Hard Rain Read Free Page A

the heat in the air as thick as fog.
    And told herself no.
    She had not acted the fool since she was eighteen. At thirty-two, she had no intention of doing so again.
     
    J ESSE HAD FEARED he could not break the gaze. He’d seen the confusion, the plea in her expression as she’d searched his face. God help him, for a second he’d prayed. See me.
    He dragged his gaze away, saw the fresh skid marks farther up, careening from the left to the right side where the road pitched down. He slowed, saw the mid-sized car upside-down, tilted against a tree trunk. He called the accident in as he veered to the shoulder and slammed the engine into Park. Before the Bronco came to a complete stop, Jesse and Amy leapt out of the vehicle and were scrambling down the ditch’s steep slope. They heard the scream as they reached the vehicle.
    “Mommy!”
    A blond-haired girl not more than three, strapped in a safety seat, hung upside-down in the back of the car. The vehicle must have rolled over several times. The front half of the roof was creased in, and the driver’s door was crumpled. The child, seated on the opposite side, was trapped in a pocket formed between the frontseat and the side of the car crushed against the tree. The child writhed against the seat constraints, terrified but appearing unharmed. An unconscious young woman was slumped half on the front seat, half on the floor, wedged in beneath the dashboard. Fluid leaking from the front of the vehicle formed a slick puddle across the ground. A thin rise of smoke snaked from the hood.
    The child screamed again.
    The car was a two-door. Jesse wrestled with the driver’s door but the mangled metal wouldn’t budge. The smoke was thickening.
    He looked around. Grabbing a large rock, he slammed it against the side window until the glass shattered. “The mother is blocking the way to the girl. We’ll get her out,” Jesse said as he crawled through the window. “Then the child.”
    Smoking engine…gas leaking from the vehicle.
    The child screamed again.
    Amy saw several small flames shoot out from beneath the front hood as Jesse pushed his way into the car. He slipped his arm beneath the woman’s arms and pulled. The woman moaned, semi-conscious, incoherent. She fought against Jesse’s grasp. Suddenly an anguished cry came from her lips. Her struggling movements stopped. The woman was injured. Fortunately her twisting and writhing indicated her spine was intact.
    “Don’t fight me. Help me,” Jesse told the woman as he pulled her from the wreckage. Small flames flared from beneath the car’s hood. He felt a resistance, saw her leg was pinned beneath the dashboard. He pulledharder but he needed more leverage to free the limb. The woman’s body, in response to the pain, had gone limp again. He released her and eased himself out of the car. He heard the child crying in the back.
    “Her leg is pinned,” he told Amy. Bracing his weight against the vehicle, he leaned as far into the car as he could and gripped the woman again under the arms. He pulled. The body resisted. He widened his stance, took a deep breath of hot air and smoke, and with an animal howl, he yanked on the woman with all his might. The body broke free. Jesse dragged the woman until he could take her into his arms and carry her several yards away. As he laid her on the hard ground, he saw her leg was twisted at an odd angle, the bone popped out of the flesh.
    “Amy,” he yelled. He turned back to the car and saw Amy crawl into it.
    The child screamed for its mother as Amy approached her. “It’s all right. Everything’s going to be fine.” Amy continued the reassurances even though the child could not hear her, knowing they were as much for her as the girl. Behind her, she heard Jesse ordering her out of there, swearing as she ignored him. She could hear the flames licking beneath the hood. She pushed herself up. Pain shot up her thigh as her knee pressed into something sharp. She pushed herself into