Shadowfires Read Free Page A

screech and a hard flat wail of its horn, halting only two feet from him. A Chevy, following too close, rammed into the back of the Subaru and pushed it within a few inches of the body.
    Rachael was the first to reach Eric. Heart hammering, shouting his name, she dropped to her knees and, by instinct, put one hand to his neck to feel for a pulse. His skin was wet with blood, and her fingers slipped on the slick flesh as she searched desperately for the throbbing artery.
    Then she saw the hideous depression that had reshaped his skull. His head had been staved in along the right side, above the torn ear, and all the way forward past the temple to the edge of his pale brow. His head was turned so she could see one eye, which was open wide, staring in shock, though sightless now. Many wickedly sharp fragments of bone must have been driven deep into his brain. Death had been instantaneous.
    She stood up abruptly, tottering, nauseated. Dizzy, she might have fallen if the driver of the garbage truck had not grabbed hold of her, provided support, and escorted her around the side of the Subaru, where she could lean against the car.
    “There was nothin’ I could do,” he said miserably.
    “I know,” she said.
    “Nothin’ at all. He run in front of me. Didn’t look. Nothin’ I could do.”
    At first Rachael had difficulty breathing. Then she realized she was absentmindedly scrubbing her blood-covered hand on her sundress, and the sight of those damp rusty-scarlet stains on the pastel-blue cotton made her breath come quicker, too quick. Hyperventilating, she slumped against the Subaru, closed her eyes, hugged herself, and clenched her teeth. She was determined not to faint. She strove to hold in each shallow breath as long as possible, and the very process of changing the rhythm of her breathing was a calming influence.
    Around her she heard the voices of motorists who had left their cars in the snarl of stalled traffic. Some of them asked her if she was all right, and she nodded; others asked if she needed medical attention, and she shook her head—no.
    If she had ever loved Eric, that love had been ground to dust beneath his heel. It had been a long time since she’d even liked him. Moments before the accident, he’d revealed a pure and terrifying hatred of her, so she supposed she should have been utterly unmoved by his death. Yet she was badly shaken. As she hugged herself and shivered, she was aware of a cold emptiness within, a hollow sense of loss that she could not quite understand. Not grief. Just . . . loss.
    She heard sirens in the distance.
    Gradually she regained control of her breathing.
    Her shivering grew less violent, though it did not stop entirely.
    The sirens grew nearer, louder.
    She opened her eyes. The bright June sunshine no longer seemed clean and fresh. The darkness of death had passed through the day, and in its wake, the morning light had acquired a sour yellow cast that reminded her more of sulfur than of honey.
    Red lights flashing, sirens dying, a paramedic van and a police sedan approached along the northbound lanes.
    “Rachael?”
    She turned and saw Herbert Tuleman, Eric’s personal attorney, with whom she had met only minutes ago. She had always liked Herb, and he had liked her as well. He was a grandfatherly man with bushy gray eyebrows that were now drawn together in a single bar.
    “One of my associates . . . returning to the office . . . saw it happen,” Herbert said, “hurried up to tell me. My God.”
    “Yes,” she said numbly.
    “My God, Rachael.”
    “Yes.”
    “It’s too . . . crazy.”
    “Yes.”
    “But . . .”
    “Yes,” she said.
    And she knew what Herbert was thinking. Within the past hour, she had told them she would not fight for a large share of Eric’s fortune but would settle for, proportionately, a pittance. Now, by virtue of the fact that Eric had no family and no children from his first marriage, the entire thirty million plus his currently unvalued stock