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Cold and ice-pick pain bored into Kit Garrido’s temples.

Her limbs were leaden, her body a deadweight in the driver’s seat of her big rig. Grit coated her tongue and teeth. She tasted blood. Try as she might, she couldn’t reach out to unbuckle her seat belt. Panic bubbled up inside her.

She felt movement. Someone yanked hard on the passenger door, unleashing pulses of pain.

“Ma’am?” A low baritone, rough.

A big hand skimmed her temple, calloused fingers hard like talons. Through her slitted eyelids, a male torso materialized, a large man in a heavy jacket. Warm ash drifted from his baseball cap and settled on her cheek, featherlight.

“What ... happened?” Her voice was a croak.

“You crashed.” His voice held the trace of a Southern accent. “Volcano’s unsettled everything. Not safe to stay here.”

Not safe? Crashed? Why wouldn’t her mouth work fast enough to spit out the questions? Fear lapped at her insides as he fumbled for her seat belt.

“You’ve got to wake up. Now.”

She forced her eyes farther open, grabbed the wheel.

Cold wind raked her cheek. Wind? She lurched into full consciousness so fast her brain rocked in her skull.

Green. Everywhere green mixed with brown, the trees of northern Washington all around, the rattling pine needles oddly muted by their coating of volcanic ash.

A pine cone dropped on her lap through the gaping hole in the windshield.

It left a sooty stain on her knee before it bounced off. She stared at it.

How ...

He was talking, but she couldn’t follow.

She touched her brown ski cap, then the flannel of her favorite long-haul driving jacket, the feel of the fabrics proving to herself she was alive. Somehow. A hiss of escaping steam commanded her to acknowledge what she desperately didn’t want to see.

Her beautiful Freightliner truck was wedged cab first, jammed in a crevice between two crooked trees.

In the side-view mirror she observed an enormous trench of gouged earth that marked her journey from the road above to the place of impact.

The shiny yellow cab with its cozy sleeping unit, her home for three-hundred-plus days a year, was squashed like the face of a Pekinese.

The pristine white trailer she’d washed that morning was no doubt damaged as well.

She closed her eyes and pictured the bold font she’d painstakingly chosen for the Garrido Trucking logo.

How absurdly proud she’d felt the day the lettering was applied.

Her truck. Her business. Her life. Finally.

Muscles in her throat tightened, and tears started down her face.

Crashed. She’d crashed. Everything she’d worked for, gone. The pain in her head intensified. She stared around wildly. “But what happened? How did I wreck?”

The man shrugged. “Dunno. I’m not sure why you’d even be on Pine Hollow Road in the first place. Pretty ridiculous, considering.”

Ridiculous? She bridled as the location sank in. Pine Hollow? Why there? Deep breaths. One, two, three, then she unbuckled and levered herself from the driver’s seat. Pain lanced her left wrist. Broken or sprained? Her shirt was splattered with blood, though she couldn’t feel any cuts.

“Easy,” the man said, arms outstretched as if to catch her.

Why couldn’t she remember what happened?

She must have rolled out of her small office solo that morning, like she always did before picking up her load, the last load she dared haul out of a region under an evacuation advisory.

She wouldn’t have chosen Pine Hollow, a twisty route that would take her nearer the volatile Mount Ember.

Everything she’d learned, the geologic facts she’d devoured, left her itching to escape.

Had she lost control? Maybe she’d been knocked out by a falling boulder.

Had the noxious gasses venting from the volcano’s bulging side overwhelmed her? But why here?

The cold infiltrated her torn jacket, numbing her arms. Faraway, she heard the distant rumble of thunder or maybe another earthquake from the mountain preparing to blow. No sounds of vehicles, sirens, people. Eerie. Terrifying.

Her thoughts were muddy, slow. Get help.

She patted her pockets in a futile search for her cell.

Gone somewhere. The satellite radio was her next choice until she realized it had been pierced by the branch that neatly skewered the windshield.

Her throat went dry. A few inches to the left and it would have impaled her too.

Ruined also was the precious old-school CB she’d rebuilt, which would have instantly connected her with a fellow trucker.

The man was still staring at her. He straightened and leaned closer. “Are you hurt badly? I can carry you.”

She couldn’t make herself answer, so he went on.

“Your radio’s crushed, I see. My cell phone has no bars down here. Where’s your phone?”

She jammed her knit cap on tighter. Hurt or not, she wouldn’t let any stranger control the conversation, especially not in her rig. “I’ll find it.”

He shook his head. “You rest a minute. I’m gonna hop out and make sure your truck’s not on fire or anything.” He muscled his way back out the passenger door, the metal protesting with a bloodcurdling shriek.

She didn’t see any sign of his vehicle through the filthy glass. Where had he come from? There were no helpful locals out and about under the present circumstances. Nerves tightened in her stomach. A trucker alone with cargo was vulnerable, a female trucker even more so.

Protect yourself. She fumbled for the crowbar, but the seat was collapsed on top of it. Instead she yanked the fire extinguisher loose, which made her head feel like it was going to detonate. Best she could do. She eased closer to the fractured passenger window.

The ground was a moonscape of ash and debris.

The man eased along, a palm on the cab for support, and she got another chance to examine him.

Long legs, cowboy boots, flannel shirt, Yankees baseball cap, and a scar—she hadn’t noticed that before.

It bisected his left eyebrow. He disappeared around the other side of the rig before returning a few moments later.

The closer he got, the taller he was, probably six four and muscled.

More than a match for her five-foot-five, hundred-ten-pound frame. The fear resurged. Protect yourself.

The extinguisher cut into her clenched palm. He drew close enough to the open passenger door for her to catch the light brown of his eyes, almost translucent like smoke. When he tried to climb aboard, she raised the extinguisher. “Where did you come from?”

His lips quirked. “Originally? South Carolina.”

That explained the drawl. “I meant...”

“I know what you meant.” He shot a look at the ravaged landscape before he turned back.

“Top of the ridge. My cabin’s up there. I was on my roof and I saw you go over the shoulder.

I was surprised six ways to Sunday. Didn’t even hear you coming because the wind was howling, and I sure didn’t expect any rigs to be in this area.

Anyway, I hightailed it here in my truck. It’s parked up a ways.”

“I don’t know you.” A silly remark.

“Don’t know you either. You from around here?”

She wouldn’t tell him where she lived. “Close.”

He pointed to the fire extinguisher and heaved out a breath.

“Are you going to clobber me with that or not? I promise it’s not necessary.

” He held up his palms. How does anyone have fingers that long?

“You need first aid before we get out of here, and I’m the only one here to give it to you whether you like it or not.

” He plucked the kit from the pocket in the door and wiggled it at her. “You’re bleeding.”

“I don’t need first aid.”

He said something in reply, but his words seemed to come from far away, a rushing sound drowning them out as dizziness overcame her.

The extinguisher dropped to the floor, and she sank onto the driver’s seat while he climbed in and slammed the passenger door.

A wave of nausea enveloped her. Hastily he dumped out the first aid kit and shoved the container under her chin as she wretched.

He handed her a clean handkerchief from his pocket with a neat C embroidered on it.

She stared at the precisely folded, pristine cloth.

His cheeks pinked. “I know. No one carries these things anymore. Mama insists, and she sends me a box of ’em every Christmas.” He looked intently at her. “I’m fairly certain you have yourself a concussion.”

He seemed like the kind of man who was certain about everything, the kind she avoided. Again he glanced out the window, and she saw the trickle of ground sloughing down the steep slope. The sky was already a sickly gray, rapidly darkening, thick with flecks of rock, minerals, and volcanic glass.

Powerless to the pain lancing her temples, she did not resist as he checked her pupils and pulse and smoothed a bandage across her brow.

“Cut up here near the hairline. Just a little one. Not deep. Probably won’t scar.”

“Who are you?”

He offered her a bottle of water from his back pocket. “Drink some.”

“Stop helping me,” she snapped. “Answer my question. Please.”

“You’re bossy.” His voice was teasing, but there was tension in his mouth, his muscled shoulders. Other thoughts were distracting him. Her too.

“Who? Are? You?” She clapped her hand on her skull as if a knife were cleaving her temples.

“Be still. No sense adding to your pain. Name’s Cullen.” He looked toward the direction of the road. Another rumble blasted through the haze.

“Cullen who?”

He scrubbed a palm through his crew-cut hair the hue of a tarnished penny. “Cullen Landry. Should I call you Kit?”

She blinked, stomach tight. “How do you know my name?”

He pointed to the stuffed bear nestled next to the ruined radio, the name Kit embroidered on a heart held in its paw. “Not rocket science. Figured that’s you, right? Short for anything?”