Winter’s End: Winter Black Series: Book Nine

by Stone, Mary

  She edged her car up a few inches to escape the reflected light and decided that this was probably the nicest driver in the city, or he wasn’t entirely sober when he made no move to close the space and blind her again. Not only that, the lane beside her was empty and open. Most would take that lane and whip around or use it to try to vie for lead, but he was behind her, keeping a respectful distance now that she’d moved, and for a wonder, he didn’t even have his brights on.

  In front of her, the light shifted to a green arrow for traffic turning left. There was none, which only served to annoy her even more.

  Her attention returned to Arthur and Lynn. She hadn’t found any indication whether Arthur was still alive, though he would be rather old by now. From what Winter had told her about the vision, it didn’t seem as though he would be very cooperative, even if he was still around. He wasn’t exactly citizen of the year.

  The light changed, for a mercy, and she checked the intersection and eased out, staying in the left lane. The pickup behind her stayed well back and in the same lane as her as they moved forward.

  Arthur seemed like he wasn’t going to be particularly friendly, especially if Winter’s vision was at all accurate. Autumn had no reason to doubt it wouldn’t be. Spooky or not, Winter had been proving her accuracy in her visions. Besides, it wasn’t as though she were one to talk, given her own unique gift.

  She went through a green light that changed to yellow as she crossed the intersection. To her surprise, the pickup behind her pushed the yellow light. While this wasn’t exactly the same thing as running a red light, it caught her attention. Pushing a yellow was something everyone did once in a while, but usually when late or in a hurry. Oddly enough, the driver gave no other signs of being rushed. He didn’t try to pass her or go around but seemed content enough sitting way behind her and going every bit as slowly as she was.

  Thoughts of Winter and Arthur and Lynn vanished, and she began to concentrate on the truck behind her. She put on her left turn signal. The next street took her into a minor, residential street that wound through stacks of houses with carefully maintained trees and salted roads. The idea of some random driver belonging in this particular neighborhood was as remote as Autumn being there.

  He turned with her all the same and cozied up behind her as she waited for an oncoming car to turn in front of her. She watched him carefully in the rearview as she coasted down the street, parked cars on either side narrowing the available roadway. If someone had been coming the opposite way, it would have been a tight fit.

  Still, her new friend was behind her at a respectful distance. Coincidence? Not likely.

  There was a small offshoot of a road to her right that went deeper into the darkness of crowded houses and brittle grass waiting for the first snow to hold onto the frozen ground. She spun the wheel at the last minute—no turn signal, no warning—making it look like she had almost gone past her turn, something anyone would do. The question was, would her shadow come with her?

  He did.

  Frowning now, Autumn hit the gas, speeding through the darkened roads, praying it was late enough at night that no one would be walking across the street. The headlights behind her chose the same street, and the gap between them closed.

  There was no longer a question that she was being followed. Who it might be remained a mystery. She couldn’t get a clear enough look at the truck to tell what kind of pickup it even was. Streetlights were sparse through this neighborhood, and he was too far back to get a clear look. Regardless, whoever it was, he or she wasn’t exactly chasing her down to tell her something quite so innocuous as a warning that a taillight was out. Whoever it was meant business.

  All right, then. She could deal with this.

  This wasn’t the first time Autumn had been on the wrong end of a creepy stalker. For that matter, she had a list of people who wouldn’t mind seeing her suffer in some way. Such was a hazard of her profession. Her work and testimony had put people in jail, and she was still fairly new at her job.

  But for some reason, her mind kept turning back toward Justin. Was it because he was the bogeyman of the hour? She and Winter had been so buried in that research, she could easily be projecting. There was no reason to think the two were linked. The important thing now was to get rid of her tail.

  She raced the car at twice the safe speed, turning on the brights to forestall any confusion about a crazy woman driving at high speed down a sleepy road. She took the next right, praying that it wasn’t a dead end, and gunned it when she saw the opening of a road in front of her. To her surprise, she’d circled back to the same road she’d been on when she first spotted the tail.

  She hit the corner on two wheels, counting on the fact that it was late and traffic on the surface street was spotty. If she sideswiped another car, then at least she would have some relative safety in the form of another driver to keep her company while waiting for the police to come and make out a report. The road was empty, though, and she wound up pushing her own car faster, running the red light in front of her.

  The creep not only stayed with her, he was moving closer.

  She pushed the car up to fifty and then a little past that. If someone crossed in front of her, she would T-bone him. Not one to pray, she called on a few deities anyway. The last thing she wanted to do was kill someone. As it was, if she hit a pothole wrong, or misjudged a turn, she would have to put some heavy-duty trust in her seatbelt and the airbags.

  More pissed off than frightened, Autumn looked around wildly for a chance to escape. No way was she letting the bastard get to her. Whoever he was, he had more than just tailing her in mind, or he would have stayed back in a position where he could watch her without notice. This was someone who meant business. Someone who had something malicious in mind.

  Which meant that this wasn’t the time to try and get him under the lights to look at his face. A move like that would only give him a clear view of her as well. Damned if she was going to give the bastard a clear shot at her head. It was time to lose him. Fast.

  The only options she could see were unpleasant ones. There was a furniture store ahead to the left. The parking lot was generous enough to accommodate several delivery trucks, all of which seemed to be put away for the night. She careened off the street and into the driveway of the lot, the tail following closely behind.

  Autumn tucked in close to the building and whipped the wheel around hard. The car jumped and ran for the curb. Autumn aimed for the concrete posts, each one bearing a sign for handicapped parking that marked the spaces closest to the building, trusting her little car wasn’t too wide to fit between. She shot through the space, the mirror on her right folding inward as it hit the pylon. She made it through, but her car bottomed out on the sidewalk as she rolled over the curb, sparks flying from the undercarriage, covering the road with glowing confetti.

  The pursuit vehicle wasn’t as small as her little car. The lights from the store lot had shown her something larger than she’d expected, some kind of large truck or SUV. The wheelbase was wider and the narrow passage that her car barely made it through turned out to be too much for him. He hit the brakes hard. She held her breath, her eyes more focused in her mirrors than on the road ahead. She swore when she saw he hadn’t hit hard enough to get stuck. She sped along as fast as she dared, leaving his lights behind her.

  It bought her some time, but the delay wouldn’t hold him for long. He’d make up the distance quickly enough. She suspected he’d had to reverse and go back out the driveway he’d come in on. She had only seconds in which to vanish.

  She found her solution quickly. A drive-thru liquor store. It was closed, as the hour was late, but it was also lit up brightly, vapor lights streaming off every corner except one. The very back of the store ended at a brick wall, unbroken, lacking doors or windows. While the lights showed the back of the lot in high resolution, there was a hole in the light behind the building, leaving the space in shadow.

  She whipped the car into that
pocket of darkness and killed the headlights at the same time. Furious now, she reached into her purse for the little gun she always carried, and waited. By this point, she wasn’t entirely sure whether she was hoping he wouldn’t find her…or that he would. She adjusted her grip on the cool metal, relishing the feel of the weapon in her hand.

  She didn’t have to wait long. An old green full-sized pickup truck raced past the liquor store at high speed, too fast for her to make out the driver or the license plate. The tires squealed as he turned a corner and then she sat in a growing silence as traffic sounds from far away drifted through the darkness, filtering through the closed windows, punctuated by the sounds of her own breathing, coming fast and hard. From the sound of her, one would imagine she’d been running at a sprint.

  Autumn held her gun, willing her breath to calm. It took a long time before her heart was willing to slow down again. Minutes passed before she felt like she could put the car in drive. In silence, she eased out of the parking lot.

  It’s not going to be there. It’s long gone.

  Despite her brave thoughts, she couldn’t help but think the truck would eventually find her again. It was out there, waiting for her in the shadows, much the way she’d waited for him. At any minute, it would pounce.

  But the street remained deserted.

  For an extra measure of safety, she placed the gun on the seat beside her and turned left, the opposite direction, away from home, at least from any direct route there.

  The twenty-minute drive to home took more than an hour as she traveled the most roundabout way she could think of. The sparse traffic offered only the normal rudeness, the drivers more often than not half-drunken fools who wanted nothing more from her than for her to get the hell out of the way.

  By the time she pulled into the covered garage, her breathing was back to normal and the adrenaline was out of her system.

  Still, she walked to her apartment holding the gun. If her hand shook a little, that was fatigue, not nerves. She repeated that statement over and over again until she believed it.

  16

  She was gone.

  That was all there was to it. She’d vanished in front of me like so much vapor. I sat at a stop light while it turned to green, but I didn’t move. I had no idea where to go anymore. The bitch was just gone.

  I backtracked my steps, followed the road back to that damn furniture store. Nothing. She was probably in Timbuktu by the time I got turned around.

  The light changed back to red again, and the color only magnified my anger. Damned mindless timer with no care for its usefulness. Not a single mindless government official seemed to have any idea how completely unneeded that light was at this time of night. It didn’t add a single thing to the world.

  I sat there, hands drumming the steering wheel impatiently as a car pulled up next to me. The guy behind the wheel stared straight ahead, minding his own business, trying to be invisible to the night. Trying to not be noticed by people like me.

  Where did she go?

  I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that she was better than me. She was smarter, discovered that I was following her, knew it, knew it, knew it…

  Slamming my hands on the steering wheel, I forced the thought from my mind. I needed to focus on a solution instead of beating myself up for the past.

  Where did that leave me? I didn’t even know which way to turn. Left? Right? Forward? Turn around? Every moment I sat still was another moment she got farther and farther away.

  I felt the scream building within me, fueled by rage, frustration, even a little fear. Damn it! I slammed the steering wheel with my fist, the dashboard, my clenched hands bouncing off the vinyl, rocking the vehicle back and forth. I imagined her in front of me as I took out the impotent rage on the truck.

  The dashboard was unmoved by my futile efforts. The truck didn’t care. I hit it hard, solidly, until my hands stung. My fingers throbbed, yet the dashboard was still unmoved by my display. I took my knife and slashed the vinyl, stabbing the blade deep into the dash to make the truck see me, to make it hurt the way I did. When I stopped, it would wear my mark, would wear it forever.

  I pulled the knife free, the blade held upside down, ready for the killing blow. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I turned to look into the car beside me. The guy was staring straight ahead, but I could see his eyes cheating, looking at me with naked fear. His car edged forward, his foot coming off the brake as he considered whether breaking the rules and running a red light at an intersection where there was no traffic was worth his life.

  It was funny. I saw myself as I must have looked to him, crazed and out of control. I was a denizen of the night, a lone killer loose on the street, and here he was, locked next to me, frozen.

  For all he knew, his life was in the balance, and the only thing keeping him in danger was an automated light spreading a red glow across the pavement like so much blood. Useless and stupid, and there he was, transfixed by it, willing to risk his life by waiting for the light to change, regardless of what was beside him.

  It was funny. I looked at the knife in my hand, at the sideways glances he hoped I didn’t see, and I laughed. Really laughed. I pointed it at him, made little jabbing motions with my knife, and laughed so hard I nearly wet myself.

  There were no other cars. There were no cops, no one, nothing, just him and me. I waved to him as sweetly as I could, and the fool waved back! How insane could one person be? The idiot actually waved back at me, his fingers moving jerkily on the end of his hand as though he were Miss America trying to woo the crowd.

  Maybe I needed to show him that he didn’t have to wait, he didn’t have to obey a light, the rules the old fat men in government created. He was a man, right? He could make up his own mind.

  I drove out into the middle of the intersection and stopped. See? See? I can do anything!

  Giddy with my own power, I turned around as the light cycled and the nonexistent cross traffic got the yellow. I drove back into my own lane, facing the wrong way and stopped. Now, our doors were even with each other.

  Didn’t this man understand? Couldn’t he see? Laws were up for grabs. He was a man, wasn’t he? The law was his to follow or disregard, yet here he was, sitting in the middle of danger simply because a little law said he couldn’t go.

  The light was still red when the man finally understood. He took off so fast he left rubber behind him on the pavement, a stinking streak of black that smoked in my headlights. It felt good being able to help a man think for himself, to let go of the confines of his mind and act as he saw fit. It was part of my holy mission. A sacred quest. The path of the righteous.

  It occurred to me then that even this was part of the holy path, the sacred mission that Grandpa had begun, the work that I needed to carry on. Everything all made sense.

  I had been pursuing the wrong car. The wrong woman. I had tried to hurt my sister. Hurt her like I was hurt. I’d started by trying to take her friend away. I’d wanted her alone. Isolated.

  But doing so meant I’d left the path, the true path, just to make her hurt. That was where my mistake lay. That was why I’d lost the redheaded bitch. Because she was a distraction I didn’t need to bother with.

  I drove down the wrong side of the road for a while. It felt good. This was freedom. Liberation. This was what the true path was, breath and life and being someone useful. Powerful even. No more stoplights. Ignoring the signs on wooden sticks that got in the way of a man driving the way he wanted.

  But as I retraced the way I’d come, I couldn’t help but wonder about the redhead again. I wondered how that bitch had given me the slip. What had she done? How had she gotten away? I’d been right behind her. That furniture store parking lot only delayed me for a moment or two. That hadn’t been enough time for her to vanish.

  I stared at the torn vinyl on the dash.

  Oh no. What had I done?

  My heart began to hammer as I examined every tear. Grandpa would be pissed t
hat I’d damaged the truck. Even though it was old and falling apart and there was as much rust as paint on the body, one scratch, one dent, and he would be angry. Very angry. He would yell, and the next thing I knew, he’d have his belt off so I could feel the taste of repentance on my back.

  “I’m sorry, Grandpa,” I cried, terror wrapping its icy fists around my throat.

  Follow the path, boy. Stop being stupid.

  The words sounded to loud and so real that I looked over at the passenger seat, sure Grampa would be sitting beside me now.

  Pulling over to the side of the road, I placed my hands over my face until I could calm down. I’d gotten distracted, then distracted some more. I needed to focus. Be still. Concentrate.

  Follow the path.

  When my breathing was calm again, I realized where I was. After a few more deep breaths, I put the old truck into drive and whipped it over into the correct lane—the correct path. Driving the correct speed, I kept my hands at the nine and three positions, eyes firmly on the road in front of me.

  Doing it right. Doing it the way Grandpa would want me to.

  A police car with flashing lights ran past me in the other direction, heading toward where I’d just been. I’d bet all the bitcoin in my account that the bastard at the light had ratted me out. I had made it my mission to liberate him, to empower him, and he’d called the cops on me. If I saw him again, I’d have to use the knife. Some people just couldn’t be taught.

  The cop didn’t have his siren on. Maybe he didn’t want to wake anyone. I was driving through a nice neighborhood, after all. He ignored me because I was driving like an old lady, stiff and unnatural, but in a way where I couldn’t hurt the truck.

  Would Grandpa like what I was doing? I thought I was being good. He said God didn’t like when I was bad. When God didn’t like something, Grandpa had to punish me on His behalf.