Page 75 of The Night Before (Savannah 1)

Wham!

The little car bucked.

Amanda flew forward, her head bouncing on the steering wheel.

Her seat belt snapped tight.

Glass shattered. Metal crunched.

Pain erupted behind Amanda’s eyes. She groaned, looking into the cracked rearview mirror, where she thought she saw a vision . . . one of another woman advancing upon her, a woman she should recognize.

Then there was nothing, no woman, no pain, nothing at all as her consciousness slid into darkness.

Eighteen

“It looks like someone tampered with her brakes,” Deputy Fletcher said from his end of the telephone connection. “I’ve had a mechanic take a cursory look at the undercarriage of Amanda Drummond’s sports car. We’ve impounded it, and it’s here at the police lot if you want to take a look.”

“Tampered with them?” Reed repeated, slipping into the sleeves of his jacket and juggling the phone. He was still in his office, working a few extra hours, when the call had come in. “So you’re saying the brake line was cut? That sounds like something straight out of an old movie. A bad old movie.”

“Come on over here and take a look for yourself.”

“I’ll be there in half an hour.”

He walked out of the station, climbed into his cruiser and rolled out of the city. He made it to the lot in twenty-five minutes, where Deputy Fletcher met him and walked him to the garage. Amanda Montgomery’s mangled Triumph was inside, elevated by a hoist. The front end was bashed in, the cherry-red hood crumpled, the wheels twisted on the axle. “It looks as if she’s lucky to be alive,” Reed observed, though most of the damage was sustained on the passenger side.

“Yeah. If she would have hit the tree dead-on, it would’ve been a whole lot worse.” As it was, the driver’s side looked relatively unscathed. “Now, take a look at this,” the deputy said, pointing to a long tube running from under the engine. The undercarriage was filthy with grease and dirt. “See right here, this is the brake line.” He pointed with the tip of a pen he pulled from his pocket. “It’s runnin’ right out of the reservoir and it’s been snipped.”

“Cut.”

“Yep.”

“Couldn’t it have happened in the accident?”

“Maybe, but we don’t think so. We figure someone cut the brake fluid line and when the fluid drained out, she lost her brakes. Cutting the line is relatively easy.” His expression was sober. “Someone wanted to mess up the car and whoever was driving it real bad. She’s damned lucky she wasn’t worse off.”

“Where is she?”

“Ambulanced to Our Lady of Hope Hospital. She’d passed out, had a few scratches and probably a bruise from her seat belt, but she woke up as the EMTs were putting her into the ambulance and had a fit. Said she was fine. I was at the scene, and we convinced her to go in and have herself checked out for a possible concussion.”

“Who called in the accident?”

“A witness. She was following Mrs. Drummond as she turned off the highway and saw her start to have trouble. When the Triumph tore off through the field, she called 911. She was waiting at the scene, and that’s when things got a little dicey. Mrs. Drummond woke up, took one look at the witness and started screaming at her.”

“Who was she?”

“A woman by the name of Christina Biscayne. Goes by Cricket.”

Reed’s radar went up. “She was following Amanda Drummond?”

“Yeah, on her way to a friend’s house when she saw the accident.” Reed made a mental note to speak with Cricket Biscayne, talked a few more minutes with Fletcher and didn’t learn anything new. From the police impoundment lot, he drove to Our Lady Of Hope, a small private hospital, but the closest one to the accident scene. As luck would have it, Amanda was about to be released. She was seated in a wheelchair, a few cuts on her face, her hair a little mussed as she waited near the door. “What’s the hangup?” she asked, glaring at the nurse.

“Just getting the doctor’s signature on the release,” the RN told her.

“I thought you had that all done.”

“So did I.”

“And what’s so hard about getting his signature? He said I could be released, didn’t he?” Amanda demanded, her fine features pulled into a don’t-give-me-any-crap expression.

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