I hadn’t even thought of a child being in this mess.
“Captain,” I moved back to call out, “she says her son’s in here, too. I’m going to see if I can reach him.” I didn’t pause or stop even when the captain yelled for me to. I belly crawled to get the top half of my body inside the passenger side window.
“Ma’am, what’s your son’s name?”
“D-diego,” she responded, her voice so full of agony and fear it was choking her.
The car was upside down, causing me to have to look up to see the backseat. There was a booster seat, scraps of paper, and a blue baseball cap that looked like it was made for a child, but there was no child.
“Diego?” I called out and got no response.
“Carter?” I heard, Don, one of my squad members yell out.
“Is he okay?” the woman asked.
“We’re working on it, ma’am,” I told her just to reassure her. I pulled out to see Don standing over me.
“You find the kid?”
I shook my head.
“It’s well after eight o’clock, most schools have been in session for at least a half an hour. Maybe she dropped him off and forgot due to the accident.”
I nodded at Don’s assessment. It made the most sense. People often get details wrong in the immediate aftermath of something traumatic like a car accident.
“We working to get her outta here?”
“Yeah, but Cap’s afraid the jaws might cause sparks and another fire to star… Hey! Where the fuc–”
His words were cut off as I ducked back into the vehicle to tend to the woman. Something pulled me back to her, whereas ordinarily, I would’ve been helping to strategize.
“Hey, what’s your name?” I questioned, reaching out to the woman still stuck in the driver’s seat.
“M-michelle. Is Diego okay?”
“Michelle. I’m Carter. I need to ask if you’re sure Diego was with you in the accident?”
“I-I,” she began, shaking her head and then turning.
“No! Don’t m?” My protest was cut off when she finally turned her head to look at me and I got to see her face for the first time. The words I’d been trying to form turned into a ball of concrete and cemented in my throat. I was speechless. Thrown by the power of her gaze. Even the blood trickling down her forehead couldn’t mar the beauty of her caramel skin, high cheek bones and brown doe eyes.
“Diego.” She blinked a few times, then squeezed her eyes tight before popping them back open to look at me. “I think I took him to school,” she finally stated.
“That’s good. That’s a good thing, Michelle. It means your little boy is safe and sound in the classroom.”
She remained silent, eyes still on mine, holding my gaze, silently begging me to get her out of there.
“So now, we’re going to do everything we can to get his mama back to him, safe and sound. Okay?” I removed one of my gloves, and lifted my hand to push strands of curly hair away from her face. “Alright?” I urged.
“’Kay,” she answered on a whisper.
“I’m gonna check your seatbelt right now. Don’t move.” I traced her seatbelt with my hand all the way down to her waist and tried to undo it, but it was stuck.
“Michelle, your seatbelt has got you in there pretty good. Great thing during an accident, but right now we gotta get you out of here. Give me a sec.” I pushed back out. “Harvard, I need a knife. Seatbelt’s caught.”
“Here.” He handed me a knife we kept in the rig. “It’s about to get loud.”
“You’re going with the jaws?”
