Dead Woman Driving: Episode 7: The Last Death: Dead Woman Driving, #7

By Sue Ann Jaffarian

After Kate and Michael rescue Sarah, Holly and Holly's two children from the Willits farm, Kate is tasked with getting Holly and her kids to the Hopkins' Compound in Missouri. On their first day on the road, they learn that someone has killed the Willitses and burned their farm to the ground, making Sarah and Holly the prime suspects. As Kate drives her charges to Missouri as fast as possible, she hits an unexpected speed bump from her past. Will it expose the truth about her?

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Novel RV
• Release date: Jun 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201227166

Book preview

DEAD WOMAN DRIVING

A Serial Novel

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EPISODE 7

THE LAST DEATH

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by

Sue Ann Jaffarian

CHAPTER

ONE

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The dream was a bad one. Kate was holding a baseball bat aloft, about to bring it down hard on John Willits and his wife while they were seated in a rusted child’s wagon, their hands and feet bound. A few feet away, Michael watched the pending execution while eating pie and ice cream, like it was entertainment.

Kate woke with a start, sitting bolt upright in bed, catapulted by the horror. Her forehead was damp, her body chilled. She fell back against her pillow and looked up, confused. She wasn’t in her bed in her trailer or even in her trailer at all. She focused on the off-white popcorn ceiling above her. For a brief moment she thought she was back in Ozzie’s RV after he had found her half dead in the desert. Slowly her brain caught up with her eyes. She was in a double bed in a motel room. The Eagle Motel, she recalled as the veil of sleep lifted, a small single-story motel painted the color of baked red clay. It was situated on a small highway north of Albuquerque, New Mexico, blending in with the desert around it as if organically grown there. The Eagle Motel was the kind of cheap motel that dotted American highways back in the 1950s and 1960s before interstates and cheap motel chains sprang up like fungi in a forest. Ozzie was gone. He had saved her life less than a year ago, but it seemed a lifetime ago.

Glancing over to check the digital clock on the nightstand, she saw it was only 3:34 a.m. A soft snore came from the double bed on the other side of the nightstand. It was Michael, catching up on his own rest. Reaching for her phone that was plugged in and recharging on the nightstand, she confirmed the time and checked for messages. There were none. She leaned back deeper into the pillows and closed her eyes, not for sleep but for reflection, until her bladder insisted she get up. After relieving herself, Kate curled up in a chair next to a small round table and studied Michael as he slept. There were two chairs at the table, nondescript in design. There was no dresser, just a luggage stand, and a small closet with wire hangers but no door. The walls were painted a dull cream. The bathroom was just as utilitarian. No frills, but it got the job done.

The day before had been long and stressful. She and Michael had rescued their target, Sarah Browning, from the Willits farm, along with the unexpected baggage of Holly and her two young children. They had driven for hours, stopping only a few times along the way, until they had reached the Eagle Motel, a sometimes safe house for the crew that worked for Bill and Sharon Hopkins, or The Agency as Kate called it.

There had been many phone calls last night between the Hopkinses and them. Bill was facilitating the pickup of Sarah by her parents. What would happen to Holly and her children was still up in the air. Holly had made it clear that, unlike Sarah, she did not want to go back to her home in Alabama, which she left when she ran off with Marcus Fallbrook. Both she and Sarah had been enticed by Marcus away from their homes at the age of eighteen with the promise of love and marriage, only to discover that they would be sold into bogus marriages to members of a rural religious sect in Texas. Rescuing Sarah had been their mission. Getting Holly and her children away from a life of slavery had been bonus points.

You okay? The question came from the other bed.

Yeah, Kate responded. I can’t get back to sleep.

We have a busy day tomorrow, Michael said, his voice thick. He’d kept watch over their charges until 2 a.m.,