“Maybe they are, but—” She sighed and rounded the Tahoe to the passenger’s side, clicking the locks open. “All right. Put those in the back and drive, if you need to be all macho like my brothers.”
“I think of myself as being a gentleman.” He lifted the cases into the hatch, then rounded to the driver’s side. She already had the keys in the ignition. He started the engine and pulled his door shut at the same time. “Which way?”
“Right out of my driveway.” She snapped her seat belt into place. “And buckle up.”
“Yes, Mom.”
She shot him a withering glare.
He buckled his seat belt and put the Tahoe in gear. It wasn’t as smooth as his Mercedes, but it was good enough, probably perfect for the roads on which she traveled. He didn’t need to back all the way down her drive. It was wide enough to turn around and drive straight out, make a turn to the right, and begin to climb.
Beside him, Ashley had her phone out and scrolled on the screen. “Hey, Heather, it’s me. I thought you worked last night . . . You shouldn’t have taken an extra shift. You need your rest . . . It’s my job as a friend and your midwife. Now, I’m probably going to need to bring in a patient in about an hour and a half. Potentially premature labor, but she’s— What?” She grimaced. “All right. I’ll take her to the hospital— Turn here.” She jabbed a finger at the side window.
Hunter didn’t see anything like a road until the front wheels of the Tahoe bit into loose gravel before the true climb began. They must have been moving up at a forty-five-degree angle. Gravel flung against the fenders with metallic clangs. He would have had a great view of the sky if the density of tree branches wasn’t so thickly canopied above. Those trees had to be hundreds of years old to soar like pillars in a medieval cathedral.
Ashley continued her conversation for another five minutes, medical jargon that meant little to Hunter except for the name Mary Kate, then she returned her phone to her pocket and leaned back in her seat, arms crossed over her chest. “The last thing we need is more rain.”
“Or snow. It’s cold enough it could snow if the temperature drops further.” He peered at the patches of sky only visible because the trees were denuded of leaves. “Do you get snow in November here?”
“Not often.” She rubbed her fingers up and down on her upper arms.
“Cold?”
“Nervous. Frustrated.” She flipped on the heater. “Yes, I’m cold.”
“And angry.”
She shot him a look of surprise. “It shows?”
“Yes.” He wanted to touch her, a sign of reassurance that she wasn’t alone in whatever was going on with Mary Kate. If she set her arm on the console, he would rest his hand there.
No, he wouldn’t. He needed both hands to steer. The instant the road leveled out, it doglegged, then dropped into a hollow that should have been beautiful but had been scarred by surface mining that left piles of slag behind.
“Awful, isn’t it?” Ashley pointed to the right. “My family used to have a farm there, but it got washed away after heavy rains in the sixties washed the leavings of the coal mines downhill.”
“How did they get away with this?” Hunter shuddered at the mass destruction.
Ashley shrugged. “The mines came in, paid people a pittance to dig minerals from their land, then drove away when the coal veins grew too small to make the work worth it. People lost their jobs and their land. It’s one reason why this area is so poor. It never was that good for farming. The soil’s too thin. But it was a better living than this and the disease it left behind.”
“Isn’t anyone doing anything about it?”
“Some. But it’s expensive and slow and no one really cares about this area. We’re all just a bunch of dumb hicks without enough influence in Washington. It’s the coal companies with all the power and money to spend on lobbyists and—” She covered her mouth with her hand, and her eyes widened. “Sorry,” she muttered behind her fingers.
“It’s all right. I don’t think I much like what my parents do for a living.”
“I like what my parents do, but my brothers—Look for a lightning-struck tree on the left and turn there.”
Hunter risked taking his eyes off the road to give her a stare of disbelief. “That’s really a direction?”
“Yes.”
“What happens when the tree falls down?”
“Then we say turn where the lightning-struck tree used to be.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.” She leaned forward. “You can go a little faster, you know.”
“No, I don’t think I can. This road is narrow. What if we run into someone coming the other way?”
“One of you backs into a lay-by.” She touched his arm. “That’ll be the other person. Everyone knows my Tahoe and gives me the right-of-way. There’s the tree.”
On the side of the road, a half-burned tree with a split trunk that must have once been a yard in diameter jutted blackened fingers into the sky. Beyond it, a muddy track wound between a tumble of rock on one side and new-growth trees on the other.
“There’s her, um, house.” Ashley pointed ahead.
It wasn’t a house. It was a rusty trailer with piles of wooden crates stacked up for steps to the door and a satellite dish on the roof.
He slammed on the brakes and just sat and stared. “I didn’t think people really lived like this.”
“They do. She has no hot water, but considers herself lucky to have running water—from a pump over there.” She indicated a well rim and pump on the far side of the trailer.
“Seriously?”
“Let’s go in.” She bolted from the Tahoe and rounded to the back.
By the time Hunter engaged the parking brake and climbed out, Ashley had her cases in hand and was heading for the door. It opened to show Mary Kate from the diner, her face flushed and puffy, and a little boy clinging to one of her legs.
Hunter leaned against the Tahoe and breathed in the cold, clean air. Around him, the woods were nearly silent save for the women’s voices in the doorway.
“I’ll wait for you here,” he called to Ashley.
She nodded and ushered Mary Kate into the trailer.
Gazing after them, Hunter realized that he might have been born in a place like this, an hour from the nearest town that was little more than a village, no running water inside. No wonder his mother had died. No wonder she had taken money for support during her pregnancy and given him up for adoption. Maybe she wanted to get out. And had his father gotten out, moved along to greener pastures, or just pretended he didn’t have a child on the way?
He shook his head. He couldn’t have come from this kind of a background. He was too healthy, too smart, too . . .
Too much of a snob.
He pulled his phone from his pocket out of habit more than out of wanting to check messages or e-mail. He doubted he would have a signal anyway, but to his surprise, he did, not strong enough for a phone call, but messages and e-mail found their way through. He skimmed the messages, then checked his calls in the event he could at least get voice mail.
And there was another call from the woman. “I’d come to see you, but I’m too sick. Please come find me.” Her plea ended in a racking cough.
Hunter closed his eyes, vaguely aware of voices, of the creak and rattle of the crate steps, of a child’s whine. Ashley was coming with Mary Kate and her child. He knew it, and yet he couldn’t react.
“They’re coming with us.” Ashley spoke right in front of him.
Hunter jumped. “Good. Can her car seat be moved?”
“She doesn’t have a car seat.”
“Is that legal?”
Ashley frowned him into silence.
Hunter nodded and got into the Tahoe. Mary Kate, coughing, climbed into the backseat, then strapped herself in with her child on what was left of her lap.
“I don’t see why you just can’t give me something for this cough and let me go. The contractions
have stopped.” Mary Kate’s words wheezed.
“I can’t give you anything. You’re pregnant.” Ashley closed the door behind Mary Kate and rounded to the passenger side of the front. “We’ll go to the hospital.”
“What if they admit me or something stupid? I can’t afford that. And who’ll take care of my boy?”
The boy looked sick himself, too thin, too pale, and coughing as badly as his mother.
“We’ll find someone until your mother comes home.” Ashley turned to Hunter. “Brooks Memorial. Do you know where it is?”
“I’ve seen it.” Hunter glanced around, realized he had to back down the two tire tracks that served as a driveway, and released the parking brake.
Rain began to fall before they reached the road. It wasn’t heavy, just enough to streak the windshield and turn the road dark. Hunter flicked on the lights, despite the early hour, and drove more slowly than usual. The only sound in the Tahoe was Mary Kate’s wheezing breaths and coughs emphasized by an occasional cough from the child. Compared to Hunter’s nieces and nephews, that child was too quiet other than the cough and an occasional whimper—too quiet and too still. Hunter would have welcomed some childish giggles or shrieks, anything other than the relentless rain drumming on the roof, growing heavier the farther up from the hollow they drove. Hunter considered the dogleg at the top of the rise. He hadn’t noticed a precipitous drop-off, and the road did seem to skirt the top of the Ridge, which meant slopes down, perhaps steep ones he hadn’t paid attention to on his concentration of the road.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Ashley’s hand curl around the edge of the console. Her gaze was fixed straight ahead, her lips tight.
“I’ve driven worse roads without guardrails and drops of hundreds of feet around the next curve,” Hunter tried to reassure her.
“It’s the baby.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “I don’t like him riding without a car seat.”
“How does she get away with it?”
Ashley shook her head. “She puts him on the floor in the back.”
“I thought hospitals wouldn’t let people leave if they didn’t have a proper car—” He stopped, realizing that the child in the back hadn’t been born in a hospital.
He hadn’t been born in a hospital.
“I’ll be careful.” He reached the top of the rise and began to negotiate the curves.
Not hairpin. He was thankful for that. Blind enough for a road wide enough for only one and a half vehicles. The first curve passed without a hitch despite torrential rains. If any place existed to do so, he would have pulled over to let the cloudburst pass. No drop-offs here, nor even steep slopes down after all. Rock breaks lined one side of the road and trees the other.
“Sound your horn when you go around the next curve,” Ashley said.
Hunter sounded the horn. Between blasts, another vehicle horn sounded. Halfway around the curve, Hunter spotted the other vehicle, a pickup, an oversize black truck with lights riding high enough to blaze into his eyes and blind him.
“Stop,” Ashley cried the instant Hunter slammed on the brakes.
The Tahoe fishtailed once, then ceased its forward momentum. The black truck kept coming.
CHAPTER 15
ASHLEY THREW UP her arm to block the light from her eyes. Behind her, Mary Kate gasped, then began to cough uncontrollably, and her son started to cry. Ahead, the truck kept coming, the roar of its engine sounding like floodwaters rushing down the mountain.
Hunter threw the Tahoe in reverse. No one could back up quickly around a curve, not safely. But the truck wasn’t giving ground. Hunter floored the Tahoe backward, wheels skidding on the wet gravel, catching, skidding again. Skidding and sliding. Sliding. The right rear wheel bumped down, spun, stuck. The engine roared. The Tahoe didn’t move.
The truck blew past them with only inches to spare.
Despite the now-idling Tahoe engine and driving rain, the mountain seemed quiet in the wake of the truck’s passing. Even Mary Kate’s coughing had ceased and her son’s crying was no more than weak hiccups.
“I thought,” Hunter said drily, “people gave way to you on the mountain.”
“They always have. But that truck . . .” She closed her eyes and pictured the jacked-up pickup coming toward them.
And saw another vision of another jacked-up pickup speeding toward her. This was on the mountain. That was in her driveway.
“You recognized it?” Hunter asked.
“Maybe.” Ashley turned in her seat. “Are you all right, Mary Kate?”
She nodded. She didn’t sound okay. Her breath wheezed in and out like an asthmatic bellows. If worse came to worst, Ashley could administer oxygen to Mary Kate. She always carried oxygen in her vehicle for when babies needed it after birth. Right now the best thing was to get them out of the mud and into town and the hospital.
Ashley turned back to Hunter. “How do we get out of here?”
“Depends. Do you have a jack?”
“Of course.”
“And something solid like an old rug?”
“I carry kitty litter in the winter but, no, not anything like an old rug.”
“Perhaps we can use some of these rocks to create traction.” He glanced back at Mary Kate. “Sit tight.”
“I can get out if that’ll help.”
“Not on your life.” Ashley reached between the seats and pressed Mary Kate’s hand. “We’ll do fine.”
They all looked out the windows, streaked with water as though they sat beneath a waterfall.
“We could always call Triple A,” Hunter suggested.
Ashley glared at him. “Is that supposed to be funny?”
“No.”
“I thought you’d driven in worse places than this.”
“I have—with at least one other male along.”
“Who is, of course, stronger and more resilient.”
“Stronger, anyway.”
Ashley scowled at him, then pulled out her phone. Zero bars of service.
Hunter did the same. “I had some service in the hollow.”
“I have no idea why the phone service is so sporadic. Tower placement, I suspect. There’s one on the other side of the holler, but not on this part.” Ashley shoved her phone into her pocket, then removed it and stuck it in the glove box. “I’ll go get the jack out.”
She wasn’t convinced it would work in this mud.
“No, I will.” Hunter put his phone with hers. “I got us into this, I’ll get us out.”
They both got out and converged on the right rear panel. The wheel was nearly rim-deep in mud.
“I hope you have a shovel too.” Hunter gave her a dubious glance.
Ashley ducked her head. “I haven’t put in my winter supplies yet.”
“I’m not sure this is stable enough to use a jack even long enough to get some more solid material under that wheel.” He kicked at the mud. It oozed around his boot like thick porridge.
“Maybe we could roll some rocks in here and fill in the mud.”
They looked at the rock breaks on the side of the road. They weren’t loose, merely parts of the mountain shoving up through the soil. Without a shovel, transferring gravel from the road would simply take too long, if they could manage it at all.
Hunter shoved his hands through his soaked and dripping hair. “I am so sorry. I didn’t see this ditch here.”
“You were backing around a curve to get us out of the way.”
She had barely escaped being run over for a second time in a month, possibly by the same truck. Possibly the truck belonging to whoever had assaulted her in her home.
Ashley shivered. She hadn’t grabbed a raincoat on her way out, and her hoodie was soaked through.
“Get back in the Tahoe with your patient.” Hunter removed his glasses, likely useless with the rain streaking the lenses, and his beautiful blue eyes held contrition. “No sense in you getting pneumonia too. I’ll walk down to the hollow until I get a signal.”<
br />
“No, I’ll go. I know who to call and directions for how to get here.”
“Oh, I can give them directions.” Hunter’s mouth compressed, and she noticed what a nice mouth it was, the lips full and firm.
She yanked her gaze up. The eyes were kind of devastating, but better to concentrate on that gorgeous blue than on thinking about how that mouth must feel.
“I can put the number into your phone.” She glared at the sunken wheel. “Or we can wait and hope someone comes along who can help.”
“Let me get my phone, and I’ll start walking. You need to stay with your patient.”
He was right. She shouldn’t leave Mary Kate in the event her contractions began again and they weren’t false labor.
They got back into the Tahoe and increased the heat. Steam rose from their clothes and the windows fogged over. Ashley removed Hunter’s phone from the glove box, handed it to him to unlock, then took it back and input the number of the garage she used for towing.
“I have an umbrella, if you like.”
“He ain’t gonna go out in this, is he?” Mary Kate spoke for the first time, sounding breathless.
Boyd, thankfully, seemed to have fallen asleep.
“Someone needs to, and he’s right about him being the better choice.”
“He’s gonna get sick in this mess.”
“I’ve been in worse.” He flashed Mary Kate his warm smile and climbed from the Tahoe. “I’ll come straight back as soon as I get ahold of someone.”
“All right.” Ashley didn’t like it. Part of her feared the black truck would return, would smash them into the rocks beside them or run Hunter down on the road. Why the driver would resort to such violence, she didn’t know. But then she didn’t know why he had come at them today, why the other man had taken off with the girl immediately after her baby’s birth.
She caught hold of Hunter’s hand just before he closed the door. “Be careful.”
“I will.” He held her gaze for a moment longer than necessary, then squeezed her fingers and closed the door against the rain.
The sleet. The rain now held slivers of ice.
“He’s a nice man, ain’t he?” Mary Kate said.
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