IT ALL HAPPENED in a matter of seconds.
And every one of those seconds felt like a year.
Mace Carson had been cruising along behind the unfamiliar car up ahead ever since he’d cleared the city limits of Mustang Creek a few minutes before, when the other rig suddenly fishtailed on the rain-slick pavement and spun a full 360. The slow-motion spin, weirdly graceful, and at the same time potentially deadly, was sickening to watch.
He eased his truck to the side of the road, jammed down the emergency brake pedal, then groped for his cell phone and muttered an expletive, watching the situation unfold, helpless to intervene as the vehicle shot toward the steep slope on the opposite shoulder, where there were no guardrails. The drop was nearly fifty feet, by his calculations, with no trees or boulders to break the fall.
Not that either would have been ideal, any way you looked at it.
With a second curse, he was out of the truck and running to do what he could, heedless of the pounding rain, phone in hand, thumb on the button that would speed-dial 911.
Meanwhile, the car came to a precarious stop at the edge, teetered and then slipped again, winding up at a precarious angle, half on the road, half off, passenger-side down. The mud, a few inches deep and slick as snot, offered the briefest purchase.
Mace didn’t rattle easily, but in those moments, his heart zoomed into his throat. He was close enough now to glimpse the driver, a woman, pale and wide-eyed with shock, leaning hard into the car door, as if she hoped to waft right through the metal to the safety of solid ground.
“Don’t move!” he said, never knowing if he’d shouted the words or simply mouthed them, dropping the phone to the ground because he was going to need both hands to get her out before the mud gave way and sent her and the car tumbling downhill, ass over teakettle.
He saw her nod. Stiffen.
He gripped the door handle, never taking his eyes off her face, realized instantly that the locks were still engaged.
“Shift into Park,” he told the woman, giving silent thanks that the air bags hadn’t deployed. The mechanisms were sensitive; in some cars, especially newer models, no collision was required. An abrupt change of direction could trigger them. “And then unfasten your seat belt. Slow and easy, now—no sudden moves.”
Another nod from her. He was either yelling or she could read lips, because she did what he’d told her to do. With a flash of relief, he heard the locks release.
The car slid a few inches farther down the hill.
* * *
BRACING HIS FEET, Mace pulled at the door. Gravity worked against him, but he’d bucked a lot of bales in his time, dug a lot of postholes and like any man who did hard physical work, he was strong.
A wedge of space opened between them.
“You’re gonna have to get out on your own,” he told the woman, who was trembling so badly her teeth chattered. His voice sounded strangely calm, at least to him, considering the circumstances. “For obvious reasons, I can’t let go of this door long enough to give you a hand.”
She slithered through the gap as if boneless, landing on her hands and knees at Mace’s feet.
When he let go of the handle a heartbeat later, the door slammed shut with an impact that set the rig in motion. As he helped the woman up from the ground, the car lurched violently, tipped onto its side and rolled over, then over again and again, gaining momentum with every flip, finally landing with an echoing crash on its top, square in the middle of the creek below.
Still gripping the shuddering stranger by both arms, Mace closed his eyes briefly, comparing what might have happened with what actually had. This was one lucky lady, whoever she was.
In the aftermath of the adrenaline rush, Mace felt a little shaky himself, but he quickly recovered. He needed to focus on what, if anything, still needed to be done; while the woman appeared to be in one piece, she could be in shock, or she might have hit her head at some point and gotten a concussion. Or suffered internal injuries of some kind.
Growing up rough-and-tumble, like any ranch kid, and competing in his share of rodeos, he knew some injuries didn’t show on the outside, the way cuts and bruises did. Not immediately, anyhow.
That made his fight-or-flight response spike again, and he took a moment to breathe his way through, line up his thoughts.
Satisfied that the lady was still upright and her eyes hadn’t rolled back or anything, he looked down the hillside.
He’d half expected the car to explode into flames when it hit bottom, rain or no rain, but it just lay there, so coated in mud that its color, rental-beige as he recalled, was indiscernible now. With all four wheels turning slowly, the rig reminded Mace of a turtle on its back, kicking in an effort to right itself.
“Holy shit,” he said, exhaling the words.
The woman looked up at him, rain-soaked, still pale, but with a quiver of amusement playing at the corners of her mouth. “You can say that again,” she replied. “But please don’t.”
He gave a short, hoarse burst of laughter at that. She was shaking, and he wasn’t entirely sure she wouldn’t buckle to the ground if he loosened his grip, but she had grit, no doubt about it. Considering what she’d just been through, he wouldn’t have considered hysterical sobs, a good old-fashioned fainting spell or a spate of violent retching out of line.
“Are you hurt?” He wished he’d asked the obvious question sooner, instead of just thinking about it.
She shook her head. Her hair, hanging in dripping tendrils, not quite long enough to touch her shoulders, was some shade of blond. Her eyes, still huge, were a remarkable