by A. J. Thomas
“Huh?”
“Nate, you’ve always been so damn perfect it was nearly sickening. Perfect grades in high school, offers from every college you applied to, LSAT scores that could get you into any law school you wanted… and you never got excited about any of it. Not once. When you came out, I was so relieved just to know you weren’t going to be a carbon copy of Dad. I figured you’d go nuts, go out clubbing, do normal young adult stuff, you know?”
“I go to clubs. Sometimes.”
“But you were never eager. You were never excited about anything. You were so caught up in making Dad happy that you were more like a robot than a human being.”
“I don’t think I’m that bad. We’ve all got different interests, that’s all.”
“Do you know how many boyfriends of yours I’ve heard about? None. Have there been any?”
“Well, not really. It never seemed like dating would be worthwhile. I mean, I’ll go out and have fun every now and then, but it’s never been a big deal.”
“Exactly! Crazy as it sounds, if this guy makes you worked up enough to mope through dinner, to swear, to fling your phone across the room, and to get a tattoo, you should hold on to him with everything you’ve got.”
“I’m not sure if that’s encouraging or insulting,” he said, chuckling despite himself.
“Both?”
“Pull in here,” Nate said, pointing to the shopping center. “Right there by the Chinese place.”
All of the spaces in front of the shop were empty. “Lights are out. You sure he’s still here?”
“The front lights are off, but the lights in the shop are still on. His Jeep’s gone, but if he’s not here, he’ll be back.” Nate dug out his phone, said a silent prayer of thanks that it was still in one piece, and tried calling again.
“How late does he work?” Steven asked.
“Oh, he lives here.”
Steven tried not to look more surprised, but his smile grew as he chuckled. “And I thought seeing Mom and Dad’s expressions when I introduced them to Cheryl was going to be the high point of this week.”
Once again Sean’s cell went straight to voicemail. Nate climbed out of the car and went to the door. It was locked, but he knocked. After a moment of staring into the dark, quiet shop, he set his head against the glass, ready to accept that Sean wasn’t even willing to talk to him at the moment. He dialed Sean’s cell again and this time left a quick message asking Sean to call him back, then put his phone away. Leaving twenty messages on Sean’s voicemail wasn’t going to help the situation, and he was already approaching creepy stalker behavior.
He was turning back to get into the car when he saw Sean’s Jeep driving toward the parking lot entrance. The Jeep’s right turn signal blinked as it slowed down. Even from across the parking lot, Nate heard the rumble of a big engine downshifting.
A cream-colored Range Rover that had been sedately following behind the Jeep surged forward, crashing into the passenger door with a sickeningly loud crunch that echoed around the vacant streets.
“Oh, God,” Nate whispered, sprinting toward Sean’s Jeep and fumbling to dial 9-1-1. There was no flash of brake lights, no squeal of tires slowing down as the Range Rover pushed the Jeep sideways onto the sidewalk. When the Jeep finally came to a stop, the Range Rover’s backup lights flashed white as it pulled back into the road.
“You aren’t going to get away with a hit-and-run!” he yelled, switching his phone’s camera on. He snapped a half-dozen quick pictures, determined to get the plate number before the Range Rover took off.
Instead of racing down the street, the Range Rover lunged forward again, slamming into the passenger door again. The impact folded the Jeep into a mangled V-shape, leaving the passenger door and the seat behind it utterly destroyed.
His heart was beating so hard his pulse seemed to vibrate through his head. His muscles screamed at him as he pushed toward the Jeep, everything forgotten except the simple fact that Sean couldn’t have been in the driver’s seat, where he might have survived.
After idling for a few seconds, the Range Rover’s engine revved again. The vehicle drove around the Jeep’s bumper and sped down the road. Nate ran over the shattered glass and plastic, tugging at the passenger door. The driver’s-side airbag had deployed, but for some reason the passenger side hadn’t gone off.
“Nate, over here!” Steven shouted from the other side. “I called 9-1-1, but she’s hurt bad.”
“Tonya?” Nate called, running around the Jeep. “No, don’t move her, you could hurt her worse!”
But Tonya was moving herself, her head lolling from side to side as blood dripped down her left temple. She cradled her arm in her lap and didn’t even seem to notice that they were there. The steering wheel was torqued toward the door, the passenger seat pushed up until all that was left of the seat cushion was level with Tonya’s head, and the center console between them was gone, buried beneath bits of twisted metal.
“I can’t even get the door open!” Steven shouted.
Nate crouched low and grabbed the bottom of the door. “Watch out for the broken glass. Grab the door frame and pull from the top,” he said, bracing his legs against the main body of the Jeep. They tugged at the door until Nate felt like his own muscles might tear from the strain, but the door wouldn’t budge.
“Tonya?” Sean’s voice came from behind him, close and panicked. “Oh, shit. Did you call an ambulance?”
“Sean!” Nate shouted, guilty relief flooding through him.
Sean’s empty wheelchair sat by the curb, and Sean stood bracing himself on a single forearm crutch. “Tonya, honey, can you hear me?” Sean called, reaching in through the broken driver’s window.
“We called 9-1-1,” Steven explained. “But she’s stuck. The door won’t budge.”
“Calm down or go sit down,” Sean said. Moving slowly and keeping most of his weight on the crutch, Sean stumbled into the side of the Jeep and reached down to the door lock between Nate and Steven. Damaged as it was, the lock still clicked. Nate stopped pulling on the bottom of the door and tried the handle, but it didn’t move. Sean raised a two-foot-long crowbar in one hand. “You.” He pointed at Steven. “Move.”
With a gulp and a nod, Steven shuffled out of the way.
Sean positioned the crowbar in the seam of the door where the frame seemed to be the most warped. “Pull,” he ordered. Nate grabbed the handle with both hands and tried to wrench the door open while Sean leaned on the end of the crowbar. The door popped open with a clang that left Nate sprawled on his ass, while Sean fell against the side of the Jeep, the crowbar clattering into the gutter at his feet. Sean ducked inside and gently checked on Tonya.
“Sean?” she gasped, trying to turn toward him.
“Don’t move her,” Nate said, getting back on his feet. “Help is on the way, but try to stay still, okay?”
Sean looked over the tangled mess of his Jeep, his expression difficult to read.
“What do we do now?” Steven asked, gesturing to where Tonya sat moaning.
“I… I don’t know,” Nate admitted, feeling helpless. Oh, he could find a million statistics about accident victims, about malpractice and negligence on the part of rescue workers resulting in devastating medical outcomes. But he didn’t have a clue what they actually did.
“We wait for help,” Sean said calmly. “Her airway is clear, she’s breathing okay, and her pulse is steady. So we wait for an ambulance.”
After six minutes that felt like an eternity, paramedics in blue coveralls were gently but firmly pushing them all out of the way. Sean made it four steps before he pitched forward as if in a daze. Nate dove to catch him around the waist. Sean wrapped his arm around Nate’s shoulders and neck, letting Nate take his weight as he fumbled with the crutch. “How’d you….”
“I walked,” Sean whispered, gesturing to a second crutch that had fallen haphazardly on the ground by his wheelchair. The reality of the accident seemed to finally catch up with him, hi
s calm facade crumbling. “I came out to answer the door and saw you running. She was… she was going to get me tacos. She’s….”
Nate felt Sean trembling and pulled him close. “Alive,” Nate whispered against his ear. “She’s alive. We’ll follow her to the hospital.” And Sean was alive. Nate clung to him, running his hands through Sean’s hair and over his shoulders in a selfish, desperate attempt to prove Sean was real, safe, and standing with him.
“Excuse me, gentlemen, could I speak to each of you about what happened here?” A large man in a police uniform shined a flashlight into Nate’s face.
“I got a couple of pictures of the SUV that hit her,” Nate volunteered.
“I’ll need to get some information from each of you,” the officer said, flipping out a tiny notebook.
Sean leaned away from Nate. The flashlight trailed down Sean’s body, where the loose sweatpants he’d shown up to the courthouse in had been replaced with a worn-out pair of shorts. Where the new prosthetic was attached to his leg, smooth black fabric extended up over his stump and knee. Sean’s shocked expression vanished in an instant, replaced with a defensive look Nate hadn’t expected.
The officer looked flustered, at least. “Why don’t you come sit down in the cruiser over here while you tell us what you saw? We can get yours out of the way first.”
Sean shifted nervously as he took in the distance.
“You okay doing this out here?” Nate asked Sean.
“Delany, could you grab me that?” Sean whispered, nodding to the crutch he seemed to have dropped.
“Of course,” he said, ignoring how much it hurt to hear the distant way Sean had used his last name. He retrieved the crutch and held it up, waiting a moment while Sean slipped his arm into the padded semicircular forearm brace that extended up from the handle.
Resisting the urge to reach out and help was hard, but Nate knew from the quick glare Sean sent him that offering help Sean hadn’t specifically asked for would just make him angry. Nearby, Steven had already been pulled aside by another officer and was giving a statement that involved frantic hand gestures and a lot of pacing. Feeling useless once again, all he could do was watch as a team of paramedics removed Tonya from the Jeep and loaded her onto a stretcher, talking to her calmly as they whisked her away.
When Steven was finished, he jogged over, his expression grim. “You’re up, Nate.”
The policewoman who joined them had a large legal pad out already. “Join me over here?” she asked with a smile.
He described the accident as best he could—recalling everything from the direction both vehicles were moving to the sound of the engines.
“I’m not sure I understand,” she said at last. “The SUV that ran into this vehicle backed up and hit it again?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She frowned. “Are you sure? Maybe the angle was off and it impacted the bumper trying to go around the wreckage?”
“I’m absolutely sure.” He brought up the still photos on his phone and held it up for her to see while he swiped through. “When it backed up after the first crash, I thought the driver was going to take off, so I snapped a picture,” he explained. “I was shaking, so I actually took a lot of pictures.” He swiped through two more that showed the Range Rover plowing into the Jeep. “That’s the second impact.”
“May I take a look at these?” she asked, holding her hand out for the phone.
“Of course.”
She shook her head slightly, staring between the photos and the Jeep. “We’ve got a new policy for evidence taken from third-party phones and cameras. I’ll have to check with my supervisor just to make sure—but I think you can email it to an HPD account, as long as I witness you sending the email from your device.”
“Really? That preserves the chain of custody?” he asked, surprised.
She shrugged. “It’s what the city attorney’s office told us to do, but I don’t think they’re too sure about it either. If there’s any surveillance footage from the gas station across the street, we should be just fine getting the pictures by email.”
“Huh. Well, if not, I’ll surrender my phone if it helps you catch that guy. It caused a lot of damage on the second impact,” he continued. “Some kind of road rage nightmare, maybe.”
She turned the phone to the side and pulled her fingers across the screen, zooming in on the license plate. “It’s a partial plate number.” She swiped to the side and tried to zoom in on a darker patch on the SUV’s door.
In the grim light, the logo was hard to make out. A flag superimposed over a giant letter C with a smaller interlocking P and G below it.
Nate felt his stomach sink in impossible recognition. They wouldn’t try to intimidate Sean, not when they were a few weeks away from trial and he hadn’t even responded to their settlement offer yet. And they’d never be so stupid as to use a company car to do it.
He looked at the remains of the Jeep again, at all that was left of the passenger seat. If Sean had been in the car, he’d have been in the passenger seat, and everyone involved in his lawsuit knew it. This wasn’t an attempt at intimidation—it was an attempt on Sean’s life.
“I believe that’s a Confederated Petroleum and Gas logo,” he said, forcing his face into a neutral mask. “And I’m afraid that complicates this whole mess a little.”
Chapter 8
PRETENDING TO sleep was probably the lamest way imaginable to avoid dealing with Nate, but Sean had chosen his path and he was sticking to it. His commitment was so firm that he might have actually fallen asleep. Since the constant hushed chaos in the hospital hallway never actually changed, it was hard to tell. Every time he cracked his eyes open, Nate was still there beside him. Sometimes he could hear Nate’s voice, sometimes Nate humming quietly while he clacked away on a laptop keyboard.
“How long has he been asleep?” an unfamiliar voice asked.
“Barely two hours,” Nate almost whispered.
“I got an extra coffee for him, just in case he was awake.”
“Thank you. I’m sure he’ll appreciate it. He wanted to stay until Tonya’s parents got here, but I figured there was no harm in letting him sleep.”
“What about you?” the voice asked.
“What about me?”
“Sleep. That magical thing regular human beings need. You two were stuck at the police station until almost one o’clock, and you’ve been here since then. The sun’s coming up already. Are you planning on getting any sleep?”
“No,” Nate said. “I’ve got a hearing at ten this morning.”
“The day before Thanksgiving? And you think you’ll convince a judge or jury of anything with the state you’re in?”
“It’s an adoption, and all the parties have already consented. I think I’ve got it under control. And I moved the hearing up for the holiday, to make it special. But I need to drop you off back at the house, don’t I?”
“No. Mom and Cheryl are waiting outside.”
Beside him, Nate shifted. “Is Cheryl mad?”
“Furious, why?”
“I’m sorry. Apologize to her for me?” Nate asked. “With Matt showing up today, I doubt I’ll get the chance.”
“Nate, do you really think I’d marry a woman who’d be angry about me spending the night playing chauffer when my little brother needs me?”
Nate didn’t answer. Sean was damn tempted to open his eyes so he could see Nate’s expression.
“No, she’s offended on your behalf. Mom offered to show her all those embarrassing pictures of me as a kid, and while they were going through the old albums, they started talking about why there weren’t any pictures of you.”
“It’s not like she threw them all out. They’re all in a shoe box somewhere.”
“You don’t have to defend her. I warned Cheryl about our folks, but she thought I was exaggerating.”
“Mom and Dad are just trying to balance everything,” Nate insisted. “They don’t want Matt’s kids to ask a lot of q
uestions that’ll just make everybody upset. They still fed me, housed me, and paid for college. If I got hurt, they’d still be here for me. And you know as well as I do that Mom’s going to show up at my door with eight bags of leftovers when she pretends to go shopping on Black Friday, so the only thing I’m really deprived of is listening to Matt spend an entire hour saying grace.”
Sean couldn’t help chuckling.
“You’re awake again?”
A warm hand settled on his forearm and rubbed back and forth.
“Sleeping in this chair sucks,” Sean muttered, rolling his shoulders to try to stretch some of the stiffness from his muscles. He reached for the tiny mound of softness he’d been resting on and pulled out a wrinkled wad of gray fabric. Beside him, Nate had loosened the collar of his dress shirt and rolled up his sleeves. “I’m sorry, I think I used your jacket as a pillow.”
“I thought it might help you sleep.”
He glanced between Nate and the jacket, narrowing his eyes as he tried to reconcile Nate’s gesture with the icy demeanor from Monday. The entire conversation still hung over them, and Sean didn’t know if or when they’d have time to sort shit out. Between seeing Tonya pulled from the wreckage of his Jeep and Nate’s insistent rant to the police about someone trying to kill him, there hadn’t been a chance to actually talk. After they’d made it to the hospital and managed to talk to Tonya for a few minutes before she was whisked away for a CT scan, Sean hadn’t even bothered bringing it up. Nate also hadn’t mentioned it, but he hadn’t gone back to acting like a prick either, so Sean wasn’t sure where they stood.
A cream-colored cup of coffee was shoved into his face, offered by a smiling man in blue jeans with a blond ponytail that trailed down the length of his back.