Sleep No More by Susan Crandall Read Free Book Online Page B

driver door opened.
    Abby walked toward the officer who was no more than a silhouette against glaring lights.
    "Miss?" he called. "Are you all right?"
    "Pretty much," she said. "My van ran off the road."
    "I'll radio for an ambulance."
    "I'm really okay."
    But her protest went unheard; he was already talking into the radio attached at his shoulder.
    Then he said to her, "You can hang up now."
    "What?"
    "911 dispatch is still on the line with your cell. You can hang up; free up the line."
    Obediently, Abby reached for the purse that wasn't on her shoulder. "It's in the water--dead."
    His hand once again went to the microphone attached to his shoulder. "You sure that line is still open?"
    Dispatch's crackling answer came over the radio. "Yes. I can still hear the frogs."
    "But not us?"
    "No. Are you at the scene?"
    He looked at Abby. "Did you call 911?"
    She shook her head, dread building in her chest.
    "Then somebody else is out here."

C HAPTER 4

    A bby stood there, looking at the officer as if she couldn't understand what he'd just said. But she had understood. It was just too awful to face. Someone else was out here. Someone who had called 911--someone too injured to get out of the car and come to the road as she had.
    Another fact sunk in. If the 911 call had recently been made, as the arrival of the deputy probably indicated, she hadn't driven into the marsh hours ago on her way home from dinner.
    But what reason would she have had to be out here in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night?
    Those muddy footprints came to mind.
    Oh shit.
    "Which direction were you coming from?" the officer asked.
    She hesitated. What if she
had
been sleep-driving? It seemed preposterous, but so did a lot of other things she'd done while asleep. "Um, I don't remember." She felt the lump on her forehead. "I don't remember what happened at all. I don't even know where we are." She pointed, "My van is over there, pointed that way."
    He nodded and then spoke into his radio again, "Is the person on the line responsive?"
    "No," the 911 operator said. "There's been no verbal communication at all. Just an open line."
    He signed off his radio and looked at Abby. "I want you to sit in my car and wait for the ambulance." He took her elbow and urged her in that direction.
    Once she was in the back seat, he retrieved a blanket from the trunk and wrapped it around her shoulders. "You stay here. The ambulance will be here soon."
    She nodded mutely. Her tongue felt too thick to speak.
    She watched him through the windshield as he walked away. He became more obscure as he moved out of the headlight beams, shining his flashlight on the pavement and searching the woods on either side of the road. Soon all she could see of him was the sweep of the flashlight beam.
    Suddenly, the light veered to the right and disappeared into the woods.
    Someone is out there. Someone is hurt. It's all my fault.
    Abby jumped out of the car, dropping the blanket to the ground as she tried to hurry toward the place the officer had disappeared. Dizziness kept her from moving in a straight line. Her bare feet slapped the pavement, every footfall shot a drumbeat of pain through her head.
    In the distance behind her, she heard the thin wail of an approaching siren.
    Abby struggled to move faster.
    Off to the right, the opposite side of the road from the marsh, she caught the flicker of the officer's flashlight through the woods. She stumbled in that direction, sliding down into the ditch next to the road, and then scrabbling back out the other side. Every sliding step was punctuated by a sharp stab or a rough scrape.
    The officer was kneeling beside a motorcycle, the flashlight shining on its bent front wheel and twisted handlebars. Then she saw it wasn't just the motorcycle; a person lay beyond it. He wasn't moving.
    The officer looked up. When he saw her, he moved the light away from the wreckage and shone it on her, blinding her from the sight of what she'd done.
    He hurried in