The idea made her cluck her tongue. Beth hated to be late for anything and was generally ridiculously early to avoid it. That wasn’t going to be the case today, she acknowledged unhappily, and then forced herself to take a couple of deep breaths to relax. There was nothing she could do about it. She should have had more than enough time to get there and back. But things simply had not gone to plan. Life could be like that sometimes.
Having encountered so much construction and so many detours using the back roads to the apartment, Beth chose a different route back to the house, one that put her on the highway for the better part of the drive. It was the route she should have taken on the way out, she supposed. But she liked to avoid the highway if possible. Mostly because she thought the drivers here were crazy. They drove too fast and then too slow and then too fast again, like they did not understand what cruise control was. And—Good Lord!—every time she turned around, someone was switching lanes without bothering to signal or see if anyone was already in that lane.
Beth noticed the semi pulling a flatbed of steel girders before it became a problem. It merged onto the highway from an on-ramp ahead of her, but she was in the middle lane so didn’t think anything of it until it suddenly swerved into the center lane just as her front end drew even with the back of it. Beth instinctively hit the brakes and started to turn the steering wheel left but, spotting the blue sedan in that lane, immediately jerked the steering wheel right instead and stood on the brakes, hoping for the best.
Seeing the steel girders coming straight at her head, Beth quickly threw herself to the side, intending to lie flat across the front seat. Unfortunately, she’d forgotten about her seatbelt. She was reminded of it when it snapped tight, holding her in place as the front windshield exploded.
Three
“Do you know where Beth lives?”
“Aye,” Scotty answered as he steered the SUV down the driveway. He’d got a lot of information and even maps before flying to Canada. And he’d insisted on driving again. It had seemed obvious from their first drive out to back up Beth that Donny was not comfortable with speed, and he had a bad feeling speed would be of the essence again here.
The young immortal accepted that news without comment, but did eye him curiously. After a moment, though, he said, “You probably want to take the highway. It’s summer and the road crews have everything all torn up. She would have taken the highway to avoid that.”
Scotty merely grunted. He’d planned to take the highway anyway. It was the only route that had been included with the info he’d been given, and had been listed as the fastest. Which was good, since he felt a certain urgency to get to her quickly.
Donny fell silent for a bit then, and Scotty was just turning onto the ramp leading to the highway when the lad suddenly asked, “What if she’s already on her way back and we missed her?”
That was a real possibility and something he hadn’t considered. Scotty frowned over it as he merged onto the highway. Once he was safely in traffic, however, he said, “We have trackers on our vehicles in the UK. Do you have anyth—”
“We do too!” Donny interrupted with excitement and pulled out his phone.
Scotty grimaced as the other man called Mortimer. If he’d thought of the trackers back at the house, he might have saved them this trip. At least he would have if all was well with Beth, he thought as he listened to Donny explain what they wanted to Mortimer.
“He’s opening the program,” Donny announced.
Scotty merely nodded, his concentration on the lanes ahead and the flow of traffic.
A good ten minutes passed before Donny said, “He has it up and sees both our vehicle and hers. He says she’s on the other side of the highway, coming our way—” Donny cut himself off abruptly and waited, and then asked with concern, “What?”
“What is it?” Scotty asked tersely.
“He says her vehicle appears to be stopped in the middle of the highway. We should pass her in a couple minutes.”
Scotty’s mouth tightened. It would be more than a couple of minutes if the slowdown in traffic was anything to go by. The people ahead in all three lanes on this side of the median were slowing to gawk at something, and he suspected it was whatever had stopped Beth’s vehicle. Even as he thought that, the traffic on the other side of the median dropped off abruptly, from a steady flow of vehicles to almost nothing. Which meant something had brought oncoming traffic almost to a standstill.
Probably an accident, Scotty thought and shifted into the outside left lane while he had the chance. He wanted to see Beth’s vehicle and be sure she was all right and hadn’t been involved in whatever was holding up traffic on the other side.
“Looks like an accident,” Donny said a moment later.
Scotty merely nodded, his narrowed eyes switching between the road and the accident ahead on their left. There were three lanes of traffic on the other side of the median too, but a flatbed trailer was presently across the two lanes farthest from them, leaving only the inside lane nearest them open. However, the cars weren’t whizzing out at one hundred ten or even the speed limit of one hundred kilometers an hour. They were crawling through the opening, the drivers rubbernecking it all the way.
“That explains why she’s stopped,” Donny murmured, eyeing the accident as they approached. “She must be in an inside lane. Look for a red Explorer. That’s what she drives.”
Scotty grunted. Their SUV was now crawling as slowly as the rubberneckers on the other side of the median, and he had a huge tight ball of “something’s fecking wrong” in the pit of his stomach.
“Can you see any of the other vehicles involved?” Scotty asked as they drew even with the end of the truck and got their first view of the vehicles behind it.
“Mortimer says we should be right beside her vehicle,” Donny murmured, the phone still pressed to his ear as he craned his neck to get a better look around Scotty. “But the only red vehicle I see is . . .”
“The one under the back of the flatbed,” Scotty finished grimly when the lad’s voice died. He didn’t wait for a response, but glanced around to assess the situation. Unfortunately, there was a concrete barrier on this side of the three lanes and no shoulder to pull off onto. He had to get to the outside lane to move the SUV out of traffic. Taking control of several drivers at once, he slowed them to create an opening, and then steered the SUV across the lanes and onto the right shoulder.
Leaving him to it, Donny unsnapped his seat belt and climbed out of his seat and then over the back seat to get to where the weapons locker and blood cooler were.
“Good lad,” Scotty muttered as he brought the vehicle to a halt, shifted it into Park and shut it off.
“How are we going to get across traffic?” Donny asked, hurrying to his side with the portable blood cooler in hand as Scotty got out of the vehicle.
“How do ye think?” Scotty asked, shifting his attention to the drivers of several passing cars.
“Mind control to make them stop?” Donny asked.