Page 24 of Tangled Skies (Stormcloud Station)

“What? This?” He swiped at the crusted blood. “It must’ve been from the airbag deploying. I’ve had a few broken noses in my time. And more than my share of black eyes, most of them caused by more nefarious things than a car accident.” He lifted a cheeky eyebrow in an attempt at gallantry. “I’m fine. Believe me, you look worse than I do.” He pointed to her chest.

She looked down to see her white shirt covered in large spatters of blood.

“Here, we need to stop the bleeding.” He proceeded to rip a strip from the bottom of his T-shirt and wadded it into a pad for her. “Hold this against the cut, it’ll help stem the blood.”

“Thanks,” she said, taking the proffered cloth, then wincing as she gingerly held it in place.

“You’re going to have one nasty black eye, as well,” he said thoughtfully. “We’ll look like a pair of prizefighters.”

A car pulled off to the edge of the road in a screech of dust and flying dirt, and the driver got out, running toward them.

“Are you two okay?” The man shouted. “Do you need me to call an ambulance?”

Mack looked at her for a second, but she shook her head. “Nah, we’re okay. Thanks,” he said. Then, after a second’s hesitation, he asked. “Can we borrow your phone? Ours are lost in that tangled mess somewhere.”

“Sure.” The man handed his phone over, still staring at the wrecked truck. “Holy shit.” The man never took his eyes off the crash. “Man, you two were lucky to get out of that alive.”

Bindi only half-listened as Mack called Stormcloud and relayed the accident to Sasha, asking her to get Steve on the line. As he talked, he got up and walked slowly around the crash site, bending down to inspect something, and then continued his perusal. Bindi thought he might’ve been walking with a slight limp and made a mental note to check his leg for injuries when he returned. Perhaps it was his broken leg, and it was hurting him after the accident, but she wouldn’t put it past him to downplay another major injury, just to get her off his back.

“Thanks, dude.” Mack sauntered back and handed the stranger back his phone. “Steve’s organizing a tow truck to recover the vehicle. He’s also reporting this to the cops, he said they’ll want to come out and inspect the site. Dale is on his way to pick us up. He’ll take us to see the doctor at the clinic in Dimbulah. I think you might need stitches.”

Bindi accepted all of this with a nod. It all felt strangely surreal, and for once, she was terribly glad that Mack was doing his take-charge thing.

“So the cops are coming?” The stranger asked.

“Yep. Steve said they should be here in half an hour, or less.”

“Well, if you two don’t need me to stay here, I might go and keep the traffic moving.” He gestured to two more cars that were pulling up by the side of the road. “They mean well, but if people keep stopping, they might cause another accident.”

“Good idea,” Mack agreed, watching the other man jog back to the stopped cars, waving his hands and signaling to them that everything was okay. It was nice of him. A lot of people would stop out of concern for their welfare. But there were also those dumbasses who just wanted to rubberneck.

Bindi took the wad of material away from her wound and looked at it. There was still fresh blood there, so she replaced it with a sigh. Mack might be right, she probably did need stitches. She’d heard that airbags were a mixed blessing in vehicles. They stopped you from smashing your head against the windscreen or dashboard, but often caused other injuries in the meantime. Like Mack’s broken nose and bruised eye, and her cut forehead. Her head throbbed, and she wished for some painkillers.

Mack turned to her, a troubled frown creasing his forehead. “The wheel fell off.”

“What? A wheel can’t just fall off,” she retorted, forgetting her woes for a second.

“Well, it’s missing. Take a look.” He pointed at the passenger side of the vehicle, where they’d climbed out of the cabin. Just like he said, there was no left-hand wheel, merely a naked axle sticking out of the wheel arch. “That’s why I lost control of the car.”

“But how…?”

“I think it’s been tampered with. The only way a wheel falls off is if the lug nuts are loose. And this is a brand-new truck…” He lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “I guess the cops will be able to tell us more.”

The words echoed in Bindi’s head, and suddenly she wondered if this hadn’t been merely an accident, after all.

The image of Mutt’s face, screwed up with hatred as he tried to strangle her, invaded her brain. “Shit. Do you think Mutt might’ve had something to do with this?” The words were out of her mouth before she could hold them back.

“Mutt? Is that the guy who accosted you last night? Why would he want to…?” Mack shook his head and shot her a look of amazement.

Damn, why had she opened her mouth? No one knew about her life back before she moved from New Zealand. It was better that way; if she left her family and her grief locked away in the past. The last thing she wanted or needed was to be telling Mack her sad story.

Before she could come up with some lame excuse, Mack interrupted her. “That’s funny, because I was thinking this might be Clarissa’s work. She’s certainly got a grudge against me, and she’s just crazy enough to do something like this. Or should I say, crazy enough to pay a henchman to do this,” he mused.

“Oh.” She hadn’t even considered that idea. Funny, how they both thought they were the cause of the accident. From what Mack had told her, this lady, Clarissa, sure did seem like a piece of work. And if she had been responsible for tampering with Mack’s bull rope…well that put her in the criminal category. But she was back in America. Surely, her reach didn’t extend this far. She wanted to dismiss the idea that Clarissa had caused the accident. It seemed much more likely that Mutt had come back sometime last night and tampered with the car. At least, that was what she was going to tell the police when they asked.

Oh.

The thought brought her up sharp. If she told the police that she suspected Mutt, then she’d need to tell them why. And that’d open a whole can of worms she wasn’t sure she wanted opened.

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