Breathless Descent (Texas Hotzone 3)

She gave a delicate snort. “I’m going to bed and not even superstrong coffee is keeping me up. I’ve never done well without sleep.”

And he had every intention of taking her straight to his trailer and tucking her in bed—his bed. Granted there wasn’t much in that trailer, but it was his, and he wanted her there. He’d made the decision to stop running from what was between them, and once he made a decision, he stood his ground. Yesterday proved to him that the only way he and Shay could hide what they felt from family and friends was to completely avoid each other—and they were too good together for him to want to.

Caleb turned down the dark dirt path leading to the Hotzone and had driven about half a mile to the gates when he spotted a vehicle on the left shoulder of the road.

He glanced at Shay. “This is private property, and I don’t know that car. I better check it out.” He stopped a couple of car lengths away from the vehicle and put the truck in Park. The absence of an obvious owner of the car set him on edge. Something was off here. “Remind me I need to make it a priority to put lights up along this path,” he murmured, reaching across Shay to grab the gun he kept in the glove box, when she pointed out the window.

“Caleb. Look.”

He sat up to find a petite female running toward the truck and waving her hands. “Help!”

Caleb grabbed his gun. “Stay here.” He shoved it in his waistband.

“A gun, Caleb?” Shay gasped.

He didn’t answer. He got out of the truck and headed toward the fortysomething woman. “What’s happening, ma’am?”

The woman screamed something he didn’t understand in Spanish and then said in English, “Help me.” She heaved out a breath, a cell phone in her hand. “My husband…my husband. Can’t…” She sobbed and dropped her phone. “Can’t get it to work.”

Caleb inched up on the woman, her face tear-streaked. “We get bad service out here.” He kept his voice low and even. “I’ll help you. Where’s your husband?”

“Dead! He’s not breathing. He’s by the car.” She fell to her knees and grabbed her phone. “Have to get help.”

Behind him, the truck door opened. He knew Shay—she’d want to help the woman. At this point, for all Caleb knew, the woman had brought her husband out here and killed him, and was still armed with the weapon. Crazier things had happened. He wasn’t letting Shay near her.

He held out his hand to Shay. “Not yet, Shay,” he ordered.

“Caleb—” she started to object.

“Not until I know exactly what’s going on,” he said, without taking his eyes off the woman. He knelt beside her. “What happened to your husband?”

She sobbed. “He…”

Caleb touched her arm. “What happened?”

She inhaled and let it out. “He was changing the tire, and he just fell over.” Her face crumbled. “He died.” The last word was a shriek.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Caleb was on his feet, tossing his keys to the dirt in front of Shay, so they wouldn’t accidentally hit her. “Drive ahead to the office and call 911 on the landline,” he yelled. “There should be someone there, but if not, the red key is the one you’ll need to get in.”

She grabbed them up and started running to the driver’s side of the truck. He faced the crying woman. “Keep trying 911,” he ordered. She kept crying. More forcefully he yelled, “Dial the phone if you want to save your husband.”

He didn’t wait to see if she would reply. Seconds counted with a heart-attack victim, which was what he was betting this was. Caleb took off running toward the couple’s car, dialing his phone at the same time, hoping his service would come through. It didn’t. Damn. He rounded the car and just as the woman had said, her husband—as he assumed the man to be—lay on his back, by the tire he had been trying to change.

As a trained medic, Caleb’s instincts kicked in and he went to work on the man. The man’s wife appeared above him, whimpering and screaming erratically, but he tuned her out and focused on the life he was trying to save. Finally, finally, he found a light pulse and leaned back, hands on his pants.

Damn it, he needed an ambulance. He could only do so much, and he worried about brain damage. The guy had been without a pulse too long. He was contemplating driving the man to the hospital when sirens sounded in the distance.

“Good girl, Shay,” he whispered, not at all surprised she’d come through.

Caleb pushed to his feet and ran toward the sound, to flag the ambulance and update the crew, when his cell phone rang on his belt. Of course. Now the tower worked. He snatched it up without looking at caller ID. “Stay where you are, Shay,” he said. “I’ll come to you.”