Kasey Michaels - Strange Bedfellows Part 3

Sean stopped dead at the entrance to the kitchen, so that Cassandra barreled into his chest as he turned around to face her. “Overreacting, Cassandra? Is that what you were going to say?”

“Sean—”

“No!” he exclaimed, holding up his hands to stop her from defending his son. “Not this time, Cassandra. It’s always two steps forward and one step back with that kid. Give him an inch and he takes a mile. Offer your hand and he grabs for the whole arm. You name the cliché, and Jase will live up to it. Just like his mother, just like me! Or did you forget that we just climbed out of your bed? Without a word of love, a syllable of promise, a mention of commitment-I took all you offered, all I could take, all I could make you give. And then some!”

“You didn’t make me give anything I didn’t want to give,” Cassandra said quietly, her soft brown eyes glittering with tears. “Nobody and nothing has control over my life, my actions. Not anymore. Not ever again. Now, are we going to stand here so I can listen to you being stupid, or are we going to the hospital to see about Jason and Becky?”

“God, what an ass I am! My kid’s in the hospital and all I’m doing is feeling sorry for myself.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “I don’t know why you just don’t tell me to go to hell.”

“I don’t know why, either,” she said, turning her head to press a kiss against the back of his hand. “But I think you have potential. Now, come on, Jason needs you. I’ll drive.”

Cassandra drove through the dark night, heading toward Vanderbilt Memorial, a disturbingly intense and quiet Sean in the front passenger seat. It had begun to rain, and the only sound inside the car was the soft swish-swish of the windshield wipers—and the beating of Cassandra’s heart.

She could feel Sean’s fear, his anxiety, his need to be with his son. She also sensed his anger at himself for believing Jason to have been at fault when, as she had pointed out, no one yet knew what had happened.

As if reading her thoughts, Sean said quietly, “He said he was all right. But what’s all right? I remember a friend of mine, from college. He was injured in a sledding accident one winter, but swore he was fine. And he looked fine. He got up, he walked around, he talked. And then, about ten minutes later, he just fell down. He—he was dead by the time the paramedics arrived. Internal bleeding, they told us later. Cassandra, if anything were to happen to Jason, I—”

“Jason said he was fine, so he’s fine,” she told him quickly, reaching across the small space that divided them, the chasm that divided her from his parental pain. “We’ll be there in ten minutes, all right? Damn, hasn’t it rained enough in this past week?”

“Do you want to pull over, let me drive?”

Cassandra shook her head, looking out onto the rain-bright street, the reflection of the streetlights on the macadam. “I can manage. Oh—look up there, ahead of us, to those blinking lights. Do you think—?”

“Pull over behind that cruiser, Cassandra,” Sean said, both his hands braced on the dashboard. “That’s my car they’re loading onto the flatbed tow truck.”

Cassandra, her lips caught between her teeth, did as Sean asked, pulling the car to a stop behind a shiny white police car whose red, white and blue lights were still blinking out their warning, streaking the rainy night with color, with a sense of urgency that sent a sickening knot to tighten in the pit of her stomach.

They were both out of the car and running toward the tow truck before any of the policemen or firemen who were on the scene could stop them, Sean calling out who he was and that he was the owner of the Mercedes.

Or what used to be a Mercedes, Cassandra thought as she stopped in her tracks, looking at the car in horror. There was barely anything left of the passenger side of the car. She walked forward more slowly, wiping raindrops from her face, squinting as she took off her wet glasses and taking in the sight of the deflated passenger-door air bag that had deployed when the car was hit.

The dashboard air bags hadn’t deployed, which meant that the impact had all been from the side, and Cassandra looked around, hunting for the source of that impact. She counted up the three police cruisers, the single fire truck—with half a dozen firemen busy washing down the street with hoses they’d pulled from the pumper truck. Cassandra could smell gasoline fumes and looked at the street, seeing the oily rainbows of color that told her at least one of the vehicles involved in the accident had leaked gasoline from its fuel tank.

“Thank God there wasn’t a fire,” she said as one of the policemen approached her.

“You with Mr. Frame, ma’am?” the officer inquired, and Cassandra nodded.

“Where’s the other car?” she then asked, wondering if it looked as bad as the Mercedes. If it did, there may have been more injuries, even a fatality.

“We’re looking for it now, ma’am,” the officer told her, motioning for her to step back. The tow truck was ready to move out, Sean’s twisted car perched on the flatbed like some sort of horrible modern art. “It was a hit-and-run, according to the kid. And there’s white paint on his rear bumper, so we believe him. Someone hit him from the rear, at least twice, and he went spinning out on the wet street. Ended up sliding against that light pole over there, at the entrance to the intersection. It was quite an impact, which happens when a car is thrown into a spin.”

Sure enough, the light pole was leaning drunkenly over the street, something she hadn’t noticed at first. The damage had all been to the Mercedes. The gas that had spilled on the street had been from the Mercedes.

Jason and Becky had been attacked! And they could have been killed!

“Somebody—somebody did this deliberately?” Cassandra looked toward Sean and saw him striding in her direction, the cold, concentrated look on his face telling her that one of the other policemen had already given him the information she’d just heard. “My God. Why? Sean?”

He took hold of her outstretched hand. “Come on, Cassandra, we’re going to Vanderbilt to talk to Jason. The officer told me he swears he didn’t recognize the other car, but I want to hear it from his own mouth, while he’s looking into my eyes. Into your eyes.”

She ran to the driver’s side of her car and slid inside, already turning the key in the ignition. “I don’t get it, Sean,” she said as she carefully pulled around the cruiser, avoiding the area where the firemen were just finishing hosing down the street, then heading for the hospital once more, this time with more than worry and fear riding along with her. Now she was also angry. Very, very angry!

Sean was sitting very still, staring straight ahead, water droplets glistening in his hair, his face lit by each streetlight they passed. His jaw was set tight, his shoulders squared. He looked ready to take on the world, and heaven help anyone who dared to get in his way.

“What don’t you get, Cassandra?” he asked tightly as the lights of Vanderbilt Memorial at last appeared in the distance. “That someone would deliberately run someone else’s car off the street? To some minds, that’s what’s known as good, clean fun. And an inexperienced young kid driving a luxury car? Hell, that must have made it twice the fun!”

“So, you think that whoever did this was really after the car? Or, if I get this right, after the kid who they saw driving such a car? That doesn’t make sense.”

“It doesn’t have to, Cassandra,” he shot back tersely, then pointed toward the windshield. “Turn up there, just before that sign pointing out the emergency entrance. The officer said someone will meet us there.”