Chapter 34
thirty-four
. . .
REAGAN
Wham.
At first, I thought I’d run something over, but I hadn’t seen anything in the headlights, and the impact had come from behind. A quick glance in my rear view made my blood run cold.
Illuminated in the glow of my taillights was a truck, its headlights extinguished, grill and brush guard menacing in the red illumination.
“Oh, god,” I breathed.
Picking up speed, I groped around my passenger seat in search of my phone. I’d wrapped my fingers around it when another crash came from the back, jolting me forward, the seatbelt digging painfully into my chest.
My phone slipped from my grip and flew out of reach.
Fuck fuck fuck.
I pressed the gas pedal down harder, desperate to create some space between me and the crazy fucker behind me. Glancing around, I searched in vain for some sort of landmark, something to tell me how close I was to the ranch drive.
Surely this person wouldn’t follow me all the way home, right?
Likely not—especially not if they knew who I was, who Finn was, and I guessed that was the case. It would make perfect sense for this to be the same person that had been tormenting me for weeks.
The truck rammed into me once again, and it took every ounce of strength I had to keep my SUV steady and on the road.
Fuck, I should’ve listened to Finn and stayed home. But I’d been determined, certain I was safe as long as the sun was out.
Silly me.
My back bumper must’ve looked like an accordion by now, but the assailant matched my speed, increasing his, slamming into me once more.
The hit jarred my bones, forcing my hands off the steering wheel. I lost control, going too fast, spinning out on the gravel. I careened off the road—right into a tree.
All the breath vacated my lungs on impact, when the airbag deployed right into my chest.
Time seemed to halt before sensation returned to me all at once.
The hissing of the engine.
The cloud of smoke seeping into the cab and blotting out the night.
The excruciating pain in my left arm.
And beyond all of that…footsteps, growing closer by the second.
I couldn’t move, not only because shifting jostled my arm in a way that had me swearing through the pain, but because I was pinned in, both by the seatbelt I couldn’t unfasten and the steering column that had moved several feet closer in the crash.
All I could do was sit there and accept my fate.
A masked, shadowy figure appeared in my periphery, and I faced them, willing my brain to latch onto any defining characteristic.
But the darkness was too thick to see anything but an amorphous mass.
They reached for the door handle, wrenching on it, and I breathed a sigh of relief that it didn’t budge, that the locks hadn’t malfunctioned in the crash. The figure lifted their elbow, clearly about to smash out the window, but stilled when a distant voice cut through the night.
“Reagan? Oh my god, Crew, it’s Reagan!”
Aspen. And she obviously had Crew with her.
Thank Hecate.
I’d take any Lawless man I could get right now.
At her voice, the dark figure bolted.
“Help!” I screamed, trying to twist in my seat, hoping they could hear me, pounding on the window with my fist. “I’m stuck! I’m still in the car!”
“Reagan!” Aspen cried when she reached the door, her phone light shining into my eyes, and I lifted my good arm to shield them. “Are you okay?”
I shook my head. “My arm. I think it’s broken. And I’m stuck.”
Crew appeared behind her. “We’ll get you out, Reagan. I promise.”
All I could do was nod. I trusted him, and he did this for a living. I was in good hands.
“Aspen?” I asked when Crew disappeared.
“Yeah?”
“Call Finn.”
“Of course,” she said, bringing her phone down and tapping on the screen, but she paused, tipping her face up. Was she…sniffing? “Do you smell that?”
For a moment, there was nothing but the scent of blood—wait, I was bleeding?
Goddesses, I was reliving the night Mom and Dad died.
At least I was alone this time.
“Gas,” I said when I finally located the scent, fear sluicing down my spine.
“Gas,” Aspen confirmed in horror. “Hey, hotshot! We’ve got gas!”
No sooner had the words left her mouth than did a whoosh sound from behind me, illuminating Aspen in a fiery glow a moment later.
“Get back, Aspen!” Crew shouted as he rejoined us.
Oh god, I was going to die in this fucking car. Trapped like a caged animal, burning alive without ever discovering what happened to my sister.
Tears fell rapidly, mixing with the blood I now knew to be coming from a cut above my left eye. I didn’t even remember hitting it.
“Cover your face, Reagan!”
Wait, what?
Crew’s words pulled me out of my spiral, and I did the best I could, turning slightly and shielding my face with my good arm, squeezing my eyes tightly shut.
A moment later, glass shattered and rained down on me, cool night air sweeping in and caressing my overheated skin.
“What about the fire?”
Yeah, those were the first words out of my mouth when I looked at Crew, his face framed in the now busted out window of my car.
Aspen chuckled, and Crew lifted a fire extinguisher.
“It’s out,” he said simply.
“He’s a fucking Boy Scout,” she said with a good-natured eye roll.
“Actually, I’m a firefighter.”
“Oh, I know,” she replied. “I just live to tease you.”
“How are you guys even here? I mean…fuck, thank you. You saved my life.”
“I had a meeting with some of my publishing team up in Boise, and since Crew isn’t on shift tonight, he came with. We were heading home when we spotted you.”
“You were hit, weren’t you?” Crew asked, and I nodded. “I thought I heard another vehicle take off, but I was so focused on checking on you, I didn’t give it much thought.”
“There was a truck. Big. Headlights off. Brush guard. They—” I cut off as a shiver rolled through me. Goddesses, I’d been so close to a fate much worse than some broken bones and a cut on my face. “I think they wanted to take me,” I whispered. “I think this was the same person who took my sister.”
“Shit,” Crew and Aspen swore in unison.
A siren wailed in the distance, preceding the flashing blue lights from the approaching cavalry. From the opposite direction, a big black truck raced up and braked hard, skidding to a stop on the gravel. Another vehicle pulled up shortly after.
“Reagan!”
Finn.
“Over here!” Aspen called. “I’m warning you, though, take it easy. Looks like she’s got a broken arm and a pretty nasty cut on her head.”
She and Crew stepped back, and then he was there.
Reaching through the window to gently cup my cheeks, turning my head this way and that, examining me.
“Belle,” he croaked out.
“Hey, soldier.”
“You’re okay?”
“I think so.”
“Can you get out?”
I shook my head. “I’m stuck under the steering column.”
“The boys will get you out,” Crew said from behind Finn, inclining his head. I looked in the side mirror, which was miraculously undamaged, to see the fire truck fast approaching.
“Captain!”
Crew turned to the newcomer. “Tuck?”
Tuck jogged up. “Heard the call go out over the scanner, so I drove out.”
Crew clapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks, man. We can assist these guys.”
Behind the fire truck, several more vehicles pulled to a stop, Lane at their head, trailed by two more guys I vaguely recognized.
“Reporting for duty, Cap,” the smaller of the two said.
“Childers, Burns. What the fuck are you guys doing here?”
They looked between him and Tuck. “Likely the same thing as the rest of you. Heard the call go out, wanted to come help.”
“You’re not getting overtime for this,” Crew said in warning. “And we’ve still gotta show up bright and early tomorrow.”
The guys made no move to leave, so Crew shrugged.
Before he could launch into an explanation of the scene, Lane arrived.
“What’ve we got?” he asked, all business.
“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that, Sheriff?” a female voice said, one that sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place.
“Be my guest,” Lane grumbled, shifting to the side so Sutton, the paramedic, could examine me.
“Hey, Reagan.”
“Hi.”
“You doing okay?”
Nodding, I said, “Just want to get the fuck out of here.”
“I think we can make that happen,” she winked. “I’m going to do a cursory exam, stabilize you, and then the fire department will get you free.”
Without waiting for a response from me, she proceeded to shine a penlight in my eyes, checking my pupils for proper dilation.
“I can’t do anything about your arm until you’re out, so I need you to keep it close to your body and hold it as still as possible when they pull you out, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Great. I’m going to put this cervical collar on you, then hand you over to the boys.”
Leaning me forward as far as she could, Sutton slipped the collar around my neck and fastened the Velcro straps. Discomfort with the unnatural position set in, and I was already counting down the minutes until I could take it off.
At last, satisfied with her work, Sutton moved out of the way, and the firefighters took her place. There were a lot of machine sounds, drilling, slamming, and winching. Finally, the door popped open. Someone reached in, cut my seatbelt, and weaved it away from my body.
There was a halt in progress as the team debated the best way to extract me, Crew ultimately coming to my rescue with a suggestion that sounded like it would cause me the least amount of distress.
“They’re going to put a hydraulic jack down here,” he said, motioning to the space by my feet, “and lift the steering column off your lap enough to pull you out. It’s going to hurt, but it’ll be quick, okay?
I nodded again. I was grateful he and everyone else around was keeping me in the loop on what was happening. It went a long way to quelling my nerves.
“You’re gonna be okay, belle,” Finn said, giving me what I’m sure he thought was a reassuring smile that was more of a grimace.
The men continued to work, the sounds of the jack filling the space as it lifted the steering column. I hadn’t realized how heavy it was, how much feeling I’d lost in my legs, until the weight disappeared and that prickling, pins and needles sensation took over.
With that out of the way, a backboard appeared and was situated at my side. On the count of three, three men gripped me, turning me and pulling me out.
A cry left me as my arm jostled, and I breathed harshly through my teeth, waiting for the worst of the pain to abate.
Finn was at my side a moment later, helping load me onto a stretcher, then grabbing my hand as Sutton and her partner wheeled it across the grass toward the ambulance.