LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter One

      The car was upside down, resting on its crumpled hood.

      Sheriff Paxton Price was out of his departmental SUV and running down the steep embankment toward the site of the crash before he was even able to discern that particular fact.

      The only indication there’d been an accident at all was the way the guardrail on the side of the road had been mangled.

      “Ambulance needed, Connie,” he said into his shoulder mic, grabbing a spindly mesquite branch to keep it from slapping him in the face as his soles slid in the dirt. Twenty feet of prickly shrubs stood between him and the white car wedged against a gnarled snag.

      If it wasn’t for the dying tree, the car would have kept on going.

      “Not just Charlie’s wrecker. You got that, Connie? Send the ambulance, too.”

      “Ambulance is over in Amber Falls.” Connie’s response crackled badly, but in the two years since he’d come back to Paseo, he was used to the crappy transmissions by now.

      “Call ’em, anyway,” he barked. He wished to hell his brother Marshall didn’t have the day off. He was a paramedic with the Amber Falls Fire Department. The town was the closest of any size, which didn’t mean much when compared to tiny Paseo.

      “On it...riff,” Connie said through the crackling and Pax grabbed another shrub as he continued skidding his way down the embankment. He needed to slow his momentum before he shot beyond the wedged car and into the ravine.

      Dust clouded when he went down on his side like a kid sliding into home plate. Only this time, he wasn’t scoring a run for the Paseo High Panthers, but was avoiding slamming into the precariously perched sports car.

      He succeeded, though barely. Adrenaline pumping, he tossed aside his cowboy hat and scrambled on his knees to the crumpled side of the car. The windshield was in the dirt and a dead tree branch bisected the back window. He’d seen too many vehicular fatalities back in Dallas, where there was emergency medical assistance available at the crook of a finger. Here in Paseo?

      They had one ambulance covering an entire county. As Texas standards went, the county wasn’t large, but still...

      “Come on, come on.” He ducked to look through the broken passenger-side window. It was the only one accessible. The driver’s side was squarely jammed against the trunk of the decaying oak.

      His gut clenched. The driver was hanging upside down, held in her seat by the safety belt. Her light brown hair was long and tangled in the spent airbags, and glittered with shards of glass. She was young. And her eyes, her terrified and very much alive blue eyes, fastened on his. “Help.”

      He read the word on her pallid lips more than heard it, and lifted a staying hand when she started to reach out one of hers. “Don’t move, honey. This big ol’ snag is sturdy, but I don’t want to take any chances. I’ll get you out. Just hang tight, okay?”

      Tears were caught in her dark lashes, but her lips lifted ever so slightly. “Fine time for puns,” she whispered.

      “Atta girl.” There was no way the door would open. He didn’t even bother trying. “Are you hurt?” Aside from the scrapes and scratches, he couldn’t see any blood. But the deflated airbags were blocking most of his view. “Can you move your legs?”

      “I can wiggle my feet.”

      “Excellent.” He knew she couldn’t have been hanging there for more than thirty minutes because he’d seen that guardrail perfectly intact when he’d cruised by it earlier. But thirty minutes or less was still thirty minutes or less too long.

      And just because he couldn’t see serious bleeding didn’t mean there was none. She looked pale and limp and entirely helpless.

      “Do you know how long you’ve been here like this?”

      She made a sound that wasn’t much of an answer. Her eyelids fluttered and closed.

      “Stay with me, honey.” With one sharp swipe of his Maglite, he cleared the rest of the window glass and tossed aside the jagged piece of dead tree branch that had shattered it. “Can you tell me what happened?”

      She didn’t respond at first and he reached in, grasping one of her hands. “Come on, honey. Try to stay awake here. Talk to me.”

      Her fingers moved. A slight squeeze. Enough to make him breathe a little easier. “I’m here.” The words sighed out of her. She had a drawl, but not a Texas one. It was more Deep South with a twist. “You have a nice...voice. I don’t know what happened.” She opened her eyes again, blinking as if to clear her vision. “One minute I was singing along with Lady Gaga and the next—” She broke off, then pulled her slender fingers free, lifted her hand and fluttered it along the gray shoulder strap pinning her against expensive white leather. “My seat belt’s stuck. I couldn’t get it loose.”

      “Then it’s doing its job.” He pulled out of the window for a moment, grabbed his pocketknife and unbuckled his duty belt, letting it drop to the ground before he carefully reached through the window again with both arms and angled his shoulders so he could fit. “You from New Orleans?”

      “Shows that much?”

      The space wasn’t exactly built for a guy his size, but he’d been in tighter spots. “Louisiana license plate.” That and the distinct NOLA accent. “This your parents’ car?”

      She seemed to rouse herself a little. “No, but Daddy’s gonna have a fit, anyway. He didn’t want me driving out here in the first place. Wanted to double-check every safety system this car has before I started out.”

      There was a small R-Haz insignia on the dashboard. He hadn’t gotten a notice from the telematics company that her car was involved in an accident, so at least one of those safety systems had failed to do its job.

      “Protective, is he?” He gained another inch.

      “And then some. Ever since Savannah’s break-in he’s been worse than ever.”

      “Who’s Savannah?”

      “My little sister. One of them, anyway.”

      “How many sisters do you have?” He’d managed to squeeze partially through the window but he still wasn’t far enough to reach her well.

      “Uh, two. And a, uh, a bunch of brothers. I’m smack in the middle.”

      “Middle-child syndrome?”

      “Please.”

      He smiled at the way she rolled her eyes. She was making good sense, and he hoped that meant she didn’t have a concussion. “I have three brothers myself,” he offered conversationally. “No sisters, though, to my mother’s everlasting disappointment.” He stretched his arm across the interior of the vehicle and snagged the tips of his fingers around the headrest of her seat, so he could use it for leverage to heave himself halfway into the vehicle. He managed not to swear a blue streak when he got up close and personal with the gearshift as a result.

      “I’m gonna cut the belt and catch you, okay?” His voice was rougher than he wanted. He was a pickup-truck sort of guy over sports cars and the nauseating throbbing in his groin cemented the fact. He turned gingerly onto his side, earning another inch of leverage.

      She visibly trembled. “Maybe we should wait for more help.”

      “We

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