Strangers She Knows

by Christina Dodd

  Great. The woman could drive a stick shift.

  As the sun lit the interior of the truck’s cab, Kellen could see her, Mara Philippi, maniacal and vengeful, with black hair that stood up like a Bride of Frankenstein parody.

  Kellen ran.

  She ran harder than she had ever run in her life. Because if Mara got close before the dynamite blew, Kellen would be blasted to kingdom come accompanied by her worst enemy. They might not both be going to the same eventual destination, but by God, Kellen didn’t want to make the journey with Mara.

  Kellen dashed.

  She sprinted.

  Only one thing saved her: that low tire gave the truck a terrifying shimmy. The front bumper dragged through the grass.

  Behind her, the engine roared, closer and closer.

  Come on. Come on. Dynamite, explode!

  She had placed tape across the eight feet of fuse wire several times. Was it still alight? Or, slapped by wet grass and spattered with mud, had it sputtered out, leaving Kellen to die at Mara’s hands?

  No. No! In less than a half mile, the cliffs dropped straight into the ocean. Kellen would jump to her death before she let Mara kill her. Before she would let Mara win.

  Why doesn’t the truck explode?

  And, she knew, Mara would follow her over.

  Behind her, the engine revved.

  Kellen glanced back.

  The truck, goldenrod yellow with a black roof, spun tires as it headed toward her. Faster, faster—Mara mashed on the accelerator, ripping through the damp grasses.

  Closer and closer…

  There! That oak! Kellen changed course, dove around the massive trunk.

  Mara twisted the wheel. The back wheels fishtailed, turning the truck ninety degrees to face Kellen—and then around too far, leaving Mara stopped and facing the wrong direction.

  Gasping, Kellen pulled the flare from her belt, peeled back the seal and, with shaking hands, uncapped it.

  Mara looked around, spotted Kellen, rolled down her window and shouted, “Sucks to be you, Cecilia!”

  Just like that, Kellen’s hands stopped shaking. Moving smoothly, she placed the cap on the bottom of the flare, pointed the metal tube at Mara and thumped it on the tree trunk. The flare roared to life, slammed into the driver’s door post—too bad it hadn’t gone inside—then skittered across the windshield, detonating in a shower of white, red and green stars.

  Mara dove sideways on the seat, away from the burst.

  Kellen held her aching side and laughed loudly enough for Mara to hear… Or rather, she would have heard if she hadn’t been deafened by the explosion. Which Kellen knew she was.

  Stupid for Kellen to allow herself this moment of triumph. Maybe she’d screwed up the dynamite, maybe she would die, but at least she’d made Mara sit in a wet seat.

  Mara sat up, blinking, blinded.

  Kellen saw a large shadow pass over the ocean onto the land, heard a familiar chopping sound—

  Helicopter.

  Another trick of Mara’s?

  Or Max?

  For a split second, she glanced up. Orange and white.

  Coast Guard!

  The truck engine roared to life again.

  Kellen turned and sprinted toward the cliffs.

  The sound of the truck’s engine grew fainter.

  She peeked behind her.

  Mara was on the move, but not as fast, and she wove as if the flare had robbed her of sight.

  The dynamite should explode!

  Maybe the fuse wire was defective.

  Explode!

  Maybe Kellen had screwed up the blasting cap.

  Explode!

  She no longer cared why the dynamite hadn’t blown, or even if she was in range when it went, only that Mara should die. To save Rae. And Max.

  Less than a quarter mile to the top of the cliff. Maybe Kellen could lure her over the edge…

  Mara’s gaze found Kellen, fixed on her. She smiled, revved the engine, and sped toward her.

  Kellen sprinted a few steps.

  The helicopter’s shadow passed over them again, lower this time, bending the grasses.

  Kellen heard a shotgun blast. She clutched at her heart. But she wasn’t hurt. She spun to see the truck half lift off the ground. The headlights grew dim.

  Mara slammed on the brakes, skidded sideways. The windshield was shattered, the paint was pitted, and Mara wiped a trickle of blood off her face. She looked up, craning her neck to see the circling helicopter.

  For the first time Kellen allowed herself to look up, really look up.

  Yes. Coast Guard. Someone inside held a shotgun pointed at the truck.

  Without the windshield between them, Kellen could see Mara clearly. Her gaze met Kellen’s. Her blue eyes blazed with that hellish flame. In their depths, Kellen read her doom. This time, Mara would kill her.

  Unless the dynamite ignited.

  The truck took off, moving toward Kellen so fast, she didn’t know if she would make it to the top of the cliff. The bumper slashed through the grasses, the engine’s heat breathed like a dragon in pursuit.

  Another shot, close overhead.

  Kellen spun to look.

  More blood on Mara’s face. She wiped at it with a frantic hand. She had to know—nothing could save her now. But she kept coming.

  Kellen ran backward for two steps. So she saw it.

  With a boom, a ball of flame enveloped the F-100.

  The earth shook. The explosion lifted the truck, then spat it out. The blazing F-100 slammed sideways onto the ground.

  Kellen lifted her fists.

  Victory!

  48

  The fireball rolled toward Kellen.

  Stupid premature celebration.

  She dove sideways. Heat charred her, rolled over and around. She rolled in the damp grass. As she spun, she caught glimpses of the blazing debris, of the truck’s body twisting, flipping after her. The triumphant flames roared.

  Kellen rolled down the slope, trying to get away, so terrified of the fire she didn’t dare stop.

  Someone in the helicopter had shot the F-100. The dynamite had ignited, finally ignited, blowing body parts, Mara’s and the truck’s, all over this part of the island.

  And Kellen was alive. She was alive! She was rolling toward the edge of the cliff.

  She couldn’t stop.

  She tore at the grasses, trying to turn herself.

  The truck barreled past her and over the brink onto the rocks below.

  The incline grew steeper and steeper.

  Kellen couldn’t slow her descent. She was going over—

  Something slammed into her, stopped her, dragged her back and away from the precipice.

  She gasped, robbed of breath by the familiar weight and warmth of—

  “Damn you, Kellen, are you trying to get yourself killed?”

  Max. It was Max, his brown eyes furious, his deep voice snapping, his shaking hands holding her close against his body.

  He had survived. His weary face was battered, but he was alive.

  She clung to him, his warmth, his vitality. “Max. Max. Thank you. You saved me.” He was here, so he had to have saved Rae, too. “You did it. You saved Rae! What about Rae? How’s Rae?”

  “She’s alive. She’ll be fine. She is fine. In the hospital. She sent me back for you.” He patted her, brushed at her back. “You’re still smoldering. Literally. My God, you women have turned me gray.”

  “I’m sorry.” She smoothed his hair back from his forehead, then anxiety caught her by the throat. “Is Mara for sure dead?”

  “She’s obliterated,” Max assured her, “and every piece of her and the truck that wasn’t blown all over the island went off the cliff and into the ocean.”

  They
were prone and tangled in the grass. Kellen couldn’t see anything. “Are you sure?” She clasped his collar in her right hand. “Really? Are you sure?”

  “Come on.” He crawled forward a few feet and parted the grass.

  The ground disappeared, a sheer drop onto the rocks, the beach, the ocean.

  The F-100 lay shattered, burning in pieces and clumps and bits, and out on the sand a headless human shape burned.

  Mara.

  “She’s not coming back,” Max said.

  “You’ll make sure. You’ll check her DNA.”

  “I will. But Kellen—you killed her.”

  49

  Max pulled Kellen closer, kissed her face, looked into her eyes, and in a tone of absolute exasperation asked, “Damn it to hell, if you got the F-100 running, why didn’t you drive Mara into the ground?”

  “I didn’t get the truck running.” She shoved at his shoulder with her right hand. “You did.”

  “No.” He sounded sure. “I never got it started.”

  “That last time, you did fix it, and if you’d had time to try, you would have been driving it all over the island.”

  He thought about the past few days, reconstructing them in his mind. “I was working on it when Rae came up screaming that Dylan was covered in blood.”

  “Right.”

  “I put it together right at last.” Max’s voice rang out with incredulous pride.

  “Yes! But you didn’t know and I didn’t know. What I did know was that if Mara thought she could chase me into the ground, she would try, for the pure joy of it. So I set a trap. I taped the dynamite, the blasting cap, and a long fuse onto the gas tank and frame.”

  “Of course you did.”

  “To lure her into the garage, I tried to start the truck, to make enough engine noise that she would think I’d failed to get it running.”

  “It didn’t start when you tried it because it didn’t have gas in the line.”

  “That has to be it. While trying to start it, I brought gas up to the motor. All Mara had to do was push the starter button, and the motor was running and so was I.” Kellen sighed in exhaustion.

  “Really? I got the truck running? It was fixed?” Max laughed. He laughed! “I fixed the F-100.”

  She smiled at him. He was so cute. “You did. Congratulations.”

  He stopped laughing. “And you blew it up.”

  Oops. “Yes. I was hoping you wouldn’t give me any trouble about that.”

  “I won’t.” He waited a beat. “Not right now.”

  Kellen looked around at the sky, so blue the storm might have been their imagination, at the wide green oaks, the damp grasses already regaining their green—and the smoldering trail of ruin where the truck had driven. “Someone shot Mara. From the helicopter.”

  “I shot at the truck, trying to kill her, or ignite the gas tank. That wasn’t what took her out. It was you.”

  “You, too. You hit her. In the face. You got her. I saw.”

  “If you insist on giving me credit, okay, I helped. But you made sure she wouldn’t go back to prison and pull another amazing escape.”

  “All right, then. All right.” Kellen leaned back on the grass. “Rae’s safe. Really now. Forever and ever.”

  “We would have protected her from Mara, no matter what.”

  “No.” The adrenaline rush was fading. “Mara said… Mara said Rae was her best friend. She would have come after her forever.”

  Max grew pale.

  “It’s okay now.” She leaned against him, wanting comfort, giving comfort. “Is my hair all burned off? Is it?” She lifted her hands to feel her head. This was a small thing, and stupid, but no hair? Again? “The scars from my surgery will show again. I’m so tired of not having hair.”

  No answer.

  She looked at him.

  He was staring at her left hand, at her poor, tortured hand.

  Hastily, she lowered it.

  Gently, Max took it between both of his and examined it.

  Stars swam as she stared at the wound, puckered red and oozing.

  In a low, furious voice, Max asked, “What happened?”

  “What you said would happen. Mara didn’t fight fair.” All the pains grabbed Kellen at once. She winced and moaned.

  “Your arm. Your back. Blisters are coming up now. We’ve got to get you to a hospital.” Max wrapped his arm around Kellen’s waist, and lifted her to her feet. He started her toward the helicopter.

  “No.” Her knees collapsed.

  He held her, kept her from hitting the ground.

  “Not yet. I have to go to the house. I have to tell her…” The world spun.

  He picked Kellen up and ran with her to the Coast Guard helicopter. “Stay with me. Hang in there.”

  “Not the helicopter. We’ve got to go back to the house and tell her…” Pain took Kellen’s breath away.

  The helicopter had come prepped for medical emergencies.

  As gently as he could, Max placed her on the stretcher the Coastie had pulled out.

  She gave a small moan, caught her breath and said, “Sorry. Sorry. I didn’t mean to. So melodramatic. I couldn’t help it. We need to go to the house and—”

  “Lady, we’ve got to get you to the hospital now.” As the Coastie stuck a needle in her arm, he introduced himself, “I’m Bill Stevens, medic.”

  “No.” Kellen had to convince them. “We’ve got to tell her—”

  “She’s hallucinating,” Bill said.

  Max and the Coastie lifted her in.

  They shut the doors.

  The drugs took effect. The pain receded and so did the world, until all of a sudden they were in a hospital emergency room and doctors and nurses were working on her hand and her burns at the same time. She came to complete consciousness, hovering on the edge of agony.

  “Give her more pain relief,” someone said.

  “Not yet. Max. I have to speak to Max.”

  Right away, he was there, leaning close to her face. “She’s still there,” Kellen told him.

  His brown eyes were anxious. “Relax, honey. You killed her. Remember? Mara is dead.”

  “Ruby Morgade is not.” Kellen respected Max’s intelligence above all things, and she trusted him to put the pieces together, but before she could say another word, the darkness took her under.

  50

  “As soon as Kellen told me Ruby Morgade was living here, alone, I sent a medical team to assess her. I also sent a cook and a housekeeping team, and a team to assess the damage to the house.” Max piloted the helicopter, the recently repaired Di Luca Robinson R44 Raven II, off the coast of California, across the Pacific and toward Isla Paraíso.

  From the back seat, Rae asked, “How did you know, Mommy?”

  “That Ruby was alive?” Kellen turned to Rae and Verona in the back seat. “She saved my life.”

  “I knew it.” Rae sounded fiercely proud, as if Ruby was her own personal champion to exalt. “So I was right. Someone did come into my room and stroke my forehead. Luna knew her!”

  “That’s right. That’s why Luna didn’t bark.” Kellen’s voice broke a little.

  It had been only four days since Kellen had arrived at the mainland hospital, and those days had been busy, filled with doctors, medications and her reunion with Rae, and in that time, they hadn’t told Rae about Luna’s death. Kellen knew the time was rapidly approaching. But how to tell a child that her beloved dog had died a hero?

  Max gave Kellen a sideways look, and continued, “The nurse is Tichi Barlow. She’s impressed with Ruby’s mental and physical health. Ruby’s appetite is good, and she’s been speaking to the construction team about what needs to be done to the house.”

  “She sounds like a remarkable woman.” As soon as Max sent word, Verona had returned from Ital
y, and she said, “If Miss Morgade’s in such good shape, why did we have to come so quickly? Kellen’s barely healed.”

  Max glanced back at his mother, then at Kellen.

  “I had a gut feeling we should come as soon as possible.” Kellen wasn’t trying to be dramatic, just truthful.

  “All right. Yes. That’s a good reason,” Verona acknowledged.

  Kellen inclined her head, and glanced down at her hands, one wrapped and taped, the other in need of physical therapy. She sighed. As soon as she got back to Yearning Sands Resort, she would be practicing the piano again…but without Luna and her complaints.

  Her eyes filled with tears, but she forced them back and swallowed.

  As Max made his first pass over the island, Rae chatted at Verona. “This is it, Grandma. Isla Paraíso. Isn’t it neat? Don’t you love it?”

  “It’s very pretty. So isolated. Who could imagine such a thing off the California coast?” Verona craned her neck to see what was below.

  As did Kellen. She strained to get a sense of the violence that had occurred here. Instead she saw the serene beauty of the island: the sandy beaches and crashing waves, the mighty oaks and grazing deer. The evidence of the truck’s explosion had been obliterated by the grasses that, with the rain, had turned a brilliant green and grown gloriously tall. “Mara Philippi left no mark,” she muttered.

  “None on the island,” Max answered. He meant that she, Kellen, had been marked.

  Yes, she had, marked by the fight, marked by the torture, marked by Luna’s loss. Her hand had required extensive repair, she’d needed minor surgery to remove a piece of the bicycle’s spoke and, once again, she had lost most of her hair, singed away from the fire that had blasted out of the F-100.

  But she didn’t care. She was healing, Max and Rae had survived their harrowing trip across the storm-tossed ocean, Rae had recovered—and Mara was dead. Completely, DNA tested and certified dead.

  “Mother, there.” Max pointed. “There’s the house.”

  “It’s a mansion. Out here,” Verona marveled.

  Seeing it with her fresh eyes made Kellen reassess it, and marvel, too. That ostentatious French chateau sat alone in the middle of the Isla Paraíso wilderness, out of place with its painted tones of blue and brown and scarlet accents.