Maximum Exposure by Allison Brennan Page A

detective had hung up on her.
    Max tossed her phone on the passenger seat and pulled out of the parking lot. She mentally wrote a few possible headlines.
    POLICE REFUSE TO SEEK JUSTICE
    STUDENTS WHO LEFT COLLEGE BOY TO DIE ON MOUNTAIN WALK AWAY FREE AND CLEAR
    DELAY IN NOTIFYING SEARCH AND RESCUE LEADS COLLEGE BOY TO DIE OF EXPOSURE
    None of them were good. She’d leave the headline to her editor, but she already had half the story written in her head. She wanted to highlight Scott Sheldon’s life, his innocence, his trust, his stolen future. She wanted to highlight the failure of a system that didn’t have a clear process to deal with missing students. She wanted to expose the three boys—particularly Arthur Cowan—for their culpability in the death of a peer.
    Max had never been religious, but she’d read Bible stories, and one that always stuck with her was the Good Samaritan. That someone would stop and help another, who was obviously ill and in pain, even though it wasn’t expected of him—resonated with Max. It pained Max that others would walk by and not give the ailing person the time of day, avoiding them, ignoring them. And too many people had looked the other way with the disappearance of Scott Sheldon. The boys who left him on the mountain. Tom Keller, who knew he’d done wrong but kept the secret. Ian Stanhope, Scott’s roommate, who didn’t think it was his responsibility to look out for his roommate. The campus police, who waited too long to notify the ranger station. Even the detective, who didn’t think there had been a crime.
    Someone had to stand for Scott.
    Maybe because Max was hot under the collar, or maybe because she was preoccupied, trying to come up with a perfect headline for her article, she didn’t notice that the car behind her was gaining until it was right on her tail. She glanced in her rearview mirror in time to see the large truck a second before it rammed her. She couldn’t see the driver, it happened so quickly.
    Her head hit the steering wheel even though her seat belt locked. She couldn’t maintain control of her car around the bend.
    Thoughts flitted in and out of her mind so fast, she barely acknowledged them. First, that she was in trouble. Then, that when she died she might finally find out exactly what had happened to Karen. Then her survival instinct kicked into high gear as she fought the urge to brake and instead sharply turned the wheel to avoid hitting a thick tree head-on.
    The SUV spun twice, and didn’t flip over. The air bags didn’t deploy, maybe because there was no front-end collision. She rolled to a stop.
    Her heart raced as she sat in the car, in the middle of the road, her hands gripped tight around the steering wheel.
    She couldn’t move. She wanted to. She wanted to get out of the damn car and walk—no, run—after the truck that hit her. She looked around, but didn’t see it. Hit and run. Dammit, someone had rear-ended her and left. She was shaking, and she didn’t want to be scared. She refused to be scared. Her breathing was shaky. She focused on slowing her heart rate, taking long, deep breaths.
    She hadn’t noticed another car pull over until the driver tapped on her window. “Ma’am? Are you okay, ma’am?”
    She tried to nod. Her neck was stiff. But nothing felt broken. She took a deep breath. Her chest hurt where the seat belt dug into her skin.
    But she was alive. She was alive and scared, and that made her angry.
    “Ma’am?”
    She slowly put the SUV in park. The engine wasn’t on, probably stalled out or broken. With shaking hands, she fumbled with the door latch and finally opened it.
    “Ma’am, my wife called 911. Help is on the way.”
    “Thank … you.”
    He put his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t try to get up. I got the other driver’s license plate. The police will find him.”
    “Good Samaritan,” she mumbled. Her head hurt.
    “You’re bleeding,” he said.
    She touched her forehead and came back with a