Once again, he’d failed to open up with his dad.
The CD moved to the next track: “Footsteps in the Dark,” by The Isley Brothers. A mellow song. Andrew lay back and closed his eyes, letting the drumming rain lull him into a state of relaxation.
When he felt the truck drifting sideways, he opened his eyes.
Dad had veered onto an exit ramp.
“Where are we going?” Andrew asked. The fuel gauge hovered near the Full mark. “Do you need to use the rest room?”
“Nah, nah,” Dad said. “Need to . . . see something.”
His father’s voice, normally energetic, had taken on a dreamy quality.
They reached the end of the rain-slick ramp. His father turned right.
It was a twisty, two-lane road, lined with tall elms and maples. Between the tightly packed trees, Andrew glimpsed rundown mobile homes and dilapidated barns.
He got that uneasy feeling that he always experienced when traveling through rural areas in the Deep South. In remote places like this, you were fortunate to get service on your cell phone. He was a city dweller, preferred to be connected and in the midst of urban civilization.
“Where are we?” Andrew asked.
“Bulloch County,” Dad said in a hushed voice. “My old stomping grounds.”
“Oh, yeah, you went to Georgia Southern. That’s in Statesboro, right?”
“Yeah,” Dad said. “A ways ahead.”
“You gonna drive by the school?”
His father’s response was so soft that Andrew had to lower the music’s volume to hear him.
“No,” Dad said. “Be quiet, Andrew.”
A frown creased Andrew’s face.
His dad was acting strange.
The wipers could not keep up with the hammering rain. No street lamps illuminated their path, and the headlights barely reached beyond ten feet.
Nevertheless, his father plowed down the road at sixty miles an hour.
Andrew checked that his seat belt was fastened.
The road curved to the left. They swung through the turn, wings of water sprouting from underneath the truck.
“Maybe you should slow down,” Andrew said.
“Maybe you should keep your mouth shut.” Dad spoke in a whisper, but his tone was firm.
Andrew blinked. What was going on here?
His dad hunched forward, gaze searching the darkness. His fingers gripped the wheel so tightly that his knuckles were pale white.
He had never seen this side of his father. This man driving was like a disturbing twin to the easygoing guy who had been boasting about his golf game only five minutes ago.
He realized how little he knew about his dad. Certainly, he knew a lot of the basics: His father was fifty-one years old, lived in Lithonia, owned a successful real estate brokerage, had been married for over a decade, attended a Baptist church every Sunday and served as a deacon, and loved golf, the Atlanta Falcons, and Heineken beer.
But he knew only surface details about his father. He didn’t know what really made him tick.
Now, he felt as if he were literally on a wild ride into the unknown depths of his dad’s psyche.
The Ford burrowed through the rain. His father pushed the truck hard, braking only lightly for curves.
A sign flashed past: Millville City Limits.
Millville? Andrew had never heard of the town.
A road on the left floated into view. “Dead End,” a nearby sign stated.
His father swerved into the turn.
“Take it easy, Dad.” Andrew braced his arm against the dashboard.
Hunkered over the wheel, his father ignored him.
Trees cloaked the road in a dark womb.
If they’d turned onto a dead end street, whatever his dad was searching for must be back there.
But what could it be?
The road twisted to the right.
Barely slowing, his father wrestled the wheel into the curve.
A hulking, white-tail deer stood in the middle of the road. The animal stared at them vacantly, nailed in place by the Ford’s headlights.
Terror seized Andrew’s heart.
“Stop, you’re gonna hit it!” he said.
Crying out, as if frightened awake from a slumber, his father spun the wheel and pumped the brakes.
Skidding, getting no grip on the slippery pavement, the Ford tilted precariously—and tipped too far to regain its balance. The vehicle turned over with a bone-jarring crash and a squeal of tortured metal. Andrew bit his tongue, tasted coppery blood, screamed, and prayed that they wouldn’t die.
Andrew awoke with a gasp.
Dull pain pulsated throughout his body, as if he’d been tumbling inside a giant washing machine. He blinked, tried to determine his surroundings.
His situation became apparent: he was in the truck. Upside down. Sandwiched between the seat and the roof.
But he was alive.
It took several seconds for him to get oriented to this upside-down world. The airbags had deployed, the puffy material pressed against his upper body. He pushed the bag away, turned his head. Pain leaped through his neck.
When he saw his dad, he forgot all about his own discomfort.
Tangled like a rag doll, thrown upside down, his father was mashed against the driver’s side door. His back faced Andrew, but his shoulders rose and fell slowly.
He was alive.
Thank God for two miracles today.
“Dad?” His tongue felt like a loose piece of meat in his mouth. “You okay?”
Dad didn’t respond.
The Ford’s engine idled. Rain sifted inside through the cracked windshield. A rumble of thunder shook the ground.
He had to get out of there and get help.
Although it hurt to move, he contorted his body, stretched his arm and grasped the door handle. He pulled.
The door eeked open. Cold rain and wind poured inside.
He began to squirm through the door, feet first. Remembering that the engine was on, he reached behind and turned the key in the ignition, shutting the truck off.
He kicked the door open, crawled through mud and struggled to his feet.
He was relieved to discover that he could stand and walk. He had no serious injuries. He was mostly woozy, and his neck ached, too, more than any other part of his body. Probably had a minor case of whiplash.
He wiped muck out of his eyes and viewed the wreck.
The Ford had flipped over and spun into a ditch. The nose of the vehicle was buried in the trench; the rear pointed skyward. The roof was smashed as if stomped by a gigantic foot, and the front end was mangled.
It was incredible that he’d survived. He felt a distinct sense of unreality, as if he were watching an accident that someone else had wound up in.
The deer that his father had tried to avoid stood on the edge of the road, unharmed. It watched him, as perfectly posed as a gazelle on a merry-go-round.
Andrew met the animal’s liquid-black gaze.
“See what you did to us?” he said. His voice was hoarse, his throat raw. “This is your fault!”
The deer only stared at him.
Did malice gleam in the animal’s eyes, as if it were aware of what it had done?
No, that was impossible. Only his overactive imagination at work.
The deer sniffed, trotted into the woods.
He felt stupid for talking to the animal in the first place. He had to settle down.
The street was deserted. It terminated about a hundred feet ahead, in a wall of trees.
Perhaps thirty feet away, he saw what appeared to be an entrance to a driveway. An ornate, wrought iron mailbox stood nearby.
If there was a house back there, trees and shrubbery concealed it from view.
Was this the place that his father had wanted to visit?
Dizziness washed over him. He bent over, drew a few deep breaths, to steady himself.
What would Mark Justice do in this situation?
The familiar question came to his mind, automatically.
Mark Justice was the pen name under which he published his thriller novels. In media interviews, he referred to Mark Justice as “my heroic alter ego.”
A creator of action-packed, ingenious tales that carried readers in unexpected directions, Mark Justice always knew how to steer his fictional characters out of a tight spot. When Andrew found himself in stressful circumstances, he called on Mark Justice, that clever aspect of his mind, for guidance.
It was, he figured, no different from an ordinary person listening to his intuition and common sense. Still, he’d never told anyone about how he tapped into Mark Justice. People already assumed writers were weirdos. He didn’t want to validate the stereotype.
Check on your daddy,
Mark Justice advised, in the brusque, tough guy voice that Andrew had given him.
Confirm his condition, then grab your cell phone and call an ambulance.
Andrew hurried to the driver’s side of the vehicle.
“Oh, Jesus,” he said.
His father’s face was pressed against the glass. A thread of blood inched down his chin. His features were slack, as if he were sleeping and would wake in a moment to brag about his golf swing.
Tears pushed at Andrew’s eyes. Could Dad be paralyzed . . . ?
“Don’t think about it,” he said.
The door was dented in several places, but appeared to be intact.
He reached for the handle. And hesitated. What if it wasn’t safe to move his father? What if he’d sustained a spinal injury? Moving him improperly could disable him, perhaps even kill him. He knew a little about car accidents from his book research. But he possessed only a layman’s knowledge and wasn’t qualified to determine what injuries his father had sustained, and how he should be removed from the vehicle.
He couldn’t go any farther. They needed paramedics.
By habit, he reached for the area on his waist where he normally wore his cell phone in a holster. But it wasn’t there. It must have fallen somewhere inside the truck.
He rushed to the passenger side.
Sure enough, his phone lay inside, against the ceiling.
“All right, let’s get some help here.” He turned on the phone.
The display read:
Searching for signal . . .
“Come on, hurry up.” The rain had seeped through his clothes. He shivered.
Searching for signal . . .
He wasn’t going to think about what might happen, here in the middle of nowhere in rural Georgia. No, he wasn’t going to think about it.
Searching for signal . . .
“Hurry up!”
No service.
“I don’t believe this shit!” He turned off the phone, switched it on again. Waited. Still no signal.
He clapped the lid shut.
“Okay, don’t panic,” he said. “Stay cool, man, stay cool.”
Bending down, he peered inside the Ford. His father had not moved, and was still unconscious.
Didn’t Dad have his own cell phone? If so, he didn’t see it, and if his father was wearing it somewhere on his person, Andrew would have to move his body to find it, and that brought him back to the danger of inadvertently injuring him.
He swung around, looked across the road, at the driveway.
If there was indeed a house back there, the residents should have a telephone.
He started running.
Damp undergrowth clotted the driveway. Andrew fought through it, half wishing that he had a machete, like an explorer in a jungle movie.
But all he had was a light. He took his key ring out of his pocket. A mini-flashlight dangled on the ring; it was a promotional giveaway from the tour for his first novel, the title of which—
The Comeback
—was stenciled on the side.
The thin blade of light dissected the darkness around him. Through the bushes, he caught glimpses of the house. It was immense—a mansion, actually.
Did Dad really know someone who lived here?
The lane stretched on, weaving around gnarled trees, their skeletal branches overhanging the ground like groping arms. By the time he tore through the last patch of shrubbery, sweat drenched him, and scratches ran down his arms and hands.
Sitting on a hill, the house loomed before him.
Owing to the suspense novels he had written, all of which relied on a sense of place to create mood, Andrew had a decent knowledge of architecture. It was a Greek Revival mansion, built in a style popular in the antebellum South. Six massive columns fronted the house. A wide veranda wound around the front. The paint, which likely had used to be white, had faded to a dreary gray. Spanish moss festooned the walls and columns, like giant varicose veins.