clutched the steering wheel. Evan’s mouth opened and shut with raspy, bubbling breaths. Rain pattered on the cab, dripping down onto Casey and Evan’s bloodied face.
Wide awake now, Death hunched over Evan, intensely interested.
“Get away!” Casey hissed. “Get out!”
Death smiled sadly. “I’m sorry, love, but of all the times to be shooing me away, this isn’t the best. He needs me.”
“He doesn’t need you. He doesn’t
“It’s too late,” Death said. “No one can help him now.”
“Virginia?” Evan whispered the name.
“No, Evan, it’s…it’s Casey.”
“Ginny?” He reached up, as if he saw his wife’s face instead of the specter of Death hovering above him.
Casey yanked the photo from the dashboard, wiping blood from its surface, and held it out, blocking Death’s face. Evan didn’t see it, focusing on Casey instead. His eyes went wide. Panicky. He took a quick, wet breath. “Back…trim. Insu…lation. Don’t let…” He gasped. Swallowed. “Don’t let them get…” He gurgled, and blood streamed out of his mouth.
“Help!” Casey screamed again. She pulled a padded jacket from a hook behind the seat and held it over Evan’s abdomen, around a deadly piece of metal.
“Casey,” Death said. “You have to let me take him.”
“No! He has a family…”
Footsteps sounded behind her, and the cab sank as a man climbed in. He grabbed Casey and shoved her backward, toward the passenger door, where another man caught her and pulled her from the seat.
“Evan!” the first man said. “Goddammit, Evan, don’t you
“Stop!” Casey said. “Wait! Evan!”
“We got it,” the second man said, and dumped her on the wet ground at the feet of two more large men. She scrambled up, and one of them grabbed her around the waist. “Nothing you can do, anymore, sweetheart. We’ll take care of him.”
She shook herself from his grasp and stepped toward the truck. The man reached for her again, grabbing her elbow. “So where is it?” The rain made trails through his dirty blond hair and snaked down his face. His eyes were a startling green.
“Where is what?”
He pulled her closer. “You have it on you now? Is that the way it is?”
The other man stood still, his arms crossed over his chest as he watched Casey’s face.
With his free hand the man holding Casey felt the back of her pants, moving to the front. When he went for her chest, Casey grabbed his wrist and twisted it inward, pushing his palm toward his arm and pointing his fingers to the sky. She rolled his arm forward, her hand on his elbow, and bent him toward the ground. Digging her finger into a pressure point on the back of his arm, she spoke into his ear. “I said, ‘where is
“I called 911! They’re coming!” A woman in a bright red suit ran toward Casey, tottering on high heels, holding an umbrella and waving a cell phone. She stopped at the sight of Casey with the man in an armlock. “It’ll just be minutes,” she finished weakly. “They’re coming.”
“Good.” Casey pushed the man’s wrist toward his arm, shoving him into the other guy, who caught him and let him go so suddenly he almost fell. Blondie regained his balance and glared at Casey, one side of his lip raised as he cradled his arm protectively.
The woman stepped between Casey and the men. “Come on, honey, you need to sit down.”
“But—”
“Come on.” She led Casey to the shoulder of the road and eased her onto a grassy patch, holding the umbrella over both of them. “You all right?” She bent her head to look at Casey’s face. “You’re not going into shock, are you?”
“I’m fine.” Why were those men gathered at the door of the truck, looking around as if they were afraid of getting caught? And how did they know Evan’s name?
Casey locked eyes with the frisker. He stared at her from under his mess of wet hair, as if trying to read something in her eyes. Or figure out a way to kill her.
“Who are they?” Casey said to herself.
The woman glanced up. “Just people who stopped to help, I guess. Like me. Oh, good, I hear sirens.” She took a few steps away, waving frantically as an ambulance pulled to the side of the road. “Over here! Here!” She went a few more paces until one of the paramedics saw her and walked briskly their way, carrying a bag of equipment. He knelt beside Casey, the woman shielding them both from the rain with her umbrella.
“In the truck,” Casey said. “You need to help him.”
“We’re on it, miss. We got him. Now, where are you cut?”
“I’m not. I’m fine. It’s Evan…”
His face grew grave, and his lips compressed. “I need to check you out, okay? Hold still now.”
Casey complied, except for swiveling her stiffening neck toward the cab of the truck. The men who had pulled her out were being evicted by the paramedics, who climbed up toward Evan, and the blood, and the photograph—
But no, Casey still held the photo, crumpled tightly in her hand. She unclenched her fingers to look down at the little family. Life would never be the same for them, after the phone call they were about to receive.
The group of men clustered by the back of the reefer, heads bent together. The one who’d grabbed Casey leaned back to look at her, and she held his gaze. He finally broke eye contact and she watched the others, trying to read their lips, but she’d really clocked her head on the window, and everything was going in and out of being blurry. She took a deep breath, trying to center herself, and was getting ready to leave the paramedic and move closer to the men when cops invaded the scene, cordoning off the area, telling whoever was listening that “there’s nothing to see here.”
How wrong that sounded.
Cars on the road were stopped now, blocked from forward progress by the accident, and drivers were leaving their vehicles to see what was going on. Some wanted to help, others just wanted to take cell phone pictures of the carnage. Casey turned her head as one man aimed his phone her way.
“You’re pretty beat up,” the paramedic said, “but there’s nothing major at first glance. A few cuts and bruises. You’ll need to go to the ER to get checked out, though. Make sure there’s no internal bleeding.” He lifted her sleeve away from the gash she’d received the night before.
“I’m fine.” Casey pulled away from him. “I don’t need to go to the hospital.”
“Yes, you do. Larry!” The paramedic signaled one of his partners, and together they hauled Casey upright, grabbing under her arms, as the woman in red stepped back with her umbrella.
“I can walk,” Casey said, batting their hands away.
“You going to be all right?” The woman in the red suit frowned. “You’re looking sort of pale…”
Casey’s eyes rolled back, and hands clutched her elbows.
“We’ve got her, ma’am,” the paramedic said. “Thank you.”
Casey wrenched her eyes open. “Thank you, for…”
“You’re welcome, honey. You take care, you hear? Do you need me to call anybody?”
The paramedics were walking away with her. “No one to call. I’m alone. It’s just me.” She and Death, who hovered in the cab of the truck, waiting to whisk Evan away.
A police officer followed Casey into the ambulance and hunched at the rear. “Can I get a statement?”
The paramedic strapped Casey down. “Make it quick.”
“Tell me what happened, ma’am?”
Casey closed her eyes, seeing the construction vehicles, Evan’s panicked face, the metal embedded in Evan’s side. “They were just…there. The dump truck and the other one. We came over the hill and the road was so slick and…” She swallowed. “It didn’t take very long.”
“How fast were you going?”
