few moments, he was forced to retract every negative thought he’d had about the paramedics as he watched their quick, efficient efforts to extract her safely from the vehicle. But it still seemed like a lifetime before she was finally loaded onto the gurney and they began to wade back through the icy water.
The trickiest part—besides making his painstaking way through the water with legs that no longer felt attached to his hips—was safely maneuvering the rack up the slick, snow-covered slope from the water’s edge to the roadway. When they finally crested the top, one of the passenger doors opened and a moment later, Macy Bradford rushed to them, her face white and scared in the snow-filtered light of the headlights and her eyes trained only on Claire.
“Mom!” she exclaimed.
Claire’s eyelashes fluttered in the icy snowflakes as she tried to remain alert. “Macy. My brave girl.”
“Are you okay?”
“I will be. You and Owen and Jordie?”
“I’m fine. We’re okay. Some people wanted to take us to the hospital, but I…we wanted to wait for you.”
Claire had been through hell and back and she was bloody and broken. But when she still managed to muster a smile for her daughter and reach for the girl’s hand, Riley felt like something sharp and hard had just lodged against his heart.
“We’ve got to get her inside so we can roll,” Claire’s cousin Doug said, not unkindly, and they pushed the gurney up into the back of the ambulance.
Without warning, the moment the doors were closed behind her mother, Macy suddenly burst into noisy sobs. Even though Riley was exhausted and soaking wet, frozen to the bone, he placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “She’s going to be okay, you hear me? She’ll be okay.”
The girl drew in a deep, shuddering breath. “I was so scared.”
“I know, honey. You’ve been a champ about this. Now we need to get you and the boys to the hospital. I’m going to see if I can round up another ambulance for you.”
“We’ve got the boys safe and warm here. Do you want us to take them down the canyon to the hospital?”
He looked up at the voice and found the woman he had seen on shore standing beside her big Suburban, along with the boy who had waded out to help him. “I’m Barbara Redmond. I work at the hospital E.R.”
Riley considered his options. If the other accident was as serious as the paramedics had indicated, it might be a while before another ambulance crew could make it for the children. Transported in a private vehicle, the kids could already be in a treatment room at the E.R. at the small Hope’s Crossing Medical Center before the other crew could make it back up.
“Thank you. That will help.”
The people of Hope’s Crossing banded together in crisis situations, with everyone pitching in to help. He’d forgotten that in the years since he’d been gone. In some of the neighborhoods he worked in Oakland, accident victims faced a crapshoot, whether would-be rescuers would call for help or loot their pockets.
Riley made sure the children were safely buckled and settled and watched the SUV slowly pull back onto the road. Just as they made the first turn, he saw the brown and white of a Peak County sheriff’s vehicle pull to a stop.
He estimated a half hour had passed since the accident, maybe an hour since he’d left the elementary school. For the first time in his life, he understood what people meant when they talked about living a lifetime in a few moments. He felt as if he’d aged at least twenty years since he sat and listened to the Spring Fling pageant with his older sister beside him.
The cold sliced through his wet clothing and Riley fought shivers as he watched a figure climb from the sheriff’s department SUV. The sheriff himself, he realized. Evan Grover.
He tensed and instantly felt kickback from his already-aching muscles.
Evan Grover hated him and had since Riley was a punk-ass kid always in trouble and Grover was a wet-behind-the-ears deputy looking to make his mark. From what he understood, the sheriff had thrown his support behind J. D. Nyman and wanted him to be wearing the chief’s badge.
The man headed toward him, his brown parka open over his beer belly. All he needed was a cigar clamped between his teeth to complete the Boss Hogg imagery.
He shook his head. “Hell of a mess.”
Riley ground his teeth together to keep his teeth from chattering. No way would he show that particular sign of weakness to the sheriff, even if he had frostbite in every appendage. “You could say that.”
“The other scene.” The sheriff whistled through his teeth. “Nasty.”
He was a professional, Riley reminded himself. He’d been a cop a long time and had dealt with much worse than a two-bit sheriff who used to have it in for him. “I’ll have to take your word. Haven’t seen it yet. I’m heading down that way myself to assess the scene.”
“No rush. Go ahead and change into dry clothes. My guys and the Colorado State Patrol have things in hand.”
“Thanks,” Riley gritted out. “I appreciate it.” Neither department had jurisdiction because this road and the canyon were all part of the Hope’s Crossing city limits, but this wasn’t the time to be pissy over boundaries, not with a fatality.
The sheriff was acting entirely too conciliatory, which should have tipped Riley off that something was disastrously wrong. But he was still caught completely unaware by Grover’s next words.
“I’m real sorry about your niece and all.”
Everything inside Riley seemed to freeze. He didn’t think it was possible for a person to be even more cold without turning completely to ice, but somehow he managed it. “Sorry, what?”
Grover stared at him for a minute, then he cursed, looking uncomfortable. “You didn’t know yet.”
“I’ve been standing in the middle of the reservoir for the last twenty minutes. I don’t know a damn thing. What are you talking about?”
The sheriff looked apologetic, his wide, weathered face a little more red than it had been a moment ago. Despite their history together, there was no malice in his eyes now, only sympathy.
“Thought you knew. The fatality in the other wreck. They’re saying she’s your niece. Your sister’s kid. The one with the bookstore who was married to that rock star. Chris Parker. Sorry to break it to you so hard.”
Layla? Not Layla. He pictured her the last time he’d seen her at his mother’s house a week ago for dinner: her nose piercing and her battered combat boots and her choppy black hair. She was funny and smart and seemed to think he was among her cooler relatives because he’d lived out of the valley for so long.
He sagged a little, shaking violently now, and had to reach for the open door of his patrol car to support his weight.
He couldn’t think, couldn’t process anything but shock.
“Are you sure it’s her?” he asked, then couldn’t believe he sounded like every other victim’s family he’d ever had to notify. He
