Page 33 of Protecting the White Bear

“Thanks so much for helping out.” Monica followed Andy to the belligerent woman’s car.

“I couldn’t get her to open her car door.” Andy sounded exasperated. “I believe she’s drunk or high on something.”

Monica eyed the wild-haired woman in the car, screaming obscenities at them. “Oh, that’s just great. We need to turn this car around and use it to head back to White Bear. Unless we return to Harvey’s motel and set everyone up in the various rooms until we can get help.”

“Because Eloise took Wendell’s truck from the motel, I’m afraid she knows where they’ll all be, join Denny and the gang, and they’ll have a ride out of there. They might go to the motel to rescue Harvey if they got some more gas,” Andy said.

“All right. We need to get this woman out of her car then.”

Andy touched the frosted window with his gloved finger. “I would break the window, but I don’t have a tool on me to do the job.”

“We can’t stay out in this cold and freeze to death while trying to convince her to open the door.” Then Monica had a thought. “My flashlight. It’s in my backpack.”

She hurried back to the Yukon and pulled her flashlight from the backpack. When she returned to the woman’s car, one of the men helping them joined them.

“I’ve got one of those emergency hammers to break out a car window,” the man said.

“I’ll get it,” his companion said and trudged through the snow to the car down the embankment to get the hammer.

When he brought it back up, he handed the hammer to Monica. She broke out the front passenger’s window. Then she opened the door as the woman screamed at her. “No!”

An open, half-finished bottle of vodka was sitting on the floorboard of the front passenger’s seat, which reminded her of the other woman, Eloise, who had been in Wendell’s camper-covered truck and the bottle of gin.

Monica climbed into the car, reached over the driver—who shoved at her and screamed like a toddler having a tantrum—and unlocked her door.

Andy yanked the door open and pulled the woman out of the car. Monica quickly joined Andy to help him confine her.

“Get off me! Stop! Don’t touch me! Let me go!” the woman screamed. “You have no right to touch me!”

“This is my last pair of handcuffs,” Monica said while she and Andy struggled to get the woman into the cuffs.

“Let’s hope we don’t have to arrest anyone else.” Andy was trying to pin the woman down on the snow-covered road as Monica tried to get the cuffs on her wrists. “Quit resisting, ma’am.”

The drunk woman kicked at Andy and Monica and connected with Andy’s leg. “You’ve just committed battery on a law enforcement officer,” Andy said.

“I don’t care! Let me go!”

“Okay, what do we do now?” Andy pulled the woman up off the road.

“Let me go.”

Monica said, “We should settle people in the three vehicles that can move and then head out. I suggest that the two cars involved in the accident that had been damaged drive ahead of us so we can make sure they don’t have trouble along the way.”

“Agree. How do you want to split up the people?”

“My brother and I can drive the car with the broken window,” the one man said, his gaze shifting to his brother—and she felt there was an unspoken communication between them.

“Yeah,” his brother agreed. “It would be too cold for anyone else to ride in it. We can cover it with an army wool blanket that will work.”

“Are you sure?” Andy asked.

“Yeah. Then you can take the drivers and passengers in the other two vehicles.”

Monica wasn’t too sure about these guys. She wasn’t certain what was making her senses feel that something wasn’t quite right about them—she should have just been grateful they hadn’t been injured and were helping—but she didn’t exactly trust them.

She got Andy to the side of the road out of their hearing as the brothers went down the embankment on the other side to get the blanket and maybe their personal items out of their car. “There’s something not quite right about these guys. They seemed so keen to move away from their car right after the accident. When they realized you were a uniformed law enforcement officer, they were eager to help.”

“Watch what they’re bringing up from their car.”

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