“She’s looking forward to it, then?”
“She can’t wait.”
Tony nodded. “Tell you what, then. Let’s you and I talk.You need to know some things.”
She couldn’t wait. She kept telling herself that. Then shedouble-clutched her way down into second and skiddedaround the curve in the mountain road.
Mountains. Baloney. These weren’t mountains. Theyweren’t even as big as the Ozarks back home in Missouri.Now, those were mountains you could really crank a car upon, the roads narrow and winding so they swooped over thetight hills like a roller coaster to send your stomach lurching into the air.
Claire needed more speed. She needed to take her little carto the very edge and expend all her concentration controlling it. She needed to scare herself more than Tony hadscared her.
The car had always worked. At least for a while. Whenever she was feeling desperate or unbearably sad or frightened, speed and challenge at least dulled the edges a little.It kept her from seeing Jimmy.
Kind of like the wine she drank to get to sleep.
Like working in a critical-care area, where you had toimprovise at the speed of light sometimes to pull a patientthrough a crisis.
Picnics didn’t help. Challenge helped, work, distraction.Sometimes a lonely beach where the only sounds were birdsand wind, where nobody could find you. Not a beautifulday with her children and a man more dangerous than sin.
Not the first taste of anticipation to touch her in years.
God, she wanted to go. She wanted to salve herself on theendless water and watch exotic birds in flight and hold aman’s hand. She wanted to have nothing more on her mindthan laughter and somnolence.
She knew better.
She drove faster.
She couldn’t drive fast enough to outdistance Tony Riordan, and that terrified her most of all.
