Sheltering Dunes (2 page)

“I’ll be there,” Flynn called, because she couldn’t change the facts. Not about Allie, not about herself, not about where she’d been or where she was going.

“Good.” Dave tossed the damp rag he had used to polish the medic unit into a bucket. “I’ve seen you run and we need a fast cor—”

An alarm blared—the computerized dispatch system signaling a callout. Flynn dropped the book into the gear bag she carried everywhere when on duty, jumped up, and jogged into the vehicle bay. Dave was already climbing behind the wheel as she grabbed a radio. She dove into the passenger seat, stashed her bag on the floor, and buckled in as Dave roared out onto Shank Painter Road. He liked to drive, and she didn’t mind riding shotgun. She slid the electronic tablet from the slot on the dash and pulled up the stats on the call. The details came up on her screen, relayed from the officer in the field to the emergency dispatcher who had entered the data into the system.

She read them out. “Standish and Commercial. Vehicle versus bicycle. Two injured. Police on scene.”

“I still think the town oughtta close Commercial to vehicular traffic during the season,” Dave muttered, swinging onto Bradford. “It’s amazing we don’t get more of these.”

They were two minutes away, and Flynn quickly logged in the details on her tablet. “The next few weeks are going to be crazy, what with Women’s Week coming up and then Fantasia right after that. Hopefully this isn’t just the first of many.”

Dave pulled in next to several police cruisers angled haphazardly across the four-way intersection, light bars strobing and radios squawking. Onlookers crowded the sidewalks and uniformed officers directed them back. One officer was taking a statement from the driver of a white catering van stalled in the center of the intersection, and two more flanked a person lying on the ground. Even from a distance, Allie was easily recognizable as one of the officers with the injured individual—her ebony hair, gathered in a twist at the back of her neck, and her statuesque body were impossible to miss.

“I’ll check the pedestrian,” Flynn said. “You clear the driver.”

“Got it.”

Flynn jumped down from the cab, unlocked the side compartment on the medic unit, and pulled out the red field-trauma kit. As she jogged over to the scene, Allie looked up, and the beauty of her dark soulful eyes was like a kick in the chest. Painful and exhilarating. Allie smiled and said hi with a hint of Southern drawl, and Flynn smiled back. No point in avoiding the truth. Allie was Allie, gorgeous and sexy without ever trying. Fate had made another decision for her, bringing her face-to-face with Allie’s irresistible charm. Why fight it? Better just to let another piece of the past go, even if another part of her heart went with it.

“Hi, Allie.” Flynn deposited her kit on the ground and squatted next to the victim, a young woman, who lay motionless on her back in the street. The woman, in jeans and a blue tank top, appeared to be in her early twenties, dark-haired, Hispanic maybe, with nutmeg skin, bold dark brows, a strong nose, and a wide, full-lipped mouth. Right now, her lips were pale and her coal-dark eyes unfocused and stunned. Flynn reached for her BP cuff and glanced at Allie. “What do we have?”

“She was on a bicycle,” Allie said, “and she and the van over there met up in the middle of the intersection. According to the driver, he clipped the rear of the bike and she went over the handlebars. She was conscious when we arrived and moving all fours, but she’s disoriented.”

While Allie talked, Flynn wrapped the cuff around the young woman’s right bicep, noting a tattoo of a heart with a knife thrust through it high up on her deltoid. She leaned over so the girl could see her face. “Hi. I’m Flynn, a paramedic. Can you tell me your name?”

The girl didn’t answer.

Dave knelt down across from Flynn and smoothly slid a cervical collar around the young woman’s neck, securing it with the Velcro tab. “Driver’s okay. Shook up. How we doing over here?”

“Ninety over sixty,” Flynn said as the digital readout on the blood pressure cuff settled. “Confused, but no apparent loss of consciousness.” She tried again. “Hey, can you tell me your name? Do you remember what happened?”

The young woman muttered, “Mi—Mica. I’m Mica.” She struggled, twisting from side to side, trying to get up. “I have to get to work. I’m going to be late.”

“Don’t try to move.” Flynn rested her fingertips lightly against the girl’s shoulder. Just that little bit of pressure was enough to keep her down. She set her stethoscope onto the bare skin of Mica’s chest above the scooped neck of her tank top and listened to her heart and lungs. Everything sounded good, and she tossed the stethoscope back into her box. When she looked down, the girl’s dark eyes were focused on her, clear but wary. “Can you tell me where you hurt?”

“Nowhere. I’m fine. I have to go.” Mica looked past the blonde with the concerned gaze and gentle hands to the circle of uniformed officers surrounding her. A swell of panic flooded her throat. She couldn’t afford to be hurt—she had no insurance and almost no money. Worse, she couldn’t afford to be noticed, not by anyone, but especially not by the police. She needed to go to work. If she missed work, she could lose her job. Her boss hadn’t wanted to hire anyone so late in the season, but she’d promised to stay all winter and work for partial wages if she had to. She needed the job. She needed to stay anonymous, unknown, unnoticed. She tried to pull the blood pressure cuff off her arm. “Please. I’m fine. I have to go.”

“Whoa, take it easy.” The paramedic—Flynn?—had a deep voice, calm but commanding. “You need to be checked out. We’re going to transport you to the hospital in Hyannis.”

“No!” The panic turned to terror. She’d worked so hard to disappear—she couldn’t surface in the system now. “No! I’m fine. I don’t want medical treatment.”

“You’ve got a bump on your head,” Flynn said, “and a scrape on your shoulder that need evaluation.”

“I’m not going to any hospital.” Details were coming back to her now—the wild bike ride, the white van in the intersection. The time. The time. She tried to turn her head to see what had happened to her landlady’s bike. God, hopefully it wasn’t trashed. She didn’t have the money to replace it. “What time is it?”

Flynn frowned. “A little after six thirty.”

“
Dios
, I have to go. I’m going to lose my job.”

“You’ve been in an accident. It’s not your fault. You’re not going to lose your job because of it.”

Anger replaced the terror. “You don’t know that. You don’t know anything about me.” Mica pushed herself up. Her head swirled, and she swallowed back a wave of nausea. “You can’t take me anywhere if I refuse.”

“You’re right,” Flynn said, still sounding calm, still patient. “We can’t. But you need to be examined.” Her handsome face tightened in concentration. “How about if we take you to the local clinic. If the docs say you don’t need to go to the hospital, we won’t go.”

“I can’t,” Mica exploded. “I’ll lose my job.”

“Okay, okay,” Flynn said, gently squeezing Mica’s arm. “How about this—tell me where you work. I’ll call them myself and explain what happened. Will you come with us if I talk to your boss and make sure you’re not going to lose your job?”

The other paramedic cleared his throat as if he was trying to interrupt or get Flynn’s attention, but she ignored him, her eyes steady on Mica’s. Something about the way she spoke, the way she looked, made Mica almost believe her, even though she knew better. People in authority said what they wanted you to believe and then did whatever they pleased. She knew better than to trust her. “Why should you care?”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Flynn murmured softly.

Mica laughed, bitterness making her throat burn. “You don’t know me. What do you want?”

“I want to be sure you’re all right.” Flynn’s eyes, a crystalline blue, darkened like the storm clouds rolling in over the bay. “Look, I don’t want to argue with you. I just want to take care of you. Let me and my partner take you to our unit and get you settled, and I’ll stand right there and call your boss. You can listen to everything I’m saying.”

One of the cops leaned down, a woman so beautiful she ought to be a model in some kind of magazine. “Flynn, we can take care of notifying her boss. Just get the information for us.”

“No,” Flynn said, still holding Mica’s gaze. “I’ll do it.”

The cop sighed. “Ever the crusader.” She squeezed Flynn’s shoulder in a strangely intimate way, and Flynn’s face changed for a second, as if the touch were painful.

“I want to talk to my boss,” Mica said.

Flynn’s mouth flickered and she smiled. “Are you always so stubborn?”

“None of your business.”

“Fair enough. Dave, get the gurney.” Flynn started to pack up her kit. “You got a deal. I’ll call him, explain the situation. And you can talk to him after. Agreed?”

“Like I’ve got a choice?”

“You do have a choice,” Flynn said seriously, as if she somehow knew that mattered. “I just want you to make a good one and not put yourself at risk, okay?”

Mica couldn’t look into her eyes anymore. If she did, she might start believing this stranger really meant what she said, and she knew better. People didn’t really care about each other, even when they were supposed to, but for sure not about an outsider. What did this stranger know about her, know about risk? She couldn’t let herself be tricked into believing that anyone was going to care about her. It’d taken her long enough, but she’d learned. Now she knew better. The only person she was ever going to trust again was herself, even if it meant being alone for the rest of her life.

“Here we go,” Dave said, positioning a backboard on the ground next to Mica.

Flynn said, “We’re just going to slide you onto a backboard and then onto the stretcher so we can move you over to our unit. Let us do all the work. Just relax as much as you can.”

“Just do it,” Mica snapped.

“One, two, three,” Flynn counted, and Mica felt herself being lifted with arms beneath her shoulders and legs. Then she was on the backboard and straps were tightened across her chest and pelvis, trapping her. She wanted to struggle. She wanted to tear the restraints away. She hated to be held down.

“Hey,” Flynn said softly. “It’s okay. We just don’t want you to roll off. As soon as we get into the unit, I’ll loosen the straps. Can you handle that?”

“Yeah, whatever.” Mica struggled to calm her breathing, telling herself she wasn’t a prisoner, these people weren’t going to hurt her. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes and she pretended they weren’t there.

Then she was being rolled over the bumpy surface of the street to the yawning mouth of a medical van. Again she was lifted, and this time placed on a bench along one side of the van. She tried to raise her head again, wanting to find the blonde—Flynn. The panic wasn’t so bad when she could see her.

Flynn pulled her cell phone from her belt. “Are you okay? I’m gonna climb out so I can get a good signal.”

“Fine. Just get on with it already.”

“What’s the number?” After Mica reeled off a familiar-sounding number, Flynn hopped out of the unit and punched in the digits, trying to place the establishment. Ten seconds later, a man answered.

“Shoreline.”

“This is Flynn Edwards, a paramedic here in town. One of your employees was in a traffic accident on her way to work. Mica.” Flynn realized she didn’t know the girl’s last name.

“Christ,” the guy said, “is she okay?”

“We’re taking her to the clinic. She was worried about missing work. She doesn’t want to go with us if she’s going to lose her—”

“Tell her to get her butt over to the clinic and get checked out. Have her call me later so I know when she’ll be able to come back to work. I’ve gotta go call in a sub now—we’re swamped. Big breakfast crowd.”

“She wants to talk to you, but if there’s no problem—”

The guy sighed. “Jesus. Just take her where you need to take her. Her job will be here when she gets back. I gotta go.” And he hung up.

Flynn pocketed the phone and climbed into the back of the unit. She squatted down next to Mica. “He says your job is okay. He had to call someone in for you.” She signaled Dave to go ahead and pulled the doors closed. “We’ll be at the clinic in just a few minutes.” She leaned forward into the front of the cab and grabbed her tablet. “What’s your last name?”

The girl hesitated, and for a minute, Flynn thought she wasn’t going to answer.

“Butler,” the girl said finally.

Flynn filled it in. “Address?”

“606 Commercial.”

“Is there someone you want me to call?”

When the silence grew heavy, Flynn shifted her gaze from the tablet to the girl on the stretcher. She was obviously in pain—her jaw was clenched and her eyes narrowed, as if holding back any sign of weakness. Her fingers were closed in tight fists. “Mica? Is there someone you want me to call for you?”

“No,” Mica said in a flat, hollow voice. “No one.”

Reese walked into the bathroom, a white fluffy towel in her hands, just as Tory stepped out of the shower.

“I thought you were feeding Reggie.” Tory smiled, her eyes holding a question.

“I was.” Reese pointed to the egg smear in the middle of her faded USMC T-shirt. “We finished everything, even the bananas, which we have suddenly decided are more fun to spit out than swallow.”