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‘Yes, that’s her.’ Jack tried to move and found that his limbs had some strength in them now.
‘Are you hurt?’
‘No...’ No one part of him hurt any more than the rest and Jack decided that was a good sign. ‘Thanks...um...’
‘I’m Cass... Cassandra Clarke.’
‘Jack Halliday.’
She gave a small nod in acknowledgement. ‘We’d better not hang around here for too long. Can you stand?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Okay, take it slowly.’ She reached over, disentangling his foot from a branch, and then scrambled around next to him, squeezing her body in between him and one of the tree trunks. With almost no effort on his part at all, he found himself sitting up as she levered her weight against his, her arms supporting him. Then she helped him carefully to his feet.
He turned, looking back over the bridge to find Mimi. Only the bridge wasn’t there any more. A couple of chunks of masonry were all that was left of it, rolling downstream under the pressure of the boiling water. He could see Mimi standing on the other side, staring fixedly at him, and beside her stood a man who he thought he recognised. Behind them, the lights still on and the driver’s door open, was a black SUV.
‘All right?’ Now that he was on his feet, he could see that Cass was tall, just a couple of inches shorter than him.
‘Yeah. Thanks.’ Jack felt for his phone and found that he had nothing in his pocket apart from a couple of stones and a handful of sludge. ‘I need to get to a phone...’
‘Okay. The village is only ten minutes away; we’ll get you up there first.’ She spoke with a quiet, irresistible authority.
Jack waved to Mimi, feeling a sharp ache in his shoulder as he raised his arm. She waved back, both hands reaching out towards him as if she was trying to retrieve him. Moving his hand in a circular motion as a sign that he’d call her, he saw the man bend to pick something up. Mimi snatched her phone from him and looked at it for a moment and then turned her attention back on to Jack, sending him a thumbs-up sign.
‘Did you mean to park the ambulance like that?’ There was a note of dry humour in Cass’s husky tones.
Jack looked over the water and saw that the ambulance had been washed off the road and was leaning at a precarious angle against a tree. He muttered a curse under his breath.
‘I’ll take that as a no.’
Jack chuckled, despite the pain in his ribs. ‘What are you?’
She flushed red as if this was the one question she didn’t know how to answer. In someone so capable, the delicate shade of pink on her cheeks stirred his shaking limbs into sudden warmth.
‘What do you mean?’
‘None of this fazes you very much, does it? And you’ve been trained in how to lift...’ Jack recognised the techniques she’d used as very similar to his own. A little more leverage and a little less strength, maybe. And, although Cass didn’t give any orders, the men around her seemed to recognise her as their leader.
‘I’m a firefighter. I work at the fire station in town, but I’m off duty at the moment. On duty as a concerned family member, though—my sister Lynette’s the patient you’re coming to see.’
‘Then we’d better get going.’ Jack looked around for his bag and saw that one of the men was holding it, and that water was dripping out of it. He really was on his own here—no Mimi and no medical bag. He turned, accepting a supportive arm from one of the men, and began to walk slowly up the steep path with the group.
* * *
This wasn’t what Cass had planned. She’d hoped to be able to get Lynette safely to hospital well in advance but, stubborn as ever, her sister had pointed out that it was another two weeks before her due date and flatly refused to go.
The hospital was now out of reach, but a paramedic was the next best thing. And the floods had finally given her a break and quite literally washed Jack up, on to her doorstep.
Despite the layers of clothing, she’d still felt the strength of his body when she’d helped him up. Hard muscle, still pumped and quivering with the effort of holding on. It had taken nerve to stay put and hang on instead of trying to run from the water, but that decision had probably saved his life.
He was tall as well, a couple of inches taller than her own six feet. And despite, or maybe because of, all that raw power he had the gentlest eyes. The kind of deep brown that a girl could just fall into.
Enough. He might be easy on the eye, but that was nothing to do with her primary objective. Jack was walking ahead of her and Cass lengthened her stride to catch up with him.
‘Lynette’s actually been having mild contractions. She’s not due for another two weeks, but it seems as if the baby might come sooner.’ It was better to think of him as an asset, someone who could help her accomplish the task ahead. Bravery had got him here in one piece and those tender eyes might yet come in useful, for comforting Lynette.
‘Her first child?’
