Shadow Dancer (The Shadow Series Book 1) (14 page)

Shake it off, Maria. Shake it off! You'll be fine.

The car began to inch across the bridge when her engine started to stall and sputter. Twenty seconds later the car engine had choked out its final death rattle.
Piece of crap engine!

There were high beams shining at the bridge from the opposite direction. The bridge was one way; there shouldn't be any vehicle facing that direction unless it was Frank with the plow trucks or maybe one of the cops warning travelers about going up the pass in this horrible weather. Maria stepped out of her tiny powder blue car and into the snowy night.

Shielding her eye from the glaring light, she tried to make out what was blocking the way up the Pass. She walked closer and noticed how far away the lights were. That is when her eyes adjusted; the lights were coming closer. Slowly at first, but then at barreling speed, the shadow of a semi-hauler was skidding down the icy path towards her. Maria ran as fast as she could, snow boots struggling to move through the heavy snow. Fear rose in the pit of her stomach as she did everything she could to get out of the way of the oncoming truck. Screeching sounded from the tires of the truck as the driver was clearly trying to stop the truck from skidding on the ice. It did him no good; the truck was only picking up speed, faster and faster. From the opposite side of the covered bridge, Maria could hear sirens. The whirring sound was a comfort at first, but then she remembered,
the children! The children are still on the bridge!

She tried running to them but it was too late. The truck plowed right over her, lifting Maria off the ground and sending her flying into the brush. She felt her body break as the world went dark.

* * *

“We need to get to the hospital!” demanded Catherine. Her labor pains getting progressively worse as the grandfather clock struck midnight.

“Catherine, it might be too dangerous, look at it outside,” explained Bridgette. The snow was
coming down heavier now, with at least a foot of snow on the ground with more expected to come overnight.

“I cannot deliver a baby here. This is not 1922! I need an epidural!” Catherine screamed, now in a certified panic.

Bridgette looked at Jack, “You have to find a way to calm her down.”

Jack glared at his sister, “You’re the nurse! Aren’t you accustomed to this sort of thing?”

“Not after spiked eggnog, I’m not! Tell Mom to brew some coffee. I need coffee to function.”

Jack ran down to the kitchen to find Moira, who was sitting at the kitchen table eating a slice of apple pie and doing a crossword puzzle. In a blunt spew of words, Jack announced, “Catherine is in labor, the weather is too bad to drive, and Bridgette wants coffee now.”

Looking up over her tortoise shell frames, Moira gave Jack a look as if he was suffering from a severe form of lunacy.

“You want to run that by me again?” Moira said, looking up at her son over her tortoise shell frames with a perturbed look on her face.

Jack spoke more slowly this time.

“Catherine is in labor. The weather is too bad to drive in. Bridgette wants coffee.”

“Well honestly, the latter two are not of any concern to me. We need to call an ambulance.”

“Will they come out in this?”

“I guess we’ll see. And tell your sister that if she wants coffee she’ll have to brew it herself. I’m off for the evening.”

* * *
 

“Where the hell is this ambulance at?!” demanded Jack, pacing under the clock in the den, shuffling his feet so loudly that he woke his
father who was snoring away in his recliner. Angus awoke in his usual gruff manner, shooting a nasty look at Jack.

“Must you breathe so loudly? I’m trying to sleep!”

Moira, who was within earshot threw a pillow at her grumpy husband’s head while screaming at him, “Get up! Your daughter-in-law is in labor, and we need a doctor!”

Shocked out of his sleepy state by his wife’s sudden attack, Angus shot out of his recliner in a confused stupor. “Huh?”

Moira answered in her best cave man voice, “Catherine. Your daughter-in-law. Baby coming. You doctor. You help her.”

Angus hurriedly marched up the steps to Jack and Catherine’s bedroom to check on Catherine
who was lying in bed in considerable pain.

“We need to get her out of here NOW!” declared Angus.

Moira, who was standing in the doorway looking deeply concerned, said “I called an ambulance over thirty minutes ago! We may need to deliver here. It’s where all my kids were born…”

Bridgette yelled back at her mother, “There's no more time to wait! We have to take her.”

Angus said urgently, “No Moira, that is not an option in this case.”

Jack added, “If we wait for an ambulance, they both could be dead!”

Moira wasn't listening. She was too busy grabbing her rosary out of her housecoat pocket to hear what the others were saying.

“Bridgette, get a blanket! “ordered Jack as he hurriedly put on his winter coat. In a single swoop, he lifted Catherine off the floor and rushed downstairs. Bridgette followed shortly after, blankets in hand. She wrapped one around Catherine, who was dead weight in Jack's arms. She grabbed the door for Jack and ran to his truck,
pulling it to the back door so he could load Bridgette into the cab.

Bridgette called to Frank, who was standing in the doorway, “I will call when we are there!”

Jack slammed the door shut, turned to his sister and screamed, “High gear, let's go!”

As the truck pulled off, Moira came running to the porch from inside, “Wait! The Pass! The Pass is too dangerous!” But it was too late, Jack and Bridgette were already heading towards one of the worst accidents Skole County had seen in quite some time.

* * *

Cole Piedmonte screamed from the backseat of his mother's car,
petrified by the noise and the darkness. One moment he was sitting in the car, tugging at his sister's hand to get her to wake up, the next, a horrible groaning noise sounded following a terrible crash. The lights that adorned the covered bridge had gone out, abruptly, and now he couldn't see anything. It was terribly cold, Natalie wasn't waking, and he didn't know what to do. Where was his mother? Why had she left him alone? He couldn't understand what was happening, or who had made the world go dark. He tried to remember how his father had gotten him out of his seat belt earlier that day. He had pushed a button, hadn't he? It had seemed so easy.

Cole pushed the orange button of the seat belt, but it didn't budge. Stubbornly he tried again and again until he began to shriek in a fashion that was typical of an overwhelmed
toddler. He pulled the shoulder belt over his head. He began tugging at the lap belt that was strapped across his belly, wriggling out of it, until he was standing on the seat. He smacked his tiny hand at the door window to no avail. He recalled his older sister doing something that made the window go down. He looked at the handle that operated the window and tried to turn it, but it didn't move at all. His hand moved to the door handle and he pulled on it with all his strength, but still, he was met with resistance once again.

From outside the car he could hear sirens and yelling. He thought he could hear his father, screaming for someone. He sounded upset, which in turn made Cole's bottom lip quiver. Getting frustrated with his progress so far, Cole climbed to the front seat of the car, his Buster Brown sneaker scuffing up the seats and center console. He banged on the glass of the windshield, desperate for someone to let him out of the dark. He cried as he banged, not knowing what else he could do.

In a moment of defeat, Cole sunk down in the driver’s seat, feet kicking against the horn. Then something happened that caught Cole's attention. Light began shining in the windshield. Snow was being removed by someone or something from the outside. And fast. Cole watched, pressing his face up against the glass. From the other side of the glass, Jack Morrow was frantically throwing snow off of the car.

* * *

Bridgette sat in the driver's seat of Jack's pickup truck as she watched Jack manually move the snow off the front of the car. She couldn't believe her eyes. The bridge had collapsed on top of Maria Piedmonte's car, and she could hear the sound of screaming and sirens. She had no idea how far off the sirens were, but one thing was for sure, they weren't getting through that rubble any time soon. She had tried to tell Jack to stay in the car, that they had to tend to Catherine and get her back to the house before they all froze to death, but he wouldn’t listen. As the snow sleeted down from sky, he frantically tried to find the source of the screams.

Jack was now standing on the windshield, yelling something, but she couldn't hear him. He yelled
again, this time loud enough to hear, "Get back, I have to break through... Hide behind the seat and cover your face!" A moment later, Jack's size thirteen boot was kicking at the windshield. Bridgette's eyes grew wide with shock as she ran from the cab of the truck towards her brother. As a nurse, she had a certain call of duty. She must help where help is needed. She was almost certain she heard him say Cole. The Piedmontes were their closest friends. She couldn't imagine what she would do if something had happened to one of them.

She tried to run through the snow but it was just too thick, and coming down too hard. Finally she reached the front of the car. Jack had cleared all the glass from the windshield and was now inside the car, looking at something in the back seat. Jack looked behind him to see his sister standing on the hood of the car.

"I can't find Maria or Joe! They have to be here somewhere. They wouldn't just leave their kids in the car like this. Here," said Jack. "Take the baby and get her in the truck straight away."

Bridgette took Natalie and wrapped her in her coat, holding her tight to her chest as she hurried back to the truck. Cole wrapped his arms around Jack's neck as he lifted them both out of the now destroyed car, racing back towards the truck, and back to safety of the Morrow manor. In the back seat of the truck, Catherine began to scream.
Bridgette put the truck into four-wheel drive as it fought against the inclement weather up the treacherous mountain. This is the last place on earth they ought to be with a laboring mother and two small children. Tires skidding against the ice, the truck veered dangerously towards the cliff edge, the holiday lights of Elkhart and Shepard’s Grove looking tiny below.

“Do you want me to drive?!”Jack yelled nervously from the passenger seat beside her.

“I’m an excellent driver, thank you, Jack. It’s the road. Just shut up and keep everyone quiet. And turn that damn radio off!”

Bridgette was the type of driver who felt speed limits were more like guidelines, and the radio blared where ever she went. Just last week she told Jack and Frank, “Billy Idol is my co-pilot” as
Rebel Yell
blared from the Gremlin’s speakers. The car was a piece of crap, but she had a top-notch stereo system. The only time she turned the radio off when she was driving was when she was nervous.

It took over two hours to reach the top of the pass, snowing falling
even heavier and thicker than it had earlier. As the wheels transferred from gravel to dirt, Jack looked at his wrist watch that started to blink.

“It’s 12:00,” said Jack, his voice bereft of emotion.

“Merry Christmas. Let’s get everyone inside.”

Moira was still in the kitchen waiting impatiently by the phone, desperate for some news. News stations from Danville had aired footage of the bridge on channel 7’s 11:00 news broadcast, and Moira could do nothing but stare at the television set, screaming in anger. When the kitchen door burst open at two minutes past midnight, she had to contain herself from breaking into hysterics.

Jack carried Catherine, still wrapped in a blanket, into the kitchen. Bridgette tightly grasped Cole and Natalie, desperate to get them in from the cold. Moira caught sight of the children, and her panic began to rise.

“Are they Maria and Joe’s children?!” she asked nervously.

“Yes. They were involved in the bridge accident. We couldn’t find Maria or Joe, though. Oh, Mom, it was horrible!” exclaimed Bridgette. Moira didn’t know what to say so she hugged her daughter tightly, before Bridgette broke free.

Bridgette pleaded, “Please look after them, I have to help
Catherine. Try to get a hold of Joe, Maria, or maybe Maria’s mother, Rita. Let them know that the children are safe.”