Shadowfires

locked wheels came almost simultaneously with the sickening sound of impact.
    Eric was hurled into the air and thrown back into the southbound
lanes as if by the concussion wave of a bomb blast. He crashed into
the pavement and tumbled twenty feet, stiffly at first, then with a
horrible looseness, as if he were constructed of string and old rags.
He came to rest facedown, unmoving.
    A southbound yellow Subaru braked with a banshee screech and a
hard flat wail of its horn, halting only two feet from him. A Chevy,
following too close, rammed into the back of the Subaru and pushed it
within a few inches of the body.
    Rachael was the first to reach Eric. Heart hammering, shouting his
name, she dropped to her knees and, by instinct, put one hand to his
neck to feel for a pulse. His skin was wet with blood, and her
fingers slipped on the slick flesh as she searched desperately for
the throbbing artery.
    Then she saw the hideous depression that had reshaped his skull.
His head had been staved in along the right side, above the torn ear,
and all the way forward past the temple to the edge of his pale brow.
His head was turned so she could see one eye, which was open wide.
staring in shock, though sightless now. Many wickedly sharp fragments
of bone must have been driven deep into his brain. Death had been
instantaneous.
    She stood up abruptly, tottering, nauseated. Dizzy, she might have
fallen if the driver of the garbage truck had not grabbed hold of
her, provided support, and escorted her around the side of the
Subaru, where she could lean against the car.
    There was nothin' I could do,” he aid miserably.
    “I know,” she said.
    “Nothin' at all. He run in front of me. Didn't look. Nothin' I could do.”
    At first Rachael had difficulty breathing. Then she realized she
was absentmindedly scrubbing her blood-covered hand on her sundress,
and the sight of those damp rusty-scarlet stains on the pastel-blue
cotton made her breath come quicker, too quick. Hyperventilating, she
slumped against the Subaru, closed her eyes, hugged herself, and
clenched her teeth. She was determined not to faint. She strove to
hold in each shallow breath as long as possible, and the very process
of changing the rhythm of her breathing was a calming influence.
    Around her she heard the voices of motorists who had left their
cars in the snarl of stalled traffic. Some of them asked her if she
was all right, and she nodded, others asked if she needed medical
attention, and she shook her head-no.
    If she had ever loved Eric, that love had been ground to dust
beneath his heel. It had been a long time since
she'd even liked him. Moments before the accident, he'd
revealed a pure and terrifying hatred of her, so she supposed she
should have been utterly unmoved by his death. Yet she was badly
shaken. As she hugged herself and shivered, she was aware of a cold
emptiness within, a hollow sense of loss that she could not quite
understand. Not grief. Just… loss.
    She heard sirens in the distance.
    Gradually she regained control of her breathing.
    Her shivering grew less violent, though it did not stop
entirely.
    The sirens grew nearer, louder.
    She opened her eyes. The bright June sunshine no longer seemed
clean and fresh. The darkness of death had passed through the day,
and in its wake, the morning light had acquired a sour yellow cast
that reminded her more of sulfur than of honey.
    Red lights flashing, sirens dying, a paramedic van and a police
sedan approached along the northbound lanes.
    “Rachael?”
    She turned and saw Herbert Tuleman, Eric's personal attorney, with whom she had met only minutes ago. She had always liked Herb, and he had liked her as well. He was a grandfatherly man with bushy gray eyebrows that were now drawn together in a single bar.
    “One of my associates… returning to the office… saw it happen,”
Herbert said, “hurried up to tell me. My God.”
    Yes,” she said numbly.
    “My God, Rachael.”
    “Yes.”
    “It's too… crazy.
    “Yes.”
    “But…”
    “Yes,” she said.
    And she knew what Herbert was thinking. Within the past hour, she
had told them she would not fight for a large share of Eric's fortune but would settle for, proportionately, a pittance. Now, by virtue of the fact that Eric had no family and no children from his first marriage, the entire thirty million plus his currently unvalued stock in the company would almost certainly, by default, come into her sole possession.

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