“Yes,” I snap. “Because he was begging me.”
Harris raises a hand. “Miss… what happened after he got in?”
I close my eyes. “He kept looking behind us, out the windows. He wouldn’t stop talking. He said they’d find him.”
“They?” Miller asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “He just kept talking aboutthemnot being human.”
Harris’s voice stays calm. “And the crash?”
My stomach drops. “I… I think he grabbed the wheel,” I say quietly.
Miller’s head snaps up. “He what?”
“He screamed and grabbed the steering wheel,” I repeat. “I tried to pull it back, but—” My breath stutters. “We left the road.”
Silence floods the room.
Harris clears his throat. “You’re saying the crash wasn’t an accident?”
“No,” I say. “It wasn’t.”
Miller rubs a hand over his jaw. “Why would he do that?”
“I… I don’t know,” I whisper. “It’s all a blur.” I bring my hand up to my head to try to help dull the ache forming behind my eyes.
Harris opens a folder slowly. “The man’s name was Johnathan Jones.”
The name lands heavier this time.
“He was a licensed hunter,” Harris continues.
“Makes sense with what he was wearing,” I say.
“They found him in the passenger seat,” Miller adds. “Seat belt on.”
My hands start to shake. “I don’t remember him putting it on.”
Harris watches me carefully. “There were injuries.”
“From the crash,” I say.
“Some,” Harris agrees. “Others don’t line up.”
I look between them. “Then what do they line up with?”
Miller hesitates.
Harris answers. “With someone who’d already been fighting for his life before he ever got into your car.”
The older detective leans forward. “Defensive wounds. Burns, bite wounds. Between you and me, Miss Vale, this doesn’t look like any hunting accident I’ve ever seen.”
Burns.The word snags on something in my mind. I see fire in colors that shouldn’t exist, blue-white and red-gold twisting together like…
Like what?
“I don’t remember,” I whisper, both truth and lie becausesomethingis there, just out of reach.