Too Sexy for his Stetson (18 page)

Brandy turned around and looked out the back window. Headlight beams from something huge edged in on them.

A super–sized engine revved.

An air horn blasted.

Brandy nearly jumped out of her skin, her heartbeat picking up speed. “What’s with this guy?”

Blade jerked his attention back to the rearview mirror. “I think the fool’s trying to pass us.”

“On
this road?”

“Yeah, he has to be crazy. It’s bad enough for a rig that size to navigate Deadman’s Pass in the daylight.”

Brandy swallowed against the sudden dryness in her throat. The nutcase assessment became obvious seconds later when the sound of metal crunched, and the Tahoe bucked.
Holy shit!
The maniac had crashed into their rear bumper!

“Jesus—” Blade hit the accelerator.

Their wheels squealed as he pressured all eight cylinders, and the Tahoe shot forward. It shimmied along the narrow road that was made of switchbacks, pigtail turns, and blind curves edged by steep drop–offs.

Even as Blade pushed it, the whine of the rig’s unrelenting gears followed in their wake. Brandy tightened her grip on her packages and stared out the windshield at the winding path. They crested the pass and began descending. Still, the idiot hung on their heels like a bumper sticker. “You’re right. He’s crazy.” Her pulse shifted to high gear.

Ahead, the Tahoe’s headlights shot daggers of light into the darkness, revealing bits and pieces of landscape zooming by. They gained a couple of yards on the monster rig, and when they shot around a bend, the glare from the truck’s lights disappeared. For a second.

A switchback. Blade gunned into the leading curve and kept going. Drop–off cliffs switched from the right side to the left and then back again.

Two glowing lights popped into the mirrors, spotlighting them. A silver–white glow streamed from the rig’s headlamps and washed the wall of pines that bordered the inside lane. Which was where Brandy wished they were, hugging the face of the mountain as opposed to flirting with the outside lane where only a black void hung to the right of the gravel shoulder next to her.

Crack
. Heavy metal jammed the SUV’s rear end again.

Blade accelerated.

Crunch.
With the next blow, Brandy sensed the power of the rig, its force taking control of the Tahoe.

“Damn it. He’s hooked onto our bumper!” Blade yanked the steering wheel left then right. The SUV broke loose and careened toward a guardrail. He pumped the brakes, set the Tahoe on course, and then rammed the accelerator, which blasted them into another turn at drag–strip speed.

Wheels smoking, brakes burning, they skidded around the curve. The rear tires fishtailed. Blade strangled the wheel and cut a hard left, then right, navigating a hairpin turn. And still the pursuer was breathing down their neck.

Another thud. This time the rig–from–hell buffeted them to the inside shoulder. They sped toward the tree–scattered ascending wall of the mountain. The Tahoe shimmied, scraping along a row of trees. Skimmed against a boulder. And jammed to a stop.

“This is good. Let’s stay on the inside,” Brandy wheezed. In her estimation, rocks and trees beat the hell out of the free–fall side of the road.

“I’m working on it.”

Except now they sat wedged, literally, between a rock and a hard place, waiting to be broad–sided by a truck that could pulverize them.

Blade gunned it.

The Tahoe lurched forward through rocky debris until the tires gripped pavement, and for a moment they flew over a straight stretch of road, which allowed Blade to draw the Glock from his shoulder holster. He turned and fired a shot through the rear window. The bullet left a neat round hole surrounded by a spider web of shattered glass as it pinged off the rig’s steel shell. But the assailant kept coming.

Blade stomped the accelerator.

Brandy swiveled around and identified the attacking vehicle. “It’s a logging truck.” And it was bearing down on them for another go at it.

When she turned forward, another pigtail turn rushed into view. Blade sped into a blind curve. Just then, a vehicle approaching from the opposite direction flew into their path, taking its lane in the middle.

To miss a head–on crash, Blade swerved. The move landed them in the narrow, heart–attack inducing, outside strip of gravel that bordered the deep ravine. Deadman’s Gulch.

Like a guided missile, the logger honed in on them once more. Its tank–like steel bumper rammed the back end of the Tahoe, again latching onto them, while the remains of the rear window shattered into the cargo space. This time the bully stuck like elephant glue.

They bobbled closer to the edge.

“Holy Christ, I’ve got the brakes through the floor!”

“Jump!” Brandy shouted. From the driver’s side, he’d land on the road. Not in the gulch.

A split–second double–take preceded his words. “Not without you.” He reached for her.

There was no time for Brandy to scramble to the driver’s side—

Time warped.

Accelerated.

Stood still.

The tires squealed and skidded, the brakes useless against the force of a hundred thousand pounds of machine. The stench of burning rubber poured in. Brandy’s fists curled as Blade’s glance stalled and held hers, his face twisted in angst.

The Tahoe skipped at an angle across washboard gravel.

Tilted.

“We’re going over! Head down! Hands behind your neck!” The last words Brandy heard.

For a second they were airborne.
Blade!

Her weight hurled against the seatbelt as the strap cinched tightly across her shoulder and stomach. But instead of hurling, or somersaulting off a sheer drop, they shot down an angled embankment, flying through the darkness like a runaway boulder.

Branches cracked and scraped the side of the car. They bounced, shimmied, thudded over jagged terrain.

With a sudden crash, the Tahoe jerked to a stop that rattled her bones as the airbag exploded in her face. The headrest slammed against the back of her head.

Silence cloaked them, as unnerving as the roller coaster dive. Brandy moved her shoulders, and the right one complained.

“Blade?” Her voice came out a shaky thread of sound.

No reply.

The air reeked of fuel. Her heart pounding, her lungs constricting, she tried to gulp air. She tore at the seatbelt. It wouldn’t give. The smell of burnt rubber and antifreeze mingled with the frightening stench of gasoline. Her heartbeat ricocheted against her ribs. They were trapped in a coffin of mangled steel and shattered glass.

“Blade?”

“Jesus—Brandy,” he rasped, “are you all right?”

“I think so. Are you?”

“I’m okay.” He hissed in a sharp breath.

She struggled against the seatbelt–harness and whimpered as pain rippled through her shoulder. A breath whooshed out. She quickly gasped for more air.

The Tahoe jerked forward. Teetered. The sound of rocks sliding down a fast drop went silent, then moments later echoed in the gulch.

Blade sucked in a long slow breath. “I have a feeling we shouldn’t rock the boat.” His hand found hers. Warm and steady. Something to hold onto in the darkness. Even so, her sprinting pulse forgot how to slow down.

“Slow and easy,” he said, “Breathe in… breathe out.”

She wheezed and unclogged the trapped air in her windpipe.

He kept his fingers locked firmly around hers. And she held tight. At the same time he reached and slid one hand along her seatbelt to find the buckle. He fiddled for a second. “It’s jammed.”

Unable to let go of him, Brandy knew she should try to help, but the fingers of her right hand were frozen in a fist.
Calm down. Assess, deputy.

“Blade, I think we should get out of here, fast.”

“I’m working on it.” He yanked at the strap and her seatbelt released. “Can you tell how badly you’re injured?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a wrenched shoulder.” She squinted to bring his face into focus.

“How about your legs? Can you move them?”

She flexed her legs and toes, then lifted each foot. The left ankle was a little stiff, but mobility was fine. “Ready for a jog, maybe not a sprint. What about you?”

She felt him moving beside her before he answered, “Everything seems to be working.”

The silver light of a thin crescent moon silhouetted Blade’s head and shoulders. She heard him straining, grunting as he shoved against the door.

The car teetered again as though… She didn’t want to think about it.

“Jesus.” He shifted positions. “I’m going to have to kick out the window.”

“God, maybe you shouldn’t with the cradle rocking like this. Wait, let me try my side.”

“Okay, but don’t get out yet.”

“Okay.” Her adrenaline–induced tugging on the handle proved futile. “This door’s not budging.”

Blade turned. His back and shoulders pressed into her left side. He kicked and the crackled glass shattered. The Tahoe bobbed as though it were a cork on stormy waters. When the front–to–back swaying calmed, Blade stuck his head out the window. “Jesus, Brandy, don’t move.”

Delicately removing his sports jacket, he rolled it up and slowly brushed the broken glass away from the edges of the window frame. Then gradually, he maneuvered and backed his way out. “Take my hand,” he said before he jumped down. “And, um… don’t lean forward. Try not to put any weight toward the front, okay?”

“Okay,” she answered softly in an effort to keep from disturbing the balance of the universe.

“Now, move to the driver’s seat… slow and easy… give me your other hand.”

Brandy swallowed. Concentrated on calming her heartbeat. “What’s our status—”

“Just hold onto both of my hands, work your head and torso through the window, and on three, jump.”

Don’t think. Just do.

The Tahoe rocked. Metal groaned. Rocks skittered, the sound fading and dissolving to nothing.

Blade held her left hand, and she thrust the other toward him, unable to open her clenched fist.

“One, two, three!” He yanked. She jumped, propelling her body forward. Her feet snagged on the edge of the window opening, then hit the ground. Sloped ground. She fell to her knees and started skidding backward, Blade sliding along after her as the Tahoe miraculously swayed and stayed balanced on whatever they were on the edge of.

When she came to a stop on her stomach alongside the Tahoe, her feet were dangling in thin air. She clawed forward, Blade’s grip giving her purchase, until she was able to toe her feet into unstable earth and push forward six inches. She slid back, losing half of the hard–earned advance. Eventually, she worked her entire body onto solid but inclining ground. She rolled over and sat up. By the sparse light of a sliver of waxing moon, she found herself staring over a sheer drop–off into the bottom of Deadman’s Gulch.

She scooted backward, Blade half dragging her, still scrambling for purchase. His arm came around her waist and they pushed to an unstable standing position.

“Come on, let’s get the hell away from here.” He forged a path through brush and spree along a foot–wide ledge while they struggled to keep from skidding once more toward the edge of the world.

In the distance, the logging truck groaned as it chugged up the snake path over the mountain.

From there on, everything was a blur.

Blade on his cell phone calling 911.

Chopper blades beating like bat wings in the night.

A beam of blinding light hovering above them like an alien spaceship. The spotlight from the rescue chopper bathed the scene and turned night into day, revealing the remains of the Tahoe perched eerily on the edge of the drop–off. Brandy found reality more frightening than the image she’d imagined in the dark.

Gentle hands, Blade’s, helped her into a harness. Blade cupped his fingers around hers until the rescue winch lifted her away from him. By the time she reached the road, the trembles of shock had settled in.

Then Blade was there, his arm encircling her as the EMTs led her to a gurney.

“But I can walk, for God sake. I can get into the ambulance under my own steam.”

Her argument fell on deaf ears.

Jaw clenched, she said, “You just took the same ride as me, Beringer. You better get your butt in here too.”

Minutes later, as they rode out of the nightmare, as she listened to the siren screeching to the owls, Blade sat on a matching gurney and held her hand. His fingers stayed clamped around hers all the way into Little Chute valley.

****

Blade relented to an emergency room doctor poking around on him for about ten minutes, then decided he’d had enough. He was still a bit shaky, but he was okay. He knew it even if the doctor didn’t.

When the doc stepped out of the examining room, he scrambled off the table, hurried into the hall, and found a lounge. Cell phone in hand, he took time to touch base with the sheriff’s department. Next, he tracked down the nurse’s station. “I need to check on Deputy Brandy Wilcox.”

The young nurse glanced up from her clipboard. “She’s in room 106.”

Blade caught his breath and bit back a demand, knowing the nurse wasn’t allowed to discuss another patient with him. He tried to reassure himself. Brandy had seemed alert and coherent when they’d arrived at the hospital. She didn’t appear to have serious injuries. But he was no doctor. Until he saw her, until he got the official report, he wouldn’t breathe easy.

The thought of losing her hit him like a fleet of logging rigs.

A cold chill rippled down his back as he halted outside her room. When he walked in, the first thing he noticed were the shadows under Brandy’s pretty eyes, not quite shiners, but her air bag had left its mark. And the second thing that grabbed his attention was the stupid bottle of perfume sitting on the tray next to her bed. “How’d the Tendre Amour survive the crash?”

“I had it gripped in my hand. I didn’t even notice it until the EMT took my pulse in the ambulance. Guess I’m too frugal to waste anything that expensive and too stubborn to let go of the best present I ever had.”

“God, Brandy…” He’d buy her a case of the stuff if it meant that much to her.