Max tried to push himself to his feet but his legs gave way. He lay there on the pavement, panting and helpless, as his mind struggled for a second to process the crackling sound that rang in his ears and the sharp pinch in his back. Desperately he spun around, dislodging the wire from his back, and only then realized what had happened.
He’d been hit by a Taser.
Bradley stopped, still a few feet away, put the Taser away and reached for his gun. The roar of an engine filled the air.
Max struggled to his hands and knees. Thankfully Bradley had shot it from a distance and had only got one dart in him. Otherwise, he wouldn’t even be able to move. He tried to push himself back to his feet.
“Stay down!” Bradley ordered. “Don’t move!”
“I’m down!” Max crouched low and raised his hands above his head. “I surrender! Okay! I surrender!”
He had no other choice. That was it. It was over.
Clearly they’d wanted him alive, though he wasn’t sure how reassuring that was.
The sound of the vehicle grew closer. Headlights glared against the gray sky, their refracted light shining off the drizzling rain. It was flying straight at them.
Bradley shouted and leaped back. Max dropped to the ground and tried to roll out of his path. But then the vehicle swerved, spinning in an arc between him and the officer, and screeched to a stop. He looked up. The familiar white side of his rapid-response unit was a foot from his face. The passenger door flew open.
Daisy leaned toward him, her blond hair tumbled around her shoulders and determination blazed in her eyes. She reached for him. “Come on. Get in!”
He forced his wobbly legs to spring and threw himself toward her and into the safety of the vehicle. Her hand grabbed his shoulder and helped pull him up. He tumbled onto the passenger seat.
“You came back for me,” he said. “I can’t believe you’re really here.”
She didn’t meet his gaze but the faint blush that rose to her cheekbones said that she’d heard him. He twisted around and struggled for his seat belt, his hands still cuffed behind his back. She leaned over, yanked it over his chest and buckled it in. The scent of her filled his senses, her dark eyes met his and something jolted inside him like residual electricity.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “I’ll get those off you as soon as we’re stopped somewhere safe.”
Gunfire sounded behind them. Max heard the clang of a bullet hitting the back of his vehicle.
“Hang on!” Daisy sat up straight, yanked the gearshift into Reverse and hit the accelerator. The truck shot backward. She tapped the breaks, shifted again and the vehicle spun forward. The passenger door beside him slammed from the impact. The vehicle righted, she hit the gas again and they shot down the road. Her eyes glanced to the rearview mirror. “Officer Kelly’s in her car and coming after us. Officer Bradley is still running back to his car.”
His head swam. “You know them?”
“They came by the house a few months ago,” she said. “Gerry said they’d tried to blackmail him. They’re the reason he said some cops weren’t to be trusted.”
He had a hunch that was as close to a told-you-so as he was ever going to get. Sirens sounded through the air behind them. Lights flashed. Her eyes cut to the rearview mirror.
“You do want me to outrun them, right?” she asked. Worry lines creased the delicate skin around her eyes. “Because if you’ve got another idea, you’d better tell me now.”
He could still only hear one siren, but it would be joined by a second one soon enough when Bradley got back to his car. The hope of meeting up with Trent and Chloe anytime soon was fading in the distance.
“Officer Kelly wanted to take me somewhere and question me illegally,” he said. “Officer Bradley wanted to kill me. The only thing they could really agree on is they wanted me to ride in the trunk. I still believe we’ve got to talk to the cops, but those two sure aren’t the ones we need to talk to.”
“Okay,” she said. Her jaw set. “Then hold on and trust me.”
She reached back between the seats for Fitz, as if feeling for the warmth of his skin. Then both hands grabbed the wheel again. Rocks and trees flew past.
Max watched as she inched the speedometer upward. The road narrowed, with steep ditches on either side. She inched closer to the gravel verge, holding the vehicle steady with a control and calm that almost stunned him even more than the Taser had. Kelly’s police car loomed large in the rearview mirror.
He had to trust Daisy knew what she was doing. He had to believe she wouldn’t do anything reckless with Fitz in the car, even with a potential killer on their tail.
Then he saw the narrow metal bridge, no more than a car’s width, leading through the woods to their right. Daisy yanked the steering wheel hard to the right, popping the vehicle in and out of Neutral, before throwing the emergency break on and off again. The vehicle drifted, spinning around in a circle as it careened toward the trees. Kelly’s cop car flew past so close it almost clipped them.
Prayer surged through him. Then he felt the rough rumble of the metal access bridge under their tires and the vehicle shuddered safely to a stop. Max looked up. Thick trees pressed them in on every side. A tiny road lay beneath them. She’d slid them over the narrow access bridge as precisely and narrowly as threading a needle.
His heart pounded. “I thought you’d lost your license.”
“For speeding, years ago, and I got it back.” She flushed and a dazzling smile flashed across her face. She undid her belt, turned around and checked the back seat. Then she laughed. “Fitz is asleep again. Let’s hope he naps for a while this time.”
She reached to put the car into Drive. But before they could move, a screech of tires filled the air, then a loud bang and the horrifying scream of metal scraping against rock.
They were sounds he’d heard a hundred times in his nightmares. Sounds that meant someone had been in a terrible accident and that somebody could die if he didn’t save them.
* * *
“Let me out!” Max said. “Please!”
She leaned over him and pulled back the door handle. Max leaped out. Daisy looked back, but all she could see were trees. That was the point. She’d maneuvered them specifically so that they’d be hidden from the road and now he was running back toward it.
Max disappeared down the path for a few seconds, then he was back. “Officer Kelly tried to turn back to follow us, lost control and crashed into the ditch. I have to call the accident in and go make sure she’s okay.”
“You can’t be serious!” Daisy pushed the driver’s-side door open. “Call it in, sure, but don’t go back. She just tried to take you hostage! Her partner wants to kill you!”
A siren roared closer. It passed. Then it disappeared in the distance. Guess that meant Officer Bradley wasn’t stopping to check on his partner.
“I told you when we met,” he said. “I have a duty to do whatever I can to save a life, unless doing so puts that person or someone else in danger.”
“Does that include putting yourself in danger?” she shot back.
His shoulders flinched like he was trying to throw his hands in the air and had forgotten he was still in handcuffs. Didn’t he get how ridiculous this was? He was actually planning on running toward an accident with his hands behind his back.
“Yup,” he said. “I go assess the scene and determine if helping the wounded puts myself, them or someone else in danger. If it poses a threat, I just call it in and back off. But right now, we have an accident victim in a ditch on a rural highway road. Even when I call it in, I don’t know how long it will take anyone else to reach her. She could bleed out. She could have a heart attack. Any number of things could happen, and I won’t know until I go check!”
He stood there, staring at her, a long breath spreading out between them and the faint, persistent drizzle running down the lines of his face. Then she turned the engine off and leaped out.
“Fine,” she said. “I’m going with you, because you’re going to need a working pair of hands and maybe we’ll be able to grab a pair of handcuff keys. But you’ve got five minutes. That’s it. Hopefully that will be long enough for you to do whatever assessing you need to do.”
He didn’t argue. He just grinned and then ran toward the accident. “Grab the jump bag!”
Fitz was still asleep. Daisy pulled the cover over his car seat and unclipped it from the car seat base. She picked the car seat up with one hand, grabbed the red bag with the other and ran after Max. The road was clear. The police car lay ahead, a white hunk of metal, nose down in the three-foot ditch. Then she saw Kelly slumped against the steering wheel, her dark hair falling over her neck and the airbag covering her face. Max jumped into the ditch.
Daisy climbed down after him. She set Fitz by her feet. “Tell me what we do.”
“ABC,” he called. “Airways, then breathing and then circulation. Our first problem is that the airbag should’ve deflated after impact. But looks like it malfunctioned and she’s got tangled up in it. Do you still have your scissors?”
“Yeah.” She yanked them from her belt.
“Great,” he said. “Open the door and then pop the airbag. Get it away from her face. I think it’s blocking her nose and mouth.”
She did so, watching the airbag hiss and deflate like a pale gray balloon. The officer’s eyes were closed. Max leaned in and put his face close to Kelly’s, then Daisy heard him breathe a prayer of thanks.
“She’s breathing,” he said, “though I’m not sure how long she would’ve been if you hadn’t cleared her airways. The airbag could’ve suffocated her. No visible contusions or lacerations, so bleeding out isn’t likely.”
“But she’s unconscious,” Daisy said.
“Open the second flap of the jump bag, and you should find a vial. It’s smelling salts. Open it and wave it under her nose.”
“Why would you possibly wake her up?”
“It’s my duty as a paramedic,” he said. “I have to try to wake her up, or I stay with her until she regains consciousness. I can’t leave an unconcious woman at the side of the road, even if her partner did just threaten to kill me.”
Now was no time to argue. She reached into the bag and found them exactly where he’d told her. She yanked the cap back. A pungent smell of ammonia that put the stench in the cabin to shame filled her airways. She held her breath and stuck the vial under Kelly’s nose.
The woman’s eyes shot open and her head jerked back. She glanced at Daisy.
“Get away from me!” She swore and rummaged around as if searching for her gun. They weren’t going to give her time to find it.
“Time to go!” Max said.
Agreed. Daisy capped the smelling salts, dropped them in the bag and scooped up the car seat. They scrambled back up the slope. A few paces later and they all were back in his vehicle, with Fitz still asleep. She turned the engine over and glanced at the dash. The whole thing had taken no more than six minutes. Max slid onto the passenger seat, and she helped him close the door and buckle his seat belt again. “Sorry, we didn’t grab the handcuff key.”
“No worries,” he said. “Now, follow my instructions exactly and I’ll talk you through how to call it in on the computer. It’ll take less than thirty seconds, I promise.” She hit the buttons he told her to and logged the GPS coordinates and an emergency code. Then she gunned the engine. They shot down the narrow track, deeper into the forest. A gunshot echoed behind them, far in the distance.
Max leaned back against the seat.
“Emergency crews will reach her soon,” he said. “Investigators will also make sure the vehicle manufacturer knows about the airbag malfunction, in case it’s part of a larger problem and they have to do a recall. You do realize something that simple could’ve killed her. You might have saved her life.”
They pushed through the trees. She couldn’t imagine what it was like to be him, always running into danger and saving lives. Stones bumped beneath their sturdy wheels. Branches scraped the windows. “What do they know about Fitz?”
“They weren’t looking for Fitz,” he said. “They were looking for something called sugar maple money.”
She could feel him watching her face carefully as if gauging her response.
She shrugged. “Smith and Jones mentioned that, too. I’m guessing that’s a Canadian thing?”
“Not a Canadian thing I’ve ever heard of,” he said. “What did Smith and Jones say about it?”
“I found some money in Gerry’s car,” she said. “They were all hundred-dollar bills. I scattered them in the cabin when we ran, because I knew that would slow them down. They called it sugar maple money.”
“You slipped two bills into the pocket of my jacket.”
Heat rose to her cheeks. “I told you I’d help pay for repairs and the car seat.”
“And I told you not to bother.”
Another dirt track appeared to their right and she darted down it. A small signpost for the provincial park flew past as a blink in the headlights. She waited for him to explain further, but he didn’t. Trees crowded the path. Jagged rocks jutted around them. Then a lake spread out, silent and gray beside them. She pulled to a stop.
“I could be wrong, but I think we’ve lost them,” she said.
“I think so, too,” he said. Towering rocks and trees hemmed them in on all sides. She cut the engine and silence fell, punctuated only by the sound of the rain pattering on the trees, the water lapping gently against the shore and their own ragged breaths.
“Are you going to tell me what’s so special about sugar maple money?” she asked.
“It’s counterfeit,” he said. She gasped. But he didn’t meet her eye. Instead, he looked straight ahead through the windshield. “It’s a very good-quality counterfeit—very hard to do and involving a very complex operation. I’m sorry, Daisy, but I think it’s time you accept you may have been working for a crime lord.”