House of Reckoning Read Free Page A

over the farm since she was ten, so she could certainly drive it the two miles home from the Fireside.
    She pulled on jeans and a sweater, and tried to imagine herself walking into that bar and trying to convince her father that he needed to give her the keys and get into the truck so she could bring him home.
    But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t picture it at all. But her mother had done it, so she would do it, too. And maybe someone there would help her if they weren’t all as drunk as her father.
    Sarah wrapped the wool scarf she’d worn to check the chicken coop and the barn a few hours earlier back around her neck, pulled a thick stocking cap down over her head and ears, put on a heavy jacket and a pair of fleece-lined gloves, and went out into the frosty night.
    She wheeled her bicycle out of the garage and climbed onto it, riding down the long driveway and out onto the quiet road with only the intermittent glow of the moon to light her way.
    She stood up on the pedals and pumped hard, the cold breeze making tears stream from the corners of her eyes, and hoped she’d make it to the Fireside before her face froze.
    As she came around a bend in the road, she saw headlights crest a hill in the distance, then disappear as she dropped into a dip and thenpedaled even harder up the small rise beyond. When the headlights appeared again, they were on the wrong side of the road.
    And far closer than they should be.
    Too late, she realized she had not worn the jacket with the reflective stripes that her mom bought for her when she went out at night.
    And the generator for the bike’s headlight had given up last year. She told herself that when she got to the top of the hill, where whoever was coming toward her could at least see her, she’d pull off to the side of the road and let them pass.
    But by the time she crested the hill, it was too late.
    The car was still on the wrong side of the road, and it was careening straight toward her.
    Blinded by the headlights, Sarah swerved her bicycle across the road to get out of the way, but the driver seemed to see her at the same moment and jerked the steering wheel, slewing straight at her.
    She didn’t want to dive into the ditch, but had to get out of the car’s way. She jumped from her bike and pushed it off the road, intending to follow it into the ditch.
    She was a split second too late.
    The driver saw her at the last instant and swerved too hard the other way, overcorrected, and slewed back to the left, tires screaming in protest.
    Sarah, terror freezing her in place, suddenly realized exactly who was hurtling toward her.
    “Daddy?” she whispered.
    The single word still hung in the night air when the truck’s enormous radiator grille slammed into her.

Chapter Two
    S arah shivered. She’d been caught outside without a coat, and now the cold seemed to have penetrated to her bones. Then came the sounds, strange beeping noises and something that sounded like squeaking shoes, but very faint, as if they were muffled by a thick fog.
    Yet there was no fog.
    Only the cold of the air and—
    Huge, blinding headlights racing straight toward her!
    She gasped, jerked awake, and a bolt of white-hot lightning struck her in the lower back, shot through her hip, and blazed down her right leg.
    “Sweet pea? You awake?”
    Sarah gasped for breath, searching for something—anything—to drive away the cold and the pain, but everything was wrong. She should be outside, but she wasn’t, and if she wasn’t outside, she should be warm. But she was still freezing. Panic rose up inside her, but just as she was about to scream she saw—and felt—something familiar: the silhouette of her father sitting at her bedside, and his hand holding hers.
    “Cold,” she whispered through chattering teeth.
    “Would you like a warm blanket?” a strange voice said. Sarah turned from her father as a pretty blond nurse checked a bag of something connected to a tube in her arm. She nodded, and