurred to Grace. Her voice sounded so calm, so cool on the other end of the phone. “Keep trying, Grace,” he murmured.
They crossed the first bay bridge, and he managed to catch up to within two car lengths when a lumbering old dump truck forced everybody to slow down.
But in the blink of an eye, everything changed. He saw the BMW switch lanes, saw it pull alongside the Audi, and then deliberately try and sideswipe the other car.
The Audi’s driver slammed on the brakes, and seconds later, to his horror, he saw the BMW veer off the road and plow through the metal fencing. He saw the cloud of sand spewed by the spinning tires, heard the crunch of metal on metal, and, worst of all, heard the hair-raising chorus of screams from inside the BMW.