The screech of brakes pierced the afternoon air.
Sam’s stomach dropped.She saw it happen as if in slow motion.Pamela’s body collided with the front panel of a sedan, the sickening thump of impact.Pamela spun and fell to the pavement.
The car wasn’t going fast.Main Street had a 25-mile-per-hour speed limit, and the driver had been approaching the stop sign at the corner.But it was fast enough.
Sam ran into the street.The driver, a middle-aged woman, was already out of the car, her hands over her mouth, making a keening sound of horror.
Pamela lay on the pavement near the centerline.She was conscious, curled on her side, making small sounds of pain.Blood trickled from a cut on her forehead, and her left leg was bent at an unnatural angle.
“Don’t move,” Sam said, kneeling beside her.She was afraid to move her for fear she’d make things worse.“Help is coming.”
“I’m sorry,” Pamela whispered.Her face was wet with tears.“I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.”
A small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk.Sam heard someone say they’d called an ambulance, someone else asking what happened, another voice asking to give them space.
“She just ran out,” the driver was saying, her voice shaking.“She didn’t even look.I didn’t see her until she was right there.I tried to stop.I did.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” someone told her.“We saw it.She just ran right out.”
Sam heard sirens in the distance, growing closer.She stayed kneeling beside Pamela, who had closed her eyes and was breathing in short, pained gasps.
A car pulled up abruptly at the curb.It wasn’t a police car, but Aiden’s Subaru.He got out quickly, his expression alarmed as he took in the scene: a woman on the ground, the damaged car, the crowd, and Sam kneeling in the street.
“Sam!”He reached her in just a few strides.“What happened?Are you hurt?”
Sam looked up at him.“I’m okay.I’m not hurt.”Her voice wavered.“Pamela tried to kill me.She’s the one who killed Margaret and Gerald.Then she ran, and the car ...”
His arms came around her, carefully pulling her to her feet and away from Pamela as the EMTs approached.
“You’re safe,” Aiden said quietly, one hand cupping the back of her head.“You’re safe now.”
Sam let herself lean against him for a moment, breathing in the familiar scent of his soap.Then she pulled back slightly as two police cruisers and an unmarked car approached.
“I need to talk to Lieutenant Phillips,” she said.“I need to tell him everything.” She paused.“Aiden, could you do me a favor?Can you meet the delivery driver in the bookstore?He’s trying to drop off a delivery for Charlotte.And can you make sure he gives a statement to the police?He was a witness.”
He nodded.“On it.”
The next thirty minutes passed in a blur of activity.Paramedics loaded Pamela onto a stretcher.Sam overheard one of them say something about a possible broken femur and concussion.They took her away with a police escort.
Lieutenant Phillips listened with an increasingly grim expression as Sam explained the confrontation in the bookshop, Pamela’s confession, and her dash into traffic.
The delivery driver corroborated Sam’s account, describing how he’d found her running from a woman holding a heavy object aloft.Other witnesses confirmed Pamela had bolted blindly into the street.When Phillips finally said Sam could go, Aiden retrieved her purse from the bookshop, locked up properly, and put the key back in the lockbox.
“Come on,” he said gently, guiding her toward his car.“I’m taking you home.”
