Saved by the Sheriff

by Cindi Myers

  “I guess with no one living out this way, it’s not a priority,” Brenda said.

  “Right.” Lacy looked over her shoulder to make sure the file boxes hadn’t slid off the seat, and was surprised to see a pickup truck following them. “If no one lives out here, I wonder who that is?” she asked.

  Brenda glanced in the rearview mirror. “I don’t recognize the truck,” she said.

  “Maybe it’s a tourist,” Lacy said. “He could be looking for somewhere to hike. Or maybe it’s someone else with a storage unit.”

  “It looks like a ranch truck, with that brush guard on the front.” The heavy pipe, gate-like structure attached to the front bumper would protect the headlights and grill from being damaged by brush when a rancher drove through the fields.

  “I didn’t see any other vehicles there,” Lacy said. “And we didn’t pass anyone on our way out here.”

  “Whoever he is, he’s driving way too fast for this road,” Brenda said.

  Lacy glanced over her shoulder again. The truck was gaining on them, a great plume of dust rising up in its wake. “He’s going to have to slow down,” she said. “Or run us off the road.”

  Even as she spoke, the truck zoomed up, its front bumper almost touching the rear bumper of Brenda’s car. The lone occupant wore a ball cap pulled low on his forehead, a black bandanna tied over his mouth and nose.

  “What does he think he’s doing?” Brenda’s voice rose in alarm. The car lurched as she tapped the brakes and Lacy grabbed on to the door for support. The screech of metal on metal filled the vehicle, which jolted again as the bumpers connected.

  Brenda cursed, and struggled to hold on to the wheel. Lacy wrenched around to stare at the driver once more, but she could make out nothing of his face. He backed off and she sagged back into her seat once more.

  “He’s crazy,” Brenda said. The car sped up, bumping along the rough road. “As soon as I can, I’m going to pull over and let him pa—”

  She never finished the sentence, as the truck slammed into them once again, sending them skidding off the road and rolling down the embankment.

  Chapter Five

  “All units report to Fireline Road for a vehicular accident with possible injuries.” The dispatcher’s voice sounded clear on the otherwise quiet radio. Travis, on his way to lunch, hit the button to respond. “Unit one headed to Fireline Road,” he said. He switched on his siren and headed out, falling in behind Gage, an ambulance bringing up the rear of their little parade.

  As he drove, he checked the GPS location the dispatcher had sent over. The accident looked to have occurred about two miles this side of the storage units, an area with a sharp curve and a steep drop-off. He slowed as the screen on his dash indicated they were nearing the site. Gage pulled to the side of the road and Travis parked behind him. He joined his brother on the rough shoulder, and stared down at a white Subaru Outback, resting on its side on the steep slope, wedged against a solitary lodgepole pine tree.

  Gage raised binoculars to his eyes. “Looks like there’s at least one person in there—maybe two,” he said.

  Two EMTs joined them—a freckle-faced young guy Travis didn’t know, and Emmet Baxter, a rescue service veteran. “OnStar called it in,” Baxter said, nodding to the wrecked Subaru. “They tried to contact the driver but no one responded. Since the airbags had deployed, it triggered an automatic call.”

  “I’ll call in the plate,” Gage said. “See if we can get a possible ID on the driver.”

  “Go ahead, but I know who it is,” Travis said, the tightness in his chest making it difficult to take a full breath. “That’s Brenda Stenson’s car. And the passenger is probably Lacy Milligan. The two of them were supposed to drive out here to pick up some of Andy Stenson’s files from storage.” He pulled out his phone and punched in Brenda’s number. It rang five times before going to voice mail. He got the same results with Lacy’s number. He swore and stuffed the phone back in the case on his hip, then stepped down off the edge of the road.

  Gage grabbed his arm and pulled him back. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “I’m going down to them. They could be hurt.”

  “Yeah, and one wrong move could send the vehicle the rest of the way down the slope and you with it,” Gage said.

  Travis studied the car and realized Gage was right. “Get Search and Rescue out here. And a wrecker. We’ll have to stabilize the car, then get the women out.”

  Gage made the call and then there was nothing to do but wait. Travis walked the roadside, studying the surface for clues to what had happened. Soon, Gage joined him. “You can see the skid marks where they went off here,” Travis said, pointing to the long tracks in the gravel.

  “Doesn’t really look like an overcorrection, or like she was going too fast and missed the curve,” Gage said.

  Travis shook his head. “Brenda’s not that kind of driver. Anyway, look at this.” He pointed to another set of skid marks behind the first, these veering away from the edge of the road.

  “Another vehicle?” Gage asked.

  “Yeah.” Travis walked a little farther and squatted down at a place where broken glass glittered amid the gravel in the road. “This is probably where it struck her car—broke the rear headlights.” He glanced back as the first of the Search and Rescue team arrived.

  “Accident or deliberate?” Gage asked.

  “They left the scene. That’s a crime, even if the collision itself was an accident. But this feels deliberate to me. The weather’s good, light’s good. No way a person traveling behind Brenda’s car wouldn’t have seen her.”

  “Maybe the other driver’s brakes failed?”

  Travis straightened. “How often does that really happen?”

  He and Gage walked back to meet the SAR volunteers. Travis was relieved to see an orthopedic doctor who worked weekends at the emergency clinic in Gunnison, as well as a local mountain guide, Jacob Zander. “You remember Dr. Pete, right?” Jacob said.

  The men shook hands, then turned their attention to the wrecked car. “We’ve got two women in the vehicle,” Travis said. “We don’t know how badly they’re hurt, but they didn’t respond to OnStar.”

  “We need to secure the vehicle before we can do anything,” Dr. Pete said.

  Another carload of SAR volunteers pulled onto the shoulder, followed by a flatbed wrecker with a driver and passenger. The wrecker driver climbed out and shambled over to join them.

  “Got a challenge for you,” Gage said, nodding to the wedged car.

  The driver, whose jacket identified him as Bud, considered the scene below, then shrugged. “I’ve seen worse.”

  “Can you secure the vehicle so that the EMTs can get down to take care of the driver and passenger?” Travis asked.

  “I’ll take care of it.” He returned to the wrecker and his passenger—who turned out to be a woman with curly brown hair—climbed out. They conferred for a moment, then both started climbing down the slope, draped in ropes and chains. Dr. Pete and Jacob followed.

  “What should we do now?” Gage asked.

  Travis leaned back against his SUV, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the scene below. “We wait,” he said. And pray that his search for whoever had run Brenda and Lacy off the road didn’t turn into a hunt for a killer.

  * * *

  LACY WOKE TO pain in her head, and the taste of blood in her mouth. She moaned and forced herself to open her eyes against the searing pain. “What’s happening?” she asked.

  The words came out garbled, and her mouth hurt.

  “Don’t try to talk, ma’am. You were in an accident.”

  “An accident?” She blinked, and the face of the man who was speaking came into focus. He was blond, with freckles and glasses.

  “It looks like you hit your head,” he said. “Can you tell me if it hurts anywhere else?”r />
  “No... I don’t know.”

  The man leaned in through the passenger-side window, which was broken. He shined a light into her eyes and she moaned again and turned her head away. When she opened her eyes, she stared at Brenda, who lay in the driver’s seat, mouth slack, white powder covering her face and shoulders. “Brenda!” Lacy tried to lean toward her.

  “We’re taking care of your friend. We need you to stay calm.” Her rescuer reached around behind her. “I’m going to put this brace on your neck,” he said. “It’s just a precaution. What’s your name?”

  “Lacy. Lacy Milligan.” The brace felt stiff and awkward, and smelled of disinfectant. Her head felt clearer now—she was remembering what had happened. But with memory came fear. “Where is the truck that ran us off the road?” she asked.

  “I don’t know about any truck.” She heard the ripping sound of a hook and loop tape being pulled apart and repositioned. “My name is Pete. I’m a doctor.”

  Then a second man was leaning in beside Pete. “Lacy, it’s Travis. How are you doing?”

  “My head hurts.” She closed her eyes again.

  “Stay with us, Lacy,” Dr. Pete said. “Open your eyes for me.”

  “Tell me about the truck, Lacy,” Travis said.

  She struggled to do as they asked, fighting against a wave of nausea and extreme fatigue. “The truck was black,” she said. “With one of those big things on the front—iron pipe welded to the front bumper.”

  “A brush guard?” Travis asked.

  “Yes. One of those. And it came up behind us really fast. It just—shoved us and we went over.” Her heart raced, and she fought to draw a deep breath as panic squeezed her chest. “Is Brenda going to be all right?”

  “We’re looking after Brenda,” Dr. Pete said. “Try not to get upset.”

  “Do you remember anything else about this truck?” Travis asked. “Did you see the driver? Was there a passenger?”

  “No. I mean, I don’t know. The windows were so dark I couldn’t see much of anything. I think he was wearing a ball cap. And a bandanna tied over his face—like a bank robber in a B movie. It all happened so fast.” She tried to shake her head and pain exploded through her with a burst of light behind her eyes. She groaned.

  “Do you remember anything about the license plate?” Travis’s voice cut through the fog that was trying to overwhelm her. “Or what kind of truck it was?”

  “I’m sorry, no.”

  “Okay, everybody get back, we’re going to open this door.” The voice came from beyond Lacy’s field of vision. Travis and the doctor moved away. A deafening screech rent the air and the car rocked and slipped to the side. Lacy let out a cry and grabbed at nothing. Then the door was wrenched off the driver’s side and two men rushed forward. One worked to cut away the steering wheel while two others slashed the seat belt and carefully moved Brenda onto a stretcher. Moments later, someone leaned in the passenger-side window and began sawing at Lacy’s seat belt with a blade.

  After that, things happened very quickly. A man helped Lacy move into the driver’s seat, then she, too, was lifted onto a stretcher. As they strapped her in, Travis leaned over her, his eyes boring into hers. “I’m going to find who did this,” he said.

  Tears blurred her eyes. “My parents...”

  “I’m going there now, to tell them in person and take them to the hospital,” he said. “We’ll meet you there.”

  And then he was gone, and all she could see was blue sky, as a group of people she didn’t even know worked to carry her to help.

  She told herself she was safe now. She was surrounded by people who would help her. But fear still made a cold fist in the middle of her stomach, and she couldn’t shake the memory of the impact of that truck on Brenda’s car, and the feeling of falling down the mountainside, knowing it was because someone wanted her dead.

  * * *

  TRAVIS PACED THE hallway outside Lacy’s room, phone pressed tightly to his ear, shutting out the intercom summons for doctors to report to the emergency room and the rattle of carts as nurses traveled between rooms. “Tell me you’ve found something,” he said when Gage answered the phone.

  “I put out the APB like you asked,” Gage said. “But we don’t have much to go on. There are probably a hundred black trucks in this county alone, and a lot of them are beat-up old ranch trucks. You wouldn’t be able to tell at a glance if any of the dents were new or had been there for ten years.”

  “There was only one black truck that was out on Fireline Road this afternoon,” Travis said.

  “Face it, Trav, that truck could be in New Mexico by now,” Gage said. “Without more to go on, it’s going to take a massive stroke of luck to find it.”

  “Yeah, and nothing about this whole investigation has been lucky. Did you at least get the files out of Brenda’s car?” he asked.

  “I picked them up myself,” Gage said. “They’d been thrown around a bunch in the crash, but that tape you put on the lids actually held pretty well. One of them is kind of split on one side, but everything is in there. I put them on your desk.”

  “Lock the door to my office and leave it locked until I get there,” Travis said.

  “You think the guy who ran Brenda and Lacy off the road was after something in those files?” Gage asked.

  “I don’t know,” Travis said. “But we can’t afford to overlook anything.”

  “How are Brenda and Lacy?” Gage asked.

  “Lacy has a concussion and a bunch of bruises,” Travis said. “They’re keeping her overnight for observation, but she should be able to go home with her parents tomorrow. Brenda regained consciousness briefly on the ambulance ride over, but has been drifting in and out ever since. Her head injury is worse, and she had three broken ribs and a punctured lung. They’re keeping her in ICU.”

  “Are Lacy’s folks there with her?” Gage asked.

  “Yes.” They had followed him to the hospital in their car. He had run lights and sirens the whole way, clearing the route, but when they arrived it was clear Jeanette Milligan had been crying, and George was as pale as paper. “They’re understandably upset and afraid.”

  A woman in light blue scrubs came around the corner. “Are you Travis?” she asked.

  Travis looked up. “Yes?”

  “Ms. Milligan is asking for you.”

  “Got to go,” Travis said, and ended the call.

  Mr. and Mrs. Milligan stood on the far side of Lacy’s hospital bed when Travis entered the room. Lacy wore a dark pink hospital gown, the black thread from a row of stitches just to the left of her right temple standing out against her pale skin. Both her eyes had begun to blacken, and her upper lip was swollen. Travis must not have done a good job of hiding his shock at her appearance, because she gave him a crooked smile. “They won’t let me look in the mirror, but Dad says I look like I lost a boxing match,” she said.

  “Maybe if anyone asks, that’s what you should tell them,” Travis said. He moved closer and wrapped both hands around the bed rail, wishing instead that he could hold her hand. But she probably wouldn’t welcome the gesture and it wouldn’t be the most professional behavior for the county sheriff. Someone had placed a vase of flowers on the bedside table and the peppery-sweet scent of carnations cut through the antiseptic smell.

  “Have you found out anything more about the person or people who did this?” Lacy’s father asked.

  “George.” Jeanette gripped her husband’s arm.

  “It’s all right, Mom,” Lacy said. “I want to know, too.”

  All three looked at Travis. “We don’t have anything yet,” he said. “If you think of anything else that could help us, let me know.”

  “I’m sorry, no.” She shook her head. “Brenda and I went to the storage units and picked up the two boxes you had marked. There wasn’t anyone else around while we were
there. I mean, there weren’t any other vehicles, and it’s not that big a place.”

  “Maybe they parked behind the storage sheds in the back. A truck could probably hide back there.”

  “Maybe,” Lacy said. “It’s not like we were looking around for anyone. But they would have had to have been there before we arrived. You can see the gate from the storage unit. That’s the only way in, and you have to stop and enter a code to open it.”

  “It’s bad luck no one else was out there who might have seen the guy who hit you,” Travis said. “There aren’t any houses out that direction, either. We’re putting a plea out on the local radio station, and it will be in tomorrow’s paper, asking anyone with any information to come forward. Maybe we’ll get lucky and someone will know something useful.”

  “Why would someone do this?” Jeanette asked. “Why would anyone want to hurt Brenda or Lacy? Or was it just a madman, wanting to cause a wreck for kicks?”

  “We don’t know,” Travis said.

  “Do you think this is related to the rock that was thrown through our window?” George asked. “Maybe the same person? One of Andy’s friends or relatives who still blames Lacy for his murder.”

  “I’ll look into that angle,” Travis said. “Though Brenda is the only relative of Andy’s I’ve ever met. I don’t remember any parents or siblings attending the trial.”

  “He was an only child,” Lacy said. “His father was dead and his mother had remarried and lives in Hawaii. He didn’t see her much. I don’t think they were close.”

  “Still, I’ll check and see what I can find,” Travis said. “Maybe it was random, or maybe it was related to something else.”

  “The files!” Lacy put a hand to her mouth. “I just remembered. What happened to the files?”

  “Gage got them out of Brenda’s car and they’re safe for now. Don’t worry about them.”

  “Have you seen Brenda?” Lacy asked. “They told me she’s in ICU?”

  “I saw her for a few minutes,” Travis said. “She’s going to be okay, it’s just going to take her a little longer. Her head injury was more severe, and she broke some ribs.”