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“How did you make peace with that…always having to find your place within a new environment?”
“By staying in the shadows. Being as silent and obedient as I knew how. Not making waves. At least until I grew older and wound up taller than most of them.”
“Did any of them ever hurt you?”
She tightened her grip on his fingers but never looked up. “You mean, did they try to get in my pants? Yes, but it was covert, and by then, I’d learned how to fight back. I was never molested. Never raped. Just never loved.”
“Shit,” Sean said.
She glanced up. The rage in his eyes was startling. “Don’t feel sorry for me.”
“Am I allowed to be pissed off at the injustice of your life?” he asked.
“Yes.”
They kept walking. Sean took a deep breath. “So now I’m asking permission to step into an obvious void in your life and love you for always.”
Amalie stopped and turned to face him. “God. Here we are again, in broad daylight in front of God and everybody, and all I want to do is die a little death in your arms.”
His eyes narrowed, his head lowered, then kissed her—in front of God and everybody. “La petite mort, Amalie. The French have such a pretty way to describe sex, do they not?”
“Maybe because sex with someone you love is such a beautiful thing?” she said.
“I would say yes to that assumption,” he said. “So, what do the voices say? Do we keep walking or—”
Suddenly, they heard the sound of crashing metal and breaking trees, and then a car horn blaring without stopping, but from where they were standing, it began echoing within the valley.
Amalie grabbed Sean’s arm. “She went off the road into a ravine. There’s a baby! The highway! Get to the highway! We will see smoke coming up through the trees!”
They started running toward the intersection and, within seconds of getting there, saw smoke rising through the trees a couple of hundred yards to the east.
“Call 911,” Sean said, and took off running.
Amalie’s hands were shaking as she made the call.
“911. What is your emergency?” the dispatcher asked.
“Car wreck. East of town, on the south side of the highway. You’ll see smoke.”
“I’m dispatching services now,” the dispatcher said. “Stay on the line with me.”
Amalie heard the calm in the dispatcher’s voice. Moments later, she was back on the phone. “What is your name?”
“Amalie Lincoln. Sean Pope was with me. He’s already running toward the scene.”
“Do you know how many are in the vehicle?”
“We didn’t see it happen, but we heard it, then saw the smoke. Someone ran off the road down into a ravine.”
Then she dropped the phone in her pocket and took off running. Sean was already a good fifty yards ahead of her and flying. She wasn’t going to ever catch him, but she wasn’t the kind to stay behind.
Jubilee PD immediately dispatched patrol cars and rescue units to the scene.
Both Pope brothers responded to the call with their partners, as did a half-dozen other officers. As they drove up on the scene, their first sight was of a woman up on the shoulder of the road holding a baby. The baby was screaming, and so was the woman. Tears were running down her face as she held the baby close, and she was screaming Sean’s name.
“Hurry, Sean, hurry! I’m starting to see flames!”
Aaron’s heart skipped a beat. See what? And where was Sean? He couldn’t see anything. He ran to the side of the road, saw his brother at the crash site, then grabbed his fire extinguisher and headed into the ravine with his partner, Yancy, at his heels.
