Attagirl, she imagined Karl saying.
Had theiralways be honestpromise to each other been a sham? What else didn’t she know?
When the stand of boulders was close enough, she stood and sprinted over to a ten-foot-tall slab. She slid between it and a squat rock, peering back at the field she’d just traversed. She saw no movement and heard no sirens.
Scanning the route ahead, she thought she saw water about a hundred yards ahead. Lake water wasn’t generally drinkable, but it had to be safer than the stagnant muck she’d just trodden through. She wasn’t really thirsty yet, but everyone knew refilling your Stanley bottle throughout the day was the key to hydration. If she kept to the woods, she thought she could get there without being seen.
Cara pulled up her baggy pant legs and took off toward where the trees were thickest. As she did, songs from the 1970s rock anthems on Karl’s treadmill playlist streamed inside her head.
Free Bird.
Why couldn’t she live anonymously and free?
Dream On.
Universe willing, maybe she could figure out how to prove her innocence.
She was loping through the forest to the tune ofYou Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yetwhen she tripped over a rock.
The cell phone flew from her cleavage, hit a tree, and landed with an ominous crack.
She landed even harder.
FOUR
JORDAN
Innocent is as innocent does!
—@cutiepiefromcali
Jordan found the wreck just north of the small town of Coarsegold, where the highway climbed through the hills toward Oakhurst.
At first, all he could see was the overturned, jackknifed semi blocking both lanes of the highway. Driving past a line of stopped northbound cars, he eased onto the shoulder and went around the big rig. As he did, he looked into the sideways cab and saw the staring, vacant eyes below the driver’s bloodied forehead. An accident he would have likely survived in his mammoth vehicle if only he’d been wearing his seat belt.
Jordan’s breath caught in his throat when he reached the other side.
A silver Dodge Ram 1500 with an oversized grille guard had come to rest on the center stripe, its cab nearly crushed. Ahead of him, the back half of a white transit van rested on the shoulder, opened like a tin can. Its front half wasin the ditch on the opposite side of the road. The driver’s-side door had an eight-pointed star showing it was from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. His scalp prickled. There was no reason a prison van should have been traveling on this road—except for the detour on 99.
Dimly aware of an older couple standing beside a Toyota Avalon pulling a teardrop trailer—apparently unscathed—Jordan thumbed his transmitter as he rolled slowly through the wreckage.
“Gracia, I’m about three miles north of Coarsegold. We have a head-on collision involving at least three vehicles: a semi, a pickup, and a CDCR van. We’re going to need fire, ambulances, and wreckers. All hands on deck, including the coroner. Reroute traffic as quickly as you can. This road’s going to be closed for hours.”
“Understood, Sheriff,” Gracia answered.
Leaving his flashers on, he pulled his vehicle across both lanes to block the northern approach. In the old days, he would have tossed flares, but given the fire outside Fresno and the constant fire danger in general, he had instructed his department to make do with triangle reflectors. He’d have to drop a few after he checked for survivors.
Jordan took deep breaths as he stepped onto the asphalt. He had arrived at the scenes of hundreds of accidents, but this was the worst one he’d ever seen. He summoned the words of his dad, and his granddad before him, the mantra that had allowed three generations of Burkes to keep functioning enough to do their jobs in the aftermath of murder, rape, battery, child abuse, farm accidents, and countless overdoses.
When the shit goes down, you’re not a man. You’re the goddamn sheriff.
It was the kind of macho bullshit that usually made his skin crawl. But it worked.
“Sheriff?” called the elderly male onlooker in a quavering voice. “I looked, but I don’t think?—”
“Please remain by your vehicle,” Jordan instructed him.
He headed for the pickup, which was closest. His throat tickled as he realized he recognized it—that it had, in fact, been parked in his driveway as recently as last week.
