Blindsighted Read Free

turned Sibyl over, cradling her head, trying to help her through the convulsions. Suddenly, the jerking stopped. Sara put her ear to Sibyl's mouth, trying to make out breathing sounds. There were none.
    Sitting up on her knees, Sara started compressions, trying to push life back into Sibyl's heart. Sara pinched the younger woman's nose, breathing air into her mouth. Sibyl's chest rose briefly, but nothing more. Sara tried again, gagging as blood coughed up into her mouth. She spit several times to clear her mouth, prepared to continue, but she could tell it was too late. Sibyl's eyes rolled back into her head and her breath hissed out with a low shudder. A trickle of urine came from between her legs.
    She was dead.

Chapter Two
    GRANT County was named for the good Grant, not Ulysses, but Lemuel Pratt Grant, a railroad builder who in the mid-1800s extended the Atlanta line deep into South Georgia and to the sea. It was on Grant's rails that trains carted cotton and other commodities all across Georgia. This rail line had put cities like Heartsdale, Madison, and Avondale on the map, and there were more than a few Georgia towns named after the man. At the start of the Civil War, Colonel Grant also developed a defense plan should Atlanta ever come under siege; unfortunately, he was better with railroad lines than front lines.
    During the Depression, the citizens of Avondale, Heartsdale, and Madison decided to combine their police and fire departments as well as their schools. This helped economize on much needed services and helped persuade the railroads to keep the Grant line open; the county was much larger as a whole than as individual cities. In 1928, an army base was built in Madison, bringing families from all over the nation to tiny Grant County. A few years later, Avondale became a stopping point for railroad maintenance on the Atlanta-Savannah line. A few more years passed, and Grant College sprang up in Heartsdale. For nearly sixty years, the county prospered, until base closings, consolidations, and Reaganomics trickled down, crushing the economies of Madison and Avondale within three years of each other. But for the college, which in 1946 became a technological university specializing in agri-business, Heartsdale would have followed the same downward trend as its sister cities.
    As it was, the college was the lifeblood of the city, and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver's first directive from Heartsdale's mayor was to keep the college happy if he wanted to keep his job. Jeffrey was doing just that, meeting with the campus police, discussing a plan of action for a recent outbreak of bicycle thefts, when his cell phone rang. At first, he did not recognize Sara's voice and thought the call was some land of prank. In the eight years he had known her, Sara had never sounded so desperate. Her voice trembled as she said three words he had never expected to come from her mouth: I need you.
    Jeffrey took a left outside the college gates and drove his Lincoln Town Car up Main Street toward the diner. Spring was very early this year, and already the dogwood trees lining the street were blooming, weaving a white curtain over the road. The women from the garden club had planted tulips in little planters lining the sidewalks, and a couple of kids from the high school were out sweeping the street instead of spending a week in afterschool detention. The owner of the dress shop had put a rack of clothes on the sidewalk, and the hardware store had set up an outdoor gazebo display complete with porch swing. Jeffrey knew the scene would be a sharp contrast to the one waiting for him at the diner.
    He rolled down the window, letting fresh air into the stuffy car. His tie felt tight against his throat, and he found himself taking it off without thinking. In his mind, he kept playing Sara's phone call over and over in his head, trying to get more from it than the obvious facts. Sibyl Adams had been stabbed and killed at the diner.
    Twenty years