Kitabı oku: «Peekaboo Baby», sayfa 3

Chapter Four

One second Delaney was breathing.

Then, she wasn’t.

The air bag hit her face and chest. The impact of the collision into the ditch, coupled with that slam, knocked the breath right out of her. Before she could react, she felt the icy cold water begin to gush into the car, spilling onto her feet and legs.

Reality quickly set in.

They were no longer on the road. The car was on its side, her side, harshly angled into a gaping ditch. The collision had crushed in her door, so much so that it vised against her right shoulder.

Trapping her.

If she didn’t do something fast, she was going to die.

She forced herself not to panic. No easy feat. Her heart was already pounding, and adrenaline was pumping through her.

Frantically, Delaney batted back the milky-white air bag so she’d have some room to maneuver and so she could see. Beside her, she felt Ryan do the same. She wasn’t successful. With each jab of her fist, each slam of her hands, the air bag shifted, but there was no place for it to go. And along with the crushed-in interior, it was literally holding her in place.

The water didn’t cooperate, either. It got deeper. Fast. It came in not as a trickle but a flood. Rushing into the car through the edges of the windows. The doors. And from the floor. Filling it. It rose past her knees. To her waist.

And it just kept on coming.

Along with it came the panic. The fear. She had to get out of there.

She felt Ryan’s hand bump against her left hip. Because Delaney was still battling the air bag, she didn’t immediately realize what he was doing. She quickly became aware that he was unlatching her seat belt.

“Come on,” he said.

It wasn’t a shout, but a calmly spoken statement as if this weren’t the life-and-death situation it had quickly become.

Ryan didn’t wait for her to comply. He caught on to her shoulder. Pulling. Tugging. Delaney did some maneuvering of her own. She rammed her forearm into the air bag, shoving it aside, and she slipped through the opening and into Ryan’s waiting arms.

It wasn’t an easy fit.

Even though his side of the car wasn’t bashed in, there was an air bag in the way, and he hauled her onto his seat, sandwiching her between the air bag, the steering wheel and his solid body.

He didn’t waste any time. With the exception of headlights that were buried beneath the water, it was pitch-dark and she couldn’t see much, but Delaney heard the soft grind of his window. It seemed to take an eternity to lower.

With each passing second, her heart beat faster. She prayed, while the water got deeper. Rushing into the car and rising until it swirled around her chest.

Then the soft grinding sound stopped.

The window stopped.

The headlights vanished.

Ryan cursed. Still not with much emotion. The stalled window and lack of light didn’t deter him. He slammed his shoulder against his door.

It didn’t budge.

Another slam. So hard that it shook the entire car and sent a wave of water careening right into her face. Delaney gasped. Nearly panicked. But then she thought of her son. Of Patrick. If she panicked, she’d die.

Because of him, she had to stay alive.

Somehow.

Delaney pulled in a long breath, holding it in her lungs. It wasn’t a moment too soon. The muddy water surged and rose. Racing in all around them, swirling and coiling, smothering, until it covered her throat. Her chin. And finally, her entire face.

God, she couldn’t breathe.

Even though there wasn’t nearly enough space for her to escape, she scrambled toward the narrow opening of the window, but Ryan held on to her. That didn’t do much to steady her heart or ease the overwhelming feeling of terror building inside her.

She lost the battle she’d been fighting with the panic. She had to have air. She had to breathe. She had to get out of there now.

Still, Ryan held on to her.

Why?

She forced herself to think, to calm down so she could conserve what little oxygen she had left in her lungs. It worked. After only a few seconds, it occurred to her what he might be doing. He was probably waiting for the car to be totally immersed so the pressure would be equal on both the inside and outside. Only then could they open the door and get out.

It was their one chance at surviving.

Ryan made another sway of movement. Not a battering motion as before. Delaney did some moving of her own, trying to find the door handle so she could try to open it.

He beat her to it.

Her fingers closed over his. His skin was so cold. Like death. But she pushed the eerie thought aside, and their joined hands pulled back the handle.

The door opened.

Relief rushed through her, but Delaney knew this didn’t mean they were out of danger. They still had to make their way out of the ditch.

Ryan hooked his arm around her waist and got them out of the car and into the shadowy water. She pushed her feet against the side of the vehicle and used it as leverage to propel them forward. So did Ryan.

Together, they surfaced.

Delaney gasped, pulling in the much-needed fresh air, and she reached for anything she could use to haul herself out of the ditch. She managed to latch on to a handful of mud and grass. Unfortunately, the soft squishy mixture wasn’t good grasping material. It slipped right through her fingers, and she would probably have sunk right back into the water if it hadn’t been for Ryan.

He stabbed his elbow into the muddy embankment, using it to anchor them, and in the same motion, he thrust them both forward. Away from the water and the car. And onto the gravel shoulder.

To safety.

Her lungs felt starved for air, and Delaney sucked in several feverish breaths. Beside her, she heard Ryan do the same. But other than that, he didn’t take any more time to recover from the ordeal.

Scrambling to get to his knees, Ryan tried to position himself in front of her. But he couldn’t. It took Delaney a moment to realize why. Their hands were locked together. Specifically, their fingers. She felt around and located the problem. The butterfly charm on her ring had somehow slipped beneath Ryan’s wedding band.

He pulled his hand away, still trying to reposition himself. Delaney did the same. A few tugs, and she felt something snap. The butterfly charm broke off, and Ryan and she were free.

Ryan immediately placed himself between her and the country road. Even through the rain and darkness, Delaney could see that he was searching for something. His eyes whipped first to one end of the road and then to the other.

Delaney did the same, but she saw nothing other than the night and the rain. Even the momentary illumination from a flash of lightning didn’t reveal anything. Definitely no sign of the other car that had careered toward them.

The car that had caused the accident.

Ryan cursed again, and this time, there was raw, uncut emotion.

Delaney wasn’t immune to emotion either as a sickening feeling coursed through her.

Perhaps this had not been an accident at all.

“I’LL BE RIGHT BACK with your statements,” Sheriff Dillon Knight informed Ryan. The lanky, denim-clad sheriff stood and headed for the exit of the interview room. “You and Ms. Nash can leave as soon as you’ve signed everything.”

Ryan glanced at Delaney, who was across the room on the phone talking to her babysitter. She nodded, an acknowledgment that she’d heard the sheriff.

Acknowledgement and relief.

Relief was certainly a reasonable reaction considering they’d been at the Grandville hospital and then the sheriff’s office for two-and-a-half hours. During that time, they’d been questioned, examined by one of the local doctors, bandaged, and then questioned again. What they hadn’t had was a moment of privacy or peace. Delaney probably wanted nothing more than to get out of there and go home to her son. Ryan overheard snippets of her conversation with her babysitter to confirm that.

Are you sure Patrick’s all right?

Please tell him I’ll be there soon.

Tell him I love him.

Kiss him good-night for me.

Definitely the words of a mother worried about her child, even if her child was probably too young to know what those reassurances meant.

They’d been lucky. Damn lucky. They’d gotten away with a bruise on Delaney’s right arm, a scrape on his neck and some assorted nicks. They would no doubt be stiff and sore for a few days, but all in all, the injuries were minor.

Lucky indeed.

Ryan took a long sip of the sludge-black coffee that the sheriff’s deputy had provided. The too-strong brew was bitter, obviously hours past its prime, if it’d ever had a prime. And yet Ryan welcomed the heat. Plus, it gave his hands something to latch on to so that he wouldn’t fidget. It was either that or stuffing his hands in his pockets. The coffee won out in the end. Too bad it couldn’t stop his mind from fidgeting, but that was asking a lot of mere hot coffee.

Even though he was in dry clothes—loaner jeans and a T-shirt courtesy of the hospital—the icy coldness of the water had seemed to seep all the way into his bones. It was a cold he’d never forget.

And he wasn’t about to forget the accident anytime soon, either.

As he’d already done a dozen times, Ryan went through the events that led up to them being plunged into the irrigation ditch. To paraphrase an old saying, the devil was in the details, and his gut feeling was that something sinister had happened tonight.

The road leading to the estate was private. Hardly used by anyone but his staff and him. Yet, the other car had been there. At the sharpest curve of the road near the deepest, widest part of the irrigation system. With no headlights on. And on the wrong side of the road. It’d come right at them.

Then disappeared.

Ryan didn’t think it was a phantom or a ghost car. Nor was it some illusion caused by the storm.

No.

The vehicle had been real. And now the question was to find out who’d been behind the wheel, why they had been on the road, and why the driver had done what he or she had done.

Ryan would get answers to those questions, and he wouldn’t rely only on the sheriff to help him. He’d call Quentin Kincade, his security guru, and get some investigators on this immediately.

“We won’t have to be here much longer,” he heard Delaney say. Ryan wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince herself or him. She hung up the phone, scrubbed her hands over her arms and started to pace.

Yep. She was a pacer.

Ryan had learned that about her over the past two-and-a-half hours. A pacer, a lip nibbler and a mumbler. He’d also discovered that she wasn’t a coffee drinker, had instead opted for bottled water. Perhaps because she was nursing and didn’t want the caffeine, or maybe because she was already too jittery.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Sure.” She’d answered too quickly for it to be anything but rote. It did stop her, however. She quit pacing, briefly met his eyes and shook her head. The motion sent a lock of her now-dry dark brown hair slipping down onto her forehead. She raked it away. “I just need to get out of here.”

Ryan understood completely. The fatigue was quickly becoming a factor, and he wasn’t sure he could think straight much longer. As a rule, he never liked to be in a situation where he didn’t have a clear head. “If the sheriff’s not back in a few minutes, I’ll see what I can do to speed things up.”

Another nod. “Thank you.” She paused a heartbeat. “For everything.”

“You’re welcome.”

Because it’d been a while, too long, since he’d said something that genuinely cordial to anyone, Ryan decided it was a good time to shut up and drink his godawful coffee. This forced proximity, and the remnants of the danger had created some kind of weird intimacy between Delaney and him.

Intimacy that neither of them wanted.

She folded her arms over her chest and resumed her pacing in her borrowed jeans and the faded blue T-shirt that swallowed her. It was at least three sizes too big, and yet it somehow managed to skim and accent every curve of her body. And she had some curves.

Something he was sorry he’d noticed.

Worse, he hadn’t noticed it just once. His attention kept going back to her—her body, her face, those eyes—and Ryan just kept forcing his attention on something else. Anything else.

Their respective coping behaviors, the pacing, the coffee drinking, the diverted attention worked for several moments. Until the silence settled a little too uncomfortably around them.

“Nothing like this has ever happened to me before,” Delaney said. “Not even a fender bender. For a couple of moments there, I thought we were going to die.”

He’d thought the same thing, but Ryan kept it to himself.

“Do you think this is connected to what Dr. Keyes told me?” she asked.

It was the billon-dollar question, and it was a possible connection they hadn’t withheld from the sheriff.

Well, in a way, they hadn’t.

Delaney had been careful not to accuse the doctor outright of a crime, but she had told Sheriff Knight about the unsettling call from the medical watchdog group. What she’d left out, however, was any mention of cloning. It was as if she were trying to strike that particular detail from her mind. Ryan was willing to bet she hadn’t been any more successful at it than he’d been.

However, the cloning allegation wasn’t the only factor to be considered here.

“I’ve made enemies,” Ryan admitted, staring down into his coffee. And that was a massive understatement. “This could have happened because of me.”

Not an easy admission to make to her, and Ryan hoped—no, he prayed—that this deed wasn’t on his head. He already had enough unresolved issues in his life without adding this latest episode involving Delaney Nash.

She came to a halt directly in front of the gray metal table where he was sitting and waited until their eyes met. “You didn’t mention anyone specific to the sheriff.”

He lifted a shoulder. “Because there’s a lot more than just one. But then, I don’t have to remind you of that.”

Delaney paused a moment and nodded. “No.”

She stood there, looking exhausted but determined to dig until they learned the truth. She also looked vulnerable. The vulnerable part wasn’t so obvious, but he knew it was just beneath the surface. The fact she was trying to hide it brought out some of his own feelings.

He wanted to protect her.

Which made him an idiot.

Delaney wasn’t some money-hungry opportunist out to extort from him. During the past couple of hours, he’d gotten past those particular allegations. But she was his enemy’s daughter. And she was embroiled in some kind of…whatever. He couldn’t dismiss the potential issues that had surfaced from the New Hope clinic and Dr. Keyes.

Nor would it be wise to overlook the obvious.

“I know we’ve been through this, but I need you to think hard. Is it possible that your father knew you were coming to see me tonight?” Ryan asked.

He braced himself for her to unleash a vehement protest, A declaration of her father’s innocence. After all, it was practically an accusation. A really serious one. Her father’s involvement would mean that he’d essentially tried to murder them.

“I didn’t tell him,” Delaney answered. No protest, and she didn’t add anything else for several seconds. “But I suppose he could have found out. I mean, my sitter knew where I was. If he called her, she might have told him.”

She became more ashen with each word, and her breath was no longer level. Delaney glanced at the clock on the wall and then motioned toward the door. “I have to go to the ladies’ room.” She obviously needed to come to terms with what she’d just realized—her father could have been the one behind the wheel of the other car.

“This is a small town and an equally small sheriff’s office, so it’s my guess that Dillon Knight won’t be able to offer you any protection,” Ryan added before she could walk away. “If you decide you want or need it, that is.” He took a sheet from the notepad that the deputy had left on the table, and he wrote down the phone number of the person who was in charge of his security. “Quentin Kincade. He’s a good man. Just call him if you have any concerns. Or if you prefer—you can call me.”

Her fingers brushed against his when she took the sheet of notepaper from him. It barely qualified as a touch.

Barely.

But she focused on their hands. Specifically, that touch. She drew her brows together, clutched the paper and retreated.

Ryan took a similar mental step back. Whoa. It was a lot of reaction for a simple touch. A leftover effect from spent adrenaline maybe?

Yes.

That had to be it.

He wasn’t about to entertain any other possibility.

He glanced at the ring on her middle finger. “Your butterfly’s gone,” he said.

“Yes.” She glanced at it and nodded. Her forehead bunched up. “It broke off and must have fallen off in the water.”

“Was it valuable?”

Another nod. “To me it was.”

Yet another feeling he didn’t want. Sheesh. Why did he have a sudden urge to head back to the ditch and try to find the butterfly?

He was obviously losing it, that’s why.

“I really am sorry for everything that’s happened,” she said.

There was a slight hitch in her voice. An edgy nervousness that hadn’t been there before that whole touching encounter or the butterfly conversation. Ryan didn’t know which had caused the change, and he didn’t want to know.

“I’m sorry, not just for tonight, but also for what went on with my father.”

She didn’t give him time to respond. Not that he would have known what to say to her apology anyway. Delaney turned and headed for the door, leaving him alone in the quiet room to ponder what the hell had just happened.

He looked down at his fingers, at the spot where they’d made contact. A spot just above his wedding ring that was still tingling. Potent stuff. Like his entire encounter with her.

The hypothetical cloning.

Her emotional reaction to his son’s photos.

Their argument.

The accusations.

The car accident.

All of it, every excruciating detail, was whirling around in his head until it was quickly becoming a blur. Still, Ryan forced himself to concentrate, to focus on one facet of the problem at a time. And one facet was definitely Delaney. Not her situation. But Delaney herself. His body wanted her, no sense denying that, but what he wanted more was answers about what was going on.

Was the technology for cloning still in the hypothetical stage? Had the New Hope clinic done the unthinkable? Or better yet, had they attempted it, failed, but for some reason wanted to let Delaney think they had succeeded?

While that theory made his heart ache for the son he’d never see again, it was a theory that had merit. And that brought him back to square one. Because that theory would no doubt involve some means of trying to get him to pay up for what was probably a hoax.

In this case, Ryan had to wonder if that would lead them directly to Richard Nash, Delaney’s father.

The door opened, and Ryan braced himself to face Delaney again, but he relaxed when he saw Sheriff Knight with a piece of paper in his hand.

“I need you to sign at the bottom,” Knight instructed. “And then you’re free to go. By the way, your driver’s waiting for you out front.”

Ryan complied, using the pen from the desk, and he handed the signed statement to the sheriff. “I’ll be hearing from you?”

The man nodded. “As soon as I’ve had a chance to conduct a thorough investigation.”

Thorough, perhaps, but it was an exercise that might not yield a thing. Ryan hadn’t remembered hearing the sound of the other car hitting its brakes, and there had been no collision between the two vehicles. And that meant, there probably wouldn’t be any physical evidence.

“Go home,” Sheriff Knight added, as if reading his mind. “Get some rest. Let me do my job.”

The sheriff was nearly out the door before Ryan stopped him. “But what about Ms. Nash? She’s in the ladies’ room—”

“She left.”

Ryan frowned. “Left?”

“Yeah. Right before I came in here. I saw her in the hall, had her sign her statement, and asked one of my deputies to drive her home. She said she needed to get back to her little boy.”

Along with his tingling fingers, Ryan experienced other sensations he didn’t welcome.

Disappointment.

And concern.

Because if the accident hadn’t really been an accident, if someone had intentionally set out to harm them tonight, then that meant Delaney, and her son, might still be in grave danger.