Forever (14 page)

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” She laughed. “Let’s give ‘em a run for their money. And, Dayne …”

“Yes?” He checked the traffic and pulled out.

“Thanks for being my friend.”

“Thanks for being mine. I think I have a shot at getting to the airport without leading a parade.”

“Well, you better focus on the road. We’ve got lots of company for now.”

They ended their call. Randi stayed behind Dayne, and by the time they hit their cruising speed, twelve paparazzi cars were clustered behind them. There was no point trying to lose them yet. His Escalade had tinted windows, but they knew it belonged to him, same as they knew the red BMW convertible belonged to Randi.

But if Randi’s ploy worked, sometime before the stretch of homes on Malibu Beach she’d turn and the paparazzi would follow.

Dayne checked his rearview mirror again. One of these days the photographers were going to cause a wreck, and then what? Would the craziness finally come to an end, or would it only

106 make them more anxious, rabidly excited about being first at the Randi took the lead, grinning in Dayne’s direction as she Eleven paparazzi cars sped by him and tried to squeeze in on either side of Randi. Da understood what they were doing. Randi was blonde and pretty, and with her BMW top down and her designer sunglasses, a shot of her driving along PCH

was

Still, the move was dangerous, and he watched her react to the nearness of them.

At first she jerked her car to the right and then to the left. He could see her grab the wheel with both hands, tryAlarm coursed through Dayne’s body. If she swerves . . help He sped up, trying to intimidate them, but still they hounded her. And now another photographer zipped around him and into the lane of oncoming traffic.

Only a sports car was coming straight for the guy. The photographer snuck back into traffic at b

the last second but not efore the sports car swerved hard to his At the same time, a delivery truck in that lane swerved out of the way, lost control, and shot across both lanes and straight Dayne had no time to analyze the situation, no time to imagine the ramifications of the scene playing out in slow motion before his eyes. No time to brake or turn the wheel. The truck flew at him like a runaway train, and in an instant he realized that this was how it happened. Every day in every city in the country someone stumbled into a moment like this, and that was all there was. Living life one minute and carried off in a body A hundred questions screamed at him. What about the wedding? What about the plans he had for later today and tomorrow

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and Thanksgiving? He hadn’t had time to talk to Ross about Jesus, no perfect time to talk to Luke and Erin, the brother and sister he’d been meaning to call since the revelation that he was related to them. No time to call Katy and tell her good-bye.

He slammed on his brakes, but the steering wheel locked and there was nowhere for him to go. In the final split second before the truck slammed into the driver’s side of his Escalade, he had just enough time to grieve everything he was about to lose. His place in the Baxter family, his years in the house on the lake, his life with Katy. But only her face filled his heart and mind and soul as the truck slammed into his SUV, as glass exploded and the sound of screaming, twisting metal filled his ears.

Something sharp and burning tore through his body, his head, as everything was going black, and his final thought was the saddest of all. The face in his mind was one he might never see again this side of heaven.

The face of his forever love, Katy Hart.

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109

RANDI WELLS watched the whole thing happen in her rearview mirror. One minute she was being squeezed by the paparazzi, fighting to keep control in her own lane, and the next there was a series of swerves and screeching tires and suddenly a truck was flying across traffic and smashing into the door of Dayne’s Escalade.

Randi slammed on her brakes and jerked the gear into park. She was out of the car before the traffic around her had come to a complete stop. “Dayne!” she shouted, her body numb from the shock. “No … not Dayne!”

Around her, the paparazzi were stepping out onto the pavement. As she hurried around a few of their cars, she heard the click of cameras. Her entire body shook, and she turned on them, screaming like a madwoman. “Are you kidding me?

You caused this, you vultures.” She raised her fist and brought it down hard on the hood of the car that had pressed in on her left side. “Stop!” She hit the hood again and again; then she faced the photographer who had caused the accident.

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“This isn’t my fault,” he sneered.

“It is too.” She reeled back and pushed the guy to the ground. Then, only dimly aware of the other paparazzi still snapping pictures, she grabbed his camera and threw it, smashing it into a dozen broken parts. “There. You’ll go to jail for this, mister. Look what you did to my-” She gasped. “Dayne! Someone call 911!”

She turned and saw the truck driver trying to get free of his vehicle. But what about Dayne?

“Dayne … hold on!” She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t feel her feet. But somehow she made it to the side of his Escalade. Dayne was unconscious, pinned against the driver’s seat, and bleeding from his mouth and ear. Randi clawed at the broken pieces of glass, desperate for an opening. She reached in and touched the tip of her fingers to his shoulder. “Talk to me, Dayne. Come on. Say something.”

In the distance she heard a siren. Come on. Get here. Get him out.

Randi was shaking harder now, so hard she couldn’t talk. Dayne was okay, right?

Just knocked out? She tried again to reach him, to touch his face and tell him everything was going to be fine. But the twisted metal wouldn’t let her any closer. She searched the other side of the SUV. Yes, maybe that was the way in.

The other side.

She ran around the back of his smashed vehicle to the passenger door, half expecting it to be locked or too badly damaged to open. Please let me inside!

She lifted the handle and pulled with all her might. To her shock, it opened.

She squeezed her eyes shut. Please talk to me, Dayne. Randi opened her eyes again and lifted herself onto the passenger seat. Shattered glass was everywhere, and the engine was still running. She turned off the ignition and put her hand on Dayne’s leg. “Dayne, wake up. Talk to me.”

He was breathing. Not much and not very hard, but his chest was moving. Randi felt a wave of relief and realized that until that moment she hadn’t been sure if he was even still alive. She tried to listen to his lungs above the pounding of her own heart.

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There was a rattling sound in his chest, and his head was hurt too. Badly. And the bleeding near his mouth meant internal injuries, right? Wasn’t that what she’d learned on some film set five years ago?

What about the air bags? She peered around Dayne, but the SUV door was too damaged to see more than a small bit of plastic. She realized the impact was so sure and so fast that the air bag had deployed, but then it had been crushed by the twisting metal around it.

Even so, the initial deployment had probably saved Dayne’s life.

Only then, as she surveyed the rest of his body, did Randi notice his leg. A long piece of metal, probably from the mangled driver’s door, had pierced all the way through his upper thigh. Her eyes widened, and she felt overpowering nausea well within her. Around the place where the metal had entered him, Dayne’s leg was spurting blood, though she guessed the piece might also be stanching some of the blood loss.

She spotted Dayne’s cell phone on the floor of the passenger side and picked it up. He had a flight to catch, right? Who would notify the woman in Indiana that Dayne had been in a terrible car accident? She slipped Dayne’s phone into her shorts pocket just as the paramedics rushed up to the SUV.

“We’ve got it, miss,” one of the paramedics said.

“No. I have to stay with him.” She turned and shook her head, begging the paramedic with her eyes.

“You’re … you’re Randi Wells.” The man hesitated. “Ma’am, I need you to step aside so we can work on him.”

A pair of workers had started using machinery to separate the two vehicles. One of them exchanged a look with the paramedic near Randi. “Is this guy who I think he is?”

“It’s Dayne Matthews.” Randi inched her way out of the Escalade. She was shaking so much that her words were nearly unintelligible. “Get him out! He needs a hospital!” Her screaming

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had dimmed to a faint cry. She finally did as the paramedic asked and stood a few feet away. “Please hurry.”

The paramedics worked as fast as they could, and their conversation was hard to understand. Randi’s head was spinning. When an officer asked if he could move her car into a nearby parking lot, she nodded absently. Her car? Did she drive here? Wasn’t she with Dayne?

When the man returned and handed her the keys, she said, “I … I have to stay with Dayne.”

“That’s fine.” The officer put his arm around her shoulders. “You can come with me. We’ll follow right behind the ambulance.”

At that moment, she had a sudden burst of sanity. She stared at the chaotic scene around her and pointed to the photographer she’d pushed a few minutes earlier. “Him.” She pointed at another photographer and another. “They did this … they were ch-ch-chasing us.”

The officer seemed to understand for the first time. “The paparazzi? They caused this?”

Randi hugged herself. Her teeth were chattering. “Y-y-yes.” She whirled around, back to the place where paramedics almost had Dayne freed from the wreckage.

“He’s okay, right? He’ll be okay?”

“Hold on.” The officer held a radio to his mouth and said something about arresting anyone on the scene with a camera. Then he put his arm around her again and led her to the passenger seat of his squad car. “Stay here.”

She started to sit, but then she jumped back to her feet. “What about Dayne? . .

. He’s okay, r-r-right?”

“They’re taking him to UCLA Medical Center. He’ll be in good hands there.”

There was a commotion near the wreckage as four men lifted Dayne onto a stretcher and into the waiting ambulance. Randi slid into the squad car and buckled her seat belt. Yes,

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Dayne would be okay, because now he was in an ambulance. And that meant he was on his way to the hospital, where they’d fix him up good as new.

The officer got in beside her and drove skillfully through the stopped and slowing traffic. When he was behind the ambulance, he turned on his siren.

“Dayne … he has a plane to catch. He’ll be late.”

The officer didn’t say anything, and Randi silently screamed at herself. Of course he would be late. It would take most of the day to stitch up his leg and make sure his head was okay.

She berated herself. What was she thinking? Dayne wouldn’t be out of the hospital later today. He might not even live that long. He had been pinned to his SUV, his leg nearly severed, with very serious head wounds.

The officer was speeding south on Pacific Coast Highway, staying right behind the ambulance just like he’d promised. “The paparazzi will be charged for sure.”

Randi wanted to say good. Good that they’d be charged. Only nothing was good at all, because charging them with a crime wouldn’t undo the damage, wouldn’t give Dayne a clear shot toward the airport and his waiting plane and the woman he loved in Indiana. She felt tears in her eyes, the first since the accident.

Finally they reached Wilshire Boulevard, turned left, and drove a few more blocks. Randi stared at the hospital. If anyone could help Dayne, the doctors at the UCLA Medical Center could. When they pulled into the driveway marked for emergencies, only eight minutes had gone by, and Randi silently celebrated.

They’d made excellent time! Maybe they could still save him.

She jumped out of the car and ran behind the stretcher. She felt faint and dizzy. But sheer willpower kept her on her feet. The paramedics hadn’t removed the piece of metal piercing Dayne’s leg. It stuck out on either side of the gurney in a macabre way. She hurried after the stretcher, silently screaming, Dayne … wake up! You have to be okay! Please be okay!

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When they were inside the emergency room, a nurse ushered her into a private room. “Ms. Wells, you can wait here. Mr. Matthews will be in surgery.” The woman patted her shoulder. “We’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything.”

Strange how wherever they went-even here in a hospital room, the great equalizer-people knew who they were. Randi Wells and Dayne Matthews. But that’s where celebrity treatment stopped. Death and destruction were no respecters of persons. Disaster could lay claim to a movie star as quickly and certainly as it laid claim to anyone else.

Before the nurse shut the door, Randi blurted out the only question that mattered: “Is … is he going to live?”

The nurse hesitated, and in that instant Randi knew just how bad things were, because if Dayne were only mildly injured, her answer would’ve been immediate.

Instead the nurse paused just long enough so her words didn’t come as a surprise. “He’s fighting for his life.” She looked pale, as if she herself was taking the news hard. And she probably was. The whole country felt as if they knew Dayne, after all. “Is there someone you can call? next of kin? They should have the chance to be here in case …” She didn’t finish her sentence. “If there’s someone we can call, please let us know.”