Authors: Ginna Gray
Erin reached the blue Chevy, jerked open the driver's door, climbed in and slammed it shut.
Max winced, his smile growing into a grin. But first, he decided prudently, he'd give her time to cool off.
Of course, there wasn't a hope in hell of her coming to the office tomorrow. He'd known that. But the temptation to needle her, to see that captivating flash of fire again, had simply been too strong to resist.
Well, he could wait. At least until tomorrow evening.
Erin gunned the engine, and the car shot backward out of the parking space. She slammed on the brakes, bringing the vehicle to a shuddering halt, gunned the engine again and went careering across the lot, tires squealing and rubber burning. Barely reducing speed, she made a fishtail turn onto the road, sending dust and gravel flying, and headed toward Santa Fe.
Max laughed. On second thought, maybe the day after tomorrow would be better.
He eased the big car toward the exit at a more sedate pace. He had every intention of returning home, but at the last moment, acting on impulse, he swung the Lincoln in the opposite direction and followed the rapidly diminishing taillights. I'll just see that she gets home safely, he told himself as he closed the gap.
He caught up with the blue compact easily, but it meant driving faster than he cared to on the narrow mountain road. Keeping up with her was not much better, he discovered. A quick glance at the speedometer had his smile dissolving into a frown. "Damn fool woman," he muttered. "Driving like a flatlander on a mountain road. Dear God! Doesn't she have any better sense?"
The downgrade wasn't too bad at that point, but he knew that very soon it would be. If she didn't slow down, she was going to be in real trouble. Grimly, Max trailed her. His gaze flicked again to the speedometer. To his horror, he saw that she was accelerating steadily.
"Slow down. Slow down, for God's sake!" he muttered helplessly. His jaw clenched. His hands tightened around the wheel. Guilt over the way he had goaded her twisted his stomach into a sickening knot. Fear made his skin crawl. "There's a curve up ahead, dammit!" he shouted, as though he could make her hear him. "Slow down!"
He glanced at the speedometer again and spat an obscenity. His balled fist struck the horn and gave it three long blasts. "Hit the brakes, damn you! Hit the brakes!"
❧
Erin pumped the brake pedal frantically. Instead of meeting resistance, she felt as though she were stepping on a sponge. And the Chevy was still going fast.
She willed herself to stay calm, but her heart began to pound. Panic crept over her like icy fingers. Licking her lips, Erin clutched the wheel and fought down the terror. Her breath came in short, labored pants.
She pumped the brake again. On the third push it went all the way to the floor.
"Oh, dear Lord!" Erin whimpered. For an instant her mind went blank with fear. Eyes wide, she sat frozen, staring through the windshield. All she saw was the road rushing toward her in the beam of the headlights—the road and the dark chasm beside it.
Finally she began to shake off the paralyzing fear. Think. Think, she commanded herself shakily, getting a tenuous grip on her emotions. You've got to do something.
The brake. The emergency brake. It had to be there somewhere. Keeping her gaze fixed on the road, Erin groped along the floorboard with her left foot. Her heart leaped when her ankle struck the small pedal. There it was!
She stomped on the emergency brake with all her might and grappled with the steering wheel.
The car slowed but didn't stop. Erin down-shifted into second gear. The engine roared with the increased RPM, and her speed dropped still more.
"Stop. Stop, damn you," she commanded through clenched teeth.
But she was headed down an incline, and the car's momentum was stronger than the auxiliary brake.
Behind her, Max was honking like a madman.
"I'm trying! I'm trying, you idiot!" she screeched at him, one hand letting go of the wheel long enough to return the blast.
The road wiggled in a shallow S curve. Erin let out a choked scream and wrenched the wheel to the left, then back to the right. "God help me. Help me. Oh, please, please, help me," she chanted as she fought a desperate battle to avoid going over the edge. The car skidded around both curves with only inches to spare.
When at last she hit a stretch of straightaway, she swerved into the oncoming lane. Hugging the mountainside as closely as possible, she prayed she wouldn't meet another car.
Up ahead a road sign came into view, and Erin's heart jumped into her throat when she saw the inverted U-shaped arrow. "Oh, Lord no! No!"
Erin reacted instinctively. Putting her right foot on top of her left one, she arched her body like a taut bow and applied every ounce of her weight against the emergency brake pedal. At the same time she held her hand down on the horn.
The car's speed continued to drop slowly. Erin gritted her teeth and strained to keep the pressure on. The acrid smell of burning brakes filled the car.
In the beam of her headlights she could see where the road curved out of sight around the mountain, the black emptiness beyond. She kept her gaze fixed on the latter. "Stop. Oh, please stop."
The downgrade of the road increased, and the awful burning smell grew intolerable.
Helpless, Erin gripped the steering wheel, her eyes wide with horror as the car began to build up speed again and hurtle toward the abyss.
"Turn into the mountain! Turn!"
Having seen the blue Chevy reduce its speed with no brake lights, Max had figured out that Erin's brakes were gone, and he'd been shouting instructions at her ever since.
Terrified, he watched the small car slue around the double curve. Sweat popped out all over him on the first turn when the Chevy skidded dangerously close to the edge. By the time Erin had negotiated the second, his thundering heart was nearly suffocating him. For a moment he hadn't been able to breathe at all.
When she hit the straightaway Max groaned his relief. She'd made it by the skin of her teeth.
But he knew the next curve was a switchback, and there was no way in hell she'd get around it.
"Get over! Get over! Ram into the mountain!"
As though she'd heard him, Erin pulled into the inside lane. "Yeah! Yeah! That's it!" Max shouted, hope surging inside him. It fizzled a moment later when he realized that she was just avoiding the edge. "Dammit to hell!" he roared in frustration. "Can't you see you don't have any choice?" The telltale smell of burning brake shoes reached him as the two cars started down the incline toward the switchback. Cursing, Max stepped on the gas and pulled alongside the Chevy. With grim determination, he jerked the wheel a quarter turn to the left and slammed into the smaller car.
❧
The impact jolted through Erin and flung her against the door. The compact's left front fender scraped rock, sending out a shower of sparks. She screamed and wrested the wheel back to the right, veering away from the wall of mountain.
The Continental crashed into her again, and the screech of metal grinding against metal was horrendous. The larger car refused to give ground, and the deafening high-pitched sound went on and on as she was forced inexorably closer to the mountain.
Panic-stricken, Erin glanced at Max. He was so close that he seemed to be in the car with her. His face was grim and set. As she watched, he wrenched his steering wheel hard to the left again. Erin's eyes widened.
In a flash of understanding she grasped his intent, and hope quickened within her. Instantly she stopped fighting him and angled the car into the face of the mountain.
The world was reduced to a cacophony of sickening sounds and terrifying flashes of unyielding rock. Glass shattered. Metal rent and crumpled. Just inches from Erin's face a wall of roughhewn stone scraped by with a banshee-like shriek, sending more sparks flying. On the other side, Max's car grated against the passenger door. Its squealing brakes added to the earsplitting din.
The little car rocked and bucked, shuddering with each jarring blow. Pitching mercilessly against her taut seat belt, Erin held on to the wheel for dear life.
Fear elongated time, playing out the nightmare in slow motion so that it seemed to go on forever. In reality, it was all over in seconds. The car had begun to slow from the moment of impact, and it ground to a halt within a number of yards, wedged between the mountain and the powerful bulk of Max's Continental.
The sudden cessation of noise was deafening.
Dazed, Erin sat motionless, gripping the wheel. For a moment a strange feeling of unreality prevailed. There was nothing but utter quiet, absolute stillness.
Steam began to rise with a hiss from beneath the sprung hood of the Chevy. A second later a crumpled scrap of metal groaned and clattered to the pavement. The sounds shattered the magnified silence, and Erin closed her eyes and slumped over the wheel, her breath whooshing out of her.
Vaguely she felt the car rock, heard the screech of metal and the pop of loose gravel beneath tires as Max moved his car away from hers, but she was too weak to move.. .or care.
Then he was there, frantically prying open the compact's passenger door and reaching for her.
"Erin! Erin, are you hurt?"
Strong hands gripped her shoulders and eased her back against the seat. A callused palm tenderly brushed her hair away from her face. Blunt fingers smoothed down her neck and found the throbbing pulse at its base.
She heard his sigh of relief, felt it in the warm puff of moist breath that struck her face.
"Erin, can you hear me? Are you all right?"
The desperate entreaty brought her eyelids fluttering open. She blinked once. Twice. Max, his handsome face distorted with worry, hovered over her. "I...I think so," she managed in a quavering voice.
"No broken bones?" His hands skimmed over her, probing and testing with brisk efficiency even as he asked the question.
"No, I... I don't think so."
At her wrist he encountered a sticky wetness, and he lifted her arm to inspect it in the dim glow from the dashboard. "You're cut."
Erin glanced at the injury disinterestedly. Blood oozed from the three-inch gash. It seemed trivial—ridiculous, even—that such a close brush with death had resulted in nothing more than a minor scratch.
"It's not deep. I'll live." The profoundness of the off-hand statement struck her, and a giggle bubbled up in her throat. Another followed, and another, each longer, less controlled, until they ran together in a high-pitched trill that edged into hysteria. "I'll live. Oh...Max!" she choked around peals of laughter that quickly turned into sobs. "I... I'm going to live."
Max released her seat belt and hauled her up against him. "Yes. Yes, I know," he crooned against the top of her head. "You're going to be fine now. Just fine."
Erin wrapped her arms around his middle and clung to him as though he were the only source of safety in the world. Racking sobs tore from deep inside her, making her whole body jerk. She buried her face against his chest and gave in to them. Within minutes her hot tears had melded his shirt to his skin.
"That's it, honey, cry it all out." With one arm wrapped around her, his other hand cupping the back of her head, he held her close and rocked her, murmuring a steady stream of soft reassurances.
They remained that way for several minutes, until at last Erin quieted.
She drew a shuddering breath and sniffed, then pulled back. Meeting Max's concerned look, she swiped at her wet cheeks with her fingertips and attempted a smile, but her lips were quivering so badly that she couldn't manage it. "I... I..." Emotion squeezed her throat, choking off her words. Her chin wobbled as a freshet of tears spurted, and she almost started crying again.
"Come on. Let's get out of here." Max staved off the crying jag by hauling her bodily from the car.
Erin wobbled on legs that felt like rubber, but when Max attempted to pick her up she stopped him. "No, please. I can walk. Really."
"All right. But here, lean on me." He looped his arm around her waist and clamped her against his side, and Erin clung to his reassuring bulk as he half carried her around the big silver car to the passenger side.
He eased her down onto the seat but left her turned sideways with her feet still on the ground. Then he squatted on his haunches before her in the wedge of space created by the open door. As he withdrew a first-aid box from beneath the seat and snapped it open, Erin sighed and slumped sideways against the seat. The cool mountain air stirred her hair and feathered over her wet cheeks in an icy caress.
"This is going to hurt," Max warned a second before he swabbed her arm with alcohol.
Erin flinched, but she really didn't mind the small sting, or the greater one that followed when he daubed the cut with iodine. The minor discomfort was reassuring proof that she was still alive.
Alive. The word seeped through her like a benediction, and she grew limp. Weakly, she laid her cheek against the soft velour and gazed over Max's shoulder while he bandaged her arm.
Gradually though, as the nightmare receded, an awareness of their surroundings crept over her, banishing the sweet feeling of relief.