Red on the River - Page 47

“Are you kidding, Raine? You’re the smallest.” Harlow laughed. “Well, besides Zahra. And she’s, um, curvier.”

Zahra rolled her eyes. “My hips are bigger. Just say it. And my butt.”

“Are you making fun of my butt?” Raine demanded.

“What butt?” they all asked simultaneously and then burst out laughing.

Raine craned her neck as if she could see. “Maybe that’s why I despise riding a bike so much. No padding.”

“Nope, none,” Vienna confirmed. “You have to have the fastest metabolism in town. I’ve seen you put away an entire pizza by yourself.”

Zahra groaned. “Don’t remind me. She does that. She doesn’t even notice either. I love food. She barely notices food. I have to chew slowly and savor, and she works while she eats. She doesn’t pay attention to her food. That’s so wrong of you, Raine.”

“I pay attention to what I drink,” Raine said. “Especially Moscow mules.”

“The three times a year you actually have a drink,” Stella pointed out.

Another round of laughter went up. Vienna slipped into the driver’s seat of the truck. Raine and Shabina both got in the truck with her to give the others more room in the 4Runner at least as far as the rental agency.

The engine turned over immediately as if eager to go. There was no having to warm it up or let it run, although she waited to make sure Stella and the others were good to go in their vehicle before she pulled out of the lot onto the road to head back toward Vegas and the rental agency.

Partway down the road, the headlights flickered for a moment. A tingle of awareness went down her spine, that first unpleasant warning she sometimes got when her radar went off that something wasn’t right. She flexed her fingers on the steering wheel and breathed evenly, checking the instruments. Everything seemed fine.

“Did you notice the headlights?” She threw the question out to both women because that nagging little red flag wouldn’t go away now that it had waved at her.

Nothing else happened as she drove down the road, and she should have dismissed that one little flicker, but instead, little knots began to tighten in her belly.

“I noticed it,” Shabina said.

“Me too,” Raine chimed in.

“A short?” Vienna asked. No way was it a short. Zale would have mentioned if there was a short in the headlights. She didn’t believe that for a minute. It hadn’t happened again, so why was her uneasiness increasing instead of decreasing?

Raine leaned forward as if peering at the road in front of her. “Are the headlights dimmer?”

Vienna couldn’t honestly say. She was almost afraid to touch the high beams. She kept up her even breathing, staying strictly to the speed limit if a little under. Because Stella was behind her and luckily no other cars had come up on them, she was even traveling below the speed limit for the most part. Once on the main highway, she knew she would have to decide to either pull over and have the truck towed, just on her intuition that something was wrong, or drive at full speed. If she did that, she didn’t want the others in the car with her.

“I don’t know. I just have a bad feeling. Maybe I should pull over and have the two of you ride with Stella.”

“No.” Shabina was firm. “If you think something is wrong, we pull over and all of us get out, not just the two of us. We’re in this together.”

“I’m most likely paranoid after all the stories of dead bodies in the desert and seeing Zale and Rainier injured and then the blood in the truck.”

“You don’t get spooked,” Raine said calmly. “I think the lights are dimmer. How is the truck handling?”

“Sluggish. That’s the other thing. You said the truck handled so well. This feels like a big slug. It feels almost as if it’s fighting me every little bend we go around. We’re coming up on the first really big turn.” She slowed even more.

“Is it the tires? Maybe the tire pressure is too low,” Shabina said. “Can’t that be a factor? I don’t really know anything about cars, but I’ve heard Stella and Raine talk about tire pressure.”

Vienna considered that for a moment. Could the tires be so low that the truck wasn’t responding? Wouldn’t she have noticed? Raine would have. Stella would have. And no, this had a different feel to it. Something else, then. Her radar was screaming now. Something was very, very wrong. She didn’t want to go into the turn that was coming up fast.

She slowed more—or tried to. Her foot went all the way to the floor. Immediately, she dropped her hand to the emergency brake.

“Oh, hell no,” she said softly. “Not both.” There was no way to make the turn. She wasn’t going that fast, but still too fast for the turn. She could take both lanes, but naturally, after no car had been anywhere close, bright lights were sweeping around the turn. “We’re going off-road. We’re not taking a chance of hitting someone.”

Raine had already calmly texted Stella, and Stella pulled over immediately, leaving them to their fate. Shabina didn’t make a sound. Vienna fought the steering. It was gone, almost nonexistent. Someone had done a very good job of getting rid of the brakes, the lights and the ability to steer properly. Unless Zale and Rainier were trying to kill her, this truck had been rigged to finish the job of murdering the two agents. It was just her bad luck that she’d been asked to take it to the rental agency for them.

Vienna wasn’t certain she could manage to maneuver the truck off the road and onto the dirt and sand. The steering refused to cooperate. For a moment, it looked as if they would plow straight ahead into the oncoming car as it swept around the curve right toward them. Vienna fought the wheel, using every bit of strength she had. She put her arms, shoulders and back into it. The truck plunged off the road, the tires hitting the dirt and rocks. The left side came down on two higher boulders, lifting that side so the truck rocked hard, throwing them back and forth as it settled with a jarring bounce into the sandy, rock-covered soil.

Vienna, heart pounding, switched off the key and sat for a moment, assessing the damage to the other two. Both women were locked tight against their seats, but strangely, none of the airbags had deployed to help lessen the impact.

“Is anyone hurt?”

“I don’t know yet,” Shabina admitted. “I think I’m in shock.”

“Raine?” Vienna insisted on an answer. Raine appeared to be texting again.

“I’m okay. A little shaken. What about you?”

“You’re bleeding. You have a cut on your head.”

“Do I?” Raine touched her forehead and looked at her fingers when they came away smeared with blood. “It doesn’t hurt. I didn’t even know I hit my head.”

“Damn it, we’re going to have to call the police and report this accident,” Vienna said.

“Not necessarily,” Raine denied. “I’m required to report any accident I get into. I immediately sent the details to my field office, and they’ll send their nearest people to take care of it for us. They’ll want to process the truck, which means they’ll tow it to their site and take care of the rental agency and make it right with Zale’s people.”

“Are you certain? Zale’s people might not like that,” Vienna said.

Tags: Christine Feehan Romance
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