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although climb didn’t seem to be the right word. As Marissa watched through her continually slush-splattered windshield, the figure looked as if it was slithering over the ice-covered rail, moving with smooth, sinuous, frighteningly unnatural ease. Once clear of the guardrail, the figure stood up tall in a long, dark coat, seemed to glide into Marissa’s lane, and stopped directly in front of her.
    Marissa gasped and pushed on her horn at the same moment. The figure didn’t move. In the gleam of Marissa’s headlights, she could see a pallid human-shaped face surrounded by a hood. In spite of the weather, she saw enormous black-rimmed eye sockets and, inside of them, the gleam of dark, almost inhuman eyes staring steadily at her. Her own hands trembled, but the figure never flinched as once again Marissa hit the horn, long and hard.
    Marissa fought the urge to slam on the brakes, knowing doing so would throw her into a spin. Instead, she steered to the left, intending to go around the person who was obviously drunk or crazy. On her cell phone she would report the incident as soon as she’d eased back into her own lane—
    Except a semitruck bore down on her in the left lane. The truck driver’s horn blared. The truck was so close Marissa could see the driver’s horrified expression. Now she had no time for deft maneuvers on ice. Immediately Marissa hit her brakes, simultaneously jerking the steering wheel to the right.
    In a moment, she realized she’d dodged both the truck and the pedestrian, but her car was spinning out of control on the ice. Back in the correct lane, she fought the wheel, but the car had a life of its own, slewing rapidly to the right.
    A thousand thoughts seemed to scramble through part of Marissa’s brain while at the same time another part maintained an odd tranquility. The tranquility shattered when her Mustang smashed into the guardrail. Sparks of metal grating against metal flashed in the darkness before she heard the groan-snap of the old, weakened guardrail bending and splitting. Marissa finally screamed when the guardrail gave way and her car plunged down the steep, rough bank toward the Orenda River.
    2
    “This weather will discourage some of the guests.” Catherine looked with concern at the cascade of snow on the windshield.
    “Not if they know what’s good for them. Evelyn Addison keeps very close track of her R.S.V.P. list. Only God knows what kind of social disasters might befall someone who misses her Christmas party.”
    Catherine stole a look at James Eastman sitting behind the steering wheel of the silver Lincoln. Even in the dim light of the instrument panel, she could clearly see the sharp angles of his profile, the sturdy chin, the straight nose, the strong forehead. He wore his black hair short at the sides with a sharp part and the top combed neatly to the side. Years ago, Catherine decided he had the physical perfection of a young Sean Connery. Still, she’d been shocked when at twenty-one she’d acknowledged her powerful attraction to the son of the Gray family’s lawyer. She’d told no one except her mother.
    Catherine had idolized her lovely, youthful, joyous mother and confided almost everything to her. No matter how startling or embarrassing Catherine considered the information, Annemarie Gray had never gotten angry, lectured, laughed, or, most important, betrayed a secret. At this moment, Catherine knew her mother would be overjoyed she was on a date with James. Annemarie had always said someday he would open his eyes and see Catherine as a woman, not just one of Bernard Gray’s daughters.
    Someday and an ex-wife later, Catherine still recalled the pain of her devastation when James had married a woman he’d met while attending law school at Tulane in New Orleans. Because her friendship with James had seemed so casual, Catherine had thought only her mother had known the unhappiness she hid beneath her smile the day the family attended James’s wedding at