PROLOGUEEdgerton, Oregon
The night was black and calm, silent except for the
mellow whine of the newly tuned Porsche engine, yet
she heard the soft, sobbing voice pleading with her again,
whispering low and deep. It never left her alone now.
No one else was near, it was just Jilly driving alone on
the coast highway. The ocean stirred beside her, but with
no moon out, it looked like an empty, black expanse. The
Porsche, sensitive to the slightest touch of her fingers,
gently swerved left, toward the cliff, toward the endless
expanse of black water beyond. Jilly jerked the car back
to the center line.
Laura’s voice began sobbing in her brain, then grew
louder, filling her, until Jilly wanted to burst.
“Shut up!” Jilly’s scream filled the car for a brief
moment. Her voice sounded harsh and ugly. It was nothing
like Laura’s had been, like a small child’s sobbing,
lost and inconsolable. Only death would bring peace.
Jilly felt that voice, Laura’s voice, build inside her again.
She gripped the steering wheel and stared straight ahead,
2 _ Catherine Coulter
praying to herself, chanting for it to stop, for Laura to go
away.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please stop. Leave me alone.
Please.”
But Laura didn’t stop. She was no longer a child,
speaking in a sweet, terrified voice. She was herself
again, angry now, and this time foul words frothed from
her mouth, spewing rage and saliva that Jilly tasted in the
back of her throat. She banged her fists on the steering
wheel, hard, harder still, rhythmically, to make the
malevolent voice go away. She opened the window,
pressed it all the way down and leaned out, letting the
wind tear her hair back, and her eyes sting and water. She
shouted into the night, “Make it stop!”
It stopped. Suddenly.
Jilly drew a deep breath and pulled her head back into
the car. The wind whooshed through the car and she
sucked in mouthfuls of the cold air. It tasted wonderful. It
was over. Thank God, finally it had stopped. She raised
her head, looking around, wondering where she was.
She’d been driving for hours, it seemed, yet the dashboard
clock read only midnight. She’d been gone from
home for a half hour.
Her life had become whispers and screams until she
couldn’t bear it. Now there was silence, deep and complete
silence.
Jilly began counting. One, two, threeno curses, no
whispers, no small child’s pleading, nothing, just her own
breathing, the soft hum of her car. She threw back her
head and closed her eyes a moment, relishing the silence.
She began counting again. Four, five, sixstill blessed
silence.
Seven, eightsoft, very soft, like a faraway rustling of
leaves, coming closer, closer. Not rustling, no, whisperThe
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ing. Laura was whispering again, begging not to die, begging
and pleading and swearing she’d never meant to
sleep with him, but it had just happened, he’d made it
happen. But Jilly hadn’t believed her.
“Please, stop, stop, stop,” Jilly chanted over that feathery
voice. Laura began screaming that Jilly was a pathetic
bitch, a fool who couldn’t see what she was. Jilly
stomped down on the gas pedal. The Porsche lurched forward,
hitting seventy, eighty, eighty-five. The coast road
swerved. She kept the car directly in the center of the
road. She began singing. Laura screamed louder, and
Jilly sang louder. Ninety. Ninety-five.
“Go away. Damn you, go away!” Jilly’s knuckles were
white on the steering wheel, her head low, her forehead
nearly touching the rim. The engine’s vibrations made
Laura’s screaming voice convulse with power.
One hundred.
Jilly saw the sharp turn, but Laura yelled that they
would be together soon now, very soon. She couldn’t
wait to get Jilly, and then they’d see who would win.
Jilly screamed, whether at Laura or at the sight of the
cliff dropping some forty feet to the heaped and tumbled
black rocks below. The Porsche plunged through the railing,
thick wood and steel, picking up speed, and shot out
to the vast empty blackness beyond.
One more scream rent the silence before the Porsche
sliced nose first through the still, black water. There was
scarcely a sound, just the fast downward plunge, the
sharp, clean impact, then the quick shifting and closing
over, the calm water returning to what it had been just a
second before.
Then there was only the black night. And calm and
silence.
