Eileen Wilks is a fifth-generation Texan. Her great-great-grandmother came to Texas in a covered wagon shortly after the end of the Civil War—excuse us, the War Between the States. But she’s not a full-blooded Texan. Right after another war, her Texan father fell for a Yankee woman. This obviously mismatched pair proceeded to travel to nine cities in three countries in the first twenty years of their marriage, raising two kids and innumerable dogs and cats along the way. For the next twenty years they stayed put, back home in Texas again—and still together.
Eileen figures her professional career matches her nomadic upbringing, since she’s tried everything from draughting to a brief stint as a ranch hand. Not until she started writing did she “stay put,” because that’s when she knew she’d come home. Readers can write to her at PO Box 4612, Midland, TX 79704-4612, USA.
This book is dedicated to my editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey, who is as extraordinary in her own way as the story’s heroine. At its best, the writer-editor relationship is a partnership that deepens over time, resulting in stronger, richer stories. I’ve been lucky. I’ve worked with the best.
One
I wasn’t thinking about dying. I wasn’t thinking much at all, this being one of those nights when a man didn’t want to listen to the noise in his head. I’d turned the radio up loud in an effort to drown out any stray thoughts, but that may have been a mistake.
Damned country music. Every other song was about loving and losing. So why did I keep listening to it?
I grimaced and drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. The wipers were slapping sleet along with rain from the wind-shield, and the wind was blowing hard. But I knew this road almost as well as I knew my own street. And I’d lived there all my life.
All my life…forty years now. Most of those years I hadn’t lived in the big old house alone, but I was alone there now. Forty years old and alone.
And getting dumber instead of smarter, apparently. I scowled at the strip of highway pinned by my truck’s headlights. Why had I let Sorenson talk me into hanging around for a drink after we shook on the deal? I wasn’t a complete idiot, though. Despite Sorenson’s good-ol’-boy bonhomie, I’d limited myself to a single drink.
“Come on, have another one,” the resort owner had urged. “On the house.” He’d tried to make out that the weather wasn’t a problem. We hadn’t even had a freeze yet.
Yet being the operative word. I’d held on to tact by the skin of my teeth—the man was a jerk, but he was the jerk who’d just agreed to use my company for a major renovation job.
“Hey, a man your size ought to be able to handle his liquor. You don’t want me to think you’re a wimp, right? Might start wondering if you’re man enough for the job.”
I’d just looked at him, bored beyond courtesy. “Anyone who has to drink to prove he’s a man isn’t one.”
I snorted, remembering that conversation. Yeah, I was some kind of man, all right. The stupid kind. The temperature was hovering just above freezing, visibility sucked, I had to be at a site at seven-thirty tomorrow morning and here I was, winding my way down a mountain road at ten minutes before midnight.
A sharp turn loomed. No shoulder along here. I took my foot off the accelerator and tapped the brakes. I intended to creep around that turn like an old man with palsy—an attitude reinforced when I saw the sign about guard-rail damage.
I hit ice halfway through.
My wheels were cut to the left, but me and half a ton of pickup kept sliding forward. The tops of a couple of pines whipped around in the wind behind the guard rails. Their roots would be thirty or forty feet below the parts I could see and beyond their roots would be a whole lot more down. I turned into the skid, then almost immediately straightened the wheel.
It worked. The rear end skated around a bit, but I’d reclaimed control. I rounded the treacherous curve, safe and sound. And through the murk of rain and sleet saw a long black whip snapping through the air. Straight at me.
A power cable. Live.
If I’d had time to think, I might have risked it. Or maybe not. The truck was grounded, but the cable might have busted my windshield and smacked me in the face with 13,600 volts. But there wasn’t time then for thought, or even fear. Just action. I jerked the wheel left and hit the brakes.
Big mistake.
The truck began to spin, slick as greased Teflon. I yanked my foot off the brakes. The power cable reached the end of its arc a foot short of my bumper. I steered into the spin, more than willing to turn all the way around and head back the way I’d come.
The damned truck just kept sliding sideways.
The guard rails. I hadn’t seen any damage. Maybe—
The rear of the truck thudded up against them. And stopped. The front slewed around. Jolted. And kept on going.
Even then I didn’t think about dying. Didn’t think at all, just flung the door open, responding to the screaming need to get out of there. But it was too late, too late to do anything but topple with the truck as it went over the edge and flipped.
Metal screeched. I turned into an object trying to bounce off the crumpling trap of the truck’s cab. It was as if the darkness itself pummeled me with a giant’s fist, and then a hard blow on my head—then silence. Stillness. I lay beneath a whole mountain of hurt listening to someone moan.
That irritated me. What business did this bozo have moaning when I was the one with the mountain on me? I opened my mouth to tell him to shut up. The moaning stopped.
Something in that cause-and-effect sequence woke a few brain cells. That had been me moaning, and I was…I was…in my truck. Only I was hanging at a funny angle.
I blinked. My right eyelid felt gummy. Slowly I put together the pressure across my pelvis and chest, the glow of the dash lights and the stillness. The nose of the truck was pointed down, but the pitch wasn’t too steep.
I was alive. And I was hurt.
How bad? I couldn’t tell. The pain itself addled me, made it hard to think. But my head…yeah, I remembered getting hit there. Instinctively I lifted my hand to see what touch could tell me. My shoulder exploded. Pain nearly sucked me down. I lay draped over my seat belt and shoulder harness and panted.
Okay, obviously my shoulder was hurt, too. Pretty bad.
Over the soft sound of rain I heard a creaking sound. A prickle of alarm made me lift my head. And rap it against something.
It didn’t take long for me to run out of breath for cursing. Or to figure out the problem: the roof of the truck was caved in. I couldn’t straighten my head.
My breath came faster. Slowly I turned my head to the right. Shards of glass glittered on the seat beside me. I couldn’t see outside because light turned the starred surface of the glass opaque.
How about that. The headlights were still on. I looked to the left.
The door was bashed in.
Deep breaths, I told myself. Panic won’t help. I wiggled the fingers on my left hand, then cautiously moved that arm. All right so far.