thought you’d come crawling back, so I didn’t. I should’ve. Should’ve
kicked your stupid face in.” He raised his hand as if to slap her.
But he checked himself even as she flinched from the expected blow.
Furious, he turned and hurried away.
As she watched him go, Rachael suddenly understood that his sick desire
to dominate everyone was a far more fundamental need than she’d
realized. By stripping him of his power over her, by turning her back
on both him and his money, she had not merely reduced him to an equal
but had, in his eyes, unmanned him. That had to he the case, for
nothing else explained the degree of his rage or his urge to commit
violence, an urge he had barely controlled.
She had grown to dislike him intensely, if not hate him, and she had
feared him a little, too. But until now, she had not been fully aware
of the immensity and intensity of the rage within him. She had not
realized how thoroughly dangerous he was.
Mthough the golden sunshine still dazzled her eyes and forced her to
squint, although it still baked her skin, she felt a cold shiver pass
through her, spawned by the realization that she’d been wise to leave
Eric when she had-and perhaps fortunate to escape with no more physical
damage than the bruises his fingers were certain to have left on her
arm.
Watching him step off the sidewalk into the street, she was relieved to
see him go. A moment later, relief turned to horror.
He was heading toward his black Mercedes, which was parked along the
other side of the avenue. Perhaps he actually was Ninded by his anger.
Or maybe it was the briNiant June sunlight flashing on every shiny
surface that interfered with his vision. Whatever the reason, he dashed
across the southbound lanes of Main Street, which were at the moment
without traffic, and kept on going into the northbound lanes, directly
into the path of a city garbage truck that was doing forty miles an
hour.
Too late, Rachael screamed a warning.
The driver tramped his brake pedal to the floorboards.
But the shriek of the truck’s locked wheels came almost simultaneously
with the sickening sound of impact.
Eric was hurled into the air and thrown back into the southbound lanes
as if by the concussion wave of a bomb blast. He crashed into the
pavement and tumbled twenty feet, stiffly at first, then with a horrible
looseness, as if he were constructed of string and old rags.
He came to rest facedown, unmoving.
A southbound yellow Subaru braked with a banshee 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 aid miserably.
“I know,” she said.
“Nothin’ at all. He run in front of me. Didn’t look Nothin’ I could
do.”
At firt Rachael had difficulty breathing. Then she realized she was
absentmindedly seflibbing her bloodcovered hand on her sundress, and the