Fatal Response. Jodie Bailey
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scrape crept through the back door. Erin leaned toward the sound. She’d strapped bungee cords on the large trash cans to keep the critters out. With the fire station situated on the edge of a broad mountain meadow, all kinds of wild animals drifted past the building. She’d seen everything from adorable baby raccoons to black bears that could swat her into eternity with one swipe of a massive paw.
One time of having to clean trash strewn across the property by an unseen animal when she was a rookie volunteer had been enough to make her double-check the security of those trash cans.
Still, the heavy plastic likely wouldn’t be able to withstand a bear. If the noise continued, she could always flip on the lights and scare the creature across the meadow and into the woods.
Hand on the switch, she listened, the hairs on the back of her neck standing at attention.
Tires screeched on the road to the station, and headlights swept across the doors of the bay. An engine revved as it strained through the gears.
Somebody was flying along the short road that ended at the station. There’d been problems in the past with drag racers on the straightest stretch of road in the county, but the presence of the fire station had put a stop to racing when it was built twelve years earlier. With at least one firefighter constantly on duty, even the craziest of kids was smart enough to know a quick race would end in a phone call to the police.
Whoever was out there was coming in hot.
Lord, help me if they’re bringing in an injured child. With the closest hospital nearly half an hour away, it wouldn’t be the first time a Mountain Springs resident had forgone 911 to bring their emergency straight to the nearest help.
Flipping on the outside floodlights, Erin shoved open the back door as a small red sports car slid to a halt in the center of the rear parking lot. The driver’s door flew open, and a young woman jumped out. She spotted Erin and hefted a large padded envelope over her head. “Don’t hurt him! Please!”
Someone must be in the back seat of the car. Erin stepped away from the building. “Is someone in the car who needs—”
“I came alone.” Her voice shook, pleading as she held the envelope out toward Erin, although a good twenty feet separated them. “Please. Just...please.”
Erin eased back toward the building and snaked her hand behind her, feeling for the door handle. If this stranger was high or on a mental break she needed assistance, but she could easily turn violent. “Ma’am? Can I help you with—”
“Don’t hurt him!” The woman rounded her car and stepped cautiously toward Erin, holding out the package. “Please, I don’t know—”
An engine roared and tires screamed as another car accelerated and skidded around the side of the building.
It was the dark sedan that had driven by so many times.
The stranger’s eyes widened in panic. She froze, directly in the path of the oncoming headlights.
Adrenaline streaked in a flashover through Erin as she took two steps away from the building.
The car’s engine revved higher as it swerved toward the woman.
It wasn’t slowing. Throwing her hands over her head, Erin tried to yell a warning, but her throat constricted. No! Stop! There was no way this was happening. Nothing she could do to prevent it.
Time slowed. A dull, crunching thud tore the air as the dark four-door slammed into the young woman. Her body was hurled limply onto the hood of the car. The windshield cracked into a spiderweb from the impact of her head. She dropped to the ground and rolled.
The sedan skidded around the corner of the building and disappeared in a shriek of tires, leaving behind the sharp smell of tire rubber and an unearthly silence.
Erin’s breath came in hard gasps. A ringing in her ears drowned out the silence as the horror of the past minute gripped her in a momentary paralysis. Her mind screamed she should run, curl into a ball, call for help...
But she was the help.
Her training took over. Alert for sounds of the other vehicle’s return, Erin bolted for the broken body crumpled on the ground. Lord, let there be a pulse. Breathing. Anything.
She dropped to her knees and let her gaze sweep the victim who lay on her side, eyes staring vacantly into the darkness.
Swallowing a cocktail of grief and fear, Erin reached out to search for a pulse she was certain she would never find.
Footsteps pounded on the pavement at the far side of the building. The sound rocked Erin back on her heels and she whipped toward the approaching steps, her mind racing with prayers and fear.
A figure appeared at the dark corner, running toward her. In the shadows, she couldn’t make out features, could only tell it was a man. But there was something familiar—
And then the man was awash in light, the silence shattered by the sound of an engine roaring closer.
* * *
There was no time to think.
Army Sergeant First Class Jason Barnes sprinted toward the woman who stood silhouetted in the headlights of the oncoming car, refusing to question if he could outrun the vehicle sliding around the corner of the fire station with its engine revving into a high whine as it accelerated.
He couldn’t allow anyone else to die on his watch.
The roar of the engine grew closer, the lights brighter. He’d never make it. He’d never reach her in time. The car was too fast.
The ache in his knee made him too slow.
He was a couple of meters from her when tires screeched and rubber burned. The vehicle skidded sideways to a halt, scraping the passenger door against the brick building.
At the same moment, Jason reached the woman and grabbed her by the waist, dragging her with him to safety behind the Mustang belonging to his buddy Seth’s wife, which sat at an odd angle on the concrete. They were safe...unless the driver got out and came after them.
He looked over his shoulder, shielding the woman, as the rear tires spun and the dark older-model sedan skidded around the side of the building, the driver nothing more than a hulking shadow in a fleeting glimpse through the rear window.
Then the woman he’d rescued, the one he still held to his chest with one arm, repaid him for saving her life by driving her head into the side of his jaw. “Let me go.”
Shock relaxed his hold and she stumbled forward, barely catching herself by planting both hands on the trunk of Angie’s car. She regained her balance, then turned toward him with all of the suddenness of a summer tornado.
A very familiar tornado.
The air left his lungs in a rush, and he had to dig deep for enough air to say her name. “Erin?”
For the first time, her eyes met his, her face shadowed by the floodlights behind her. But there was no doubt, none at all
He’d rescued his ex-wife.
For a moment, there was zero sign of recognition, but then her eyes widened and she gasped. “What are...? Where did you come from?” She backed away from him slowly, glancing over her shoulder, then back to him as her jaw set in something that might be fear. “Did you do this?”
“Do what? Save your life?” Wait. No. This was not about them. He couldn’t let this become the discussion he’d played out in his head for years.
He had to find Angie Daniels, and Erin had been standing in front of Angie’s Mustang while a second car bore down on her.
Angie’s car, Erin beside it. Nothing computed. Right now, he couldn’t focus on the parts that didn’t make sense. He had to focus on finding Seth’s wife.
Staff Sergeant Seth Daniels had called the members of their team an hour earlier and asked them to search