“Don’t tell...”
“He’s not who you think he is...”
“It’s killing me to watch you leave...”
“Come back to me, babe...”
Darkness started to engulf her. Her body was chilled, her limbs heavy, sluggish. A sixth sense told her to run, but she couldn’t move. Icy fear clutched around her heart as her senses started to disappear and her eyes fluttered closed...
Day 13
2:00am
* * *
“Saige, what’s going on?” her father asked, coming into the living room with a very rumpled looking Detective Robinson on his heels.
When she’d woken up screaming, Alex had been the one to come barging into her room, and he ended up calling Coulter to come to the house.
As she watched Coulter pour coffee into a mug from the sideboard, she answered her father, “I got my memory back.”
Coulter burnt himself with coffee and cursed. Saige turned toward her father and watched him drop into a chair beside Christina, who sat huddled into a thick bathrobe on the sofa. Alex sat at the opposite end and Saige caught his quick glance at her stepmother, which confused her all the more. She thought they were at war with each other.
“Alex hinted at something when he called me. Do you mind if I record what’s said?”
Saige bit her lip and nodded. “It’s okay.”
Coulter moved forward and after they tested that his cell picked up her voice clearly, he then placed it on the arm of the chair Saige sat in.
“Go ahead, Saige,” Coulter encouraged.
Saige closed her eyes to settle herself and then started her story from that night.
It had been a warm day, but from the minute she’d started out to Port Jude, the heavens had opened and bombarded her car with rain, which made visibility bad. Night had started to fall halfway into her journey because she’d been late leaving after talking to Quinten. At first, she hadn’t wanted him to know that she was on her way to him for the weekend, but she’d ended up giving it away. Just the sound of his excitement told her how right her decision had been.
Although it was only a two hour drive between Tampa and Port Jude, a four hour round trip wasn’t feasible all the time. They would have to work it out though because she realized earlier in the day that she couldn’t go weeks without seeing him. Quinten had been just as miserable without her.
Leaving the main route, Saige started to wonder about the wisdom of th
e trip. She should have waited until early morning and set out at first light instead of driving in the pounding rain.
Her fists gripped the steering wheel and her stomach clenched with nerves as she peered out of the windshield. Driving past the sign welcoming tourists to Port Jude, Saige sighed in relief. She only had another twenty minutes or so before she hit the turn to her father’s house, and the boathouse where she knew Quinten was waiting for her.
A pop, and another pop, startled her. Her car started to slip across the slick cement, followed by more popping noises.
Saige shrieked as she wrestled with the steering wheel. She managed to bring the car to a stop along the side of the road without any damage to it or herself.
Her hands shook and blood rushed through her head and ears. She rested her forehead against the steering wheel and concentrated on breathing in and out to steady herself.
“Oh boy,” she moaned, realizing the predicament she was in, and it wasn’t good.
She couldn’t see anything through the lashing rain and the darkness that surrounded the car.
Turning, Saige tipped her purse onto the passenger seat and grabbed her cell to call Quinten. But as she swiped her finger across the screen, she stared at it in shock and panic.
She shook it and kept trying, but nothing. The battery was dead. Even as that realization sank in, she kept trying in hope that it would come to life.
Nothing.