Bram was a lot less patient, asking me about that day over and over, walking me through every move I’d made getting ready to go to Daisy’s house, getting in my car, driving toward Daisy’s house.
Right up until my memory stopped cold at the turn on Old Mountain Road.
I’d finally yelled at him to stop, to leave me alone, and he’d left dejected and angry, nowhere to put his rage over what had happened to me.
Which was why I was telling the Hawks first.
“I remember someone following me up the mountain,” I said. “Someone in a black SUV.”
“Did you get a look at who was in the car?” Jagger asked.
I shook my head. “The windows were tinted really dark.”
“Tell us everything you remember,” Hawk said. “And don’t leave anything out.”
“Chill,” Jagger said.
I could practically see the frown on his face as he looked at Hawk.
I took a bite of my sandwich — chicken salad, my favorite — and thought back to that day. It had been sunny out, I remembered that, one of those days after the cold of winter and the dampness of spring when you knew summer was really here to stay, when you knew you had months ahead of you with sunshine and warm breezes and green as far as you could see, the trees in the Blackwell Preserve in full leaf.
“I left for Daisy’s about eleven,” I said.
“Stop anywhere along the way?” Hawk asked.
I could hear the FBI training in his voice, knew he was cataloging everything I said.
“No, I went straight to Old Mountain Road, but instead of making the turn to Daisy’s, I went up the mountain.”
“Why’d you go up the mountain?” Vigo asked.
There was nothing accusatory about the question. He was just putting himself in my head.
“I don’t know. I was… I was thinking about my parents.” I left the other part unsaid: that I was thinking abut what my parents would think about the Hawks, about my relationship with them. “I think I just wanted to be close to them.”
“So you went to the mountain?” I heard the confusion in Hawk’s voice.
The mountain was where my parents had died, where Bram had almost died.
“I don’t have anyplace else. Bram had to sell the house to take care of me when I was a kid, and the cemetery…” How could I tell them that I’d never felt my parents’ presence in the cemetery where they’d been buried? That it felt as cold and antiseptic to me as a hospital? “They’re not there.”
I’d always felt my parents on the mountain, like they’d lingered there after their deaths.
“So you made the turn,” Jagger said. “When did you first notice the SUV?”
“Maybe… halfway up the mountain?” I remembered the way it had looked, large and hulking, in my rearview mirror. “I didn’t think anything of it at first, but then it started riding my bumper, even when I sped up.”
My heart rate had ticked up a notch and sweat slicked my forehead.
“Then what?” Hawk asked.
“Then I knew something was wrong.” The dread I’d felt on the mountain returned, a clenching pressure in my chest that made it hard to breathe even though it had been getting easier as my broken ribs healed. “The SUV crossed the double yellow and pulled up alongside me, and then it…”
Jagger reached for my hand. “It’s okay. Take your time.”
I drew in a breath and forced myself to exhale slowly, the way my new therapist had taught me. “It swerved into me. But I held the steering wheel and even though the car kind of… jumped, it stayed on the road.”
Hawk cursed under his breath.
