“Well, I can’t jump it and you have gas. I’m sorry but you’re going to have to get it towed.”
He watched her face fall. “I take it you don’t have Triple A or something. But your insurance should cover it.”
She looked down and didn’t reply.
“You don’t have insurance?”
She glanced across at him, misery making her eyes appear almost black in the dim light of the parking garage. “Liability and bare-bones collision.”
“Okay.” He closed her hood. “This is what we’re going to do. The car should be okay overnight, but take all your belongings. In the morning, I’ll call Raleigh police and get a reputable tow.”
“Okay.” Shay bit her lip. No point in telling him she couldn’t afford a tow, much less a repair bill.
James watched her collect what amounted to very little from her car and then opened the passenger door to his cruiser for her. Her anxiety made him want to tuck her under his arm and promise her that bad things would never again happen to her as long as he was around.
But life wasn’t like that. He couldn’t stop all the big bad wolves from coming to her door, or anyone else’s. But he was feeling the urge to try.
*
“I’m really sorry about this.” Shay sat uneasily in the passenger seat of the cruiser. She had given him directions to her neighborhood.
“No problem. I’m a door-to-door kind of date guy.”
Bogart stuck his head through the front hatch between them, tongue lolling out of his mouth, and slurped the side of Shay’s face.
She laughed nervously and pushed him away. “The waitress was right. Your kisses need some work.”
James glanced at her. “I assume you aren’t talking to me.”
Shay turned to look out the window so that he wouldn’t see her face. She liked him, really liked him.
They drove northwest out of the main part of town. Shay had directed him to avoid the 440 Loop traffic though it took them away from the most direct route to her apartment. Plus, maybe she didn’t want to say good night yet, though she was definitely going to leave him at her door.
A little nerve jumped at the corner of her mouth. The problem was, she didn’t want to leave him on her doorstep. Or the living room. What would he do about that?
As they left the main part of the city a soft misty rain began to fall. James turned on the radio. To her surprise, it wasn’t country. Pink was singing one of her plaintive songs, something about getting up and trying again.
Suddenly, out near Crabtree Creek, the brake lights of the traffic ahead all leaped into brilliance at the same time. The sound of screeching brakes and squealing tires accompanied them.
“Uh-oh.” James stepped on his brake and they rolled to a stop behind a double line of cars. “Did you see anything?”
“No, I wasn’t paying attention.” Shay craned her head forward to gaze between the pulsing windshield wipers.
Moments later a man came running toward them, arms waving. James let down his windshield an inch.
“You a cop?”
James nodded.
The man pointed back up the line of cars. “Car went off the road up ahead. Blew a tire, I think. Jumped the guardrail and went down the incline. There’s a creek down there.”
“You call 911?”
“Yeah. I’m a trucker. But we need to get down there, pronto.”
“Right. Let me move out of the traffic lanes.”
Turning his flashing lights on, James drove his cruiser up over the curb and onto the grassy shoulder and carefully edged forward. He didn’t move forward all the way to where the railing was because he knew other law enforcement and emergency vehicles would need the space.
Shay eyed him cautiously. “You’re going to help?”
He put the car in park before he turned to her. He’d almost forgotten she was with him. “That’s right. I want you to stay in the cruiser with your seat belt on. I’m leaving the lights on but there’s the chance of being rear-ended because some driver may come along who isn’t expecting a sudden stop.”
James got out and rushed forward following the trucker. The lights of the stalled traffic lit up the angled beginning of a guardrail. He noted it was bent and scraped. The car must have catapulted over it. Farther ahead, several passengers had emerged from their cars and were looking over the railing above the creek into the darkness below.
As they reached the rim of the incline that led down to the creek bed, James and the trucker paused.
Two men in business suits carried a half-conscious woman up the grassy incline, her body sagging between them. James winced. Good Samaritans often moved people who should not be moved until they’d been examined. But it was too late to point that out.
The woman came to life as they tried to lay her in the grass.
“My baby! My baby!”
She twisted away from them and began trying to crawl back the way they’d come. One of the men reached to restrain her by the shoulder. “It’s okay, ma’am. We’re going to send someone back down there in a minute.”
“No! No! No! My baby! Got to get my baby!”