“Good morning,” Luc said through lips that were suddenly loose with nerves. Another shake of the head as they reached the truck, maintaining his self-deprecating smile. He could pull this off. He could. “I was sure that if I drove fast enough, the plow would get me out, but…”Flatten smile, shrug, indicate truck, pretend a half-dead woman isn’t inside.A woman they’d done this to. A sweet, passionate, intelligent woman they’d damaged.
No anger. It wouldn’t help. He pushed every single splinter of rage into a smile, made his shoulders relax, took some easy swings at the snow.I’m just a dumb city boy. Foreigner, pronouncedfurner, like they said it around here.
“Took itrealfast,” Isaiah said as two of his guys peeled off, not even pretending.
“Never really driven in the snow before,” he lied, shoveling faster.Elmer fucking Fudd.
“Well, first thing you wanna do is let the truck roll, just roll it.” Oh, this guy was all helpful advice, all warm fuzzies, wasn’t he?
Luc managed to dig one wheel out, and half the plow, too, with enough room to roll forward. As long as nobody blocked his progress. The uphill side of the truck was flattened against the bank, which was to his advantage, Luc realized, as the two guys who’d separated from the group leaned nonchalantly on the driver’s side and peered in.
What could they see?
“Yes, I figured that. Too fast to stop. I hit the brakes and…” Luc indicated the truck again, that silly smile frozen in place and his arms working so hard he couldn’t feel them. If he sped up, he’d be nothing but a cartoon blur.
“Where you headed in such a hurry on a day like this, son?”
Son? Son?The man couldn’t possibly be more than a decade older than Luc.Putain, his shtick was over the top.
“Ran out of…”Milk, he almost said before replacing it with “Beer.” They’d have milk, wouldn’t they? They’d offer him milk, and he wouldn’t have a choice but to accept it.
And why the hell hadn’t the two men looking in the window sounded the alarm?
“You got a dog in there?” one of them asked.
Forced chuckle. “Yes. Stray. Some hunter must have lost him in the woods. He just showed up at my door, right before the snow, in bad shape. Took him to the vet in town. Nobody claimed him, and I’m out a thousand bucks.”
Beside him, their leader lifted something he’d been holding loose at his side.A gun!screamed Luc’s brain, and he barely kept himself from flinching. Slowly, the man sank the blade of a shovel into the snow, threw it off to the side, sank it in again. Like a cat playing with its prey, he helped Luc dig out the tires. One of those orange cats with yellow eyes. Taunting. Helping before hurting. Sounded like a good motto for these guys. He wondered, in a brief moment of hilarity, if that was the message behind Abby’s brands.Help first, hurt later.
“You’re a real Dr. Dolittle, huh? Have to remember that if we have any creatures show up, needing looking after. If they’re lame or require too much care, we usually just shoot ’em, put ’em out of their misery. We’ll bring ’em to you now.” Oh, God, theyweretoying with him, weren’t they?
Why hadn’t they said something about the woman in his truck yet? What were they waiting for?
With a small shake of the head, one of the men stepped away from the window. Isaiah’s strange eyes followed his progress before flicking back to Luc.
“Looks like you got yourself dug out, neighbor,” Isaiah said with a hardthwackof one gloved hand to the truck’s hood.
“Thank you,” Luc breathed, wondering when they planned to strike. Wondering, waiting, his back a target as he climbed into the cab and watched the men move reluctantly away. A final lift of the hand and slowly, as calmly as he could manage, Luc disengaged the emergency brake, shifted into first, and let the truck rock a couple times before it crawled out from the drift. He let it roll with his foot on the clutch, no accelerator, and kept on going down the hill.
It wasn’t until he’d made it to the road that he let himself turn and take in the front seat. Empty.
“Please tell me you’re back there,” he said, because she had to be. She couldn’t have gotten out with the passenger door wedged into the snow.
“Yes.” Looked like she’d flattened out on the seat under that blanket with the dog flopped on top of her.
Luc let out such an overwhelming breath of relief, he thought his body would deflate to nothing.
“I’m sorry, Abby,” he said, turning onto the main road. “But I’m taking you to a doctor.”
* * *
After giving Le Dog a big scratch and a kiss, Abby climbed slowly out of the backseat, into the front. She ached. Every bit of her ached, even the rush of relief running through her felt like an ache.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Hospital.”
“I won’t do it, Luc. Hospitals are official. Official means police. Police means…”
