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“Where did they go?” I asked as I frantically drove on in the direction we’d last seen the two vehicles speeding away from us. “How could we lose them so quickly? They were in sight just a few seconds ago.”
“Maybe so, but they were both flying when we saw them,” she said. “They could be anywhere by now.”
As we raced out of town, the woods grew around us quickly on either side. Union Square had stopped developing in this direction, probably because there was such a steep drop-off on either side of the road. The woods here were dense, and it must have been difficult to build on.
I was driving faster than I should have been when Grace grabbed my arm again.
“Would you please stop doing that?” I asked her fiercely.
“I’m sorry, but I think I just saw something back there,” she said. “Turn around. Better yet, pull off the road.”
“Where exactly am I supposed to do that?” I asked. There was no room at all on either side of the road.
“I don’t care, but we need to get back there. Suzanne, I think Manny and Tyra just had an accident.”
I found a spot a few hundred yards up the road, pulled the Jeep into it, and we hurried back on foot to where Grace had seen something moments before.
“Should I call the police?” Grace asked me as she pulled out her cell phone.
“No, let’s see what’s going on first,” I said.
We made our way to the spot in question, and as I looked down into a small ravine, I could see something shiny amidst the greenery. How anything managed to catch the light in such a densely wooded area was beyond me. “There’s something down there,” I said as I picked my way quickly down the steep slope. “How did you see anything from the road, going as fast as we were going?”
“The branches were broken and bent along here,” she said. “I knew something was wrong.”
“It’s Manny’s SUV,” I said as we got closer and I recognized the first vehicle.
“That’s not all,” Grace said as she pointed ahead of it. “That’s Tyra’s car in front of it.”
“He must have pushed her off the road, and then he ended up going in after her,” I said. It was the only scenario that made sense. There wasn’t much of a turn where they’d gone over the edge, and it was a beautiful day without a drop of rain in sight.
It had to be deliberate!
I held my breath for a second as I approached Manny’s vehicle, bracing myself for what I was probably going to find inside.
To my surprise though, it was empty!
While I’d gone straight to Manny’s car, Grace had made her way over to Tyra’s. “She’s not here!” Grace called out.
“Neither is Manny, but there’s blood on the seat and the door handle,” I said. Both air bags had gone off, probably saving their lives.
But they’d still been in an accident, and both of them had evidently managed to walk away from it.
The only real question at the moment was, where had they gone?