Envy the Night Read Free Page A

that he saw too late because he was too close, and then he hammered the brake pedal and slammed the wheel left and hit the back corner of the Lexus at fifty miles an hour.
    “
Shit!
”
    The back of the Jeep swung right with the impact, then came back to the left and sent the front end sliding, a fishtail that was threatening to turn into a full three-sixty. Even as the skid started Frank could hear his father’s voice—
turn into it, turn into it, your instinct will tell you to turn away, but you’ve got to turn into it
. He heard it, recalled those old lessons in the half second that it took him to lose control of the car, and still he turned away from it. It had happened too fast and the instinct was too strong. He turned away from the skid, the tires shrieked on the pavement, and then any hope of getting the car back was gone.
    Frank was saved by bald tires. He’d lectured himself on the tires a dozen times, thinking they’d kill him someday if he didn’t get them replaced, but instead they saved him. The pavement was dry, the Jeep was a top-heavy vehicle, and if the tires had been able to grab the road well he probably would have rolled. Instead, because there was hardly a trace of traction left on the worn rubber, he slid. He saw whirling trees and sky and then the Jeep spun off the shoulder and into the pines. He heard a crunch and shatter just as the airbags blew out and obscured his vision, and then he came to a stop.
    The airbag deflated and fell away, leaving his face tingling, and for a few seconds he sat where he was, hands still locked on the steering wheel, foot still pressed hard against the brake, blood hammering through his veins. It was amazing how fast the body could respond—you’d spend an hour just trying to wake up on a normal morning, but throw a crisis out there and the body was ready for a marathon in a split second. He reached over and beat the airbags aside with his hands and saw spiderwebbed glass on the passenger window, the door panel bent in against the seat. Bad, but nothing terrible. He could probably drive away.
    What about the Lexus? Devin Matteson’s Lexus. He was sure of it again, absolutely certain, and without any pause for thought he turned and reached behind his seat, found the metal case, flicked the latch and opened it and then he was sitting behind the wheel with a gun in his hand.
    Reality caught up to him then.
Sanity
caught up to him.
    “What are you doing?” he said, staring at the gun. “What the hell are you doing?”
    He slid the gun back into the case and closed it and opened the door—after a glance in the sideview mirror to make sure he wasn’t going to step out in front of a truck, survive the accident only to get squashed when he was on foot—and then got out of the car. He walked around to the front and saw that he wouldn’t be driving anywhere. The right front tire was blown out and the wheel bent inward, crunched down beneath the mangled front quarter panel. If he’d handled it right, turned into the skid instead of away, he might’ve been able to keep the Jeep straight enough to avoid the trees. Then he’d be left with a dent and a drivable car, instead of this mess.
    He’d lost track of the Lexus at the moment of impact, and now he was surprised to see how far behind him the car was, a good hundred feet at least. The driver had made the shoulder as well, but the car was facing the wrong direction and angled against the trees that lined the road.
    Looking up at the car made his previous suspicion come on again, and again he thought of the gun, had to shake his head and move away from the Jeep before the urge to go for it got any stronger.
    “It’s not him,” he said. “It’s not him.”
    At that moment the driver’s door on the Lexus opened and Frank’s breath caught and held for a second until the driver stepped out onto the road.
    It was not Devin Matteson. Not by a long shot. Even from this far away he could tell exactly how ludicrous