She unbuckled her seat belt and faced him, lifting her chin. That was dirty pool bringing her daughters into it. Still, a tremor started at her core and spread across her shoulders. “I would never put my daughters at risk.”
“Aren’t you?” He climbed out of the minivan. “You keep telling yourself that, and maybe you’ll believe it.”
Then he closed the door and stomped away, his boots leaving deep tracks in the snow.
Chapter 6
Rachel was still glaring at Mick’s back when he reached his truck, the heavy snow pelting his coat. But no matter how infuriating his suggestion was that she would risk her daughters’ safety, he had a point. That Riley needed her help didn’t change the fact.
“It’s none of your business,” she said to him as though he could hear her through the glass and the wind bending the nearby trees.
Mick wasn’t paying attention to her, anyway, as he opened the quad cab’s rear passenger door and pulled out an ice scraper and snow shovel. Then he went to work, clearing the passenger side first.
After putting the van in gear, Rachel inched forward, then shifted back to Park. Her father never would have forgiven her if she’d left someone stranded on the side of the road. Even someone as frustrating as Mick Prentiss. “We’re the Hoffmans. We help people,” her dad had always said, though only the men in the family had ever done that. Either way, she couldn’t leave Mick until she’d at least made sure that his truck started.
“You’re lucky I’m driven by guilt,” she said, as she pulled her hat over her ears. According to the dash clock, she had fifty-five minutes before she needed to be back at the school.
Movement farther down the road caught her attention as she reached for the door handle. Another vehicle had turned off the main roadway and was headed in their direction. Something about it felt odd. Though it wasn’t unheard of to pass another car on one of the narrow county roads, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen three vehicles on one at once. Particularly in the middle of a snowstorm.
Mick must have sensed that something was off, too. He’d been working his way around the tailgate, but now he positioned himself behind the truck to observe their visitor without being noticed. Rachel could only sit and wait.
The white SUV rolled at the same steady speed past Mick’s truck. The driver didn’t pause near the driveway of the demolished house, either. But when it pulled alongside her minivan, the vehicle slowed to a crawl. Rachel pressed her back against the seat. Even with just four feet separating them, she could see nothing more than shadows through the black-tinted windshield and windows. The driver would have had no trouble seeing her.
Her pulse thrashed in her ears, her hands gripping the wheel so tightly that the texture had to make indentions in her palms through her gloves. All she could do was wait for the driver to stop. To roll down the window. To do…something.
And then it was over. Just past her rear bumper, the driver gunned the engine and sped away, barely fishtailing with the vehicle’s four-wheel drive capability.
She lowered her head and covered her mouth with her hands. Mick threw open her passenger door before the SUV had disappeared completely from her rearview mirror into a backdrop of white.
“My God, Rachel. Are you all right?”
She couldn’t stop shaking, let alone find the words to answer him as her heart tried to pound its way through her coat. Mick climbed back inside and closed the door, but when he reached over to touch her shoulder, she flinched. He withdrew his hand.
“Who…was that?” She continued to stare into her mirror though only snow remained.
“I messed up.” He yanked off his hood and shoved his hands back through his hair. “I thought it might be the suspect, coming to survey the damage. Or just a curious neighbor. So, I stayed hidden to get some photos. I didn’t realize they’d come there for—”
“Me?” She finished it for him, but she wasn’t ready to believe it.
“I didn’t know—I should have been—”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you?”
He leaned forward, carefully watching her like one of his EMT patients. She folded her gloved hands at the bottom of her rib cage and lifted her gaze to his. If she could make her legs stop trembling, maybe he would even believe her.
“You don’t really think he was after me, do you?”
“They didn’t slow down near my truck or near the crime scene.”
She crossed her arms, needing the firm pressure of that self-hug. “From the road, they probably couldn’t tell you were there. And it still could have been the arsonist, just finding me there and wanting to scare me away from his work.”
“Could have been.”
His skeptical expression suggested that he didn’t think so.
“If they had nothing to do with the fire, then how would they know to find me here?”
