Heated Moments. Phyllis Bourne

and dripped down her arm. Damn scissors, she thought, looking at the wound. She should have pulled them from her bag weeks ago.

      Lola glanced up at the officer, holding her bloody hand in her other one. “I know I have a first-aid kit somewhere in my purse. Maybe you could empty it and...”

      The cop stepped back from the Mustang on wobbly legs, and the color drained from his face.

      “Blood,” he whispered, staring at her hand.

      “It’s just a little cut,” Lola said, though it hurt like hell. She positioned her arm to give him a better look. “See, it’s not a big...”

      His eyes rolled back in his head, and the poor guy looked as if he was about to drop on the spot.

      “Officer Wilson,” Lola yelled, throwing open the car door.

      She reached out to steady him with her good hand, but was a second too late. He crumpled to the ground. Lola heard a horrifying thunk as the back of his head hit the gravel, cushioned only by weeds poking through.

      “Shit! Shit! Shit!” Lola hissed.

      Her cut forgotten, she knelt beside him.

      “Officer Wilson?”

      No response. She lifted his head to her knee and noted from the rise and fall of his chest that the cop was still breathing. Thank God, she thought, sending up a silent prayer. He didn’t appear to be bleeding, but with her hand still dripping blood she couldn’t be sure.

      Grabbing the two-way radio from his belt, she pressed several of the buttons.

      “Officer down,” Lola yelled into it, imitating the lingo she’d heard on TV cop shows. But unlike television there was no reassuring voice saying the cavalry was coming to the rescue, only the hiss of dead air.

      Closing her eyes briefly, she shoved aside the panic threatening to consume her.

      “I’m just going to my car for my phone to call for help,” Lola told the unconscious officer.

      She rested the cop’s head on the ground as gently as she could, and then dived inside her car. After snatching her cell phone off the passenger seat with trembling fingers, she hurriedly called 911.

      Lola clutched the phone to her ear. Silence. She glanced at the screen. The words No Service had replaced the dots indicating signal strength.

      The panic she’d banished was creeping up on her now. Looking down the barren road, she saw the tractor still inching through a field in the distance. It was too far away. She ran to the police car, hoping its radio would be more effective than the one the officer carried. Her efforts were rewarded with static and then more silence.

      Returning to the unconscious cop’s side, Lola exhaled a shaky breath. She had no idea if she should move him, but what choice did she have? She couldn’t leave him here to go for help.

      She was going to have to take him to help.

      Lola rounded her car to the passenger’s side and flung open the door. Back at the officer’s side, she sucked in a deep breath before crouching on her haunches. She lifted his head and then his shoulders as gently as possible, finally managing to weave her arms under his.

      The cop, who she would have described as scrawny when he’d stepped out of the patrol car earlier, was a lot heavier than he looked.

      “Come on, Officer Wilson,” she pleaded. “Help me out here.”

      Slowly, Lola dragged him across the hot pavement toward the passenger’s side of her car. Rivulets of sweat rolled down her back as the sun beat on it, and for once she was grateful for years of torturous Pilates classes that had not only kept her lean, but made her strong.

      Still, she was gasping for breath by the time she managed to get Officer Wilson slumped in the passenger’s seat.

      Back in the driver’s seat, Lola snatched a wad of tissue from the pocket pack to stem the blood still oozing from her hand. She used her free hand to start a GPS search for the closest hospital.

      “Hold on, Officer Wilson,” she said, as the route to a facility a few miles away appeared. “I’ll have you at Cooper’s Place Community Hospital in a flash.”