Page 2 of Until You Found Me

Logan slams on the brakes, skidding the truck to a stop inches from a woman standing on the double yellow line.

He rushes out to check on her, worried he may have bumped into her even if she didn’t fall. He might end up in jail for vehicular assault when he was just about to get his life together. “Shit, are you okay? Did I hit you?”

She doesn’t respond. Doesn’t look at him or move an inch. She stares a thousand miles ahead through the blaring headlights, rainwater running through her long hair and down her face tinted red.

“Do you need some help?” He’s unsure of what to say or do. Never ran into anyone non-responsive on the back roads before, and reruns of law and order haven’t prepared him for this.

She remains silent, swaying barefoot on the pavement.

He takes a moment to assess what he’s looking at without viewing her through the filter of someone worried he’s about to catch a charge. She’s got a split lip and cracked knuckles.There’s dirt under her fingernails and caked into the creases of her clothing until it’s turned to mud. It colors the long strands of her red hair until she could be a brunette if he didn’t look close enough.

She looks like she crawled right out of the earth. The moment that concept enters his brain, he shivers. The horror of it is too great to process and so he stuffs it away, refusing to consider that might have been her reality before he found her.

He pulls out his phone. “Gonna call for help, okay? You wanna sit in the truck and warm up? Can you talk to me? What’s your name?”

He’s got his finger on the number pad when her haunting stare connects with his. It’s so hollow and visceral that it reaches right into his chest to grip the part of him that recognizes only that and refuses to let go.

“Am I dead?” A dry, scratchy whisper is all he’s granted before her eyes roll back in her head and her body gives out.

She’s light as a crumpled feather in his arms when he catches her and completely his responsibility. Her soaked clothing drowns his until the cold rainwater seeps against his chest, leaving it stuck to his skin even after he’s deposited her across the backseat. Taking her in himself is faster than waiting on an ambulance and she doesn’t have time left to fuck around on the side of the road.

This morning he thought he was a few hours from dying and now there’s a woman in his truck who just might.

He’s breaking speed laws, but if he gets pulled over at least there’s a good excuse laying unconscious beside a jug of motor oil and a fast food wrapper.

No one comes out this far from town unless they live hereand he knows for sure she doesn’t live here. Never seen her before and she isn’t the type to be forgotten. He worries his bottom lip between his teeth, swerving to miss a deer that should be marked for his hunt and checking the rearview mirror for signs of life.

She was breathing when they started, but he isn’t so sure now and she absolutely cannot die here. No one deserves an ending like this…not to mention the last thing he needs is a dead body in his possession.

Logan never checked for a wreck nearby. Maybe she drove off an embankment.

Maybe she was the victim of a hit and run.

Maybe she got lost after her car broke down.

His mind runs through possibilities, each one avoiding the elephant ready to stampede to the front. Something didn’t happen to her, something wasdone to her.

“You keep breathing, we’re almost there.” He reaches back to pat her on the hand that dangles off the edge of the seat. “Come on, wake up, wake up, wake up.”

What normally takes twenty minutes may as well take sixty. The road sucks them into a time loop that refuses to spit them out until the clinic light beams red and he squeals to a stop right up front. It’s not a real hospital, but it’s a better option than anything he could do for her himself.

“Help! Someone help!” He carries her limp body in his arms through the sliding doors, leaving a trail of crimson-colored droplets in his wake.

“Logan? What the hell happened?”

“Found her in the middle of the road. Was standing up and then she fainted. She’s all bloody. She won’t wake up.” He cuts off Audrey with rapid-fire answers to questions he knows arecoming while he lowers his charge onto a gurney.

Audrey shines a light into a pair of distant blue eyes. “Did she say anything?”

“No. I mean yes, but only asked if she was dead.”

“Anyone else there? Car accident?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ever seen her before?”

“Jesus, I told you all I know. Help her. Do something!” He barks back, agitated that so much attention is being spent on him when it should all go to her.

---