“Watch him,” I demanded and made my way back to Lyric.
Alamo had gotten the door open.
“Don’t move her!” I called.
“I’m not gonna fuckin’ move her, brother,” he snapped.
I closed the distance between us and helped Alamo force the door further open.
“I’m going to be sick,” Lyric warned and promptly puked everywhere. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, sweetheart,” Alamo assured. “The EMTs are here. They’re gonna take good care of you.”
“Y’all are so nice,” she mused.
Alamo smiled his million-dollar smile and I found myself scowling in response. It didn’t matter that he was married to the woman of his dreams, I didn’t want him smiling at Lyric.
“Excuse us,” a female voice ordered as she and her partner rolled in a gurney. “Oh, hey, Doom.”
“Hey, Marney,” I said. She’d been an EMT when I was a firefighter and I liked her. She was crazy as fuck, but fun. “Her name’s Lyric. She just threw up, and she’s got a laceration on her head.”
“Okay, we’ll take it from here.”
Admittedly, I hovered while they extracted Lyric from her car, and as soon as she was on the gurney, she passed out.
“Fuck,” I snapped, stepping toward her.
“We got her,” Marney said firmly, placing an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth. “You friends?”
“No,” I admitted. “Never met her before.”
She raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything further, and I stepped back to let her work. I watched as they bandaged Lyric’s head and loaded her into the ambulance, then I was left to help clean up the scene, since I had a tow truck available for the cops to use.
My shop was right next door to Alamo’s. He did mostly mechanical work, I did body work, but we’d cross-pollinate on occasion when we were short-handed or got bored. In the case of the Lexus, he was short-handed, and I had Rabbit training a new guy on paint, so I had a little time on my hands.
Well, until this happened.
I took it upon myself to retrieve anything of Lyric’s out of her car that looked valuable and stowed it safely in my saddlebags until I could get it back to her. I don’t know why I did it, but I felt as though it was important.
Once we’d sorted her car, we left the scene for the police to finish up, and I went back to the Lexus I’d been working on. When it was time to close up for the day, I headed back to the compound for a beer…or twelve.
Lyric
ICAME AWAKE slowly, my face feeling like it had gone a few rounds with Mohammad Ali, and tried to figure out where I was.
“Oh my word, Lyric,” Melody cried and sat on the edge of my bed. “You look all swollen and crap.”
Classic Melody. Always concerned about how we looked and traveled with her makeup artist, Billy, twenty-four-seven. I was actually surprised he wasn’t here with his kit in tow.
“The doctor said you were upside down for a long time.”
The memory of the accident flooded back and I grimaced. I still smelled like puke. “Yeah. It wasn’t fun.”
“You have to have surgery on your leg, huh?”
I nodded. “Apparently so. Tomorrow, I guess.”
The doctor had filled me in right before he’d given me some really good drugs that allowed me to sleep for a while.
