The Secret Gift Read Online Free PDF

Suddenly there were trees where moments before there had been nothing but open, empty moorland, with huge limbs gnarled from decades, even centuries, of growth. They weighed in on either side of the car, bringing to mind the apple orchard in
The Wizard of Oz.
Any moment now she expected to hear one of them grumble, “She was hungry!” before reaching out its twisted branches to whack her.
    Okay, now she really was beginning to lose it.
    That was it. She was just going to turn around, head back the way she’d come, and spend the night in the post office parking lot if she had to. Libby slowed the car to a halt, yanked the gearshift into reverse. And then ...
    What was that?
    She squinted through the drizzle dotting the windshield. Was that a light she saw ahead?
    Shifting into first gear, she inched forward. She could hear the wheels crunching on gravel, and the rain pelleting the windshield. She scanned the gloom before her. It was so unbelievably dark. She was just beginning to believe she had imagined it when, suddenly, she saw it again.
    A flash of light.
    Libby slowed the car, stopped, and flicked the headlights to high beam, then back to low, once, twice, hoping to draw the attention of whoever it was lurking ahead.
    Success!
    A light flashed in the distance, pointing in her direction and holding steady. Stifling the urge to giggle like a lunatic, Libby rolled forward to meet her rescuer.
    Twenty seconds later, she was slamming the brake pedal to the floor.
    She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out. Not even a gasp.
    Standing before her was a man. She didn’t notice his face, his hair color, or even his height. She couldn’t have said with any certainty later whether he’d been wearing jeans, a kilt, or, for that matter, a taffeta ball gown.
    There was only one thing she could describe in clear detail.
    And that was the gun he had pointed at her windshield.
    Dear God,
she thought fleetingly as she waited for her life to begin flashing before her eyes,
I’ve just driven into some horrible reality television show ...
    She realized then that she could do one of three things. She could floor the gas pedal and run him down, although given the fact that he was about twenty feet from her and aiming a shotgun right at her nose, his first reflex might be to fire. That wouldn’t be very good.
    She could jam the car into reverse, but without any light and the glut of trees she’s just crawled through, she would no doubt ram herself straight into a tree trunk.
    So she did the only other thing she could think of. She put both hands on the steering wheel and blasted the horn.
    The sudden blare, however, didn’t send him fleeing into the night as she’d hoped. Instead he walked straight for her and yanked open the car door. Libby was still leaning on the horn, leaning on it for dear life, staring at him in the way a hapless Transylvanian held up the sign of the cross before an advancing Dracula in the old black-and-white films.
    Very calmly, and without saying a word, the man wrapped his fingers around both her hands and lifted them off the steering wheel.
    The horn went silent.
    He simply stood there, holding her hands and staring at her.
    Libby was too paralyzed to speak. She opened her mouth, but the words wouldn’t come. She stared back at him, at the hardest pair of eyes she’d ever seen, and waited for him to do whatever he intended to do to her.
    And since she had no one left in the world, her absence would scarcely be noticed.
    He let go of her hands. “Get out.”
    Libby jumped at the sound of his voice and fumbled with the seat belt. She tried to unhitch it, but her hands were shaking, trembling, and she couldn’t work the button.
    “I said get out.”
    His voice was deep, terrifyingly calm, and his face was without expression.
    “I’m trying to get out, but I can’t—”
    “I mean get out of here. Turn the car around. And leave. Now.”
    “I—” she stammered, “I was just looking