Behind her the truck barreled down the incline, gaining speed now, closing all the distance she’d gained. Angie’s stomach turned to water. She hit the curve, slamming on brakes. Skidding sideways, she smacked the right-hand side of the Subaru against a massive tree trunk. The impact jolted her bones, reverberating through her clenched jaw and slamming into her brain. She hit the gas again, fishtailing as she scraped the right side of her car against rocks along the upper bank.
Please, dear God, please let them just be spooking me ... I’m not ready to die yet. Got a wedding ... need Maddocks to see my dress ... I’m going to be a stepmother, can’t let Ginny down.
Angie pulled through the bend and rammed the accelerator down again. Behind her the truck slid through the corner, almost smashing against the same tree. It came fast now, looming in her rearview mirror. The grille of the truck blocked light. She couldn’t get to her phone. Also knew from her last trip to the lodge with Maddocks that it would be no use. There was no cell reception along this strip, not until the lodge, where a signal could be received from a tower on the other side of the peak.
The logging road dipped sharply again. Angie’s limbs shook with adrenaline as she once more gathered speed down the incline. She didn’t know how many of these she could pull through alive, how much longer she could stomach the adrenaline, keep up the intense focus.Fuck!How could they be so brazen.Fuckfuckfuck.
As she closed in on the tight bend at the bottom with a steep drop to the left, Angie was suddenly convinced Jaz had been killed. Someone—or a group of someones—who lived out here in this desolate hillbilly redneck Canadian wilderness wanted to ensure the truth stayed buried. To do that they were prepared to kill her, too.
Who’d known she was heading to Predator Lodge this morning?
An image slammed through her mind. Constable Darnell Jacobi talking on his phone as he watched Angie drive out of the police station lot in her rental. Another image crashed into her brain. A black truck pulling off the verge and into the road behind her as she’d turned north onto the highway earlier.
Had Jacobi called someone and described her car? Given them her rental registration? Was Jacobi in this with Wallace and the gang? Or was it someone else in that truck?
Her car skidded. Jesus. She swerved, almost going over the edge of the bank on the left side. She swung her wheel sharply around another bend to her right. Her heart stopped dead. Oncoming lights in the fog. Fast. Not enough room to pass without one of them pulling over to give way. Or hitting head-on.
The Dodge came up behind her at double speed. It slammed her rear. She screamed as her car veered sideways, sliding across the narrow track, the oncoming lights looming closer. Desperately Angie struggled to spin the wheel the other way.
She went off the road on the uphill side. Through the fog the oncoming lights took shape. A red pickup. With an oval Ford logo on the front. The horn blared as it scraped past her Subaru and rounded the corner, heading straight into the path of the Dodge. Angie heard a bang.
She struggled with her gears and hit the gas again. Spinning her Subaru tires, she skidded back onto the road. She kept her foot on the gas, kept going. No way in hell was she going to stop and go toe-to-toe with whoever was driving the Dodge. They wanted to kill her. She’d call for help for the driver of the red Ford when she reached the lodge.
For the next several kilometers, Angie kept flicking her gaze up to the rearview mirror, fully expecting to see lights reappearing in the fog.
No one came.
Her muscles eased slightly, and that’s when the shakes began—big palsied shudders that seized hold of her body and rattled her like a rag doll and chattered her teeth. Fisting her wheel, she swore over and over, yelling every foul word she could think of in an effort to seize back power, to control her mind, to beat down the overwhelming fear that had exploded through her body, to stop the shaking of her limbs.
Teeth still chattering with the effect of adrenal overload, Angie finally saw the dark shape of the big log lodge looming in the cloud ahead. Sleet became fat wet snowflakes as she turned off the logging track and bumped down the rutted driveway into a wide gravel-covered parking area.
In the low cloud and swirling snowflakes, the lodge was huge and gothic-looking. She drew up her hood, opened her door. Her intent was to get inside and call the police to report the truck and crash. But she stilled as it struck her that 9-1-1 would dispatch Port Ferris police. Jacobi. There was no other detachment for hundreds of miles.
Angie exited her vehicle, slammed the door shut, and tried to walk on wobbly legs toward the lodge entrance under a portico. She passed the garage area and froze.
Coming at her through the snow globe of whirling snowflakes and mist was a hooded figure with an axe.
CHAPTER 31
Angie drew her knife, flicked it open, dropped into a defensive stance. Heart thumping in her chest, she blinked into the cold snowflakes. The apparition shifted closer. Fog swirled. The person materialized.
“Angie?” said a female voice. “Angie Pallorino? Is that you?”
“Jeezus,” she said, lowering her blade, a whoosh of air escaping her chest. “Claire, God, I ... I’m so sorry.”
She quickly folded and sheathed her knife, secreting it into her pocket. “You spooked the hell out of me. On top of what happened on my way over here.” She took a breath and joined Claire under cover of the portico. “Someone in a black Dodge RAM tried to run me into the lake, and then I saw you with the axe. I thought ... I don’t know what I thought.”
“I was splitting logs for the fire.” Claire propped the axe against a woodpile near the door. “What do you mean, a truck tried to run you off the road?” She looked concerned.
Angie wiped water from her face. “I didn’t see the plate. Who around here has a black Dodge diesel engine with extended passenger cab—hunting spots across the top?”
“Just about a quarter of the guys in town.” Claire frowned. “Are you okay? You’re shaking like a leaf.”
“I’m fine. I need to make a call. I need to report the incident. Did someone just leave here or come by in a red Ford pickup?”
“Yeah, my dad just left. He’s got a red Ford. He’s heading into Port Ferris. He—”
“I think he might have collided with the truck. He almost hit me and then rounded the bend. I—”
