Broken Bonds Read Free Page A

and putting the truck in Park. “It’s in my purse, behind my seat. It doesn’t work farther up in the mountains, but I think we’re low enough now.”
    He reached down and lifted the bag onto her lap. “Heavy.”
    “That purse is more or less my office. I keep everything in there—my files on home visits, presents for children. Here,” she said, handing him the phone, then hefting her bag onto the backseat.
    She drove again as he called his office and talked to someone called Jen, explaining what had happened. The woman was upset, and her voice was so loud that Char could hear most of what she said. “Yes, I’m all right,” he said. “I’m heading for the sheriff’s office to report it.”
    “But he meant to do it?” the woman shrilled. “To kill you? But who, Matt? I can’t believe it. Thank heavens you got out.”
    “Let’s just say a Good Samaritan came along and saved me. I’ll explain later.”
    At that, he turned to look at Char. Tears in his eyes, he pressed his lips tight together and nodded at her. The moment was somehow intimate, as if he had embraced her. Char cleared her throat and turned back to the road.
    “Yeah,” Matt told Jen, to answer another question. “You’d better call Royce, let him know, though he’s due in tomorrow. And check the insurance papers on the truck. No, I’ll call you later or be back when I can. Calm down. I’m okay. Right. Bye.
    “Thanks,” he told Char, ending the call and putting the phone in the storage space between the two seats. “For the phone and for everything. I appreciate your being much calmer than she is.”
    She was tempted to ask if Jen was his assistant or—or what. He didn’t have a ring on his left hand, but you never knew. And “Good Samaritan” or not, it was none of her business. Then, past the next curve downward, something caught her eye.
    “Oh! Look, down there! I think that’s your truck in that rocky ravine.”
    They had looked over the edge from the crash site, but the jutting rocks and trees below had hidden the wreck. He unfastened his seat belt and leaned toward her to look. “You’re right,” he said, so close his breath fanned the loose strands of hair by her right earlobe. “Can you pull over, so I can look down? I hope that didn’t start a fire. Just got it filled up with gas.”
    She stopped the truck, and they both got out to peer over the rim of rock. He reached for her wrist, then her hand, whether to keep her safe or himself sane, she wasn’t sure. When they saw the battered truck below, she gasped, and he swore under his breath. A fire had blackened the foliage around it like an ink spill. A crooked finger of dark smoke pointed upward from the wreck.
    “Thank God it didn’t hit a house, or start a rock slide,” he said, his voice rough. “Maybe the guy who pushed it off was just looking for trouble with anyone, but what if someone wants me gone—down there in that?”
    He shuddered and gripped her wrist harder, until she pulled him gently away from the precipice. “No, it’s not the vehicle I always drive,” he said, as if trying to reassure himself. “My senior partner and his driver sometimes use it, but they’re out of town.”
    “Then maybe he was the target. I mean, isn’t he the one helping to finance all the fracking around Cold Creek? Not everyone’s in favor of that.”
    “Don’t I know.”
    Char tried to remember things he said so that she could tell Gabe if Matt didn’t recall everything later. He did have a scrape on the side of his head, though he seemed clear-minded. “Sorry I didn’t get there sooner,” she murmured, almost to herself, as they climbed back in her truck.
    “Glad you didn’t, or you could have been hurt. What a way to meet.”
    There was another strange, silent moment between them as she put the truck in gear and they started down again. “There is a Navajo saying, ‘If you save someone’s life, you feel responsible for them.’ But I didn’t really