by Linda Sands
A vehicle came up on the passenger side, pulling out of my blind spot. No telling how long he’d been drafting on my tail. It looked like an ambulance at first—white van with red markings—but there was no light bar, no wailing siren as he passed, just the throaty roar of a souped-up engine.
A clanking sound coming from the trailer caught my attention. Damn. I hadn’t noticed anything in the road. I leaned forward and squinted into the side mirror. The Hummer was still on the driver’s side, closer than before—and gaining.
The van and the orange semi I’d been paralleling had shifted into the exit lane.
The Hummer took off like a cop on a call. His headlamps lit the empty road ahead, bouncing off the huge curving cement wall on my side of the highway. I had never understood the reason for a three-story wall on this section of road. Boone said it was designed to hold back the earth and preserve natural surroundings. I thought that was a load of shit. Developers were probably too cheap to level the land.
It took me a second to register that the red lights that appeared suddenly in front of me were the brake lights of the Hummer. His big tires squealed and smoked as he skidded across two lanes and pulled a 180—something I would have thought impossible. He flipped on his high beams, then the spotlights on top of his truck.
“Fuck!” I yelled, blinded. I pulled hard to the right and felt the trailer fight back. I stood on the brakes and felt a tug, then a snap as the trailer rotated ninety degrees. Then it broke in half. Forty thousand pounds of steel and paper headed right for me, while the weight and momentum of the rest of the trailer pulled in the opposite direction. The more I tried to downshift and brake, the closer the Hummer and the cement wall seemed. How could that be?
It all only took a few seconds, but in the slow-motion way that bad shit tries to rationalize with your brain, I saw it all too clearly.
The breaking back end of the trailer, taillights of the exiting orange semi, fire leaping from my brakes igniting the paper, the tipping of the sleeper, the wrenching and popping of riveted steel. Then Boone was there, one hand on the steering wheel with mine, right before we flipped, as if we could control the laws of physics if we just tried hard enough. When Boone flew through the air I thought about gravity. Then I thought, Where’s all that red paint coming from?
The cement wall acted as a guardrail as Old Blue dragged her load. The screech and scrape of metal against asphalt, metal against concrete, was deafening. Sparks flew, glass imploded.
I never felt the final impact.
Everything was sideways. Pinned to my chair by the seatbelt, I hung a foot above the ground, smelling fire and gasoline. The radio might have still been playing, but the crackling, miniature explosions and whine in my ears were too loud to let me hear anything else. Every bone in my body ached. I shook my head to clear it.
Boone.
Through the broken windshield, I saw him on the highway. He looked like an acrobat in the Chinese circus, the ones who bend themselves into small, clear boxes. I wanted to curl up just like him and take a long nap.
Someone approached. They stood over Boone, a shadow man caught in the lights of the Hummer. He looked in my direction, at Old Blue tipped and broken, at the burning load of paper, at a river of flammable fluids, then turned away. Sirens wailed in the distance.
I clawed at the seatbelt digging into my chest and neck. It took two tries to get it to release. I didn’t figure on the fall. Broken glass, twisted metal. My head pounded a thudding, nauseating rhythm. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing it away as I dragged myself out of the cab. Shards of glass ground into my palms and elbows as I pulled my legs clear of the steering wheel, then the dash and the hot metal hood. Every movement sent a sharp stab of pain. Every stab of pain cleared my vision a bit more so that I could see Shadowman bent over Boone, touching him. I tried to yell. Nothing but a low moan. The sound of a wounded animal. Not me. Blood ran into my eyes. Sirens grew louder. Shadowman dropped Boone, ran to the Hummer, killed the lights, and drove off.
I tried to stand. My leg gave out beneath me. I screamed. Double Boones wavered in my vision as I rose to one knee and made my way to him, part limp, part drag, part scoot-and-crawl, like a zombie marathon.
I collapsed beside him. “Boone?”
My hands searched his face. “Baby?”
I put my ear to his mouth then his nose, seeking his breath. “Don’t you die on me, you hear me, Tyler Boone? Listen, they’re coming. Help is coming. I need you to hold on.”
He moved his lips. A hissing sound came from somewhere. He was leaking.
He whispered, “Love you always,” and then what sounded like “highwayman.”
I kissed his face again and again. “I love you, Boone. It’s going to be okay. You’ll see. It’s all going to be fine.”
I patted his chest, abdomen, his hips where his pockets were inside out. His body seemed smaller, weaker—none of his limbs were in the right places.
He smelled wrong too, not like my man, not like pine and sweat, but like piss and copper.
He smelled like shattered dreams.
Watch for Grand Theft Cargo, Precious Cargo, and more books in the Cargo trucker mystery series by Linda Sands, coming soon to wherever great books are sold.