Lindsey nodded toward my right arm. “Can you construct with that wound?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m the supervisor. I tell peons what to do.”
“Then get with it.” She grinned at me. “Someone’s gotta work around here.”
We ate our burgers in comfortable camaraderie, talked, smiled, and occasionally laughed. I enjoyed the sight of her smile. Easy. Carefree. Confident. A smile I might fall in love with if I got careless. Lindsey owned a face I could look at for days on end and never grow tired of the looking.
By the way she looked at me, perhaps she felt the same.
“I have to get back to work,” Lindsey said as she finished her meal. “I promised my client I’d have this project for him this evening.”
She picked up the check, only to have me snatch it from her fingers. “I’m buying.”
“Whatever, man. Let’s go.”
I paid the ticket, then walked on newly healed feet beside her to her car. “I’ll go back to work tomorrow,” I commented as we crossed the parking lot.
Before she unlocked her sedan, Lindsey seized my chin in her fingers, inspecting my wound closely. She then grabbed my wrist and examined my arm also. “I think you should wait another day.”
“I’m good, Doc,” I said cheerfully. “Hardly hurts at all.”
She unlocked the car, then got in behind the wheel. “And Austin?”
“Gone to sell his dope to the local junkies. Probably forgot all about me by now.”
“Let’s hope so.”
Her hand on the back of my seat, Lindsey carefully backed the car from its parking slot.
The silver pickup sped toward us from nowhere and slammed into the sedan’s rear.
The car spun sickeningly, tires squealing. The grinding smash of metal against metal screeched in my ears. My head whipped around on my neck, making it crack.I’m dead.
***
“Hit and run,” the cop said. “No witnesses.”
He eyed us as Lindsey and I sat on the curb, constantly stared at by passersby and looky-loos hoping to see blood running down the gutter. “Did you see the vehicle?”
Lindsey shook her head. “It happened too fast. I just caught a blur from the corner of my eye.”
“All I saw was a silver truck,” I added, rubbing my sore neck. “Maybe a Ford, but I can’t be sure.”
He gestured with the hand not hooked into his duty belt. “What happened there?”
“Lost an argument.”
He and his partner exchanged a long look but dropped the matter. As both Lindsey and I waived medical care, the responding EMTs loaded their gear back into the ambulance, waved to the cops, then drove away. The firetruck that also answered the call of an accident lumbered slowly into traffic, shutting off its strobes.
Lindsey rubbed her face with both palms. “Now what do I do? My car is totaled.”
The truck’s impact on the right rear quarter panel had smashed in the frame and the wheel. Broken glass twinkled on the asphalt. The front where we’d been sitting when the truck hit had remained intact, and the car’s airbags had saved us from serious injury. All in all, we’d gotten lucky. Had the truck struck us broadside, I might now be dead.
“Insurance,” the cop commented blandly. “That’s why you have it.”
“Yeah.” Lindsey blew out a sharp gust and scraped her hair back. “Thanks.”
The officers ambled away, ostensibly to watch for the tow truck. I nudged Lindsey with my shoulder. “How’re you feeling?”
