Читать книгу A Hero's Redemption - Suzanne Mcminn - Страница 6

Haven, West Virginia

Lightning cracked, flaring into the dark vehicle, the heavy June night outside suddenly pressing down on the prison transport van, reaching inside, tightening the air. Still dressed in the suit he’d worn to the sentencing, Dane McGuire forgot that his wrists were bound by handcuffs linked to a metal restraining belt at his waist and tried to reach up, touch his face, feel the strange humming pressure filling his head.

In the matter of the State vs. Dane McGuire in the murder of Calla Jones, the jury finds the defendant, Dane McGuire, guilty.

The prison transport van took a sharp mountain turn in the night, bouncing Dane—the sole occupant in the back—against the side of the vehicle. The chain connecting the shackles at his ankles rattled in the dark of the rear holding cage.

Guilty, guilty, guilty.

If only he hadn’t gone to Calla Jones’s farm. If only he’d arrived a few hours earlier, or later, or—

Lightning shot down again, and the humming turned into a stinging in his skin, all over. The van jerked from side to side and he hit the hard wall of the vehicle as he was thrown, first to one side, then the other. For a split second, he thought he was okay, he was in one piece, maybe just a pothole, then the back end of the van came up, tossing him like a ball, and the vehicle plowed end over end. Time suspended in some awful slow motion, turning, just turning, his body flying out of the seat belt. The last thing he knew was impact and his head striking something hard.

He opened his eyes to darkness, blinking in agonized waves of nausea. Cold. He was so cold. Freezing cold. He battled to move by instinct, to lift himself up, every motion dazed, painful.

The mountain road stretched out before him, empty but for a shimmering wave of some thick vapor that disappeared before his eyes, rushing away in an eerie whoosh that left nothing but silence. Dane’s heartbeat filled the void, heavy, stumbling.

The van, the guards—

There was nothing but eerie stillness. Stillness and…something soft and frozen falling on his face. He looked down, confused, seeing the snowy ditch where he’d fallen, seeing the shackles on his wrists and ankles…gone.

He felt himself fall back, hit the ditch again, and he wondered if he was already dead.