now,” he muttered, positioning his hands where he knew she would have protested had she only been conscious, he squared his shoulders and shoved, “one last big push.”
Exhaling the breath he’d been holding, he experienced a surge of triumph. She was out! Time for him to be the same.
Gabriel scrambled out of the mangled death trap himself.
A small spark seemed to materialize out of nowhere. The sudden gleam reflected in the side mirror caught his eye. Gabriel instantly reacted even before the actual image even registered in his mind.
His feet hitting the ground, he grabbed the blonde up in his arms and raced to his truck. Pushing her into the passenger seat, he had just enough time to jump in behind the wheel and throw the vehicle into Reverse. His foot urgently pressing the accelerator all the way down to the floor, he put as much distance as humanly possible between his truck and the totaled sedan.
He did it just in time. The spark had multiplied, giving birth to flames that grew instantly larger and larger, as well as more insistent. By the time he’d gotten three hundred feet between his truck and the sedan, the latter blew up.
He sat in the cab of his truck, staring in disbelief at what very easily could have been his funeral pyre—or at the very least, hers.
Tension riddled his six-foot-two frame, even as he closed his eyes and exhaled.
“Guess we both just used up our share of luck for the next fifty years,” he speculated quietly, addressing his words to the unconscious blonde in the seat beside him.
His nerves badly rattled, Gabriel took a few deep breaths to try to steady his nerves. It would take more than that, but he kept at it, knowing he needed to get a grip on his emotions. People would be asking questions and he was vaguely aware that he had to put this all down in a report.
It started to rain again.
Nature was putting out the fire, he thought absently, unable to look away.
He was so completely focused on what had just happened that he remained almost totally oblivious to his surroundings for at least a couple of minutes. By the time he saw the other two vehicles, they were all but on top of him.
The weather-battered tow truck led the way. Mick had come, just as he’d promised.
The second vehicle was a Jeep. The official markings on its sides proclaimed it to belong to the sheriff’s department. As they approached, the Jeep suddenly picked up speed and wound up reaching him first.
Barely coming to a complete stop, the deputy inside the vehicle jumped out. Alma hit the ground running at her top speed.
Reaching the truck, she cried out breathlessly, “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Gabriel told her, dismissing himself. “But she’s not.” And then his mind suddenly backtracked, remembering. His only call had been to Mick. He’d stated the problem. He had not asked for reinforcement. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Having a heart attack,” Alma retorted. She nodded toward the scruffy mechanic in the worn sheepskin jacket and faded overalls.
“Mick called the sheriff’s office as soon as he hung up with you. I picked up the call,” she added needlessly. Satisfied that her brother had no mortal wounds, she seemed to relax a little. For the first time, she took note of the woman slumped beside him on the passenger seat. “What happened to her?”
Gabe shrugged, his wide shoulders reinforcing his answer. “Damned if I know. I was driving into town when I spotted her car.” He nodded in the general direction of the ravine. “It was tottering on the edge, two wheels in the air and set to drop like a stone at the slightest shift in weight.”
“And she didn’t say how that happened?”
Gabe shook his head. “She was unconscious when I got there.” His eyes shifted toward Mick. The mechanic was now standing behind Alma. With the sedan burned, there was nothing for the man to tow or fix. “Sorry I got you out here for no reason, Mick,” he apologized.
Mick rubbed the ever-present graying stubble along his chin as he looked back at what was left of the sedan. “Oh, I dunno. Might take it back to the shop, anyway, and do me a little detective work on the remains. Figure out why it burned,” he explained, adding, “Things are a might slow right now. Could use the diversion.” He paused and peered closer into the cab of Gabe’s truck. “You don’t need a tow in or nuthin’, do you?”
With a pleased smile, Gabe sat up and affectionately patted the dashboard. “She handled herself just like the trouper she is, Mick.”
Mick beamed with satisfaction, like a parent whose child had remembered all his lines in the school play. “That’s ’cause she had a good mechanic,” Mick pointed out matter-of-factly. Then he nodded at the woman whose car was now a charred heap and asked, “What are you gonna do about her?”
Alma already had her cell out. “I’ll call ahead to the doc, tell him we’ve got an emergency coming in.” She looked at her brother. “Two emergencies,” she corrected. When Gabe raised one quizzical eyebrow, she said, “Have him check out both of you.”
“I’m fine,” Gabriel told her firmly. He absolutely hated being fussed over, especially when the person doing the fussing was a doctor.
With a sigh, Alma shifted the cell phone to her other hand. Leaning in, she ran the tips of two of her fingers along his bare arm. Holding up “Exhibit A” for Gabe’s perusal, she said, “Not from where I’m standing. You’ve got cuts on both your arms, big brother. You’re seeing the doctor.” There was no room for argument in her tone.
Gabe tried, anyway. “But—”
Alma leveled a pointed, silencing look at him. “You’re seeing the doctor, Gabe,” she repeated with deadly conviction, “even if I have to beat you senseless to do it.”
He laughed shortly. That was Alma. If sweet talk didn’t work, she instantly turned to verbal threats, which in turn bore fruit if necessary.
“Comforting,” he cracked.
“I wasn’t trying to be comforting,” Alma informed him crisply. “I was just trying to keep you from bleeding to death. Don’t want or need you preying on my conscience, Gabriel.”
Gabe gave up arguing the point directly and resorted to shifting the focus of the conversation.
“I’m more concerned about her,” Gabe said. He took out a handkerchief and wiped away some of the blood on the blonde’s forehead.
The handkerchief fell from his fingers when he heard the woman moan.
It was the first actual sign of life he’d gotten from her. “You’re okay,” he said to the blonde with feeling. “You’re with friends.”
“Friends she ain’t met yet,” Mick, who’d been silent for the most part, now quipped before walking away to take a closer look at what remained of the car.
It was still raining. Not nearly as badly as it had been earlier, but sufficiently enough to put out what there still was of the fire. Plumes
