“Are you working early tomorrow?” Nicole asked her.
“Not until lunchtime, thank goodness.”
She glanced up at the rearview mirror to check the car behind her, annoyed by the bright lights reflecting there.
“Something wrong?” Macy asked.
“The car behind us is driving too close,” Nicole muttered, squinting and keeping her gaze on the road in front of her.
At a four-way stop sign, she came to a complete halt before continuing on. Out of nowhere, another car approached from the right and sped right through the stop sign, plowing into them before Nicole could blink. Her car spun and took another hit from the vehicle behind her, which had obviously stayed on her tail.
Macy screamed. Nicole gritted her teeth and held on to the wheel as the back of her car skidded into a lamppost with a sickening crunch.
Sam paced through his house, moving idly from one room to the next, unable to sit still or get comfortable. He didn’t expect Nicole to be at his beck and call, but he’d sure hoped she’d want to see him after a long week apart. He could have gone to Joe’s, but that would have been too obvious. He might be desperate to see her, but she didn’t need to know that.
Another glance at her dark house told him she hadn’t come home, although he’d been keeping watch and already knew as much. He was already mentally lecturing her about not leaving inside lamps and the porch lights on. It was safety 101 for anyone, but Nicole wasn’t dealing with a normal situation. Just because they thought they knew where all the players were in her situation didn’t mean she should be lax with the basics.
He glanced at his watch and blew out a long breath. Nine wasn’t that late and he needed to chill. He started upstairs when his cell rang.
Pulling it out of his pocket, he glanced down, surprised to see the police station’s main number. “Marsden.”
“Hey, Sam. It’s Burnett.”
“What’s up?”
“Just doing you a solid. I thought you’d want to know your girlfriend was in a car accident at the stop sign on Maple. No serious injuries, but the car’s in pretty bad shape. They’re lucky.”
Sam narrowed his gaze. “They?”
“She was driving Macy Donovan home. Both women walked away relatively unharmed. A damned miracle if you ask me.”
Sam was in his truck by the time he wound up the call. On the short drive over, a myriad of situations ran through his mind. Panic and the need to see her were paramount, but his cop brain also was on alert, thinking about Tyler’s old man hiring someone to scare Nicole into heading home.
Sam arrived on the scene to find one side of her car crunched, and his stomach twisted painfully. He parked and climbed out of his vehicle.
Burnett met him as he headed for the ambulance. “That was fast.”
Sam nodded. “I appreciate the call. What happened?”
“Looks like Mrs. Adler was driving too fast and ran her stop sign. She was driving without a license and wandered off without her daughter knowing.”
Sam winced, knowing that Mrs. Adler was in her mideighties.
Burnett shook his head. “Sad when they get old and lose control like that. Anyway, she slammed in
to Nicole’s passenger-side back door. According to Nicole, the car behind her wasn’t giving her much space to begin with and couldn’t stop in time, causing a second impact.”
Sam’s instincts went on alert. Was it that the actual accident was a coincidence, but the second occurred because Nicole was being followed?
“Who was the second driver?” Sam waited for a Russian name.
“Drunk driver.”
Sam ground his teeth together. “Local?”
Burnett shook his head, and Sam’s instincts went haywire. “You’re booking him, right?”
“Yeah, but he refused the Breathalyzer,” Burnett said, inclining his head.