Perri O’Shaughnessy - Breach Of Promise

Lindy slammed her foot on the brake sending her own skidding car straight down the road toward the point where Rachel’s car had vanished over the edge. She knew enough to stop braking and steer into the skid. For a few moments she fought to slow and stop the Jeep. She then sat very still, stunned.

The lonely mountain road stretched ahead in the eerie silence, the snow piled high on both sides in some places. Rachel must have plowed right through a drift and over the side. Lindy, whose heart was pounding so hard she thought she could feel it beating through her sweater, spotted the other car in a ditch off the side of the road, its rear end sticking up into the air, the exhaust pipe spewing fumes.

Stupid, stupid girl! What was with her? She could have killed herself, and Lindy, too! Lindy pulled up about fifty feet from Rachel’s car and sat for a minute more, shaking, giving herself a second to restore her breathing to normal, then jumped out, her mind blank, just moving to keep ahead of the action that had almost overtaken them both.

She got out of the car, forgetting the gun, trying to figure out what to do next, when, out of the dim twilight of forest and trees, Rachel appeared. She was climbing quickly, clumsily up the snowy slope, heading straight for Lindy.

She must have seen Lindy following her, Lindy realized as she moved from one cold foot to the other. So here it came, the dreaded, hoped-for confrontation. And now, something strange. As the figure came closer, she got the distinct impression of a much larger person than Rachel. That must be her own fear blowing Rachel up. In the dimming light, Rachel looked immense, and so dark, dressed in bulky black clothes like a Ninja. And where was her face?

An instant later, Rachel, who had never slowed in her amazingly swift ascent uphill, knocked Lindy down. But Lindy had seen it coming, so she toppled softly into a snowbank. She leaped up, ready for a real round, if that was what Rachel wanted. And that was when another very strange thing happened. Rachel pushed right by her without stopping and ran down the road, faster than Lindy had ever seen the indolent Rachel do anything.

Nonplussed, covered with snow, Lindy stared after the girl until she disappeared around the bend. A few hundred more feet and the idiot would reach Highway 89. There she could flag someone down easily. Maybe she had a concussion or some other brain injury. Or… could she be afraid just at the sight of Lindy? Even though she knew it was disgraceful, Lindy enjoyed a delicious moment of pleasure at the thought.

What now? Get back in the Jeep and chase after her? But Lindy realized Rachel would blame her for the accident. The smart thing for her to do was to leave. Yes, time to go, pretend this had never happened. How humiliating it would be, having to admit she had been trailing Rachel, and she was sure Rachel would blow it up into a lot more. Maybe she just wouldn’t admit it. Truth had its limits.

A keening sound like the cry of an injured animal interrupted her thoughts. She ran over to see what could make a noise so terrible.

The front of the car appeared to be stuck in a snowbank. Rubbing away the snow on the window Lindy saw the strangest thing of all. There was a woman inside in the driver’s seat. Utterly confused at the sight, she stepped back. The woman stirred and she heard that awful sound again.

Lindy tried the handle. The door fell open, and Rachel tumbled out into the snow onto her back, still wearing her sealskin coat. She was semiconscious. Her eyes fluttered. Blood began to flow from somewhere.

Her eyes opened. When they landed on Lindy, she screamed and scrabbled at the snow, trying to use one arm to drag herself backward.

“Let me help you,” Lindy said, but Rachel’s eyes bulged out and she tried to shriek again and then her eyes closed and she stopped moving. Had she fainted? Was she dead? Lindy bent closer to find out.

A big black Ford Ranger came down the road from the direction of the plant, and Lindy recognized the driver as George Demetrios. Within seconds George came running. “What happened?” he asked, panting.

“I don’t know,” Lindy said. “Do you have a phone in the truck?” While George ran back to call an ambulance, Lindy sat in the snow beside Rachel. She wanted to do something, so she lifted Rachel’s head very gently off the snow and put it in her lap.

She had a dizzy, disoriented feeling. The sun shot bright ice picks through her sunglasses. Her scarf and one mitten had fallen off and the snow burned her hand. A few feet away, the forest turned dark and mysterious again. Rachel’s face seemed to shine in its ghostly sleep, so young and pretty, almost virginal-looking in its freshness.

A thought struck her. Here was Rachel in her arms. So who was the other one? The Rachel who ran?

Had Lindy run Rachel off the road? Maybe Rachel had recognized her car, felt Lindy’s fury behind her, and in her own fear had run her own car over the edge after all.

The figure running up the hill must have been a passerby, nothing more.

She heard a siren. George appeared on the side of the road. “Get the hell out of here, Lindy,” he shouted. “This doesn’t look so good. Let me take care of things from here.”

Propping Rachel’s head over a soft part of the sealskin coat, Lindy grabbed her scarf and mittens and ran all the way up the hill to her Jeep, pulling away just as the ambulance arrived.

At ten Monday morning, on a threatening day with clouds billowing day with clouds billowing over the western mountains, Rachel Pembroke entered Nina’s conference room looking as if she’d stepped off the runway at a New York fashion show. The dress was Isaac Mizrahi, the shoes Manolo Blahnik. The perfume made you want to lean in and breathe deep. Her long black hair gleamed like an oil strike, geysering down the front of her dress. A diamond on her left hand flashed prisms of expensive light. She was young, beautiful, and about to be very, very rich.

Everyone had heard about her trip to the emergency room on Friday afternoon, and that she had told the police she was convinced that Lindy was involved in some plot to harm her, but the only obvious sign of her troubles was a long scratch on one cheek. Apparently, Nina thought, Rachel was the kind of person who came out fighting.

Genevieve followed her to the conference table, looking understated in a sensible wool suit with a rose-colored blouse. She laid her notepads and pens out neatly on the table in front of her. Winston was a no-show. He and Genevieve must have decided to alternate on the depositions. Riesner had called to say he was running late.

“Oh, hi,” said Rachel to Genevieve, peering at herself in a silver-backed mirror, obviously mistaking the woman at her side for a secretary. “I’m dying for some coffee. Think you could get me some?”

Nina paused at the door to see how Genevieve would respond. Up came the curly head. “How do you take it?” Genevieve asked sweetly. “In your lap or on your head?”

Rachel snapped her compact shut. “Excuse me?”

Genevieve laughed lightly. She held out her hand, which Rachel shook, looking confused. “Forgive me for not introducing myself to you right away. I’m Genevieve Suchat, jury consultant for the other side.”

She held on, and apparently pressed a little hard, because Rachel gave out a teeny squeal and pulled sharply away. “Well, I certainly didn’t mean to offend you,” Rachel said, massaging her hand.

“Oh, God, no. I’m sure you didn’t,” Genevieve said, with a false smile.

Genevieve put her vexation with Rachel into one word during the lunch hour, as they walked down the snowy path that led from the office into the Truckee marsh now piling with snow. “Flaunting,” she said, her Southern accent very pronounced. She seemed most Southern when she was most upset. “Don’t you just hate flaunting?” She kicked at a loose clod of hardened snow. “Must drive Lindy Markov insane, seeing Rachel dolled up like that in clothes only Mike could afford.”