What I was doing was pumping the brakes hard and fast, and there wasn’t anything else I could do to avoid what was surely going to happen.
In front of us, directly in front of us, far too close in front of us, was a huge washout. All the snowmelt and all the rain of the past few days had come down the hills and pounded into the side of the road. The runoff had found a weak spot, and the water had won. The gaping ravine felt acres wide and miles across, and if I didn’t stop the bookmobile in time . . .
“C’mon,” I told the bookmobile. “Stop, already. You can do it.”
Denise shrieked. “Minnie! Turn! You have to turn!”
But I couldn’t. That would be the absolute worst thing I could do. My truck-driver training had taught me that if I swerved while braking this hard, the bookmobile’s high center of gravity would tip us over, flopping us onto the side, or, worse, rolling us over completely. Books would fly off the shelves, each one a dangerous projectile, and we’d tumble over and over. Above all, what I couldn’t do was turn.
“Turn!” Denise shouted.
The tires slipped on the wet asphalt, slipped on the wet leaves, and we kept moving inexorably toward the pit.
“Minnie!” Denise was sobbing. “We’re going to die and it’s all your fault!”
Seriously? If I’d had even a fraction of a second to spare, I would have shot her one of Eddie’s Looks That Could Kill, but I didn’t have that much time. I had to steer us straight and I had to pump the brakes and I had to use all my will and strength and might to stop us. I had to stop us. I had to.
Denise’s shriek went up an octave and she covered her eyes.
Eddie started howling.
I kept braking. I kept steering.
Braking.
Steering.
Braking . . .
I was almost crying from the tension, my lower lip sharp with pain from biting, my chest tight from holding my breath, my hands so tight on the wheel that they’d never come off.
Slower and slower we went, but we were still coming closer to the edge of the gaping maw. How many feet? Too many.
Then the pavement was gone from view and we were still moving forward.
Denise’s shriek escalated to the upper range of an operatic soprano.
Eddie’s howls came close to matching hers.
I breathed a silent prayer.
The bookmobile’s front tires bumped forward over the edge of the washout . . . and then we stopped.
I turned off the engine immediately. The only things I could hear was rain spackling the windshield and the tick-tick-tick of the cooling motor.
“We’re . . . not dead?” Denise uncovered her eyes.
“Not even close.” But I wasn’t sure how stable we were. The washout looked wide, but the light was so poor that I couldn’t judge the depth. Ten feet? Twenty? I didn’t know and couldn’t guess. And if so much of the road had already washed away, how much more might go with it? “We need to get out, okay? Slow and easy.”
“I’m out of here.” Denise flung off her seat belt and scrambled for the rear door.
“Easy, pal,” I told Eddie. He was cowering in the back corner of his carrier. “Sorry about the noise. I’ll make sure it never happens again, okay?”
He hunched back ever farther, clearly not believ- ing me.
“Yeah, can’t say I blame you.” I released his carrier and lifted him free. “You were even closer to her than I was, and your ears are a lot more sensitive than mine.”
“Mrr.”
“You are such an Eddie,” I said, lugging him the length of the bookmobile and down the steps. “You really couldn’t be anything else, could you?”
“Now what are you talking about?” Denise demanded. “Are you talking to that cat again? That’s so weird. I like cats and all, but you—”
Eddie said, “Mrr!” at the same time I heard an odd metallic thunk! kind of noise, and before my brain could register what the noise was, the report of a rifle reverberated back and forth across the hills.
Someone had shot at us. At the bookmobile. At my cat.
Denise screamed and ran around to the other side of the bookmobile. Even in the murky dark, I could see her arms waving in the air as she scuttled to safety. Eddie’s carrier was firmly in my hand and I walked hurriedly to where Denise was crouching behind a tire. I thought fast and hard, trying to push down the red-hot fury that was rising in me.
Someone had shot at Eddie, dammit, and whoever it had been was going to pay and pay hard.
I took a deep breath and tried to assess our situation in a calm and rational manner. This was difficult, because I was so angry that I wanted to charge up that hill, shouting angrily at the top of my lungs, but I knew that would be stupid in the extreme.
Calm. I needed to stay calm and figure out how safe we were behind the bookmobile. But I had no idea. All I knew for certain was someone up the hill was shooting at us. Then again, maybe the shooter was already gone, but from here there was no way to know.
“Wh-what are we going to do?” Denise asked.
Her teeth were chattering, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t from cold. I felt a surge of sympathy for her. Three weeks ago today, her husband had been killed, and here she was, afraid for her own life, her children one parent away from being orphans. Sure, the children were adults, but they still needed their mom.
I looked at her. “Do you have your phone?”
“My what? Oh. My phone.” There was a rustling as she searched her pockets. “No, I must have left it . . .” She gasped out a giggle. “It’s in my hand. How stupid—here I am looking for it and it’s in my hand.”
Now was not the time to give Denise a hug and tell her it was okay to be stupid once in a while. “Do you have any reception?” I asked. “Call nine-one-one. Tell them we’re disabled and that a shot—”
Ping!
We ducked, because we couldn’t help it, and as the rifle’s report echoed, Eddie thudded up against the back of his carrier, hissing.
“That shots have been fired.”
“I know how to call nine-one-one,” Denise snapped, thumbing the phone, which lit her face with a faint blue glow. “And the reception’s crappy. I can’t believe you got us stuck out here in the middle of nowhere. Of all the places to run into a washout, you— Oh, hi,” she said into the phone. “What’s my emergency? Well, I have a couple of them going on.”
Ping!
This time, the bullet slammed into the ground at the back of the bookmobile.
Denise shrieked, and I felt sorry for the person at the other end of the phone.
I laid a hand on Eddie’s carrier and knew what I had to do. “Here you go, bud.” I unlatched the door and swung it open wide. “Can’t have you trapped in there.” In the short time we’d been outside, my eyes had started adjusting to the dim light. Objects were beginning to have defined edges, and Eddie’s carrier was one of them, making it a clear target for anyone inclined to turn it into it one.
“Half an hour?” Denise asked loudly, even as I tried to shush her. “What do you mean it’ll take someone half an hour to get here?”
Outstanding. Denise’s voice carried like no other. If the shooter was listening to us—and there was every reason to assume so—the shooter now knew we were sitting ducks for thirty minutes. Even if someone showed up in half that time, there was still plenty of time to . . . to . . .
I soft-footed it to the rear bumper. Unless the shooter had a night scope, there was no way my small and dark shape could be seen. And if the shooter were good, Denise would have been picked off the second she’d fled the bookmobile.
My breaths were short and quick as I stood there, convincing myself of my safety. I studied the hillside, looking for signs of life, looking for anything, really, and there, not a hundred feet away, was a slight widening in the treetops. A narrow trail. Perfect.