Page 82 of River Ride

Dad gave the signal that we were done at the reception, and we left the air-conditioned building and crossed the hot-as-hell asphalt to get to our trucks.

“Take your jackets and your ties off, boys. The trucks are going to be fry factories until we get up the road a bit and the air kicks in.”

Virge tugged at his tie. “I’m so happy to get this goddamned thing off my neck.”

My brother made me laugh about fifty times a day. I should start keeping track.

When we got to the ranch, me and Virge hung up our suits, changed into cutoffs and didn’t bother with shirts. Lucky enough to have First Nation Blood in us we wouldn’t burn like a blonde guy—like our dad.

Billy had a little trouble saddling Bonnie Grace. She’d been a little out of sorts since Tammy left the ranch and wasn’t giving her all the attention she was used to.

We helped Billy and he had more trouble getting into the saddle using his bad leg. Once he was up, there was no problem at all. He was an excellent rider.

How could he not be? He’d been riding since he was six months old. I was still laughing at that.

Ashville. North Carolina.

Tammy left Rick at the truck stop in the morning and drove all day on coffee and little white pills. Not having any idea where she was headed, Tammy drove north through the Carolinas enjoying the gorgeous scenery.

Around twilight, the pills began wearing off and a huge jolt of pain shot through her body and paralyzed her brain and temporarily disabled her motor skills.

High in the mountains where the roads were narrow and anything but straight, Tammy lost strength in her arms and couldn’t turn the wheel fast enough.

She missed the sharp turn on the switchback and the huge Freightliner careened to the right and smashed through the guardrail.

Tammy had no time to react or to scream before the truck plummeted down and down the side of the mountain into a deep gorge.

No idea how long she’d been unconscious, before the sound of sirens forced her to wake up. She tried to think and clear the fogginess out of her brain, but her neck hurt and so did all the rest of her.

If she was lying in the truck when the rescue crew got to her, the police would haul her off to jail.

How badly was she hurt?

No time to check her body parts for specific injuries to see what was working and what was broken. The pain seemed to be massive in a head-to-foot way, so she figured more than one part of her body was badly damaged.

It would take the cops and the Fire and Rescue a long while to get down to the bottom of the ravine, so she had time to get out of the truck and put some distance between her and the truck she liked so much.

If she had broken bones, the going would be slow.

“I’ve got to try to get out of the truck.”

Tammy tried the handle on the driver’s door, and it was broken off. The door had caved in against her and trapped her between the door and the airbag.

The airbag was pushing her back against the seat and she had to fight her way through the tiny opening to her right. Thatmeant she had to climb up and over the console to get to the passenger door and get out of the truck.

As she began moving and using her body, her left arm and shoulder hurt a lot. She noticed the left side of her head was bleeding too. Her hair was matted and all sticky with blood.

She had nothing to wipe the blood away with. Her bag of clothes was in the sleeper, but she couldn’t get to them.

Tammy fought through the pain because she had to if she wanted to survive. She forced herself to crawl over the console. It was the only way out of the truck.

The sirens grew louder and were screaming up on the highway far above her head. She had to hurry.

As she flopped over the console into the passenger seat letting out a loud groan, she recognized the familiar pain of the dog bite rearing its head.

She reached down with her functioning right hand and felt the fresh blood soaked through her pants.

“The stitches came apart.”

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