Blown Away Read Free Page A

heart to weep and with shock pulling at her sanity, she sat for a moment beside the body,just holding her mother’s hand, as if it might change the outcome of the storm. Finally she thought of Susan again and pushed herself upright. She had to keep searching. Susan had to be somewhere. Surely God wouldn’t take them all. He wouldn’t let them all be dead.
    When she finally found her cousin, lying flat on her back behind what had once been the smokehouse, she knew she’d been wrong. Susan’s face had been crushed beyond recognition.
    Too numb to cry, too sick to think, she stood without moving, trying to wrap her mind around everything that had happened and what to do next.
    At the same moment it hit her that she was the last living member of her family, she remembered Lance Morgan and why she’d been running for home.
    She pivoted quickly as she flashed a swift look toward the road, then felt in her pocket and realized she didn’t have a phone. She couldn’t call for help. Lance could come driving up at any minute and do to her what he’d done to that man. No one would know the difference. They would just think she’d died in the storm.
    Panic hit.
    She had to get away.
    She needed to get some medical help and figure out what to do next. But she knew Lance well enough to know that he would be behind her at every move.She could take Susan’s car and drive into Bordelaise. Someone there would help her. She could—
    She stopped and moaned, blinded by a sudden pain from the deep wound in her head. She needed to regroup first. No need making accusations against Lance that she would never be able to back up. Lance might be a lot of things, but he wasn’t stupid. Whatever she said, he would just chalk it up to her head wound. And now that he knew she’d seen him, there was no way he would bury that body where he’d been digging. He would move it, of that she was certain. And until she could figure out where, she needed to keep herself and her accusations under wraps.
    She started toward the car when her legs suddenly went out from under her. She fell only a few feet away from Susan’s body. It took every ounce of strength she had left to get back on her feet, and as she did, found herself looking down at Susan again.
    They’d been born to twin sisters and within a month of each other. They had grown up like sisters, their features so similar that people had often mistaken them for twins, as well. They even wore their thick dark hair in the same casual style. At that moment, a thought occurred. It was daring, if not crazy, but it might give her the space and time she needed.
    Susan’s facial features were forever altered by whatever had killed her. But she was wearing jeans and black shoes like Cari’s, as well as a white T-shirt.The only difference was Cari’s dark green, three-quarter-length all-weather coat. If she put the coat on Susan’s body and got away before anyone saw her, whoever eventually found the bodies out here would quite naturally assume Susan was Cari. Especially Lance, who’d been the last person to see her alive.
    And better yet, even though Susan was known in Bordelaise, no one knew she’d driven over from Baton Rouge to spend the night, so no one would suspect anything. Convinced this was the answer she needed, Cari took off her coat and, without looking at the wreck of Susan’s face, knelt down and managed to put it on her by rolling her first one way, then the other.
    Shaken and sick at heart, she finally crawled to her feet, then stopped and looked down. As she did, she shuddered. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought she was looking at her own dead body.
    Suddenly afraid she would be caught before she could get away, she headed for Susan’s car as fast as she could go, stumbling once and falling yet again before she managed to get behind the wheel.
    Her hands were sore from the splinters, and sticky with the same blood that was all over her clothes, but she couldn’t