Just then he saw what Rose’s speed had won her.
Halfway across the lot, she was already getting inside the truck. James didn’t bother calling for her again. Whatever was happening, she didn’t want him to be a part of it.
But that didn’t stop him from trying.
James pushed his big muscles as far as they would go at the truck with all he had.
Wildcard Rose?
Not even a man like him could catch her if she didn’t want him to.
She slammed on the gas as soon as the truck started.
James missed her by mere seconds.
Rose not once looked his way.
Wherever she was going, she was going to face it alone.
* * *
ROSE WASN’T USEDto the truck. She didn’t know how much speed it could handle and how much grace she needed to give it without letting her foot off the gas pedal. Instead of playing it completely safe, but also notputting her entire life on the line by slinging it around at ninety miles an hour, she split the difference.
When she came to the metal gate that separated the Reynolds Farm and the Seven Roads Cemetery right off County Road 72’s start, she hit it at a cool forty miles an hour.
The truck whined at the hit, bumped her around a little, metal twisted a little more, but it took out the gate without taking her out. And it didn’t pop a tire as far as she could tell.
Small blessings, she thought, as she started to haul tail again.
The Seven Roads Cemetery had changed names three times in its one-hundred-year existence. No one really got buried there anymore and not many people in town had people already there, so the through traffic had become less and less over the last few years. Five months ago, the entire place had been shut down after the storm dislodged some graves and nearly destroyed the main office.
Damage or not, though, Rose knew her way around.
Knuckles white against the steering wheel, she bypassed the decapitated office and took the main road that ran around the entire two-acre plot of land. Gravestones, old and weathered, dotted the land to her right. Big oaks, some damaged from the same storm, were lined up at her left. Her target, though, would be right up ahead in a few seconds.
Rose’s stomach tightened as the phone in her pocket vibrated.
She knew who it would be.
She knew what he would say if she answered.
She knew what he would say when she told him why she was out here.
James would tell her to turn around. To stop. To wait.
To not listen to Lloyd’s warning.
To not willingly go into danger.
To not make it easier for Damon…
But what James didn’t realize was that she was doing this for him.
“While you’ve been dodging his attacks, I’ve been playing his games,” Lloyd had said, exhaustion in his every word.
“Damon’s?” she had parroted.
Lloyd had sighed.
