"Yes!" I burst out. Wrench Man grinned at me, flashing a gold tooth, and returned to his task, adjusting the wrench so the nuts wouldn't come off all the way. Five minutes later, Ricky and Wrench Man had my car jacked up, the tires switched out, and lowered back to the ground on the spare.
"That is so awesome," I said. Finally. Something that went right. "Thank you." I turned to Driver and offered my hand, which he took and shook, bemused. Kara did the same just as Wrench Man finished tightening the lug nuts with my tire iron.
"Don't let nobody use the machine on these in the shop," he instructed, looking at both me and Kara as Ricky replaced the hub cap. "Or get a battery operated one." He held up the impact wrench. "I have one you can plug into your car lighter," he said as he unplugged the impact wrench and started packing it back into its case. "Works good as long as you check the charge a lot." Driver wound the extension cord up and took it into the store as Wrench Man put the case back in the lowrider's trunk and Ricky put my flat tire, jack, and tire iron in the back of my car, slamming the door shut when he was done.
"Thanks again," I said as Ricky and Wrench Man started toward the store.
"No problem," Wrench Man said. "Get your tire fixed soon, so you have a spare." He sounded like a dad might, though he couldn't have been older than twenty-five.
"Will do." I waved as he went into the store and Kara flopped into the passenger seat.
"Let's go," she said.
"Gladly." I went around to the driver's side door and just as I reached for the handle, my phone rang. I almost ripped my pocket trying to get it out and when I saw the caller ID, I nearly cried in relief. "Jesus, honey. I've been worried. Where are you?"
"K.C., it's River."
Something in his voice made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. "What's up?"
"We had an accident--"
"What?" Fear clogged my throat. "Where are you? Are you okay?" I was suddenly freezing in the warm summer night. "What the fuck is going on? What do you mean?" Oh, Jesus. Please let her be all right. Please. Oh, God...
"Hold on. We're okay, just a little banged up--"
"Banged up? What--" I must have sounded hysterical because River interrupted me again.
"Calm down. Listen to me. We're in Farmington at the hospital. They're checking Sage over. She's got some cuts and bruises, but no broken bones. They just want to be sure nothing inside got damaged."
I stood, numb, listening to River, trying not to freak out.
"The car's in bad shape," he was saying, "and I called Detective Simmons. She should be here in a half-hour or so."
"Simmons? Why? What the hell--"
"Kase, this wasn't an accident," he said, his deep voice more urgent than I'd ever heard. "Some asshole ran us off the road."
Chapter Twenty
I TRIED NOT to glare at the emergency room nurse but failed, because she scowled right back at me. "Sage and River Crandall," I repeated, spelling "Crandall." "They were involved in a car accident about three hours ago and brought here for an examination."
The nurse made a show of looking at her computer monitor and typing something on the keyboard when Kara spoke up. "They may not have arrived by ambulance," she said, shutting me up so she could try to charm the nurse. "River called us and said that neither he nor Sage was seriously injured but they were here, at the hospital, waiting for Detective Maria Simmons."
That seemed to jog Nurse Attitude's memory because her expression changed to one of recognition. "Hold on," she said, before leaving her station and disappearing through a nearby door.
How the hell busy can an emergency room in Farmington be? I bit my tongue and forced myself not to barrel through the examination and trauma rooms, looking for my girlfriend. I was not going to be in a better mood until I saw her and touched her and made sure, for myself, that River was right and she wasn't badly injured.
"It's okay." Kara squeezed my arm. "She's okay. River's okay."
"No, it's not. Somebody tried to mess with my girlfriend and her brother. That is not okay," I said between clenched teeth, tired, stressed, and brittle in a way that left me cold and weighted with past baggage. Kara didn't say anything more, and I was glad for it because I would have started an argument with her. Events out of my control, the woman I loved in the middle of them in serious danger, and me helpless to do a damn thing about any of it. I felt trapped in my own skin. I wanted to find the bastard who did this and run his sorry ass off the road, then drag him out of his wrecked vehicle and kick whatever shit was left out of him. The depth of my rage scared me, but in a weird way, it kept me from wanting to run away.
I shoved my hands into my pockets and stared at the door the nurse had gone through, willing it to either open or to burst into flames beneath the onslaught of my gaze. "This is fucked up."
"Kase," Kara said.
Something in her voice made me turn toward her and in her eyes I saw worry and maybe a little bit of fear. I locked my retort behind my teeth at her expression.
"You're scaring me."
I unclenched my teeth, took a deep breath, and exhaled long and slow, clearing my roiling thoughts. "I'm scaring me," I admitted. "I'm sorry. I'm a little outta control right now. I just don't know what to do or how to deal with this."
"You need to be present." Kara crossed her arms, a barrier between us. "This isn't about you, and the control freak in you is pushing all your buttons."
"How is it not about me?" I demanded. "My girlfriend and her brother could have died."
She shook her head. "That's what I'm talking about." You're trying to make it your issue so you can feel like you have control. Sage isn't one of your research projects. Her father died. Her past is biting her in the ass. You're part of this, but it's not your issue." She stuck her lower jaw out a little, and it reminded me of when we were kids, challenging me or Joely. "Sage needs you right now maybe more than she ever has. She needs a partner to hold her hand and help her through this. She doesn't need a traffic cop to tell her what streets to take."
My gut knotted the way it does when I hear something I don't want to, and usually because I'm not ready yet to deal with one of my mistakes or flaws. "Fuck," I said just as Nurse Attitude appeared through the door. If she heard, she chose to ignore it.
"They're on their way," she said, expression bland, before picking up a manila folder from the counter and disappearing again only to reappear through a door that led into the nearby waiting room.
"Julio Torrez?" she said, and an elderly man who might've been a rancher pushed out of his chair and walked toward her, holding his left wrist gingerly against his midriff. They both disappeared behind the door and again I thought about charging through to find my girlfriend, but decided that Julio Torrez didn't need some half-crazed woman running wild in the various trauma rooms of the Farmington hospital.
I took several breaths, tried to calm my mind. Okay. Chill pill. God, I was tired.
"Hey," came River's voice and I looked up from the counter to see him ambling toward me from a different hallway, one I surmised led into hospital proper. "Sage is on her way." He smiled, but it looked forced. I hugged him and stepped back, looking him over. An inch-square bandage decorated his forehead over his right eye and dried blood stained the collar of his T-shirt. His left cheekbone looked swollen and already, I could tell he was on his way to a black eye. Kara also gave him a hug, but she was more careful about it.
"Shit," I said. "What's your prognosis?"
He shrugged, a little grimace accompanying the gesture. "Just a few cuts and bruises. Nothing broken, no scary stuff going on inside."
"What happened?" Kara asked before I could.
River shook his head in a slow, Clint Eastwood way. "We left Tonya's around six-thirty. Sage decided to go through Shiprock and take 491 back through Gallup. Grab I-40 to Albuquerque."
"That's an extra forty or fifty miles," I said, my irritation obvious.
He nodded, another slow gesture that said as much as if he had
spoken. "She gets a bug up her ass, not a damn thing anybody can do about it. Least of all me." He managed a little smile. "I love her to death, but you might as well try to cage water when she gets it in her mind to do something. Been that way all our lives."
I started to respond, but thought better of it. River's relationship with his sister was just that. His relationship with her. He knew Sage's stubborn streak. I'd just be preaching to the choir if I said anything more about how stupid I thought it was to drive 491-- especially at night. Formerly Highway 666, it had a rep that lived up to those numbers. "The Devil's Highway," locals called it, infamous for the accidents and weird stuff that garnished regional legends. It dropped south from Shiprock eighty miles to Gallup, through rugged Navajo country and given the crazy shit we'd already been dealing with...
"So you're on 491," I said instead, shoving myself into research mode. "How far did you get?"
"Maybe forty miles south of Shiprock. Not much traffic. Just the usual--local rancher-types and other area residents. A few semis." He stopped, thinking. "We picked up the asshole probably ten miles south of Shiprock, driving a dark blue pickup. It looked like an older model."
"So when did you think it might be an asshole driving?"
He offered a slight smile. "I'm kind of a suspicious guy. And when you spend a lot of time in remote areas like I do, you notice little things like stuff cars might do." He smoothed his T-shirt over his abdomen. "After I noticed the truck--"
"Wait. Were you driving?" That would seriously piss me off, if River was driving and they still took 491.
"No. But when I'm a passenger and if the car has an automatic mirror that I can control, I'll check out traffic. I'm kinda weird that way. I like to know what's following me."
Maybe not so weird, these days. "What was the truck doing?"
"Nothing that would tip off most people. Sage drives the speed limit or under it. A lot of people pass her when she's driving. This guy didn't. He got within fifty yards, maybe, but kept his speed at
Sage's. She was driving just under the speed limit. Now, if the guy was in an RV or something, I wouldn't get the heebies about it. But it was a pickup that looked like it could fit somewhere on the Rez and after ten miles of this, I didn't think the guy was just slowing for his turn-off. Sage noticed it, too."
"Did she speed up?" Kara now, moving closer.
He shook his head. "No. She wanted to see what would happen. She slowed down a bit, and the guy did, too. That's when we both knew there might be a problem."
I tugged on my chin, thinking. "What time was it?"
"Pushing seven-twenty or so."
I was about to ask another question when I spied Sage over River's shoulder, approaching from the same hallway he had. He must have seen my attention shift, because he turned as well. I started walking toward her and she sped up and threw herself into my arms. Neither of us said anything for a long moment and I closed my eyes, trying not to cry. "Goddammit," I whispered. "Please don't do that again."
"I'm sorry," she said, near my ear.
I pulled away so I could look at her. She was crying. "For what?"
"Taking 491. I know with all the weird stuff going on-- especially in that area--it was a dumb thing to do."
In spite of myself, I laughed. "Okay, I was a little pissed about that, but that's kinda stupid. It's just a damn road. If you wanted to go that way, then that's what you wanted to do."
She hugged me again. "I'm an idiot. I should have listened to you when you asked if you should hang around." She sniffled. "Now who's the psychic?" She wiped at her face with her left hand.
"It doesn't matter. You and River are safe."
She managed a smile and hugged me again. "I don't know whether the car's salvageable."
"Honey," I said, more forcefully, "it doesn't matter. You and River are safe. I don't give a shit about your car. That's replaceable. We'll deal with that later. Right now, let's go find a motel and get some sleep."
She nodded, uncharacteristically deflated, and I let go of her, though I retained my hold on her right hand with my left, worried. "Anything seriously banged up?" I asked, an afterthought. I'd almost crushed her in my hug.
"No. Just bruises from the seatbelt--" she gestured at her chest. "Some bruises on my legs from who the hell knows."
"Oh, shit. I'm sorry. Here I was squishing you--"
She squeezed my hand and leaned into me. "I don't care. I needed you to squish me."
I almost started crying again, thinking how close I'd come to losing her. The rage that had flared earlier had settled into a hard, cold anger. If it was within my powers to do so, I'd find the driver of that truck. I'd find him, and I'd fuck him up.
"How about we get our stuff and find a motel?" River suggested. I looked at him, surprised. I'd forgotten for a moment about him and Kara.
"Stuff?" I looked from him to Sage then back to him.
"We got lucky. After the asshole ran us off the road, we got out of the car and went back up to the road. There must've been somebody behind the asshole--don't know how far away--but he stopped to help. He drove us to the hospital, too."
"Who?" Kara asked.
"Older guy." River touched the bandage on his forehead, as if making sure it hadn't come off. "Robert Bent or something."
Sage reached into the front pocket of her shorts with her free hand and pulled a business card out. "Bend. He does real estate and he was on his way to Gallup."
I took the card and read it. "Thank you, Mr. Bend," I said. "You'll be getting my undying gratitude. I'll even buy a house in Gallup from you. Where's your stuff?" I asked, looking at River.
"At the info desk in the other wing." He gestured down the hallway from which he and Sage had come.
"By the front? The main entrance?"
"Yeah," River confirmed.
"Okay. I'll go get the car and bring it around. I'll meet you all over there."
"Sounds good," Kara said as River nodded in agreement. But Sage wouldn't let go of my hand.
"I'm going with you," she said.
I almost told her no, almost told her that she didn't need to be doing much more, when I remembered what Kara had said earlier that night, about not being a traffic cop telling Sage what roads to take. "All right." I glanced over at Kara and River. "We'll meet you around front."
Kara was smiling at me. "Will do." She and River turned and headed back down the hallway while Sage pulled me toward the emergency room entrance.
As we passed the nurses' station, Nurse Attitude looked up from her monitor.
"Thank you," I said, and meant it. The flicker of a smile tugged at her lips and then Sage pulled me out the sliding glass doors.
I STUDIED SAGE'S Toyota from the highway, and though afternoon heat floated above its metal surfaces, I couldn't shake a chill that encased my spine. She and River had gone off the right side of the road, down a shallow embankment. The car was resting on an incline, front end down. A wooden fence post stood about five feet from the front bumper, part of a long series of wooden fence posts that stretched miles south and north, supporting strands of barbed wire.
"He got us from behind," River said. He was on my right, arms crossed. "A pretty good hit."
I looked over at him. He was wearing sunglasses, so I couldn't read what might have been in his eyes. He scratched his cheek before he started talking again. "Just plowed into us. I was thinking that Sage shouldn't brake. Weird, the shit you think about in a crisis." He sucked his breath through his teeth, making a whistling sound. "The dirt killed some of our speed, but the front end hit that little rise there--" he brushed past me and made his way to the passenger side of the vehicle, pointing toward the bumper. "That was a good jolt," he said, loud enough for me to hear over a passing semi.
I clenched my teeth together and pulled my phone out of my pocket, checking the screen. I had talked with Chris that morning for a good hour and managed to dissuade her from leaving Albuquerque to drive up and bring every pickup truck owner i
n a hundred-mile radius into the Farmington Police Department for questioning. She was "on call" with the situation, however, and I knew that meant she'd be texting or calling at "reasonable intervals" to make sure I was okay. I put the phone back in my pocket. No service out here. Maybe it was time to switch carriers. Of course, it wasn't like I made a habit of spending lots of time in remote areas of the country, trying to solve strange murders and locate pickup truck hitmen.
River scrambled up the embankment, his cowboy boots slipping a bit in the loose soil. He brushed his jeans off and glanced back at the car. "We sat there for a little bit after we stopped," he continued. "I asked Sage if she was okay, if anything was broken. She said no and we both got out then. It was still evening, so it wasn't like we had to do this in complete darkness. Fuckin' balls on that guy, running us off the road when it was still light out."
"Anything about the truck?"
"Dark blue. Maybe an early nineties model. I think it was a Ford. Lots of trucks look like that, unfortunately. But right about now, it'd have a bashed-up front bumper."
Which might make it easier to find him, if he's local. "Front plate?"
"Nope. Must be local. Unless he's from a state that requires those and he took it off."
He didn't sound convinced. I wasn't, either. "Did you get a look at him?"
"Not really. It was a guy, dark hair, dark sunglasses. I remember those. They looked like aviator sunglasses. From how he was sitting, I got the impression he might be a big dude. Light-colored shirt. Maybe tan. Maybe whitish. Seemed he's kinda broad across the shoulders."
Like he uses his upper body a lot? Like on a drill rig? No way was this a random act of violence. I glanced over at my car, pulled off the right-hand side some thirty yards ahead. In front of it sat Maria Simmons' police-issue car. She was standing between the two cars, talking to Sage. Kara lurked nearby, away from the highway. All three then started toward me and River. Dark blue pickup. Something about that stuck in my head, but I wasn't sure why.
The Ties That Bind Page 26
