Anthony’s words from days before pinged in my head.
All it takes is one phone call to make him disappear for good…
A smile crossed my face. “And he will,” I said with finality. “Come hell or high water, his reign of terror is coming to an end. One way or another.”
Done saying what I needed to say, I turned and walked away.
Thirty-Six
Ty
“What we got, Cap?”
Seated on the jump seat next to Tuck in 24’s main ladder truck, I waited for Cap to answer Hendrix. Focused on the bullshit running unchecked through my head, I’d missed the dispatch call that came in minutes before.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one.
Cap leaned forward and twisted the knob on the call radio, cranking up the volume.
Static filled the air.
Then, “Medic requested at the 3500 block of Highway 3, Toluca. Multiple vehicle collision. Multiple persons requiring assistance. One male. Early fifties. Fatality expected.”
“Shit,” Kyle said, shaking his head. “People fly up and down that damn highway. Some idiot probably tried to take one of the curves in the rain and lost control. Ravines hug each side of the road so who the hell knows what we’re about to ride up on.”
The radio crackled once more.
“Medic requested at the 3500 block of Highway 3, Toluca,” the dispatcher repeated. “Multiple vehicle collision. One female. Early-twenties. Unconscious. Multiple injuries suspected...”
My entire body froze.
Highway 3.
One female.
Early-twenties.
“Cap,” I said, my chest rising and falling. “Radio Tank now!”
More static. “… Fatality likely.”
“It’s not her,” I said, feeling my heart twist, tearing itself apart from the inside out. “It’s not…”
It was.
I didn’t know how I knew it.
But I did.
Raising my hand, I slammed my fist into the back of Cap’s seat. “Goddammit no!”
Hendrix and Tuck were silent beside me.
Cap’s face went paler than a ghost’s.
Curly, the engine driver, looked ready to puke.
“Step on it, Curly!” I screamed, unbuckling myself from the seat.
The truck’s engine roared as he did exactly as I demanded.
Like a bullet fired from a loaded gun, we took off, speeding through the rain that poured from the Georgia night sky in heavy bands, making it impossible to see more than twenty feet in front of us.
“Hold on!” he yelled. “Dead Man’s Curve is coming up!”
I grabbed onto the overhead rail as we took the curve that had taken the lives of more people than I could count at top speed.
The truck’s tires squealed against the wet pavement, fighting like hell to grip the asphalt. Hendrix slammed into the door beside him as a string of curses flew from Cap’s mouth.
Ignoring everything except the flashing blue lights before us, I stared out the front windshield, my eyes frantically searching the scene for my Angel’s car.
I almost sighed in relief when I didn’t see it anywhere.
But then I saw the tire tracks, followed by the busted guardrail and I swear to Christ, what remained of my heart shattered.
Before the truck came to a complete stop, I was out the door and running.
Kyle ran next to me, matching me step for step.
Reaching the embankment that led to the ravine below, I jumped over what remained of the guardrail and peered down the slope.
My eyes found the car immediately.
Silver. Ford Focus. Busted to hell.
No, no, no!
“Heidi!” Needing to get to her, I charged forward, not giving a fuck about the drop or how steep it was. One misstep was all it would take for me to fall and break my neck. “Angel!”
Halfway to her, I slipped, landing on my side.
With nothing to stop me, I started sliding quickly.
Digging my boots into the ground, I managed to stop my descent right as I reached the tail end of her car. Jumping up, I ran around to the driver’s side where an older highway patrolman stood, not doing a damn thing to help her.
“Get the fuck out of the way,” I barked, ready to throw him further down into the ravine if need be.
Ripping his flashlight from his hand, I slammed my shoulder into him, ignoring the threats he slung my way and forcibly moved him away from the place where I needed to be.
Please God…
Let her be alive.
Since the side of the car was caved in, completely unrecognizable, I didn’t even try to open the door. Instead, I placed my ungloved hands on the busted window and leaned inside.
I’d seen a lot of bad things in my life, some beyond horrible, but nothing—and I mean nothing—compared to seeing Heidi’s mangled body, blood-covered face and purple lips.
It was my undoing.
“Oh fuck,” I cried, pressing my shaking fingers into the side of her neck. “Come on, baby, stay with me!”
Relief washed through me when I found her pulse.
She’s alive.
Terror seized me when I counted the beats.
She’s dying.
Knowing that we needed to move her fast, I backed up and stood straight. “I need a goddamn medic! Tuck!”
“Yo!” I turned my head to the right, following the sound of his voice. Kneeling at the back end of the car, he was pulling supplies out of a med bag. Tossing me an IV start kit, he stood. “Get that in her arm, and I’ll collar her. Spine board is on the way. Tell me what else you need.” His voice was calm despite the panic covering his face.
If Heidi dies, he’ll lose part of Carissa too.
Leaning back in the car, I shined the flickering light over her body, assessing each of her injuries. “Fuck,” I cursed, seeing her legs trapped beneath the warped dash. “She’s pinned.”
“Where?”
“Legs. Thighs down.”
“Hendrix!” he screamed. “We need a wench and the jaws!”
Hendrix hollered something back, but I couldn’t tell you what it was. My focus was on Heidi. “I’m here, Angel,” I said as Tuck shoved a crowbar in the passenger door and used his weight to pry the crushed metal open. “You’re going to be fine, baby,” I whispered as I fought to hold myself together. “Just keep breathing for me.”
After climbing over the broken glass covering the seat, he slipped a cervical collar around her neck, securing it as I worked on tapping the vein in the bend of her arm.
“You hang on,” Kyle said, strapping an O2 mask to her face. “Do you hear me, Heidi?” Face pale, he kept talking. “I’ve already lost one sister. I won’t lose another.”
Successfully hitting her vein, I slid her IV into place and secured it.
Just let her make it to the ambulance…
Blowing out a breath, I pushed her blood-soaked hair from her face and gently pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Goddammit, Heidi,” I said, feeling a tear slip free. “You can’t do this.” Desperation mixed with anger swirled in my chest. “You don’t get to leave me. Not now, and not ever!”
“Jacobs…”
Tuck’s words faded away as I focused on my Angel. “I know you can hear me,” I told her. “Baby, listen to me, I need you to fight.” Reaching down, I took her limp hand in mine. “I need you to fight to stay with me.” Tear after tear fell down my cheeks as I begged her soul to stay with mine. “Cause without you, I won’t make it.”
“Ty, man you’ve gotta step back! Jaws are here, and we need to get her out of the car!” I could hear Tuck’s shouted demands, but they didn’t register.
My hands cupped Heidi’s battered cheeks. “You promised me forever.” I kissed her once more. “Our forever hasn’t started yet.”
“Ty!” Kyle shouted again, but I didn’t move.
I couldn’t.
I can’t leave her.
“Get
him the hell back,” Cap shouted at someone. “And keep him back!”
“Man…” Hendrix’s voice echoed in my ear half a second before his arms wrapped around me like two boa constrictors and jerked me back, tearing me away from the woman who was my heart, soul, and everything in between.
“No!” I screamed, more scared than I’d been in my entire life. “Cole, let me go!”
I’d almost broken free of Hendrix’s hold when Curly rushed over and helped restrain my arms, effectively holding me in place. “Heidi!” I screamed as Cap, and the rest of my team maneuvered around the car, preparing to free my Angel with the jaws-of-life. “Baby, you fight! Do you hear me? You fucking fight!”
The sound of grinding metal filled the air.
The popping of the PVC dash followed.
“She’s loose!” Tuck bellowed. “Get me the spine board!”
I could do nothing but helplessly watch as Cap rushed to help Tuck and one of the rookies load my girl onto the spine board. “We’ve gotta get her up the hill,” Cap said, looking from the board to the steep climb. “If we don’t, she’s not going to make it.”
His words gave me the fuel I needed.
Her not making it isn’t an option…
Ripping free of Hendrix and Curly’s holds, I rushed forward.
Slipping both of my hands into the front slots on the side of the board, I looked from Cap to Tuck. “We’re gonna make it up that hill.”
“Hell yes we are,” Tuck said, grabbing the other side.
“I need all hands on deck!” Cap shouted. “Now!”
Ignoring the individual men who piled around me, surrounding the board, I focused on Heidi as Cap spoke once more. “Alright,” he said. “On the count of three.”
“You don’t let go, Heidi,” I demanded, willing her to listen.
“One!” Cap began to count.
“You dig deep, and you fight!”
My voice cracked.
“Two!” he continued.
“I mean it, baby, you don’t let go!”
More tears fell.
“Three!”
Pulling in one last breath, I lifted.
Holding her steady, we started to move.
My last thought as we headed up the hill? God, if you’re listening, please don’t take her. But if you must, take me too.
Thirty-Seven
Ty
I was numb.
Covered in a mixture of mud and blood, I kneeled next to the nurse’s station in the Emergency Room, waiting for someone to give me an update. I felt like I’d been there forever, but in reality it hadn’t been more than an hour, hour and a half max.
“Ty!”
I turned my head and glanced over my shoulder at the sound of Carissa’s grief-stricken shout. Dressed in a pair of pajama pants and one of Tuck’s hoodies, she stormed toward me, her hair pulled up in a messy blonde knot on top of her head. Tears stained her splotchy cheeks and I could see her body trembling from over twenty feet away.
Maddie and Grandmama burst through the door behind her, their terrified expressions matching my own.
Standing, I slid my shaking hands into my pockets and waited for all three to reach me.
“T-tell me,” Carissa stuttered, coming to a standstill in front of me. “Tell me, she’s not g-gone.” Shaking her head wildly, she wrapped her arms around herself, seemingly trying to hold herself together. “My baby s-sister, she c-can’t—”
Without thinking about what I was doing, I reached out and pulled her into my arms. Burying her face against my chest, she twined her arms around my back and held me tight. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t hold back the tears that filled my eyes.
I hadn’t cried since I was a kid, around five maybe, but when it came to my woman I couldn’t keep my shit in check. I’d cried the night she kissed my scars, and I’d cried the day she confessed to loving me.
And now? Keeping them at bay was impossible.
“She’s hanging on,” I said, burying my face in Carissa’s hair. “She coded in the ambulance, but we got her back.”
Carissa jerked her head back; our gazes met. “I don’t u-understand…”
When Maddie and Grandmama reached us, I unwound my arms from C and took a step back. I hated letting her go, but I needed to take a breath. “I’m waiting on the doc now, but from what I saw, it’s a miracle she’s still here.”
“Oh Jesus,” Grandmama cried, clutching the neck of the floral nightgown she wore. “What’s wrong with her?” Her panicked eyes met mine. “You tell me, right now, Ty! You tell me what’s wrong with my grandbaby!”
I felt like throwing up.
The fear, the anger, the goddamn trepidation; they all swirled in the pit of my gut, making my stomach churn. “Like I said, I’m still waiting on the doc, but from what I could tell…” I paused and drew in a deep breath. Recalling the shape she’d been in, along with the injuries that had marred her beautiful body was enough to send me headfirst into an emotional tailspin, something I couldn’t afford to do.
I could lose my shit later.
But right then, I had to hang on.
I have to fight…
Just like I asked her too.
“She has an open ankle fracture on her right leg.”
“What’s that mean?” Maddie asked, speaking up for the first time.
“It means the bone completely fractured and busted through the skin.” Carissa gasped, but I kept talking. “There was also a deep laceration on her inner right thigh that caused her to lose a lot of blood, but that’s fixable.”
When I hesitated to say more, Grandmama jumped my ass. “Yeah? And what ain’t fixable?” Her chin wobbled and her old eyes glossed over with tears. “Tell us, Troublemaker. It’s better for us to find out now than when the rest of the clan pours in here, which should be any minute now.”
My jaw ticked and the pain boiling in my veins morphed into rage. “It’s her head.”
Three words.
That’s all it took for them to understand how serious this was.
“I don’t know if we’re looking at something as simple as a concussion, or something a helluva lot worse, but she hasn’t regained consciousness. There could also be other issues. Her neck, her back.”
“Tell me my Bug was wearing her seatbelt,” Grandmama said, closing her eyes. “If she wasn’t, why I swear I’m gonna—”
“She was,” I answered, interrupting Grandmama’s tirade before she could get started. “It helped keep her restrained, but the car rolled off the road and then flipped sixty feet down into the ravine that hugs the side of Highway 3. From what I saw, the airbags didn’t deploy, and I swear to Christ I don’t know how the fuck she held on.”
Backing up a step, Carissa covered her head with her palms. “How are they going to f-fix her?”
“I don’t know, C,” I replied, honestly. “Depends on what the test results say.”
Maddie, who’d dealt with her own serious head injury in the past, bit the tip of her thumb and asked, “Are they doing a CT scan?”
I nodded. “They had to stabilize her first, but the nurse said she went in about thirty minutes ago.”
As soon as the words left my mouth, my crew stormed through the hospital’s sliding glass doors. Like me, Hendrix, Tuck, and Cap were covered in blood, mud, and Christ only knows what else.
Upon seeing her husband, Carissa turned and ran for him. Leaping into his arms, she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face against his shoulder. “It’s gonna be alright, Princess,” he said, closing his eyes. “Heidi’s tough as hell. She’ll get through this.”
“Handsome,” Maddie said, looking at Hendrix. “I need you tell me that she’s going to be okay.” Until that point, she’d done well at keeping her shit together. But the moment Hendrix pulled her into his arms and just held onto her, she fell apart.
I may never hold Heidi again…
I pushed the thought away, refusing to let it take root.
Like Kyle said
, my woman was tough.
As terrified as I was, I knew she’d make it.
I wasn’t giving her any other choice.
Standing next to me, Cap gripped my shoulder just like he’d done back at the station. “You hanging in there?”
I nodded but remained silent.
What the hell was I supposed to say?
“Anybody call Daryl yet?” he asked, looking from me to Tuck.
It was Tuck’s turn to nod. “I did, but I didn’t go into detail, so I’d appreciate it if nobody else did either. All I told him was that Heidi had been in an accident and he needed to get his ass back to town. Right or wrong, I didn’t want him to have a heart attack on the way back or kill himself trying to get here.”
I understood that.
As messed up as the situation had left me, I couldn’t imagine it being my little girl that had been hurt. I’m pretty sure I would die trying to get back to her.
“Good,” Cap answered. “Where’s all the kids?”
Grandmama whipped a hanky out of her purse and blotted her eyes. “Shelby’s got em’. Dottie, Felix, Clara and Brantley are over there helping her watch em’ all.”
“What about Charlotte and Hope?”
“They’re both at the shelter, along with Evan. And before you ask, Keith is at work, and Anthony got called out on a homicide call.”
Cap turned his attention back to me. “You talk to Chase?”
Sliding my hands into my pockets, I leaned back against the nurse’s desk. “Yeah. Him, Ashley, and Papaw are on the way now. He said Ashley’s a wreck.”
Maddie flinched at my words, setting off alarm bells in my head. “You got something you need to tell me, Freckles?”
Clutching Hendrix tight, Maddie fell apart further. “They were on the phone with one another”—she paused and blew out a breath—“when it happened.”
Rage welled up in my chest. “Heidi was on the goddamn phone?” My voice came out louder and a helluva lot harsher than I intended.
“Watch it,” Hendrix snarled, his eyes flashing with warning. “I know you’re upset, but if you ever raise your voice to my wife again you’ll be needing somebody to pick you up off the floor.”
Every Wrong You Right: A Redeeming Love Novel (Book 6) Page 28