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“Not smart,” I mumbled, slipping the key into the ignition. “Like ‘and she was never heard from again’ not smart.”
I watched as the SUV careened off the far corner of the lot into the grass. The ground was soupy and particularly fragrant, thanks to a septic-tank leak. The owner of Flapjack’s had warned us not to park anywhere near it, or we’d end up stuck to our axles in substances best not imagined, which is what was happening to the SUV the more it spun its wheels. I glanced between my demolished car and the guy who seemed so hell-bent on killing my passenger. At this point, I didn’t know which was more distressing. The SUV driver stepped out, slipping and sliding in the muck that had sucked him in to the ankles. There was a flash of metal in his hand as he strode toward the truck. A gun. He was pointing a gun at us.
Fortunately for me and my barely conscious passenger, the SUV guy wandered a little too close to my Pinto. And my rusted-out baby, being the most temperamentally explosive of all makes and models, had not taken kindly to being squished by the big, mean off-roader. My notoriously delicate gas tank was leaking fuel all over the parking lot, dangerously close to the lard bucket Flapjack’s set out back to catch employees’ cigarette butts. And because the saloon was staffed by likable though lazy people, there were always a few smoldering butts lying around on the gravel.
WHOOSH.
The fuel ignited, sending my car up like a badly upholstered Roman candle. Mr. SUV was thrown to the ground as a little mushroom cloud exploded over us.
Good. Explosions drew a lot of attention. People would come running out to see what had happened, and Mr. SUV couldn’t afford that many witnesses. This guy would get the (fully equipped) medical attention he needed . . . and I would end up answering questions for a lot of cops.
Not good.
I hadn’t even realized I’d punched the gas before I felt the gravel give way under the tires and the truck lurch toward the open road.
He slumped against the window as I careened out of the parking lot and onto the highway. The closest medical facility was in Bernard, about seventy miles up the road. As we neared the town limits, I passed the Lucky Traveler Motel, wishing we had time to stop and pick up my clothes and medical bag. But nearly everyone in the bar knew where I lived. The SUV driver would only have to ask a few people in the crowd that gathered to roast marshmallows around my immolated car and he’d find me in about ten minutes. For that matter, he could have been following us at that moment. Somehow, that made my spare contact-lens case and stethoscope seem less significant.
“Mister?” I said, shaking his shoulder, wincing as I noticed the blood seeping through his shirt. Gunshot wounds to the abdomen usually meant perforated major organs and damaged blood vessels, but his blood loss was minimal. I held out hope, though I knew that wasn’t necessarily a good sign. There could be some complication or an exit wound I wasn’t aware of. I pulled my apron out of my bag and pressed the green canvas against his belly. He groaned, opening his burnt-chocolate eyes and blinking at me, as if he was trying to focus on my face but couldn’t quite manage it.
“You,” he said, squinting at me. “I know you.”
I swallowed, focusing on the situation at hand instead of the instinctual panic those words sent skittering up my spine. “No, I’d remember you, I’m sure. Just hold on, OK? I’m going to get you to the clinic in Bernard. Do you think you could stay awake for me?”
He shook his head. “No doctors.”
I supposed this would be a bad time to tell him I was a doctor.
“Not that bad. No doctors,” he ground out, glaring at me. I scowled right back. His face split into a loopy smirk. “Pretty.”
His head thunked back against the seat rest, which I supposed signaled the end of our facial-expression standoff.
And now that I had time to study said face, I could appreciate the shaggy black hair, eyes so intensely brown they were almost black, and cheekbones carved from granite. His lips were wide and generous and probably pretty tempting when they weren’t curled back over his teeth in pain like that.
“Please,” he moaned, batting his hand against my shoulder, weakly flexing his fingers around it.
Well, damn, I’d always been a sucker for a man who kept pretty manners intact while bleeding. “Fine,” I shot back. “Where do you want to go?”
But he’d already passed out.
“And she was never heard from again,” I muttered.
A few miles later, my passenger stopped bleeding, which could mean that he’d started to clot . . . or that he’d gone into shock and died. My optimism had reached its limit for the evening.
Keeping an eye on the road, I pressed my fingers over his carotid and detected a slow but steady pulse. I took a deep breath and tried to focus. I’d been through so much worse. It didn’t make sense to panic now. How had I gotten myself into this? I’d worked so hard to avoid this kind of trouble. I’d kept my head down, stayed low profile. And here I was, driving around in a possibly stolen truck with a possibly dead body slumped over in the passenger seat. If I’d had one operating brain cell in my head, I would have run screaming into the bar the minute I heard the men arguing in the parking lot. But no, I had to help the injured stray, because living with the less-than-civic-minded side of humanity over the last few years had apparently taught me nothing.
I saw a sign ahead for Sharpton. Since he didn’t want to go to the clinic, I’d turned off the main highway and stuck to the older, less-traveled state routes. I tapped the brakes, afraid I would miss some vital piece of information hidden between the words “Sharpton” and “20 miles.” As the truck slowed, the big guy slumped forward and snorted as his head smacked against the dashboard.
Good. Dead people do not snort. That was my qualified medical opinion.
“Hey, big guy?” I said loudly, shaking his shoulder. “Mister?”
He snorted again but did not wake up. I laughed, practically crying with relief. I gently shook my . . . passenger? Patient? Hostage? What was I going to do with him? He didn’t want a doctor, he said. But as much as I needed a vehicle, I didn’t have it in me to just leave him on the side of the road somewhere and drive off.
Just over the next rise in the road, I saw a sign for the Last Chance Motel, which seemed both ominous and appropriate. I took a deep breath through my nose and let it slowly expand my lungs. By the time I exhaled, I’d already formed my plan. At the faded pink motel sign, I turned into the lot and parked in front of the squat, dilapidated building. There were two cars in the lot, including the one in front of the office, which seemed to double as the manager’s quarters.
I reached toward the passenger seat and gently shook the big guy’s shoulder. His breathing was deep and even. As carefully as I could, I raised the hem of his bloodied shirt and gasped. The bullet wound, just under his ribs on his left side, seemed too small for such a recent injury. The edges of the wound were a healthy pink. And the bullet seemed to be lodged there in his skin.
