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Exhaustion rippled through him. He was working a double shift that had started before six this morning. Only the county sheriff along with two deputies were assigned to this area, and the three of them were spread thin.
He flipped on his flashing red lights and pulled a U-turn. A canine whimper sounded from the backseat, and Liam glanced over his shoulder. “Sorry, Duchess, looks like you’re stuck with me.”
He’d discovered the animal earlier in the day wandering around the town square. The tag listed her name but no phone number. A nuisance call and a traffic stop had prevented him from reaching the county shelter before closing. Though bedraggled from being caught in the rain, the dog was well fed—too well fed. Someone must be worried about her.
He handed over a bone-shaped biscuit from the box he’d purchased earlier. “Why are you complaining? You’ll be home before me at this rate.”
Soon the flashing lights of Deputy Jim Bishop’s identical Chevy Tahoe appeared, and Liam eased his vehicle to the side of the road.
His radio popped to life. “Unit 120.” Rose’s voice was solemn. “Deputy Bishop called in a code four.”
A frisson went through him.
All the years he’d been in law enforcement, he’d yet to overcome his latent dread of fatality calls. “Ten-four.”
He adjusted the collar of his slicker, tugged his hat lower over his forehead and stepped into the pouring rain. Splashing through ankle-deep puddles, he jogged the distance to where Deputy Bishop stood vigil.
Tall and gaunt with thinning sand-colored hair, Bishop was openly gunning for the sheriff’s job in the next election. Given what Liam had seen of the deputy’s job performance, the guy had a better chance of getting kicked by a snake.
The man pointed a slender arm. “Down there. Got a brief look at her before the rising water drove me back.”
A beige Fiat 500 rested upright in water from the culvert, rain streaming through the shattered sunroof. Liam recognized the car—the model was distinctive—but he didn’t know the driver.
“Single fatality,” Deputy Bishop shouted over the storm. “Female.”
Judging by the crumpled exterior, the car had rolled at least once before landing at the bottom of the ditch. The headlights cast a weak, shimmering beam through the rising water, and Liam caught a glimpse of the motionless driver.
“Any identification?” Liam asked.
“Rose is running the license plates.”
Liam always trusted that God had a plan. Sometimes that plan was human intervention. “I’ll check it out.”
“You can’t. You’ll be washed away by the current.”
“Turn on your searchlights,” Liam called over his shoulder.
He shucked his utility belt but kept his police two-way radio clipped to his shirt collar. Rummaging through the rear compartment of his vehicle, he retrieved a rope, then slammed the hatch shut. He paused a moment before deciding to forgo the backboard. Fire and rescue were better equipped to retrieve the body.
Bishop’s truck was parked with the nose angled toward the ditch. After securing the rope to the bumper, Liam tied off and backed toward the vertical grade.
“Take up the slack,” he called.
Bishop nodded.
The drop wasn’t far, but it was steep. Liam’s boots sank into the muddy embankment, and his arms strained against holding the bulk of his weight. Moisture had already soaked through his collar and saturated his uniform. Though it was early spring, the rain was just shy of sleet. He could have left his slicker behind for all the good it was doing him.
His gloved hands slipped, and he lost his grip. The slack broke free. He plunged the last few feet into icy, calf-deep water, his hip bumping painfully into the car’s rear fender. Stumbling and slipping, he managed to fight the current.
“Thanks for keeping the slack, Bishop,” he mumbled darkly.
His feet went numb almost immediately. The rain was coming down too fast, turning runoff from the culvert into a shallow, raging river. The water reached his knees and wrenched at his balance. Gripping the car roof for purchase, he squinted through the dim glow of Bishop’s searchlights and wrestled his way to the shattered driver’s window.
Submerged to the waist, the woman’s lifeless body was slumped over the deployed airbag. Her right arm bobbed near the gearshift, palm up, the fingers curled, and her dark hair hung limply around her downturned face. Papers drifted in the current, escaping through the broken passenger window.
Liam’s throat tightened. Even without seeing her face, he sensed she was about his age.
He offered a brief prayer for her and the family she left behind.
Taking a deep, steadying breath, he grasped her shoulder and pulled her upright. Her head lolled backward, and her dark hair plastered wetly across her ashen cheeks. He aimed the beam of his flashlight toward her face. Blood oozed from a gash near her temple, and a purple bruise darkened one eye.
He brushed her hair aside. There was something familiar about her, but he couldn’t place where he’d seen her before. Maybe he’d stood behind her in line at the supermarket. A likely occurrence in a town the size of Redbird.
Her eyes flew open.
Adrenaline spiked through his veins, and the flashlight slipped from his fingers. She gulped for air, her chest heaving, then feebly groped the front of his coat, her expression panicked.
“H-help me.”
He’d caught a brief glimpse of her eyes. A unique shade of amber topaz.
Catching the woman’s hands, he pressed them between his gloves. She wasn’t dead, but she was going to be if they didn’t get her out of this water soon.
“It’s all right,” he soothed. “Fire and rescue are on the way.”
“Wh-who are you?” Her teeth chattered.
The question caught him off guard for a moment. That was the problem with being a dead man—remembering his cover name didn’t always come easy.
He sluiced the moisture from his face. “I’m Deputy Liam McCourt with the county sheriff’s department. What’s your name, ma’am?”
“My name is...” An expression of abject terror descended over her features. “I don’t know. I d-don’t know what my name is! Wh-what’s happening to me?”
A fresh sense of urgency filled him. Injuries from car accidents were notoriously deceptive.
“It’s all right.” He cupped his hand behind her head, and she turned her face into his palm. “Don’t be afraid.”
He caught sight of Bishop’s silhouette outlined by the searchlights and depressed the button on his two-way. “Check on fire and rescue. They’re late.”
“I’m c-cold,” she managed to say between chattering teeth.
Something wasn’t right. People sometimes forgot the events leading up to an accident, as though the trauma bleached their memories, but he’d never encountered someone who’d forgotten their own name.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll get you out of here.”
“Promise?” She clutched the lapel of his jacket. “Please don’t lie to me.”
Don’t lie to me.
The past six months melted away, and he was no longer standing in the freezing rain. He was suffocating in the sweltering Dallas heat. His memory had taken him to when he was working undercover in the Serpent Brotherhood, playing the same game he’d perfected in foster care. He was pretending to fit in. Pretending to be something he wasn’t. Not even Jenny had seen through his act, and they’d briefly attended grade school together.
For once Liam had been grateful the foster system had bounced him from family to family. Jenny hadn’t known he’d gone to college before joining the Dallas PD. The few people who remembered him from those days believed he was just another kid from the old neighborhood—all grown up and going nowhere.
Are you a cop? Don’t lie to me. Jenny’s words echoed in his mind. Her boyfriend, Swerve, was the lead fixer in the gang and took care of problems by making them disappear. Swerve was responsible for more than one missing person in the Dallas area. He’d gotten agitated during the exchange, and he’d accidentally pulled the trigger. The bullet had carved a path through Liam’s left shoulder, shattering his clavicle before slicing into Jenny’s neck. She’d bled out before the paramedics had arrived.
The scene was a mess, and Swerve thought he’d killed them both. The US Marshals had done the rest. They’d given Liam a new last name and tucked him away while the case wove its slow path through the court system.
A broken tree limb slammed into Liam’s shin, ripping his feet from beneath him, forcing him back to the present. He caught hold of the door handle and dragged himself upright, then wrapped his arm through the open window, bracing his body. A sharp metal edge dug painfully through his sleeve.
“Are you hurt anywhere else?” Keeping her head supported with one hand, he gently touched the lump on her forehead. “Can you tell if anything is broken?”
“I d-don’t k-know. I don’t th-think so.” She frantically beat against the water swirling around her waist. “I have to get out of here.”
“Soon.” He depressed the Call button on his radio and leaned his ear to his shoulder. “Where’s that fire truck?”
A grating voice sounded from the microphone attached to Liam’s collar. “Delayed. Driver didn’t know the road was washed out.”
“Tell ’em it’s urgent.”
“Hold your horses. Not gonna change things for the victim.”
“She’s alive, Bishop.”
The momentary shock of silence was deafening. “That can’t be. I checked. I didn’t feel a pulse.”
No use arguing about the details when there was a life hanging in the balance. Who knew what other injuries she might have sustained, and she was at risk for hypothermia.
“There’s a backboard in my truck. Send it down,” Liam ordered.
“Ten-four,” came the quiet reply.
The car lurched against the tide of rainwater, and his heart slammed against his ribs.
She didn’t have time to wait for fire and rescue. “We’re getting you out of here, ma’am, but you’ll have to work with me. Can you do that?”
He risked exacerbating her injuries by moving her, but she was going to drown otherwise.
She gave a hesitant nod. The car shifted again, and she bolted upright, grasping his arm.
“Yes,” she gasped. “H-help me.”
His shoulder protested the abuse, and he grimaced.
The woman stilled. “What’s wrong? Are y-you all right?”
“It’s nothing,” he replied gruffly.
His feet sank deeper into the mud, and his gut churned. He didn’t know how much longer he could keep his footing. He didn’t know how much longer they had before the water swept away the car.
The woman took another deep, gulping breath. “I trust you.”
Her declaration knocked the breath from his lungs. The last person who’d trusted him, Jenny, had paid the ultimate price. He’d prayed to God plenty growing up, especially during the worst times, and he’d begged God to save Jenny that day.
He’d gotten the same answer he’d grown accustomed to: silence.
He didn’t resent God for ignoring his prayers, instead, he’d learned that if a man never asked for anything, he was never disappointed.
Lightning streaked across the sky. Thunder rattled the shattered windshield, and her grip on his arm tightened. His past no longer mattered. What mattered now was this woman’s safety.
“Someone f-forced me off the road,” she said. “S-someone tried to kill me.”
She found herself in a freezing nightmare of throbbing pain. Blood pounded inside her skull. Her other pains were too numerous to count, and the frigid rain had her bones aching.
The water was rising.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. She wasn’t staying in this car another minute.
“Did you hear me?” She tried to shout over the rushing water, but the words came out warbled. “About the accident?”
“I heard you,” the deputy said, a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “I’ll get a description of the vehicle and the driver once you’re squared away.”
“A t-truck, I th-think.”
She attempted to reconstruct the moments before careening off the road, but the images at the edges of her vision blurred.
Someone had tried to kill her, and they’d nearly succeeded.
Her eyes must have drifted shut, because the next instant, Deputy McCourt was gently nudging her. “Stay with me.”
He was somewhere in his early thirties and handsome in an earnestly boyish kind of way. The weak beam of light from the highway above wasn’t strong enough to see his eyes, but she had a vague impression they were blue. His beard was dark, and she assumed the hair beneath his brimmed hat matched. He was tall—his shape hidden beneath his enveloping slicker.
The car shifted, and she frantically reached beneath the water to unfasten her seat belt. The mechanism released, and the sudden freedom sent pain shooting through her shoulder.
She clutched her upper arm and groaned.
“What’s wrong?” The deputy steadied her through the broken window. “What happened?”
The strap had been cutting into her collarbone, but she’d been too preoccupied by everything else to notice. “I’m f-fine. Just the seat belt.”
Her lips were going numb, making speech difficult. She pressed her palm against her throbbing head and winced.
The deputy broke the few remaining glass shards from the surrounding window frame. “You’ll have to crawl out. I’ll help you.”
“A-all right.”
As she drifted in and out of consciousness, the next few minutes passed in a blur. Strong arms lifted her from the car’s wreckage. The pain came in gasping waves. Even the slightest movement jolted her battered limbs. Once the deputy had positioned her on the backboard, she struggled feebly against his insistence on checking her for additional injuries. She was fine. She could walk. As he secured her upper body, a shaft of pure agony jerked through her.
“Sorry,” the deputy mumbled. “You have a dislocated shoulder.”
