How to Knit a Love Song (36 page)
Abigail’s hands shook so much she could barely hold Clara’s leash. Clara growled softly, but made no move. “Did you burn something else? Not the cottage. Not the house!”
“That fire was just to get your attention. You did a great job trying to put it out, by the way. I didn’t expect that rancher to get back so soon, and I knew slashing his friend’s tires would keep the other one out of trouble. I really wanted you to see what a big blast could do. I suppose you could call it a small, a very small, warning. I don’t like other men touching you. Just remember that. You’ve done well this week, keeping the rancher off you. You made me proud.”
Abigail put the growling Clara between them, took the deepest breath she could, and screamed. She screamed for all she was worth, and then she took another breath and started again. Samuel turned and ran as doors along the alley were flung open. Two men rounded the corner at a run.
“What’s wrong, lady?” one yelled.
“Stop him! He stole my purse!” It was the only thing she could think of, but it worked to set the men into chase mode.
Samuel got away, though. Again.
Abigail spent yet another hour with the young officer, who tripped over his own apologies. “I mean, we thought we had shots fired, so we had to take that super seriously, you know?”
“I know,” said Abigail, and signed the second report. She needed to get home. She needed to find what Samuel had left for her.
She longed for Cade.
In her truck, Abigail rolled the windows down and breathed the salt air as she drove along the coast. She headed inland, the radio playing quietly in the background.
It wouldn’t be too bad. Right? Whatever it was Samuel had left. Even as she thought it, she didn’t believe it.
How the hell was she supposed to get through this? She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t live here being as scared as she’d been in San Diego.
Oh, God, she wanted Cade.
But things were different now. Abigail was strong. She had her land. Her store. Her dream. She could and would protect what she had. She could do this herself.
She
had
to do this herself.
Abigail distracted herself by thinking about the opening chapters of the book she would write. Janet had been right—it was a great idea. Book. Think about the book.
She’d start the book with driving onto the land, that moment when she first saw her legacy.
The moment she’d seen the cowboy up on the ridge.
Okay, she wouldn’t write about that part. She wouldn’t write about him.
The road wound through yet another stand of eucalyptus. This was her favorite part of the twenty-five-minute drive back to the ranch, this narrow, swerving bit right before Mills Bridge and its huge curve. This part, before, and the part after, in the live oaks, she loved that.
But now, as she came up on the bridge, she slowed a little. She really hated the next part. There was a tanker truck in front of her, and what looked like a horse trailer behind her. She wanted plenty of room between all of them. People went too damn fast on this road.
Cade went too fast on this road.
No, think of the new book.
She wanted photographs included in it. Pictures of Eliza at home on the ranch—she had a box of them stored somewhere. Lovely pictures of Eliza holding wool, knitting, guffawing at the camera as she always did. Photos of her sweaters, her socks, her mittens. Abigail could replicate the items, make the old sweaters in new colors, sit in the same place, show the students looking out at the same valley. Yes, people would like that.
What
was
that tanker doing? Abigail was in the middle of the long bridge now. She gripped the steering wheel tighter. The tanker swerved a little as if to miss hitting an animal. Then it jerked itself back on course. Up ahead, coming from the other direction, a small car was passing a passenger van over the double yellow line.
Abigail hit her brakes, softly at first, to get the attention of the horse trailer behind her, then harder. But in her rearview mirror, she could see another vehicle passing the horse trailer, dangerously, on the curve.
A black SUV.
It was Samuel.
He passed the trailer and began closing the distance between them fast. He didn’t slow down at all.
The small car coming at them in their lane seemed to realize it shouldn’t have tried to pass, but by then it was right next to the van. It braked, but it looked as though the van driver was panicking. It slowed as well, both of the vehicles now taking up both lanes.
The tanker hit its brakes and rocked sideways violently.
They reached the second curve of the long bridge. Abigail braked harder, and Samuel’s SUV almost hit her rear bumper.
Time slowed down. As if it were a movie shot in slow motion, Abigail saw every detail.
The small car accelerated and shot past the van. It just managed to clear the front end of the tanker in front of her. But the tanker braked so hard that it lost control. Near the end of the bridge where it rejoined the steep cliff and became road again, the tanker jackknifed. The back cylinder twisted off, rolled, and instantly burst into flames. The van barely cleared the tanker. Abigail had nowhere to go but forward; she’d never stop in time.
She pulled the steering wheel as hard as she could to the left, missing the rear bumper of the van as it passed her. She skidded around the fishtailing, blazing tanker. For one horrifying second, the spinning front cab of the tanker was right in front of her, facing the wrong way, and she looked into the terrified face of the driver.
His mouth was open in a scream. His hands twisted the wheel in vain.
Abigail hit the far left guardrail as she slipped her truck between it and the tanker cab. She corrected her steering, cleared the end of the bridge, and made it to the roadway. Behind her, through the open window, she heard the sickening sounds of metal crashing, shrieking, as the SUV failed to avoid the tanker.
Flames exploded higher in her rearview mirror.
Then, with a noise louder than anything she’d ever heard, the end of the bridge collapsed entirely behind her. It took down with it the fiery tanker, its cab, Samuel’s SUV, the horse trailer, the small car, and the van.
Abigail careened to a stop on the shoulder, just off the bridge.
She leaped out of the truck, cell phone in hand. She dialed 911 for the third time that day, and gave the dispatcher all the details she could, as she stood on the edge of the cliff and watched the metal beneath her burn.
“How many people are injured, ma’am?” asked the dispatcher.
“I don’t know! At least five. Maybe more! Just hurry! The bridge fell…”
“The bridge
fell?
You didn’t say that, ma’am! How much of the bridge?”
“The last half, the, uh, eastern half, I guess. Just get out here.” Abigail flipped her cell phone closed and closed her eyes, unable to feel anything but the heat rising from below.
Then she heard a scream, followed by another. The flames, fast to rise, were dying down. She could see at least one person—no, there were two—stumbling between vehicles.
She had to help.
She started down the cliff, carefully bracing herself against the slipping rocks.
Almost at the bottom, she called out, “Help is coming! Hold on! They’re on their way!” The intensity of the heat terrified her, but she kept going.
A man wearing overalls and bleeding from the head waved her over to a small car. He fell to his knees.
A huge sound, terrible in its volume, came from above her. Abigail looked up.
The whole side of the cliff was coming down. Oh, God, her pickup truck was coming down with it. She saw the back end of it tilting, sliding on the moving rocks, and now the whole hill was moving toward her, carrying the truck, deafening in its roar.
She ran, toward the fire, toward the man, as fast as she could. She’d never make it out of the way in time.
Life is too short to be bothered knitting something you don’t love.
—
E.C.
O
n his way up the driveway, Cade tried to slow his breathing. He’d cleared the whole ranch with Tom’s help. If Samuel was hiding here, he was invisible. He was out there somewhere, and Cade was going to find him. Tom was in charge of watching for Abigail to return, and Cade had made him swear on his life that he would keep Abigail safe if she beat Cade home. He felt both foolish and dead serious asking Tom to agree.
Cade didn’t deserve her. But maybe he could begin to earn her love. Starting right now.
He hit the main road and slammed the gearshift into fourth.
So what if Eliza had some grand plan in place? So what if she’d wanted him to get together with Abigail, to set them up? Eliza had been about love. She had loved Uncle Joshua with every last bit of her heart, and she wouldn’t have expected him to be with Abigail unless he loved her.
Which, dammit, he did.
But he’d hurt her, because he was the biggest idiot that had ever lived, and she’d never trust him again. He didn’t blame her.
Cade rolled down the window to try to cool his mind.
Wasn’t this the way? He finally fell in love, and he couldn’t have her, wouldn’t ever be with her because he hadn’t been able to see who she really was, in time.
He snapped the radio off. He wasn’t in the mood for music.
Maybe he’d listen to the scanner. It was good for picking up the fire channels to monitor medicals and house fires, and sometimes he liked to be nosy about what was going on in town. Cops were fun to laugh at when they got hyped up on the radio.
And man, they were hyped right now. So was the dispatcher.
“David-two, David-seven, Adam-four and all other available units, code three for the bridge. Code three for Mills Bridge. Total six ambulances enroute, reports of multiple casualties, MCI initiated, three helos enroute. Proceed with caution, eastern span is out. Repeating, eastern span is
down
. Need road blocked on eastern end. Repeat, road is
not
blocked on eastern end. Four casualties transported by ground so far from western end, unknown status of remaining victims.”
Mills Bridge? He was almost to the eastern end of it. He hit the brakes as he came out of the last curve before the bridge started. He knew that doing so had saved his life.
Nothing. A sheer drop into nothing.
He kicked the truck into reverse. He had to set up a roadblock, to set up something. Someone else was going to come around fast and fly off the edge like he almost had.
A hundred yards up the road, he yanked the emergency brake and skidded into a turn that placed his truck squarely across the middle of the road. At least they’d only hit it and not fly over. He grabbed four flares from his tool box, lit them all and threw them up the road as far as he could. Then he turned and raced for the cliff’s edge.
It was bad. He could see at least five vehicles down there, some people moving around. Something was on fire, but it looked like it had almost burned out. A fire-patrol rig had four-wheeled down the other side and looked like it was pumping water. At least eight cop cars were flashing their lights on the other side, and he watched as uniforms scrambled down. Two ambulances were loading their crews up the hill on the other side. It looked as if they were carrying patients up on Stokes stretchers.
Thank God the river was low, barely ankle deep at this time of year.
He stood on the edge and tried to ascertain if it was safe to descend. Rocks skittered down, but it looked like the part that had gone down was the shale, and all that was left up here was solid rock. It should be okay.
He started down, his boots slipping immediately. He hit the dirt with his backside and bounced back up.
Then he saw it.
Abigail’s truck. At the bottom, halfway covered in rock, a tangled mess. It wasn’t near the tanker and the other vehicles—it was closer to the cliff’s edge. It was on its side, and he could hear the mangled engine still ticking under the rubble as he got closer.
He stopped breathing.
If she was in that thing when it went down…
No.
If she was in that truck…
If she had been anywhere
near
that truck when it went over…That stupid, little no-good couch-carrying truck.
Still barely breathing, his mind exploding with terror, he went down faster. He wouldn’t, couldn’t fall.
Everything depended on this.
Everything.
All that he was, depended on her.
“Abigail!” His voice was too quiet. He gathered air into his lungs as he launched himself down the few remaining feet and at the truck. “Abigail!”
He peered into the wrecked cab.
She wasn’t there. Thank God, she wasn’t there.
But where was she?
“Abigail!” His voice sounded as hysterical as he felt.
Paramedics knelt over someone near a horse trailer that was almost in splinters.
A woman.
They were working on a woman.
Cade tripped and fell to his knees once and he used his hands to scratch at the rocks, to push himself back up so he could run again.
Not her, it couldn’t be her. He would die, too.
A startled-looking paramedic, way too young for the job, yelled as Cade pushed between them to look.
The woman they were working on was a blond, not a brunette. Covered in blood. She was breathing: the medics had been positioning her on the board to get her up the other side.
It wasn’t her.
“Sorry,” Cade mumbled and pushed his hands into his hair.
“Where?” He choked. “Where are the others?”
“The worst were transported first. If you don’t see someone here, they’ve gone to County Hospital. Now get the hell out of the way.”
Cade couldn’t seem to make his feet respond to his wishes.
“Move!” yelled the paramedic.
He stumbled out of their way, and approached an officer who looked bewildered by the chaos.