Lyla couldn't determine if she was crying from the pain he inflicted or because she knew that these were the final moments of her life.

Then unexpectedly, the world shifted on its axis as though everything, all at once, in perfect harmony, went sideways.

She jerked her face free of Keenan's hand, and in doing so, she set his body weight to work against him. His boot skated and gravity took over. He lost his grip on her wrist and stumbled backward down the hill toward the road.

Headlights appeared. Lyla could see the choreography unfolding moment by moment, yet it happened so quickly that there was no way to prevent it. But why would she? Through the fog of intoxication, she understood that this bizarre series of events, this intervention would save her life and send it on an unexpected and unexplainable trajectory.

In that split second, headlights revealed Keenan toppling out of the woods, onto the road, and into the path of the car.

The instant Lyla heard the collision – the sound of two thousand pounds of metal, glass, and plastic making devastating contact with one hundred sixty pounds of flesh and bone – she knew that she had been liberated. When Keenan's limp body cartwheeled across the hood of the car and into the night sky, she felt a sense of relief. She was free, no longer a victim.

The body landed in a heap, twisted and broken, Keenan's rage and violence abruptly extinguished.

The car skidded to an abrupt stop on the pavement. Then silence, a profound stillness.

With her accelerated heart rate, the drug flooded her bloodstream. She watched the driver throw open the door and bolt out onto the asphalt and gravel road. He looked like Jack or a version of Jack entirely drained of color. Or was she hallucinating?

She bounded down the hill toward the scene of the event. Now closer, Lyla could verify that the person standing beside the car was, in fact, Jack. They looked at each other with an equal measure of surprise.

Wide-eyed, and in shock, he blubbered, "What was that? What the hell was that?!"

"Keenan," she gasped. "My car broke down just up the road and he chased me into the woods."

Jack inched to the opposite side of his car. What he found sucked the air out of his lungs. He bent forward, hands on the hood of his vehicle.

Lyla knelt beside the motionless body feeling for a pulse in Keenan's carotid artery, which ran just beneath the blue serpent tattoo on his neck. She shook her head.

"I think... I think... he's dead," she said. The word landed like a hammer.

.....................................................................................................................................................