Read Online Nowhere to Hide by Carlene Thompson - Free Book Online

start at the very beginning, when you were headed for the Addisons’ house.” Eric’s voice was courteous but businesslike. “Catherine said you were late and probably going to drive too fast.”
    Catherine flushed and looked at Marissa. “I didn’t say you would go too fast, just that you might because you were late.”
    Marissa felt a prickle of annoyance with Catherine but kept her expression pleasant. “She always worries that I drive too fast,” Marissa said to Eric. “The weather was bad, though, and I wasn’t going to take any chances just to reach Evelyn Addison’s house on time. I drove below the speed limit.”
    Eric nodded.
    “By the time I neared the place where I wrecked, the snow had increased and I slowed down to thirty-five miles an hour,” Marissa continued, her throat tightening. She looked at Lindsay, who was trying to tuck the teddy bear under the afghan. “That’s when I saw…something. It climbed across that icy guardrail so easily! Then it walked into my lane, stopped, and stared at me.” Marissa raised her eyes and looked at Eric with near defiance. “It seemed to be daring me to hit it.”
    Catherine, James, and Eric stared at her. Marissa thought even Lindsay, who’d successfully hidden her toy, was looking at her with especially probing dark brown eyes. “Well, it’s true!” Marissa burst out defensively.
    “Are you certain someone didn’t run in front of you and freeze?” Catherine asked Marissa, and then quickly turned to Eric, speaking as if she were explaining a child’s behavior. “The snow was obviously worse than Marissa had expected and she got frightened and confused and couldn’t see clearly. Someone must have just run out in front of her and froze.”
    “That is not what happened,” Marissa snapped.
    Everyone’s gaze fastened on Marissa again as Eric said, “But visibility was very poor. With all that snow and your headlights on low—I presume you know to turn your headlights on low so they won’t—”
    “Refract light on the snow and half-blind me. Yes, I know that, Eric, and my headlights were on low beam.”
    “But you still say you saw a person.”
    “It wasn’t just a person stupidly trying to cross the highway in a snowstorm. It was someone dressed up like a Halloween ghoul who climbed the guardrail and deliberately stood in front of me!”
    “I see,” Eric said in the careful voice one would use with a hysteric.
    Her own tension and the doubt she saw in three pairs of eyes suddenly made Marissa flashingly angry with everyone in the room. She glowered at James and Catherine, then fastened her gaze on Eric and burst out, “You’re all looking at me like I’m crazy, but I’m in full possession of all my faculties just as I was minutes before I had the wreck. That’s why I am certain, Mr. Chief Deputy, that someone walked onto the lane of a highway, then deliberately stopped in front of my car!”
    Before Eric could answer, Marissa drew a deep breath and continued, seething, “You also might remember, Eric, that I have twenty-fifteen vision.”
    Eric tilted his head slightly and said coldly, “I do remember that, Marissa. I remember very well that you have above-average vision.”
    Oh God, Marissa thought. Her excellent vision—how she’d mentioned it to the police when Gretchen died, how little attention they’d paid, how she’d had no time to make them acknowledge its importance. Her throat tightened, and for a moment she didn’t think she could continue talking to Eric. Then she made a decision. She’d failed to convince everyone of what she’d seen then. She wouldn’t fail now.
    Marissa drew a deep breath. “I just had my eyes checked two months ago and my vision is still twenty-fifteen. That’s why I believe you can trust the accuracy of my description of this ‘person of interest,’ as you cops say, in spite of the bad weather.” She looked straight at Eric and spoke firmly. “The man—I assume it was a man—was tall.