by Sharon Sala
Charlie came back with the small backboard to stabilize her for removal. “What about the driver?” he asked as he dropped to his knees.
Rachel shook her head. “There’s a child in an infant seat trapped between them. Can’t ascertain her condition, other than that she’s still alert enough to cry and has bonded with the man who stopped to help. He seems to be able to communicate with her. I sure couldn’t.”
To their relief, another siren was blasting around the winding curves. The arrival of the rescue squad was imminent. Seconds later, Rachel was on her feet and running to meet them.
“Bring the Jaws,” she shouted, indicating the powerful Jaws of Life, which they would need to extricate the victims from the crumpled metal.
Men in uniform began swarming around what was left of the small car. Everything was being done that could possibly be done, yet Boone couldn’t find it within himself to care about anything but the child who had, strangely, entrusted herself to him.
The steam was nearly gone, baring what was left of the cab to a clear view. There was a spilled juice box lying on a film of shattered glass. The scent of grape mixed with the smell of burning rubber and spilled fuel, giving added poignancy to the truth of how quickly a life could end. A rag doll dangled from what was left of a rearview mirror. A woman’s purse and its contents were strewn all over the ceiling of the car. Boone made himself focus on something other than the condition of the young driver’s body. He looked past him to the child beyond, and for the first time he had a clear, perfect view of her face.
Even upside down, with her cheeks flushed and her eyes swollen from crying, she was beautiful. Thick brown curls framed a face just starting to lose its fat baby shape. Tiny scratches on her cheeks and forehead, probably from flying glass, had already stopped bleeding. She had a turned-up nose and a rosebud mouth, and there were creases in her cheeks that he suspected just might be dimples. Boone tugged at her fingers and smiled.
“Hey there, Punkin. It’s me, Boone.”
Unbelievably, she tried to smile back. Then be watched as her gaze slowly moved to her father, then her mother, as if she, too, was seeing for the first time the aftermath of what had happened. He didn’t know what to say. Could a child that small understand what she was seeing?
“Punkin...?”
She looked back at Boone. “Sleepin’,” she said softly. “Daddy sleepin’.”
Tears shattered what was left of Boone’s view. “Yes, baby, your daddy is sleeping.”
Rachel was rechecking the injured woman’s pulse when she heard the little girl’s voice. Her gaze shifted to the man on the opposite side of the car. He was smiling at the child, but there were tears shimmering in his eyes, eyes so black she couldn’t even see the pupils. The grip he had on the baby’s hand was gentle, so gentle. She took a deep breath and went back to her work, aware that this was no time to join him in grief.
And then Charlie tapped her on the back. “Rachel, you’ve got to pull back. They’re going to use the Jaws.
Metal crunched and popped as the hydraulic claw did what it had been designed to do. Moments later, they had the door on the passenger side open. Rachel pushed her way past the firemen to the young mother inside. To Rachel’s relief, the woman’s eyelids began to flutter. Charlie was on his knees beside her, the neck brace in his hand. They began to do what they’d been trained to do.
Before Boone knew it, the ambulance holding Punkin and her mother was flying down the road, with lights flashing and the wail of a siren to accompany them home. He shuddered. It sounded too much like a little girl’s scream. And while he watched, another vehicle arrived. The name emblazoned in gold paint on both doors said it all. County Coroner. They’d come for Punkin’s daddy.
Oh, God.
His mind went blank. He looked down at his scratched and bloodstained hands. The pale blue T-shirt he’d put on this morning was blood-spattered. His black leather jacket was wet and muddy. And while he stood, rain started to fall again. The urge to cry was so close at hand that he couldn’t focus on what to do next. He closed his eyes and lifted his face to the sky, wishing it would wash away the memories of what he’d just seen.
With weariness in every movement, he turned toward his truck just as the familiar black and white of an Oklahoma Highway Patrol car pulled up to the scene. In a gesture of defeat, he leaned against the fender, waiting for the officer to emerge.
Rain was coming down faster now, plastering his hair to his head and his clothes to his body. Impulsively he held out his hands, welcoming the cold, bulletlike droplets that fell upon his bloodstained skin. For once the thought of solitude inside that run-down trailer house in the Kiamichis seemed inviting, but he couldn’t leave. Not now. He took a deep breath. It wasn’t quite over yet.
He drove through Razor Bend in a daze, not stopping until he found himself in Denver Cherry’s front yard. He’d come back to Razor Bend to finish a job. Either he would finish it...or it would finish him. He walked onto the porch and into the house without knocking.
One look at Boone MacDonald and Denver forgot any notion he’d had about putting him in his place. There was blood on his shirt, and his clothes were wet clear through. He didn’t know what had happened to him, but the look in Boone’s eyes made Denver nervous.
“I suppose you came for your money,” he said, trying to maintain the upper hand.
Boone didn’t have to pretend to be angry. Denver Cherry was a man who didn’t care who he hurt or how it happened, as long as he got what he wanted. The world would be better off without Cherry’s kind, and yet he lived and a young man had died. Boone swallowed his rage. He couldn’t get the sound of a little girl’s sobs out of his mind.
“We never did agree on how much,” Denver said, then looked away when Boone’s hands doubled into fists. He’d known sending Tommy Joe to tail Boone might tick him off, but he’d never figured Boone would take it so hard.
“Just pay me. I’ve got things to do,” Boone said.
Denver shrugged, then handed over a wad of bills that Boone didn’t even bother to count. He shoved them in his pocket and turned on his heel, aware that if he didn’t put some space between them, someone was going to get hurt.
“Hey, Boone.”
Boone stopped in midstride, without turning around.
Denver stared at the angry set to Boone’s shoulders, wondering what kind of response he was about to get.
“You did a real good job. I might have some more work for you, if you’re interested.”
Boone swallowed, then closed his eyes, letting himself remember why he was here.
“Sure, why not,” he muttered. “But next time, either send your bird dog with me, or keep him tied on a leash. Understand?”
Denver grinned. “You’re a hard nut, aren’t you?”
Boone blinked. Today he’d cried. Tonight he just might get drunk. That made him a nut, all right, but he wasn’t hard enough to ignore the pain.
“You know where to find me,” Boone said, and slammed the door shut behind him.
Hours later, he lay in bed, wide-eyed and sleepless, ignoring a line of cockroaches running up the wall, while he listened to the rain running off the tin roof. An unopened bottle of Jack Daniel’s sat right where he’d put it hours ago. He’d taken one look at it and known that drowning this pain wouldn’t make it go away. A notion was pushing at him, urging him up, moving past reason to a need he couldn’t stop. He wanted to know what had happened to those people from the wreck...and he needed to see Rachel Brant.
Watching her in action today had intrigued him. The helpless, crying woman he’d found in the dark was not the woman who’d taken charge at the wreck. The woman she’d been today was cool, collected and competent. She’d done everything right, and with skill and ease. She hadn’t folded once at the sight of blood and death, and he knew seasoned officers who wouldn’t have been able to say the same.
It wouldn’t take long, he reminded himself. All he had to do was just knock on her d
oor and ask about the victims’ conditions. She was bound to know something.
He rolled out of bed and reached for his boots. Before he slept, he needed to hear the sound of her voice.
Rachel puttered through the last of her evening chores, only half-aware that the rain had finally subsided. Water dripped from the leaves onto the roof, soft, gentle sprinkles hardly detectable from indoors. It was only after she went outside to toss coffee grounds beneath her rosebush that she became aware of the slight trickle running through the gutter and out the downspout at the end of the house. There was a much-needed gentleness to the night that the day had not held.
Pictures kept flashing into her mind. A young father, gone from this earth too soon. A young mother, hanging on to life. A small child who’d held even tighter to a wet rag doll, her only familiar object in a world gone awry.
Rachel sat down on the back porch steps and buried her face in her hands. Losing a patient was the downside of her job. She’d thought she’d learned to live with the knowledge that sometimes, even when they’d done everything possible, it still wasn’t enough. But tonight she wasn’t sure.
Music drifted out through the screen door and into the night, blending man-made notes with those of Mother Nature. In a fanciful way, the raindrops sounded a little like teardrops, which fit well with the songs being sung. Her taste in music was eclectic, but tonight, sad country songs fit her mood.
She looked up just as the moon emerged from behind a cloud. There on the lawn, standing in the shadows next to her swing, was the tall, unmistakable, silhouette of a man. She gasped. Heart pounding, she jumped to her feet. All she could think was to get inside and lock the door.
“Please, lady, wait!”
She froze. She couldn’t see his face, but she knew that voice and the straight set of those shoulders as he stood with his legs slightly apart, as if bracing himself for a blow. It was the same man who’d found her standing in the stream!
He’d come through the woods as he had before, telling himself with every step he took that he was doing this all wrong, that if he kept this up, he might as well put a gun to his head and pull the trigger. Everything he was doing was in direct opposition to what an undercover officer should do. Personal wanting was supposed to take a back seat to the job, but that wasn’t happening tonight.
And then he’d seen her come out of the house, and while his mind was shouting, No! his feet had been moving ever closer to her house, to her. When she sat down on the steps, he’d wanted to join her, and when she buried her face in her hands, his heart had gone out to her in empathy.
So, he’d thought, you do feel the pain.
Music had drifted out of the house, coming to him on the night. At first it had been nothing more than background to the woman who’d captured his focus. But somewhere between one breath and the next, he’d heard the voice, then the words, and they’d taken his breath away.
It was an old song from the Eagles. Once, years ago, he’d stood in the back of a crowded concert hall and heard them sing this very same song.
Desperado.
Then, the words hadn’t meant anything more than any lyrics, but now they came to him as a warning that struck deep in his heart.
He swayed where he stood, as if wounded. Love somebody before it was too late? It was already too late for him. By virtue of his life-style, and in society’s eyes, he was a desperado... an outlaw who didn’t belong in a good woman’s life.
“I’ll call the police!” Rachel shouted.
Boone’s heart hurt at the knowledge he kept putting that fear in her voice.
“Please don’t. I came to ask you a question.”
Rachel’s hand was on the doorknob, and if the man had taken a single step farther, she would have been inside in a instant. But he never moved, so neither did she.
“What?”
“Today you worked a wreck outside of town.”
To say Rachel was surprised at the man’s choice of topic was putting it mildly. She’d been expecting something personal, even something sexual, that would fit the dark anonymity of his coming and going. She stood without answering, waiting for him to make a wrong move.
“There was a little girl who called herself Punkin.”
Rachel’s eyes widened. How had he known that?
“Is she all right?” Boone persisted.
She could see no danger in answering, but her voice was still shaking when she spoke. “Yes, I believe so.”
“And her mother?”
Rachel’s hand fell from the doorknob to her side. “We left her in good hands. Last I heard, she was stable.”
Boone exhaled slowly in relief. “Good,” he said softly. “That’s good.”
“How did you know?” Rachel asked.
But Boone answered her question with another of his own.
“The little girl...Punkin...was she still crying when you left?”
Rachel’s eyebrows arched. Still? How did he know she’d been crying at all? Unless...
“No. Some of the family had arrived. When I saw her last, she was sound asleep in her grandmother’s arms.”
“Thank you,” Boone said, and his voice was so quiet that Rachel had to strain to hear his answer.
“Who are you?” she asked, just as the last notes of the song faded into the night.
“No one.”
The emptiness in his voice was unmistakable. In spite of herself, Rachel felt empathy instead of fear.
And then he moved. But instead of coming toward her, he turned and started back toward the woods. When he moved out from beneath the tree and into the moonlight, it fell upon his shoulders, enhancing their breadth and his height. Once again Rachel was struck by his strength and his size. But this time, as he walked, something struck her as familiar. Impulsively she ran to the edge of the porch and called out.
“Wait!”
Surprised, Boone turned before he thought, and then realized that he was no longer concealed by the shadows of night. Although the distance between them was real, there was no way he could hide the sight of his face.
Oh, God... Dear God... Rachel thought, as her hands curled tightly into fists.
Neither spoke. Neither moved. A lingering rain cloud passed between moonlight and earth. A few moments later, it was gone...and so was the man.
A nervous chill ran up Rachel’s back. She turned and bolted for the door, shutting it and locking it firmly behind her. Yet even after she was safely inside and sitting in the dark with the phone in her hand, she couldn’t get past the fact that the man who’d found her sleepwalking...the man who kept coming to her out of the dark...the man who’d cared about a small child’s tears...was the same man who ran with that gang.
That night, when at last she slept, she dreamed. But not the same dream as before. This time she dreamed of a man with dark, laughing eyes, a man who killed with the same passion as he made love.
Chapter 6
When the alarm went off in Rachel’s ear, she rolled over and out of bed in the same smooth motion. Only after she hit the button to shut off the alarm did she realize that she’d set it last night out of habit. She groaned in disbelief. She didn’t have to go to work today or tomorrow. It was six in the morning, and she’d gotten up for nothing.
“Good grief,” she muttered, and crawled back between the covers.
But habit was a hard thing to break. In spite of burying her nose in the pillow and squeezing her eyes tight against a burgeoning dawn, sleep wouldn’t come.
Finally she flopped onto her back, scrunched her pillow beneath her neck and contemplated the luxury of two entire days to herself.
No one to answer to.
No sitting around waiting for an emergency to happen.
Today, she could make things happen for herself. She glanced toward the window. It wasn’t raining, but wind was whipping the azalea bushes beneath the window near her bed. Every now and then, an elongated branch hit the pane with a thump, then a scratch, as if someone, or something
, were begging to get in.
Goose bumps peppered the skin on her arms as her imagination took flight. And even though she knew she was safe, she got up and headed toward the kitchen.
Two cups of coffee later, she was still pondering the identity of the man who’d found her in the stream. For all she knew, he was a criminal. He certainly looked like one. At any rate, he was a man who didn’t belong in her world. She shuddered, remembering the men he ran with and the way he’d watched Griff kissing her with no sense of shame.
Yet, even in her dismay, she was forced to give credit where credit was due. If he hadn’t happened upon that wreck yesterday, more than likely that mother would have died, and God knew what might have happened to the baby before anyone found them.
She would never have believed a man who presented himself as a modern-day outlaw could be as empathetic and compassionate as he had been with that small, frightened child. But he had.
In fact, Rachel knew that if that had been their first meeting, she would have come away from that wreck with a completely different impression of the man. She’d seen him reluctant to move from danger, eager to go back to the child who was trapped. And not only that, he’d been concerned enough to come last night and ask about her condition.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Rachel muttered, and dumped the last of her coffee down the drain. “I’m romanticizing about some probable felon, just because he hasn’t lost the ability to shed tears for someone else’s pain.”
Angry with herself and what she considered “flights of fancy,” she made a list of things she wanted to do today, then went to get dressed. Casual would be the order of the day.
But just as she was walking out the door, the phone began to ring. Conscience told her to answer. Instead, she stood, listening to the second, then the third, shrill ring. When it rang for the fourth time, her answering machine clicked on, and Rachel stood in the doorway, listening to Griffin Ross’s voice.