Page 67 of Ashes to Ashes

We reached Ash’s truck, and I jumped into the passenger seat while he hefted both dogs into the back. And then he hopped in, fired up the engine, and we peeled out down his long, winding driveway to theroad.

We’d done it. We’d gotten out alive.

But then the truck swerved, and my eyes darted to Ash. He was white as a sheet; his skin dotted with perspiration. That’s when I realized he was driving with only one hand; the other was locked on his side, blood seeping through his fingers to coat hishand.

“Holy shit!” I unbuckled my seatbelt and flew across the bench to grab hold of the wheel. “Ash, stop!”

His head lolled and fell against the seat back. Thankfully, he stayed conscious just enough to slide his foot from the gas. A few seconds later, we came to a bumpy stop on the side of a deserted forest highway.

I pressed my hands to his wound, and blood seeped between my fingers. Ash’s head twisted and his eyes found mine. “You’resafe.”

“But you’re not!” I screeched, my panic rising. We were in the middle of nowhere, and I had no clue how close the nearest hospital was, or how to explain to the police where they could find us. With one hand still pressed to Ash’s side, I rooted around in my shirt and pulled my phone out from my bra. Slick with blood, it slipped from my fingers and clattered to the floor near Ash’s feet. I reached down to get it, but it had fallen too far away. I couldn’t keep my hand on Ash and reach my phone at the sametime.

I grabbed his other hand and pressed it against his side. “I need your help, Ash,” I implored when it fell limply to his side. “Come on, baby. Apply pressure there.”

He blinked, and as though moving through wet cement, dragged his hand back to his wound and pressed. “Thank you,” I breathed out, dropping a kiss to his cheek and then diving down to the floor boards to find my phone.

When I finally clasped it between my fingers, I sat up triumphantly. It didn’t matter though. We were in a dead zone. The “No Service” alert across the top of the screen loomed large. “Please, no,” I cried. “No, no, no,” I chanted, moving the phone all around, hoping to pick up even a faint signal. It was nouse.

“It’s okay, baby,” Ash whispered from lips that had gone chalky. “You didgood.”

“Stay with me, Ash,” I begged as his eyes fell closed. “Come on. I need you to stay withme.”

His lips stretched in a small, faraway smile. “Everything’s going to be okay, Rae. You’re safe now. No one is ever going to hurt you again.”

Dorothy ducked her head over the back of the seat bench. Whimpering, she nudged Ash with her long, pointed nose. Her whimpering grew louder and louder until Blanche joinedin.

Alone in the cab of the truck surrounded by two inconsolable dogs, I watched the man I loved slowly bleedingout.

With a cry, I pressed against Ash with all my might and kissed him hard. “Don’t you dare die on me! Do you hear me, Ash? We have a long, happy life ahead of us. You have to fight for me. I need you to live so I can give you a bunch of babies, and we can grow old together surrounded by our grandkids.” Tears fell from my cheeks to mix with the blood coating my hands and wrists. And with each second that passed, I knew that no matter how loud or how insistently I begged for a different outcome, I was going to lose him. That we didn’t have a long, happy life ahead of us. That I wasn’t going to have his babies.

I knew deep in my gut this was the end of our story.

* * *

Except it wasn’t.

In the next heartbeat, I heard the distant sound of sirens. They drew closer, until a cop car and an ambulance pulled up alongside the truck, their tires throwing rocks and other debris into the air. Before I could jump out and alert them to the situation, an EMT was already there, yanking Ash’s door open and pulling him onto a gurney. Together, he and another EMT quickly took in the situation and began working to staunch Ash’s wound.

A police officer gripped my hand and pulled me to the side, closing the doors on the two dogs that were barking and snarling and doing their best to protect me from what they perceived as a new threat. “It’s okay,” I told them as the door clanged shut. I palmed the window. “It’s okay girls. They’re here to help.” In an instant, their barks grew silent and they sat at attention, their big brown eyes watching. Waiting.

“Are you Rae Griffin?” the officer asked.

“Yes,” I croaked.

He pulled out a pad of paper and a pencil. “Can you tell us what happened? Dispatch received a call from Mr. Devereaux about 30 minutes ago alerting us to an intruder, and then his private security system reported gunshots being fired from inside the house a few minutes later. The monitoring company alerted us to your location through a GPS tracker, but we don’t have any more details thanthat.”

“Someone broke into the house,” I explained through panicky breaths. “There were three gunshots, and then a few minutes later, two more. Ash came up the stairs and dragged me to the truck. There was blood everywhere, but I didn’t know he’d been shot. Not until he started to lose consciousness.” I ducked around the officer to see how Ash was doing. The two EMTs had put an oxygen mask over his nose, and his chest was rising and falling in a steady, if slow, rhythm. “Is he going to be okay?” I asked, my eyes darting back to Ash’s supineform.

The officer’s gaze followed and the EMT gave a quick, short nod. “It’s just a flesh wound,” he pronounced. “He’ll befine.”

I breathed a huge sigh of relief and my knees buckled. But before I hit the ground, the officer caught me in his arms. “Whoa there,” he said. “I’ve gotyou.”

Now that I knew Ash was going to live, my mind was able to focus on something else. Like the fact that as far as I knew, Chip Noones was still inside the house. Ash hadn’t told me what had become of the man, but if he was alive, the police needed to arresthim.

“You have to go to the house!” I cried, pushing him toward his car. “He’s still there!”

The officer dug in his heels. “The intruder?”

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