Page 83 of No Kind of Hero
“Same thing.”
She was still worrying about it when Evan shouted “Stop!” So loudly that she jumped, and the car swerved. She hit the brakes, screeched to a halt, and said, “What?” with her heart beating out of her chest.
“Turn,” Evan said. “U-turn. Now.”
She was doing it, only then registering the truck that had passed them while she’d had an eye on the GPS and her mind on the future. A pickup truck.
“Damn,”Evan said. “I need to be driving. Floor it. Go.”
It was a forty-five zone, but Beth stepped on the gas. Fifty, fifty-five, and she could see the pickup ahead.
“No,” Evan said.“Floorit.Now.”
She wanted to shut her eyes. She didn’t. This wasn’t the plan, though. What were theydoing?The speedometer was at sixty, sixty-five, the SUV hurtling around the curves, and they were coming up fast on the pickup.
“What now?” she asked.
“Tail him.” Evan sounded grim, like he was planning to do something terrible. Have her run the truck off the road or something. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be atall.They were going to get in trouble.
Something was wrong with the pickup, too. As she watched, it swerved across the center line, then overcorrected and headed toward the shoulder before it straightened out.
“Drop back,” Evan said, but Beth was already doing it. If she didn’t, she was going to hit the truck.
“Goodness,” Michelle said. “What on earth is hedoing?”The pickup was slowing now, swerving again. Two heads seen through the truck’s back window, the driver much taller. Moving toward each other, then away again. Another swerve, and the truck was bouncing onto the shoulder, coming to a halt.
Evan was shouting, “Stop!” But Beth didn’t need him to. She was pulling in behind the pickup even as the passenger door opened and a slight figure dropped to the ground, then stumbled in the gravel. A blonde, holding a wailing baby under its arms. A blonde baby. Gracie, being swung awkwardly through the air as the girl ran onto the road, back toward Beth’s car.
A baby with blood on her face.
The driver’s door opened, and something came sailing out into the middle of the road. It bounced, and the contents spilled across the asphalt. A purse.
Beth was out of the car even as she registered what was happening, and her mother was right behind her. But Evan, somehow, was ahead of both of them. Running past the blonde even as Beth caught up to her, registered the red mark on her cheek, the eye that was puffed closed. Michelle was there, taking a screaming Gracie from the girl’s arms, the pickup was gunning its engine, but Evan was at its window. Pulling something—somebody—half out. His fist landing once, twice, and again. Then shoving the figure back inside. Shouting.
Beth wanted to go to him, but the girl. April. AndGracie.Her mother, though, had Gracie already. Had her cuddled tight, was walking back to the car, talking to her as if none of the rest of it existed. But April just stood there in the road. Skinny jeans, high-heeled sandals, pink tee, flaxen hair to her shoulders. Petite to the point of fragility. Bruised, stumbling, and crying. Beth got to her, because there was nobody else to do it. They were choking in a cloud of black smoke, the pickup was roaring off, and Evan was coming back. Running again.
Beth thought,One thing. Do the next thing.She picked up the purse and its scattered contents, walked April back to the Audi with her arm around the girl, and said, “All right. You’re all right. We’ve got you. We’re going to help. We’ve got you now.”
It was a rescue, she thought dimly as she helped April into the back seat of the car. A bizarre one, not what they’d planned at all. Her mother was in the middle seat, fastening a still-wailing Gracie into her car seat. The baby’s screams shattered the air, and a trickle of bloody fluid ran down her neck as she arched her back, flailed her arms, and cried.
Beth told April, who was crying almost as hard as Gracie, “Sit there. Fasten your seatbelt.” And then she slammed the door and ran around the car as Evan got to the rear door. As he put his hand on his baby girl’s cheek, then turned to Beth and said, nothing in his face or eyes like anything she’d ever seen before, “Get in on the other side. I’m driving.” And she did.
Evan was on autopilot. Driving. Thinking,Coeur d’Alene.He knew where the hospital was. He knew where the ER was. Twenty minutes.
Gracie wasn’t crying, but April was. He asked Beth, “Gracie.”
She said, “She’s drinking her bottle. My mom’s giving it to her. I don’t think it’s . . . maybe not as bad as it looks.”
“Ask her,” Evan said. “Your mom.” April was still sobbing, and he should care, but he couldn’t care now. He hadn’t even hit that asshole hard enough to knock him out. Hard enough to make him bleed, though. He wished it had been harder, but he’d had to go.
Beth was leaning back over the seat, but there was too much crying going on back there. Gracie’d started up again, and Evan couldn’t hear. Beth sank back into her seat and said, “Gracie’s hot again. But my mom says . . .” She took a breath, and her voice was steadier when she said, “If she were really bad, she’d be limp. Crying’s good, she says.”
“What’s wrong with her face? Where’s she hurt?”Keep the car on the road.He was ten miles over the limit. He hoped he’d be pulled over. He wanted an escort.
“My mom thinks it’s her eardrum. Gracie’s. That it ruptured. That’s where the blood’s coming from, she says, and that makes sense. April, though . . . he had to have hit her.”
“Yeah. I saw.”
Beth was silent a moment, and then she asked, “Did you hit him hard?”
