“You tell me if anything hurts.”
“Everything hurts,” she mumbled. “I’ve never been in an accident before.”
“You started out with a doozy.” He carefully worked his hands along her arms. She had a nasty scrape on her left shoulder and a small cut on her right wrist, but other than that, her skin was smooth and cool. A little too cool for the hot day, but she’d had a nasty shock. He moved to her feet and started at her ankles. More scrapes. More scratches. But no bones sticking out where they didn’t belong. Nothing that was starting to swell.
He was doing his duty, but he’d have had to have been dead not to appreciate the way she felt. And because of that fact, he wondered if it was time he gave Mindy a call. She was a teacher in Amber Falls he’d seen off and on over the last six months. No more interested in anything serious than he was.
He realized he’d reached Georgia’s knees and quickly moved his hands away, sitting back on his heels.
“You were lucky that snag caught your car and you were wearing your seat belt. You have some ID in the car?”
“Of course.”
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
Her eyes followed his hand. “Three. I can see perfectly clearly,” she promised tiredly.
“Do you think you lost consciousness at any point?”
“I don’t think so. I wasn’t even driving that fast.”
“Wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that.” He’d be a wealthy man and his mom wouldn’t have had to rent out the north section of land to an infamous billionaire just to keep the bank from taking it back.
“I wasn’t,” she insisted.
“Okay, NOLA girl,” he soothed, because she was obviously going to get worked up. “Just rest there for a few minutes.”
She didn’t argue. Merely threaded her fingers through her hair and shook away pieces of glass still clinging there.
He left Georgia long enough to retrieve his duty belt and fastened it around his hips again. He fingered the tear in his uniform shirt as he attached his shoulder mic and called in their status to Connie. He had to provide his own uniforms and he didn’t think there’d be any way to fix this particular tear.
“Ambulance freed up,” Connie reported back. “Should be there soon.”
“Thanks, Con.” He looked away from Georgia, who was still lying on the ground. She’d spread her arms wide and was alternately lifting one leg, which looked just as perfect as it had felt, then the other, and flexing her bare feet around in circles.
Her toes were painted a brilliant purple that matched the T-shirt that had crept up her stomach to reveal the low-cut waistband of her white shorts. They were diminutive, those shorts. Revealing both the small, thin gold hoop piercing in her navel as well as the sleek muscles in her thighs as she worked her legs.
He scooped up his hat and slapped it against his thigh a few times to shake off the dirt, then slid it on his head as he walked around the vehicle, taking pictures with the small digital camera from his duty belt. The only angle he couldn’t get to was the north side of the car, because he’d have to climb into the ravine to get it.
He went back up the hill, taking pictures of the path the car had taken as it rolled down. He took pictures of the spot it had left the road—obvious only because of the safety guard along the curve that had been torn away. He took a few measurements and made note of them to add to his report later, then returned to Georgia and handed her the sandals he’d found tossed clear of the car about twenty feet away. If she hadn’t been wearing her seat belt, it could have been her body tossed aside, too.
“You were lucky all the way around,” he told her. “Two feet to the right or left of the tree and we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all.” He watched her slide on the shoes as she sat up. They were patterned flip-flops with thick foamy-looking rubber soles that added a good three inches to her height when she gingerly rolled to her feet. They also had a designer label that even a good ol’ boy like him could recognize.
The shoes didn’t mean she had money. But the expensive car that cost more than what he earned in a year sure did suggest it.
“Going to need to take a report of what happened, if you’re up to it.”
She brushed the dirt off the seat of her shorts and raked her fingers through her long hair, pushing it behind her shoulders. “Happy to cooperate, if I could even tell you what happened.” She looked up the embankment, where his SUV sat, red lights flashing, and he saw her sway.
He quickly caught her beneath her arm. “Steady there, ma’am.”
She pressed her hand to her head. “I preferred ‘NOLA girl,’” she murmured. “Doesn’t remind me how close I am to my thirtieth birthday.”
“And how close is that?”
She wrinkled her nose as she dropped her hand. “’Bout eighteen months.”
At least he knew she wasn’t a teenager.
He nodded toward the SUV. “Let’s get you up to the truck and you can sit down and get outta the heat.”
“Heat here is nothing compared to the hot soup we have back home.” She looked over her shoulder at the wrecked vehicle. “Nothing about that looks fixable to me.”
“No, ma’am.”
Her lips turned down. “I just got it, too. Picked it up yesterday morning before I left town. It drove perfectly all the way to Shreveport. I stayed the night there, then started out again this morning.” She sighed audibly, then turned toward the embankment, taking a first step. He let go of her, but hung behind to lend a hand the second she looked in need of it.
Unfortunately, that meant he had a close-up view of her hind end as they progressed up the steep hill.
Only a few sliding steps in those platform sandals, though, and Pax took her arm again. One rescue a day was enough.
Before they made it to the top, he saw Charlie Esparza pulling up in his wrecker. Pax waved at the skinny man when he nimbly hopped down from the truck. Without waiting, Charlie started skidding down the hill toward them. “Bad spot t’go off,” he said breathlessly. “No skidding, either.” He lifted his cap long enough to reveal his white hair, then took Georgia’s other arm. He was barely taller than her. “Any more vics?”
Pax shook his head and soon the three of them were safely back on the roadside. He settled Georgia in the back seat of his SUV with the AC running and a fresh bottle of water. He left the door open, though, not wanting her to feel like he’d taken her into custody.
For one, she hadn’t done anything wrong that he could determine. He’d smelled no alcohol on her. There was no evidence of drugs. In fact, there was no evidence of anything to explain why she’d careened off the highway without seeming to make any attempt at avoiding it.
As Charlie had observed, no skid. Meaning no braking.
While
