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“Calla!” he heard Mack shouting and banging on the back door. At least the bastard had finally got his priorities straight and was in the damn water.
Liam yanked on the front door. It didn’t give at first but after bracing his feet and yanking some more, it finally opened.
Liam took a giant breath of air and ducked underneath the water. He swam into the front seat. It was dark inside, a little bit of light filtering through the submerged windshield. Enough to see that it was the kind of ambulance that opened to the back compartment, thank Jaysus.
It was awkward to maneuver his lanky body through the narrow opening to get to the back. He got the top of himself through but his bottom half became tangled, his foot stuck on the steering wheel. Shite!
He was getting short on air and the back of the ambulance was completely dark. He couldn’t see a thing. Including where Calla was. Or where the surface was so he knew how close he was to catching a breath.
He finally kicked and kicked until he got his legs untangled so he could slip all the way through the opening to the back of the ambulance. He swam up and broke the surface. He took a huge breath and then immediately started searching.
“Calla?” He moved his hands around in the wet darkness.
That’s when he heard the most beautiful sound in the world. Muffled cries came from his left and, following the noise, his hands closed on Calla’s drenched frame, sitting on a gurney.
Jaysus the water was up to her chest. He felt along her body until he came to her face. Some sort of rag was stuffed in her mouth. He yanked it out and she started crying, “Thank you. Thank God. Oh God. Thank you. Thank you.”
“Gotta say, this is the first time I’ve been called God outside the bedroom.”
“Oh my God, if I could smack you right now, I would,” she laughed and cried at the same time. “Get me out of here. I’m handcuffed to this damn thing.”
Shite. Liam felt down her arms to her wrists. On both sides she was cuffed to the handles of the huge gurney. There was no way they were going out the way he came in. And they were running out of time.
“I’m gonna see if I can get the doors open from the inside. I’m only letting you go for a second, okay.”
“Okay,” she said, but her voice shook so much Liam could tell she was terrified in spite of the fact she’d just been making jokes.
Right then there was an ear-splitting bang. And then another one.
Then the ambulance was flooded with light as Mack yanked open the back door. For a second, Liam could only stare. The bastard had shot the lock off the door.
“You could have killed us, you fucking maniac.” Then he shook his head. “Help me get her out of here. She’s handcuffed to this damn thing.”
Mack nodded and waded into the ambulance. He pulled on the handcuffs and obviously saw what Liam had. They weren’t getting her out of there apart from the gurney. Liam was already trying to tug at the gurney and get it free from the sinking ambulance. It wasn’t budging.
“Mack, help me move this damn thing.” He jerked at it some more but while it rattled a bit and sloshed the water, it didn’t move.
“I don’t want to panic anyone,” Calla said, “but get me the fuck out of here!”
Liam looked up and saw the water was at her neck. He would not sit here and watch Calla die.
Mack dove down, probably trying to find whatever held the gurney to the ambulance. Good idea. Liam did the same. He felt all along the floor on the right side of the gurney. But there were just the wheels and the floor and nothing holding the two together. What the fuck was it?!
He ran out of air and surfaced. Only to find Calla’s head tipped back as she strained to keep her nose above water.
“Goddammit!”
Liam looked around… There! He yanked a bit of clear plastic tubing off the wall. It had a mask on one end and some sort of medical something on the other. He ripped both of them off and put the tube in Calla’s mouth just as the water closed over her face.
He held the other end of the tube clear of the water so she could keep breathing through it. But holding it up meant he couldn’t help Mack in the search to free the gurney. And they only had so much time before the whole goddamned ambulance filled and sank. Liam had no idea how deep the water was, but it had been an especially snowy winter and all the reservoirs and lakes were full.
Mack came up gasping for air. He took one look at Liam holding the tube out of the water and Calla submerged. His eyes widened and then he took another huge breath and dived back down.
“Come on, Mack,” Liam whispered. “I’ll take back every time I ever called you a stupid bastard, if you can just figure this out.”
The water continued rising. The tubing Liam had found wasn’t very long and soon, the water had risen almost to the end of it. Shite, shite, shite. He couldn’t— They weren’t going to be able to— FUCK!
He looked around frantically for anything else that might do. Some other tubing that might be longer? But everything was in disarray, half the shit must have fallen off the walls and out of the cabinets when the ambulance crashed into the lake.
