False Impressions by Terri Thayer Page A

forward, trying to guess where she was. The road was dark without many streetlights. Houses had been few and far between.
    She considered turning around, but the snowbanks narrowed the roadway to two small lanes. She couldn’t execute a three-point turn. If she tried, there was a distinct possibility that she’d end up in a ditch.
    April felt a flutter of nervousness, and she swallowed hard to relieve it. This road would probably cross the valley parallel to the highway and bring her out to the other north-south road, the one that Deana lived on. She could easily find her way home from there.
    She’d call Mitch. He’d reassure her she was on the right track. She reached for her cell and lost control of the wheel for an instant.
    The car began to slide. Her headlights glinted off something metal ahead. She let the phone drop and made sure her hands were on ten and two just as her father had taught her. She gripped the wheel tighter and took her foot off the gas. She was careful not to brake. If the road was just a little bit icy, it would set her into a spin.
    The bare trees along the side of the road were coming quickly at her. Her chest tightened. There was a line of brush on the shoulder, with a pine forest encroaching behind. She didn’t want to go off the road. There could be a creek and ravine hidden under the snow.
    Steer into it. Her father’s voice came into her head. He’d taught her to drive. She saw a break in the snow cover, a gash all the way down to the mud. Her dad had told her that her hands would follow her eyes so it was important to keep looking straight ahead. Whatever was on the side of the road, she couldn’t let it distract her now.
    Her father’s voice in her head was comforting. His teaching her to drive had been a nice time for both of them. He’d been a good teacher. She missed Ed. He and Vince had been gone several weeks and expected to stay in Florida for two more.
    She pushed on the gas pedal and the car straightened. She skidded to a stop, half in the lane, half on the snowy shoulder.
    As her lights illuminated the scene more, April’s heart sunk. She had seen something off the road. The raw wound in the snow was tire tracks, half-filled with the latest accumulation. Someone had gone off the road like she almost had.
    She flicked on her flashers. She leaned over her passenger seat and stared. Her headlights gave her a clear view. She could see where the car had left the road, but there were no footprints in the snow.
    April listened but heard nothing but the distant rumble of cars on the interstate and the incessant burbling of a creek, which seemed to pay no mind to the dark and cold.
    She opened her door and called out.
    “Hello? Anyone there?”
    There was no engine noise. Had the car been there long enough to have run out of gas? Or had it shut off when it skidded off the road? Snow had fallen on and off all night. There was fresh snow in the tire tracks, but the accident could have happened anytime in the last couple of hours.
    She heard a noise. A human sound. A groan. She stopped moving. The trees creaked in the wind. What had she heard? She couldn’t be sure.
    She got out, picking her way carefully. In the trunk of her car, along with a newly added forty-pound bag of kitty litter for traction and a folding shovel that Mitch had given her to dig herself out of ditches, was a high-powered flashlight leftover from the earthquake kit she’d carried back in San Francisco. Gone was the bottled water and rations. It struck her that an earthquake kit would be mighty handy in the event of getting stuck in a snowstorm, too.
    An owl hooted in a nearby tree, causing her heart to pound and her feet to slip out from under her. She steadied herself. If someone was hurt inside that car, she needed to get help. She reached in for her phone, called 911 and reported the car off the road.
    She grabbed the flashlight and stepped carefully across the frozen earth. She slipped once and cursed