Six
Narelle glanced behind her but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. All she saw were every day workers heading toward the train station to go home. An afternoon ritual for many, and something she did every day, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching her.
Today wasn’t the first time she’d experienced that sensation. She’d felt it many times since she’d returned from Bali.
At first, she’d put it down to paranoia after the incident with the driver at the hotel. Now she was wondering if she was manifesting it. The likely story was she was imagining it, and she wasn’t being watched or followed at all.
She made it into the station and skipped down the stairs to the platform to wait for the train to take her home.
Her afternoon commute was the only time she allowed herself to think about Andy, to wonder where he was or what he was doing.
Did he think about her?
Miss her?
Wish he could see her again?
She doubted it.
From what little he’d said and her overactive imagination, she’d decided he was a spy and was off doing something glamorous and a little dangerous. Probably in an exotic location, with a beautiful woman ready and willing to do whatever he wanted her to do.
Narelle silently scoffed at her imagination taking her on a wild ride. A ride that didn’t exist.
Determined to put thoughts of Andy out of her mind, she pulled her e-reader out of her purse and started to read. It was the best way to pass the time on the train, and so what if she imagined every hero in her romance novels to look exactly like Andy? It didn’t matter how the author described them. She always pictured him now.
That’s how obsessed she was becoming. Itwasn’t healthy for her to think this way. She should accept one of the many invitations she received from some of her friends to catch up for dinner. Most of her friends were married, and after the third time of them inviting her to dinner and a single guy happened to be there, she stopped accepting them.
She’d been happy in her single existence until Bali.
Camille had come back to work and had almost seemed shocked to see her there. She hadn’t said anything to Narelle since, and she was fine with that. The other woman wasn’t more than a work acquaintance, and Camille would never be anything more.
The train arrived at her stop. Following the crowd of people off, she kept her head down and made her way toward her car, the back of her neck tingling again.
When would this feeling stop?
It was ridiculous to constantly believe she was being followed. She needed to shake it off and stop worrying about it. That was what was making it worse, always letting it be front and center in her mind.
Two minutes later, she was pulling out, following others who were eager to get home likeshe was. She was doing exactly what she’d been obsessing over someone else was doing to her.
Turning up the music, she pulled into traffic, mentally running through what she food she had, and what she could have for dinner. As a kid, she’d never considered the thought her mother put into making the evening meal. It was put on the table in front of her, and she ate it. Now that she had to be responsible for preparing it herself, she had a bigger appreciation of how her mother had done it night after night. At least she only had to cook for herself and not for a whole family—maybe one day, if she could find a guy she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.
Again, Andy’s name flashed across her mind, and she shook her head, as if she could dislodge it from her memory.
The sound of screeching brakes pulled her from her thoughts, and she checked her review mirror. A pickup truck was bearing down on her, a large bull bar covering the front of it.
“Shit.” She clenched her fingers around the steering wheel, knowing that was likely the wrong thing to do, but unable to get herself to relax her grip, and braced for impact. The jolt was like nothing she’d ever experienced. The sound ofcrumpling metal loud. Her head whipped forward into the airbag, grazing the steering wheel, before her head connected with the driver’s side window. The force of the hit propelled her into the middle of the intersection where another car hit her side on, causing her to spin across the intersection right into a light pole. Glass shattered around her. The interior of the car filled with dust and smoke from all the airbags deploying.
This is it. I’m going to diewas her last thought before blackness engulfed her and everything went quiet.
Chapter
Seven
“What the fuck?” Andy slammed on his breaks as a car came careening into the intersection. The car beside him wasn’t so quick and slammed into the small SUV, sending it across the road and into a light pole.
It happened so fast and also so slow. He clocked the large pickup doing a U-turn before speeding off. Something about that seemed off, and he noted it away in the back of his mind to work out later. His focus was on the inhabitants of the car and if they were okay.
He pulled up on the curb, his phone to his ear as he called emergency services, only to find out that someone else had already called the accident in and help was on the way. Making sure it was safe to getout, he raced over to the silver SUV. There was a woman standing nearby, looking pale, as she clutched her hands together.
