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Five hours.
That’s how long she’d been driving already, and Breanna hadn’t even reached the state line yet. Maybe she should’ve stayed on I-5 instead of cutting over to Route 39, but that’s the way her GPS sent her, so she took it. Cranking up the tunes, she passed Klamath Falls and grinned. “Seventeen more miles.”
With her Spotify playlist blasting, she excitedly waved goodbye to Oregon as the ‘Welcome to California’ sign appeared. The state of her birth, though she would be nowhere close to her family in LA. She hadn’t even told her mom she was making the trip. She’d only worry. Besides, just hearing the name Dalton made Sarah Benjamin sad. It surprised Breanna she got to keep her dad’s last name.
Bad blood between her mother and her late father’s family. Namely, her grandmother, Valerie Dalton, whom Breanna had never even met. She’d never met Shane Dalton either—not that she could remember, anyway. He died when she was just a baby.
So when she received an official-looking letter from St. John, Maynard & St. John, Attorneys at Law, on her grandmother’s behalf, requesting her presence at Dalton House, it aroused her curiosity. What did Valerie Dalton want? Breanna doubted it was a desire to meet her son’s only child after twenty-one years. But it could be, right? The woman had to be in her seventies now. Maybe she’d had a sudden change of heart in her old age.
Yeah, and maybe shit doesn’t stink.
The correspondence, signed by one Derek St. John, said little. No clue why she was being summoned. He only stated he was following the wishes of his client and advised Breanna to plan to get there before the Thanksgiving holiday—and the arrival of winter weather in the Sierra Nevada. Mountain roads can be treacherous when the snow comes.
Did he think she was an idiot?
Chrissakes, just because she was a California girl, didn’t mean she’d never driven in snow before.
After marinating on it for a week, she left word with the lawyer’s secretary to let him know when to expect her. The week of Thanksgiving break would have to do, and too bad if Derek St. John or her grandmother didn’t like it. Breanna had friends to see, parties to go to, and classes to attend. Okay, she was on the flexible undergrad track for her BA in English. If she wanted to, she could log into lectures on her laptop, comfy in her pajamas, from the sofa in her apartment—or from anywhere, for that matter, but the old lady didn’t need to know that.
Her gaze flicked over to the snow-capped range of peaks to the east. Overcast, the midday sky looked dreary, but the clouds weren’t ominous. Yet. She’d be fine. But Breanna still had five hundred miles, some seven hours of driving left before she reached her destination, and her ass was already numb.
A hundred and forty miles later, her bottom screaming at her to get up and stretch, gas gauge down to a quarter tank, she got off the highway. Refuel. Restroom. Coffee. There was no time to waste if she wanted to reach Dalton House before dark. Estimating she’d only need to make one more stop after this one, Breanna stood in line, Styrofoam cup in hand, rubbing circulation into her aching backside with the other. As long as the weather held, and barring any unforeseen hazards on the road, she should be good.
Her ass protesting once more, she sat back down behind the wheel, burning her tongue on the steaming hot battery acid that passed for gas station coffee. Yuck. Breanna grimaced into the cup, her phone vibrating on the center console.
“Hey, Kay,” she answered.
“Just checking on you. You there yet?”
Kayleigh, her closest friend at college, and her roommate, was a worrywart. An old mother hen in a twenty-year-old body. She was the girl who forbade the consumption of jungle juice at parties—especially those held on Greek Row, cockblocked the fuckboys, and forced her to eat something besides cheap ramen noodles for dinner. And Breanna loved her for it. God only knows just how many bad decisions she’d saved her from.
“Hell, no.” She expelled some air, tipping her head back against the seat. “Just made it to 395.”
“You’re not being safe.” Breanna could just picture Kayleigh shaking her head. “You should stop. Get a room and rest for the night.”
“No, I’ll be fine,” she assured her. “It’s only a few more hours.”
“Stubborn.” Kayleigh sighed through the phone. “Have you even bothered checking the weather, Bree? They’re predicting—”
“Snow. I know.” Swallowing a sip of the putrid battery acid, she glanced up at the sky. “I’ll be there long before it gets here, so don’t worry, okay?”
“Yeah, I bet that’s what the Donner Party said too, and look what happened to them.”
“So dramatic,” Breanna said, chuckling at the historical reference. “I think it’s pretty safe to assume no one’s going to be eating me—dead or alive.”
Kayleigh giggled. “Well, should that lawyer guy or Grandmama serve fava beans and a nice chianti at dinner? Run. Fast.”
“Will do.” And she started her car. “I’ll text you when I get there.”
The cloud cover grew more dense the farther she drove. No longer merely overcast, the sky appeared heavy, saturated in a deepening gray. Breanna wasn’t too concerned, though. According to her GPS, Dalton House was less than an hour away.
Like a good, obedient girl, she exited off the highway as the robotic British male voice instructed her to. She preferred him to the Siri-sounding woman. A checkpoint was set up on the road in front of a mom-and-pop store. Coming to a stop, Breanna lowered her window.
“Evening, miss.”
She tipped her chin. “Hello.”
“You’re gonna need to get chains on those tires before I can let you through. We’re expecting a doozy of a storm. Can’t have you getting stuck out there on the pass.”
