Page 35 of Save the Last Dance (Take the Backroads #1)

Chapter Fourteen

I n a new record for incredible highs and plummeting lows, Mack had recaptured a dream for exactly one afternoon.

Got it. Lost it.

He took the long way home from Spencer Farm, figuring he’d better avoid the entrance ramp to the interstate or he’d find himself racing back to Nashville where his world made sense. Work always made sense. Family, relationships and this town, on the other hand…

Taking a winding road past the local quarry, Mack drove the El Dorado with the top down despite the chill in the air, trying to get his head on straight. His time with Nina had been incredible. Amazing. Better than he remembered, imagined or hoped. They’d been so completely in synch.

Then came the revelation that she’d spoken to his mom the night of her breakdown and he’d been just about gutted.

He’d been a jackass to accuse her of pushing his mother over the edge, obviously.

But he’d been shocked—both that she’d faced his mother alone that night and that she’d kept it quiet for so long.

That told him how much the confrontation must have hurt her.

Nina never kept anything quiet. It was part of her charm.

To a guy who thought through every move and always took the cautious path, Nina’s gutsy, bold way of speaking her mind was refreshing.

Pounding a fist on the steering wheel, he ground his teeth to avoid feeling the fresh ache in his chest.

He could just imagine the kinds of things his mother might have said.

She’d always told him that Nina wasn’t right for him, but Mack had ignored her because he’d finally found some happiness outside his claustrophobic family.

Still…Mack was used to the kind of hurtful things that could come out of his mom’s mouth when she was in a state.

That night especially, after thinking Mack was dead, she’d been a wreck and climbing the walls.

Nina would have been utterly unprepared for that kind of firestorm. It explained a lot about her desperation to leave Heartache after that night. Sure she’d escaped to deal with the grief of Vince’s death on her own. But his mother had played a role in chasing Nina away.

Nearing the top of the quarry hill, he noticed a sign was down.

He remembered the sign because he’d driven the route plenty of times as a teen when he’d worked for the family’s construction business.

He’d made trips up here for building materials and there was usually a sign for an S curve down a tricky bit of incline.

He’d had to navigate it carefully when he was pulling a trailer full of gravel.

Maybe he’d inherited more of his old man’s civic-mindedness than he’d realized, because Mack found himself pulling over.

He’d call the town garage tomorrow to ask them about the sign, but he was curious if it was in the weeds of if a kid had stolen it for his bedroom wall.

Parking the El Dorado on the side of the road, he left the engine running as he stepped out of the vehicle.

Traffic was almost nonexistent on this road at night, but he left his headlights on just in case.

A strangle feeling crawled up his spine. Like someone was watching him. Or?—

Someone was calling out?

Mack ran to the car and killed the engine. He was probably hearing things, but he couldn’t shake that humming of his sixth sense. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as he listened to the wind blow through the trees near the quarry.

There! A high-pitched cry. It could have been animal or human, but his instincts told him someone was in trouble.

“I hear you!” he shouted. Popping the trunk, he found flares and a flashlight. Ah, screw the flares. No time.

He left his lights on, took his phone and flashlight and headed into the woods.

“If you can hear me, I need you to make noise!” He bellowed the words. There were no houses near the quarry, just a few buildings owned by Rowen Gravel. There was a moon out, but there was zero ambient light out here on the far edge of town.

Was someone lost? Had a kid fallen down one of the cliffs? There was a lot of cool equipment down in the quarry to attract troublemakers—dump trucks and bulldozers sat there all the time.

When no sound answered his call, he ran faster through the trees, twigs snapping in his face since the brush was thick around the edges of the property.

He swung the flashlight in an arc in front of him, sweeping the ground with the beam until he hit a patch that reflected back at him.

Pausing, he turned the beam hard to the east where he’d thought he’d seen something.

And that’s when he spotted shiny metallic paint in robin’s-egg-blue.

A sports car rested nose-down among the trees, crumpled into half its regular size.

His knees buckled for all of a second as old memories of another crash robbed his focus. But there was a survivor this time, damn it. He’d failed his friend by letting Vince take off in his car when he’d been upset. He wasn’t failing someone again.

Shoving aside everything else, he sprinted toward the vehicle. Twice he lost his footing on the side of the steep hill and he skidded lower down the cliff beyond the wreck. When he climbed back up, keeping his boots lodged in the base of one tree after another, he shouted again.

“You okay?” His heart beat so fast he figured there was a real chance he’d have a coronary in the dark before he even got to the driver.

What the hell was it about this day that he had one foot in the past and one in the present?

His throat was raw when he called out the next time.

“I’m here and I’m calling for help now.”

He forced himself to stop long enough to focus on his phone. He called 911 and then launched himself toward the driver’s side door.

“911. What’s your emergency?” a woman’s voice said through the device.

Thank you, God.

He tugged on the car’s dented panel, but it was wedged. He could see someone inside.

“I’m at the scene of an accident on the Quarry Road in Heartache.

Tell the emergency responders to look for the El Dorado at the top of the hill and walk straight down the bank on the east side of the road from there.

” He pulled the door harder. “I only see one victim. Female. I’m putting the phone down to try and open the door. ”

Settling the phone on a crook of a nearby tree, he hit the speaker button and accidentally disconnected the call. Screw it. He grabbed the door handle and yanked. Once. Twice.

The third time, he may have dislocated his shoulder, but at least he dislodged the rumpled metal.

“Are you okay?” He sank to the running board area near the driver’s seat. The girl was slumped half into the passenger seat, her left leg twisted at a wrong angle as blood spilled down her thigh. Not a lot, though.

Mack leaned into the dark to listen for her breathing. Checked her heart. Both were strong.

Thank you, God.

Not until that moment had he realized how scared he’d been. How much he’d seen his eighteen-year-old best friend inside this dented-to-shit hunk of metal. Vaguely, he realized his phone was ringing.

Crap. Pulling himself together, he leaned back out into the night and retrieved the phone. The screen lit up with a return call from the dispatcher.

He thumbed it to speakerphone. “I’m here,” he said, still half out of breath. “She’s alive but unconscious. Her leg appears to be broken, but no protruding bones.”

“Help is on the way,” the 911 attendant assured him.

“No,” the teenage blonde moaned, stirring.

He glanced back down at her. “Careful. Don’t make any sudden movements. You could have a head injury.”

“I do,” she murmured. “My head hurts.” Her lip was cut, too, he realized.

And, as he studied her face, looking beyond the injuries, he realized he recognized this girl.

“You’re Ally’s friend.” He’d just met her earlier that day. “I’m Ally’s uncle from the straw maze. Mack.” He kept the phone on speaker for the 911 worker in case she had questions.

In the distance, he heard a siren.

“Rachel Wagoner. Please don’t tell my mother about this.” Her words were whispered but clear.

“Don’t talk if it hurts, Rachel. You’ve got a bad cut on your lip.” And he didn’t bother mentioning the totaled car would be tough to hide from the teen’s mother.

“I mean it. Don’t tell my mom. She’ll kill me.” She turned frightened eyes his way.

Determined to keep her calm, he said, “All teens feel that way. I’m sure your mom will just be relieved you’re alive.”

“You don’t know my mom.” She shook her head, then groaned, squeezing her eyes closed. “So glad I’m eighteen…almost free…” Her voice became wobbly.

“Calm down. It’s going to be okay.” Clearly, he needed to steer the conversation away from talk of her mother. “We’ll figure something out. I hear an ambulance now, okay? You’re almost out of here.”

The sirens grew louder and he knew from long experience in Heartache that the full contingent of rescue vehicles would have been dispatched. For once, he was glad as hell this was a small town, because there wouldn’t be any traffic to get in their way. They were going to take care of this girl.

“Please, call Ally instead,” the girl mumbled, her eyes sliding closed again. “I need to talk to her about something.”

Holding the girl’s hand as the sirens grew closer, Mack hoped her worries were just teenager melodrama and she was just overly concerned about wrecking the car and that was why she didn’t want him to contact her mother.

Even so, since she was eighteen, technically, it was the girl’s decision.

Provided she wasn’t too out of it. All stuff for the police and hospital to sort out.

For now, he could at least call his niece and let her know her friend needed her. No harm in that.