Strange Bedfellows. Kasey Michaels

him that, even if they tumbled down the mountainside, maybe the Jeep’s battery would last long enough to allow the headlights to serve as a beacon for possible rescuers.

      If the Jeep wasn’t buried ten feet deep beneath a mountain of mud.

      If one of the boulders didn’t come crashing into the Jeep at window level, ripping off the roof and killing the two of them instantly.

      With Cassandra’s head buried against his shoulder, he looked out the front windshield, watching the area the headlights illuminated, seeing the melting mountainside even more clearly with each new bolt of lightning.

      They were going forward, parallel with the roadway, sliding down the mountainside toward Grand Springs one lurching, heart-stopping yard at a time, the Jeep kept upright only by the strength of the guardrail.

      The screech of metal against metal, the Jeep’s frame scraping along the guardrail, sent sparks into the air and turned their wild ride into a bizarre, frightening, macabre amusement park adventure.

      And then he saw it. A boulder so big it was higher than the roof of the Jeep. Wider. Wedged between the guardrail and a huge, overturned tree.

      And the Jeep was heading straight for it, swept along at about thirty miles an hour—or so it seemed to Sean—held against the rail like one of those tin rabbits that circle a dog-race track.

      “Hold on!” he shouted over the escalating noise…the rush of rain…the rolling thunder that slammed and reverberated inside his chest…Cassandra’s single scream, which cut straight into his heart.