Without Mercy - Lisa Jackson [2]
The radio did little to calm her nerves, and the windshield wipers slapping away the rain only added to her case of jitters. Jules was too late. Shay was going to fly off without a good-bye, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Not even Edie could fix this. A judge had ruled that Shay was to be sent away for rehabilitation.
She tuned the radio to a station where songs from the eighties were peppered with rapid-fire traffic updates from Brenda, the serious reporter who rattled off trouble spots on the freeway system so fast it was hard to keep up.
Not that it helped.
Basically, it seemed, every freeway was a snarled mess this miserable February morning.
“Come on, come on,” Jules muttered, glancing at the clock on the dash of her twenty-year-old sedan. Eight-seventeen. The height of rush hour. And she was supposed to be on the dock by eight-thirty, or it would be too late. She flipped on her blinker and bullied her way into the lane that was curving toward the Evergreen Point Bridge that spanned Lake Washington.
A semi driver reluctantly allowed her to squeeze in, and she offered him a smile and a wave as she wedged her way into the far right lane and nosed her car east. She was nearly clipped by a guy in a black Toyota who was talking on his cell phone.
“Idiot!” She slammed on her brakes and slid into the spot just as the first notes of “Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson filled the interior of her Volvo. “Oh, God.” She pushed the radio’s button to another pre set station, but the strains of the song reverberated through her head.
In her mind’s eye, again she saw her father, lying in a pool of his own blood, his dying eyes staring upward as the song played over and over.
Jules nearly smashed into the pickup in front of her.
“Oh, Jesus.” Calm down. Don’t kill yourself getting there! Adrenaline from the near wreck sang through her veins. Jittery, she took three breaths, then, with one hand, fished inside her purse for a bottle of painkillers. The stuff she’d taken earlier hadn’t worked.
She found the bottle and popped off the cap with her thumb. Pills sprayed over her, but she didn’t care, washing two tablets down quickly with the remains of yesterday’s Diet Coke that she’d left in the car’s cup holder.
The bad mix of caffeine-laden syrup and headache medicine made her wince as the refrain of “Billie Jean” kept pounding through her brain. “You’re a head case,” she told her reflection in the rearview mirror. “No wonder you’re out of work.” Well, technically she had a job waiting tables, but her teaching career was over. Her recurring nightmare and blinding headaches had taken care of that.
In the mirror, beneath the bill of her cap, she caught a quick glimpse of gray eyes that held a hint of rebellion—that same disguised mutiny that was so evident in her younger sister.
At least Shaylee wasn’t a hypocrite.
Jules could hardly say the same of herself.
A siren wailed in the distance; then she spied an ambulance threading through the clogged lanes of freeway traffic, going in the opposite direction.
God, her head throbbed.
Even though it was a cloudy day, the glare got to her.
She found her pair of driving shades tucked in the visor and slipped them on.
“Come on, come on,” she muttered at the truck belching exhaust in front of her.
It took another twenty minutes and one more near collision before she reached her exit and eased along a winding road that hugged the shoreline of the lake.
She rounded a sharp curve and pulled through the open wrought-iron gates of a private residence. With a long, brick driveway, the building that appeared through the spruce and fir trees was more castle than house, a huge stone and brick edifice that rose three full stories on the shores of the lake.
She parked near the front door, next to her mother’s Lexus SUV. Then, without locking her car, she dashed through the spitting rain to