“Please, please be okay.”
“I’m alive,” he murmured opening his eyes. Then he swore—a lot. “Tammy get out of here.”
“No. I’m not leaving you.” She turned and crawled out through the broken glass of her door, around the front of the truck, to the driver’s side.
She spent the next five minutes trying to pull open his door. Her hands were getting cut on the broken glass, but it finally popped open.
Lance managed to undo his own seatbelt and crumpled like she did onto the roof of the truck. He cursed again.
“Is anything broken.”
“I don’t know. I fucking hurt everywhere.” He reached for her and she helped him out.
Surprisingly he was able to stand, unsteadily. “Can you stand?” he asked.
“I think so.” She cried as he helped her up. Her incision was bleeding and her ribs were killing her. Being restrained by a seatbelt during a crash certainly didn’t help the healing fractures of her ribs.
He framed her face in his hands and studied her. “Are you okay baby?”
“I think I look better than you.” Lance’s face was covered in blood. He had a large laceration over his left eye. It was probably glass from the windshield because both front airbags and the side impact ones deployed. “There’s a laceration about two inches long over your left eye.”
“Well, I don’t feel it yet. At least we’re alive. I will never doubt airbags, ever.” He took her arm. “Let’s get away from here before this thing blows.” He ended up helping her up the edge of the ditch to the gravel road. Once there, he searched for his phone, pulled it out and called emergency services.
“Lance we need to stop your bleeding.”
He nodded, and while on the phone, managed to remove his suit jacket, and then his shirt. He gave it to Tammy who tore a piece from the cotton material to wipe blood from his eye and forehead. Then she balled a bit up in her fist and held it over his eye. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine. Just jolted my ribs.” She lied. She was in agony.
He studied her for a moment, and his expression told her he didn’t believe her, but he nodded and continued speaking into the phone.
“Lance?” Tammy pointed to an object a hundred yards past the totaled ranch truck. It was a van, on its roof, like the truck and smashed to hell. The rear wheels were still spinning. She made to go toward it and he gripped her arm shaking his head while still talking on the phone. He gave the dispatcher information on the second vehicle.
“Someone could be hurt.”
“You are not playing rescuer to whomever is in there. They tried to kill us,” he said tersely.
She never stopped to think of the circumstances that led to the crash. “Do you think?”
“I know. They can burn to death for all I care. Your well-being comes first. The ambulance and cops can deal with whoever that is. He came out of a side road behind the trees over there.” He waved his hand toward the trees guarding the entrance of a scarcely used side road. “He purposely waited for us.”
She certainly couldn’t let someone perish no matter who they were, or what they did. As she was thinking that, she saw someone crawl out from around the van.
“Oh my God!”
“Jesus,” Lance said beside her.
There were sirens in the distance now. It would only be a few minutes before they reached them.
“That son of a—”
Tammy scrambled in front of Lance and grabbed and clung to him. “We’re alive. Can we please let it go?”
“I should have killed him when he hit you.”
“No Lance, he’s—” She suddenly felt very faint and started to sway.
“Ah hell.” He tightened his arms around her and made her sit down. It was perfect timing for the ambulance. “Christ, Tam, you’re bleeding from the abdomen.”
