Page 61 of Save the Last Dance
Mack ran to the car and killed the engine. He was probably hearing things, but he couldn’t shake that humming of his sixth sense. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as he listened to the wind blow through the trees near the quarry.
There! A high-pitched cry. It could have been animal or human, but his instincts told him someone was in trouble.
“I hear you!” he shouted. Popping the trunk, he found flares and a flashlight. Ah, screw the flares. No time.
He left his lights on, took his phone and flashlight and headed into the woods.
“If you can hear me, I need you to make noise!” He bellowed the words. There were no houses near the quarry, just a few buildings owned by Rowen Gravel. There was a moon out, but there was zero ambient light out here on the far edge of town.
Was someone lost? Had a kid fallen down one of the cliffs? There was a lot of cool equipment down in the quarry to attract troublemakers—dump trucks and bulldozers sat there all the time.
When no sound answered his call, he ran faster through the trees, twigs snapping in his face since the brush was thick around the edges of the property. He swung the flashlight in an arc in front of him, sweeping the ground with the beam until he hit a patch that reflected back at him. Pausing, he turned the beam hard to the east where he’d thought he’d seen something. Andthat’s when he spotted shiny metallic paint in robin’s-egg-blue.
A sports car rested nose-down among the trees, crumpled into half its regular size.
His knees buckled for all of a second as old memories of another crash robbed his focus. But there was a survivor this time, damn it. He’d failed his friend by letting Vince take off in his car when he’d been upset. He wasn’t failing someone again.
Shoving aside everything else, he sprinted toward the vehicle. Twice he lost his footing on the side of the steep hill and he skidded lower down the cliff beyond the wreck. When he climbed back up, keeping his boots lodged in the base of one tree after another, he shouted again.
“You okay?” His heart beat so fast he figured there was a real chance he’d have a coronary in the dark before he even got to the driver. What the hell was it about this day that he had one foot in the past and one in the present? His throat was raw when he called out the next time. “I’m here and I’m calling for help now.”
He forced himself to stop long enough to focus on his phone. He called 911 and then launched himself toward the driver’s side door.
“911. What’s your emergency?” a woman’s voice said through the device.
Thank you, God.
He tugged on the car’s dented panel, but it was wedged. He could see someone inside.
“I’m at the scene of an accident on the Quarry Road in Heartache. Tell the emergency responders to look for the El Dorado at the top of the hill and walk straight down the bank on the east side of the road from there.” He pulled the door harder. “I only see one victim. Female. I’m putting the phone down to try and open the door.”
Settling the phone on a crook of a nearby tree, he hit the speaker button and accidentally disconnected the call. Screw it. He grabbed the door handle and yanked. Once. Twice.
The third time, he may have dislocated his shoulder, but at least he dislodged the rumpled metal.
“Are you okay?” He sank to the running board area near the driver’s seat. The girl was slumped half into the passenger seat, her left leg twisted at a wrong angle as blood spilled down her thigh. Not a lot, though.
Mack leaned into the dark to listen for her breathing. Checked her heart. Both were strong.
Thank you, God.
Not until that moment had he realized how scared he’d been. How much he’d seen his eighteen-year-old best friend inside this dented-to-shit hunk of metal. Vaguely, he realized his phone was ringing.
Crap. Pulling himself together, he leaned back out into the night and retrieved the phone. The screen lit up with a return call from the dispatcher.
He thumbed it to speakerphone. “I’m here,” he said, still half out of breath. “She’s alive but unconscious. Her leg appears to be broken, but no protruding bones.”
“Help is on the way,” the 911 attendant assured him.
“No,” the teenage blonde moaned, stirring.
He glanced back down at her. “Careful. Don’t make any sudden movements. You could have a head injury.”
“I do,” she murmured. “My head hurts.” Her lip was cut, too, he realized.
And, as he studied her face, looking beyond the injuries, he realized he recognized this girl.
“You’re Ally’s friend.” He’d just met her earlier that day. “I’m Ally’s uncle from the straw maze.Mack.” He kept the phone on speaker for the 911 worker in case she had questions.
