The Dying Breath: A Forensic Mystery

blinked, trying to right herself again. Through the cracked windshield she saw the car had come to rest at a ninety-degree angle against the mountain. The car’s hood had crumpled into pleats.
    Kyle was not moving. She saw there were smudges of smoke smeared across his face like war paint, and his hands hung limp in his lap. And then she saw what she was looking for: the knife. It had skidded forward, at the edge of the dashboard, just within reach. She could cut herself free with its blade. Her left hand, swollen and bruised, pulsed with every beat of her heart, but she forced herself to go slowly, to reach past Kyle. Her fingers stretching, the blade, still red with Justin’s blood, glancing against her fingertips, and then pain exploding against her hand.
    “I’ll take that,” he said, plucking the knife by the handle.
    She could see the cold rage in his eyes as he kicked his way out the driver’s door, the knife clutched in his hand. In a flash he was at the passenger side; there was enough space for him to yank open her door, the hinges groaning in protest. The blade winked in the light.
    The sharp edge whipped up over her head and she watched its arc, sure of where it would strike. Her heart. It was aimed at her heart.
    She saw her parents and Justin and her school, Lyric, and her life, a shaken snow globe of memories. But the blade did not slice into her chest as she expected. Instead, she felt a stab as the knife cut against the zip tie that held her wrist to the grab bar. She was free. Mercifully free.
    Tossing the knife in the air, he caught it with his left as he yanked her out of the car, onto her knees. “Bitch,” he spat. “We’re going over the side, one way or another.”
    Her death had been postponed, but it was coming, just the same.
    Screaming, kicking, she tried to hold on but she was no match for him and his strength as he pulled her across the Million Dollar Highway.
    “No!” she cried, but he did not hear her. She dug her heels into the slick asphalt but there was nothing to brace her, no way to stop him. His grip around her wrist was like a vise. He grunted as he pulled her into the center, halfway across the line, then five feet from the edge. From there she caught a flash of the bottom, the sheer drop that ended in juts of stone so ragged they looked like teeth. There was no way to live through a fall like that. Her chances would have been better protected by the steel of the Jeep.
    “Oh God, don’t do this!” she begged.
    “God’s not doing it,” he said, leering. “I am.”
    And then, like a miracle from heaven, she heard a rumble from below. A semi appeared around the bend, blowing black smoke from an upright exhaust pipe. The driver looked down as the blue cab roared toward them. In that moment when Kyle wavered, she acted. Twisting her arm against the joint where his thumb met his fingers, she broke his grasp. Staggering, she stepped backward while Kyle stared at the approaching truck, paralyzed with indecision.
    The rear wheels of the cab smoked as it squealed then stopped less than ten feet away. The driver jumped to the ground, landing hard. He was thickly muscled, with a black mustache that brushed the edge of his jaw and a red plaid shirt.
    “You all right?” the truck driver cried. “That’s a bad wreck. You kids okay?” He held up a cell phone. “I already hit 911. They’ll be here any moment.” And then, as if he sensed something was off, the driver asked again, “You sure you’re okay?” Then he saw the knife.
    It seemed to take only a moment for Kyle to decide.
    Backing up, he kept his eyes locked on hers as he took three long steps toward the lip of the road.
    “Kid, what do you think you’re doin’?” the trucker roared. He was running toward Kyle but Kyle stood tall, like a diver ready to make a back flip off an Olympic high dive.
    “Kid!”
    Kyle’s arms flew out straight from his sides so that his body made the shape of the cross.
    “I guess I’ll make this last journey alone. Good-bye, Cammie. Make sure they write about me.”
    Then, without another word, he sailed backward, his eyes on Cameryn’s as he arced into the air to disappear onto the rocks below.

Chapter Seventeen

    THE BALLOONS IN her hand bobbed and swayed, looking like giant moons. While Cameryn rode up in the elevator she felt a similar lightness inside herself, as though she would rise up and touch the ceiling of Mercy Hospital. She was that happy.
    The elevator ding