She was coming back into focus and managed to stop herself before she blurted out that terrible, unreasoning, childish fear of hospitals.
She tried not to wince at the needles of pain. The tourniquet Tom had wrapped around her arm was being removed.
The question, so practical, so easy to answer. Hands lifting her onto a stretcher she felt a blanket covering her, sleet pelting her face. Her arm was being held something tight was pressing against it.Ī different voice: "She may have internal injuries, Tom Westlake's right down the road. She tried to protest, but her lips wouldn't form words. "My God, it's Katie DeMaio!"Ī voice she knew. The sound of the car door opening a blast of cold air. Dark, velvety blackness was closing over her as from somewhere off in the distance she heard a siren. The headlights and panel lights went out. Sharp, biting pain attacked her wrists and knees. She raised her arms in front of her face, trying to protect it from the splinters of flying glass that exploded from the windshield. Her body was flung forward against the wheel, then slammed backward. Katie felt the sickening crunch as metal tore into bark. Like a skier about to jump, the car poised for an instant at the edge of the shoulder, its wheels lifting as it slammed down the steep embankment into the wooded fields.Ī dark shape loomed ahead: a tree. It careened onto the shoulder of the road, but the shoulder too was a sheet of ice. She turned the wheel into the skid but could not control the car. From the distance she saw headlights approaching. The car raced across the divider and spun around. "Oh.no!" She gripped the wheel frantically. The sudden increase in speed as she rounded the curve made the car fishtail on the sleet-covered road. "He didn't get away with it!" The memory of that reassurance distracted Katie now, made her press her foot harder on the accelerator. It would have been awful if he'd gotten away with it." And I keep thinking how frightened she must have been. Quietly she brushed them away as she said, "I miss Abby so. Her eyes, already moist and faded with age, filled with tears. "With his record, let's hope the judge decides to send him to prison for the rest of his life," Katie answered. I never would have thought you could, but when you talked, you proved every point you made them feel what he did to Abby. Miss Rawlings' sister, Margaret, was in court to hear the verdict and afterward had come up to Katie. But still she had managed to convince the jury that Teddy Copeland was the man who had viciously murdered eighty-year-old Abigail Rawlings during a robbery. The defendant's confession had been suppressed by the court, a major blow for the prosecution. Roy O'Connor was one of the top defense attorneys in New Jersey. If her mind had not been on the case she had won, Katie might not have taken the curve so fast, but the intense satisfaction of the guilty verdict was still absorbing her.
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