It had all the makings of a low-grade movie of the week. Or, in another era, a sad Grimms’ fairy tale. And it looked as if the happy ending was going to be awarded to his client, if he had anything to say about it.
If he lived to deliver the deposition he’d gotten.
Another sharp skid had Alain jerking to awareness again, his mind on the immediate situation rather than the courtroom. He could all but feel the tires going out from under him.
The winds weren’t helping, either. Strong gusts sporadically rose out of nowhere, fighting for possession of his vehicle. Fighting and very nearly winning. Once again he gripped the steering wheel as hard as he could just to keep the car from being shoved off the road.
It felt as if the wind had split in half, and each side was taking a turn at pushing him first in one direction, then the other, like a battered hockey puck.
Alain thought about the way the day was supposed to have gone before this sudden, spur-of-the-moment disaster had unfolded. He’d made arrangements to go antique browsing with Rachel, then grab an early, intimate dinner, after which whatever came up, came up.
Alain grinned despite the immediate trying situation. Rachel Reed was a wildcat in bed and pleasantly straightforward and uncomplicated when she was upright and dealing with life. Just the way he liked them. All fun, no seriousness, no strings. In that respect, he was very much like his mother.
He found himself struggling with the wheel again, trying to keep his car on course. Whatever that was at this point.
Where the hell was he, anyway?
Though he knew it was futile, Alain looked expectantly at the GPS system mounted on his dashboard. It continued doing what it had been doing for the last fifteen minutes: winking like a flirtatious teenager with something in her eye. One of the arrival-time readings that had flashed at him earlier had him back at his house already.
He only wished.
“What good are you if you don’t work?” he demanded irritably. As if in response, the GPS system suddenly went dark. “Hey, don’t be that way. I’m sorry, okay? Turn back on.”
But it remained dark, as did the rest of his dashboard. He no longer had lights to guide him, and all that was coming from his high-definition radio was an endless supply of static.
Alain blew out a breath. He felt like the last man on earth, fighting the elements.
And lost, really lost.
Even his cell phone wasn’t working. He’d already tried it more than once. The signal simply wasn’t getting through. Mother Nature had declared war on him and all his electronic gadgets. It was as if she knew that without them, he had no sense of direction and was pretty much adrift, like a leaf in a gale.
There was a map tucked into a pocket of the front passenger door, but it was completely useless since it only encompassed Los Angeles and Orange County, and he was somewhere below Santa Barbara, on his way to Oz—or hell, whichever was closer.
He was crawling now, searching desperately for some sign of civilization. He’d left the city behind some time ago, and he knew there were homes out here somewhere because he’d passed them on his way up. But they were sparse and far apart and he’d be damned if he could see so much as a glimmer of a light coming from any building or business establishment.
He couldn’t even make out the outline of any structure.
Squinting, Alain leaned forward, hunching over his steering wheel and trying to make out something—anything—in front of him.
Just as he gave up hope, he saw something dart into his path.
An animal?
His heart leaping into his throat, his instincts taking over, Alain swerved to the left in order not to hit whatever it was he’d seen. Tires squealed, brakes screamed, mud flew and he could have sworn the car took on a life of its own.
Where that tree on his left came from he had absolutely no idea. All Alain knew was that he couldn’t slam into it, not if he wanted to walk away alive.
But the car that he had babied as if it were a living, breathing thing had a different plan. And right now, it wanted to become one with the tree.
A moment after it started, Alain realized that he was spinning out.
From somewhere in the back of his head, he remembered that you were supposed to steer into a spin. But everything else within him screamed that he not make contact with the tree if he could avoid it. So he yanked hard on the wheel, turning it as far as he could to the right.
Horrible noises assaulted his ears as the screech of the car’s tires, the whine of metal and the howl of the wind became one. His usual composure melted as genuine panic gripped him. Alain heard something go pop.
And then there was nothing.
It seemed as if Winchester had been giving her problems since the day she’d found him and brought him home from the animal shelter. But she had a soft spot in her heart for the dog and cut him more than his share of slack. Of all the canines Kayla McKenna had taken in, his was one of the saddest stories.
Before she’d rescued the small German shepherd, someone had used him for target practice. When the dog had come to her attention, Winchester had a bullet in his front right leg and was running a low-grade fever because an infection had set in. Rather than go through the expense of removing the object, the local animal shelter, where she’d found the wounded dog on her bimonthly rounds, had only placed a splint on the leg.
The dog she’d whimsically named Winchester, after a rifle made popular during the winning of the West, was down to only a few hours before termination when she’d come across him. The instant she’d insisted that the attendant open up his cage, Winchester had come hobbling out and laid his head on her lap. Kayla was a goner from that moment on.
It was her habit to frequent the shelters every few weeks or so, looking for German shepherds that had, for one reason or another, been abandoned or turned out. If she could she would have taken all the dogs home with her, to treat, nurse and groom for adoption into good, loving homes. But even she, with her huge heart, knew she had to draw the line somewhere.
So she made her choice based on her childhood. Hailey had been her very first dog when she was a little girl—a big, lovable, atypical shepherd. As a guard dog, she was a complete failure, but she was so affectionate she’d stolen Kayla’s heart from the start. Her parents had had the dog spayed, so she never had any puppies. But in a way, Kayla thought of Hailey as the mother of all the dogs she’d rescued since moving back here after getting her degree.
Kayla had all but lost count of the number of dogs she’d taken into her home, acting as foster guardian until such time as someone came along to adopt them. It didn’t hurt matters that she was also a vet, so that the cost of caring for the neglected, often battered animals was nominal.
“You’ll never get rich this way,” Brett had sneered condescendingly. “And if you want me to marry you, you’re going to have to get rid of these dogs. You know that, don’t you?”
Yes, she thought now, lifting the lantern she’d brought out with her, to afford some sort of visibility in the driving rain. She’d known that, and hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it. She’d met Brett in school. He was gorgeous, and she had fallen wildly in love. But it turned out she had completely misjudged him. He was not the man she could spend the rest of her life with.
So she’d kept the dogs and gotten rid of her fiancé and in her