grabbed a bright orange vest from her emergency kit and pulled it over her coat as she jogged across the headlight-illuminated road to where he’d set out flares. “Hey, Dave,” she greeted when she got close enough to recognize Dave Ruiz. He was a longtime deputy with plenty of experience when it came to their expressway. Far more experience than she had, at any rate. “Miserable night for this particular pleasure, but nice to see you all the same.”
Dave, wearing a similar vest, handed her a bundle of flares. “You, too, Ali.” He gestured at the semitrailer that was on its side, blocking both lanes of traffic. “Driver’s cleared the debris from the hay bales he lost, but we’re still waiting on the tow to get it back on its wheels.”
If it hadn’t been for the headlights and the glow of the flares, it would have been impossible to see much of anything. As it was, the lights reflecting off the falling snow made their task even harder. “At least this wasn’t two miles up the road.”
“Amen to that. We’d have had someone go off the curve for sure. All we have to deal with now are a bunch of pissed-off, impatient drivers.” The deputy pointed at the toppled trailer. “If we could get some snow cleared away from that side of the trailer, we could redirect traffic one-by-one past the block.”
She squinted at the vehicles crowded around them. “Going to have to get each side to give an inch or two.”
He grunted. “Yep.” He jerked his head. He was wearing a dark beanie, same as she was, and snow clung to it. “Already got a Good Samaritan working on our side to get ’em pulled back some. Busy night with the snowstorm, or we’d have more boots on the ground here.”
“Help is help. I’ll work on my side,” she said. “Considering the angle of the trailer, might be easier if we started letting my side go through first.”
“That was my thinking, too.”
Happy that they were on the same page, she lit a flare and started working her way back along the highway, dropping the flares as she went to outline the improvised route.
When she was finished, she walked back along the line of bumper-to-bumper vehicles, telling each driver what the plan was and assuring them they were trying to get the road passable as quickly as they could. Her feet were cold again inside her boots, but at least they didn’t ache the way they had in the high heels.
There was no room to use the plow on the front of her unit or Ruiz’s, so she pulled the snow shovel she always carried from the back, headed over to the end of the long semitrailer and started attacking the berm that had built up from weeks of snowplows clearing the highway. It was a good four feet high, packed hard with ice and snow and dirt, and she was already breathless when someone carrying a pickax joined her.
“Fancy meeting this way.”
She went still, peering at the tall figure. “Mr. Cooper?” He had on a proper coat and gloves at least, though his head was still uncovered.
“Might as well make it Grant, Officer Ali.” With a smooth motion, he swung the sharp tip of the pickax into the iced-over mound. “I’ll break. You shovel.”
It was too much effort to argue, particularly when the idea was a good one, and between the two of them, they managed to break down a car length’s worth of snow and ice, shoving the clumps off into the ditch on the other side. The ditch wasn’t terribly deep, but it could break an axle if a driver wasn’t careful. They both moved farther along the berm and continued.
“You always carry a pickax around with you?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“Your truck parked somewhere in this logjam?”
“’Bout a mile back on the other side.”
“So you are capable of a straight answer.” She stopped for a minute to catch her breath and rub the growing ache in the small of her back. She was in good shape, but this was a workout like none she’d had in a while. “Have business in Weaver?”
He, on the other hand, just kept swinging away with the pickax. The guy was like a machine. “My sister isn’t in Weaver.”
Too proud to let him make her look weak, she jabbed the tip of the shovel into the mess again and resumed pitching it off to the side. “That’s not really what I asked.”
After siccing Jax on Greer back at the bar, she was going to have to work hard to get her sister to let her use her sweet, claw-foot bathtub back at the house tonight. When she and her sisters had bought the place, they’d agreed to pay separately for the renovations to their own bedrooms and en suite bathrooms, but combine their funds to restore the rest.
A fine idea in theory.
Except that Ali’s bathroom was still a work in progress. It had a plywood subfloor perpetually in wait for tile, a sink that worked most of the time and a shower that didn’t. Since Maddie had moved in with Linc, Ali had taken to regularly using her shower. But a shower wasn’t going to help her aches and pains anywhere near enough after tonight.
Greer, on the other hand, had immediately redone her bedroom and bath. In the entire house, it was the one haven from all that was broken or about to break down. And her claw-foot tub was seriously a thing of beauty.
“It’s what you meant,” Grant countered.
She didn’t bother correcting him, since it was true. “You bought the Carmody place quite a few years ago.”
The sharp tip of his pickax sliced cleanly through the snow and ice. “Your point?”
She possessed excellent peripheral vision. Which was handy, because she could watch him without seeming to watch him. “You left it vacant for a long time.”
“No law against that.” He moved farther along the berm, chipping away faster than she could shovel.
She clenched her teeth and sped up, even though her muscles protested. From behind the truck trailer, she heard engines revving up. Impatient drivers were starting to get a scent of freedom. Just to be safe, she left the shovel standing in the berm and walked back to the first car. The middle-aged driver—smoking his way through a pack of cigarettes if the butts sitting on the road were any indication—rolled down his window when she approached.
Smoke wafted out around her and she coughed once. A lot of her fellow officers smoked, but she’d never understood the appeal.
She repeated what she’d told him once already. “I’ll come back and let you know when it’s safe to proceed. It’s still gonna be a little while yet, I’m afraid.”
He swore. “Little lady, I’ve got places to be.”
She smiled, though she wanted to grind her teeth. “We all do, sir. Might want to consider preserving your gas a little if you can stand the chill—”
He swore again and rolled up the window, cutting her off. He did not turn off his engine.
She straightened, headed back to her shovel and pulled it from the snow. “Just another night in paradise,” she muttered.
Already two yards farther than he had been, Grant paused. “Say something?”
He’d done
