Radclyffe - Sheltering Dunes

*

“Hey, Flynn,” Dave called across the squad room, “are you going to play or not?”

Flynn closed her book, keeping her finger between the pages to hold her place, considering her answer. She’d been avoiding thinking about the Columbus Day weekend touch football fund-raiser for a week and a half. She ought to play. The game was a town tradition, the proceeds went to a number of community outreach programs, and she couldn’t avoid seeing Allie in social situations forever. Other than brief encounters on the job, she hadn’t seen Allie since the day Allie had been shot and Flynn had told Ash Walker that Allie needed her. Allie had needed Ash, not Flynn. No matter how much Flynn had wanted to be the one standing by Allie’s bedside, had wanted to be the one Allie needed, she hadn’t been Allie’s choice. She’d never been Allie’s choice. Allie had always been in love with Ash, and it hadn’t taken Flynn more than seeing them together once to figure that out. So she’d walked away and Allie and Ash had worked out their issues, just like she’d known they would. She’d pretty much worked out her own too. She wasn’t in love with Allie, not exactly. She might have been, if they’d seen each other a few more times. If they’d slept together, but they hadn’t. Not quite. The spark had been there, the possibility had been there, but the timing had been wrong.

Flynn almost laughed. Timing seemed to be everything with her, and she had yet to get it right. She kept almost falling in love, only to discover she’d been too late or too love-struck to see there were problems, time after time. When she’d come here, changing the entire direction of her life, she’d hoped the pattern of her life would change as well. As if that were in her control. She knew it wasn’t. Even if she hadn’t believed that a greater plan, a greater power, was at work, she couldn’t alter the road her life was destined to follow any more than she already had. She was done running. This was home and she was staying.

“I’ll be there,” Flynn called, because she couldn’t change the facts. Not about Allie, not about herself, not about where she’d been or where she was going.

“Good.” Dave tossed the damp rag he had used to polish the medic unit into a bucket. “I’ve seen you run and we need a fast cor—”

An alarm blared—the computerized dispatch system signaling a callout. Flynn dropped the book into the gear bag she carried everywhere when on duty, jumped up, and jogged into the vehicle bay. Dave was already climbing behind the wheel as she grabbed a radio. She dove into the passenger seat, stashed her bag on the floor, and buckled in as Dave roared out onto Shank Painter Road. He liked to drive, and she didn’t mind riding shotgun. She slid the electronic tablet from the slot on the dash and pulled up the stats on the call. The details came up on her screen, relayed from the officer in the field to the emergency dispatcher who had entered the data into the system.

She read them out. “Standish and Commercial. Vehicle versus bicycle. Two injured. Police on scene.”

“I still think the town oughtta close Commercial to vehicular traffic during the season,” Dave muttered, swinging onto Bradford. “It’s amazing we don’t get more of these.”

They were two minutes away, and Flynn quickly logged in the details on her tablet. “The next few weeks are going to be crazy, what with Women’s Week coming up and then Fantasia right after that. Hopefully this isn’t just the first of many.”

Dave pulled in next to several police cruisers angled haphazardly across the four-way intersection, light bars strobing and radios squawking. Onlookers crowded the sidewalks and uniformed officers directed them back. One officer was taking a statement from the driver of a white catering van stalled in the center of the intersection, and two more flanked a person lying on the ground. Even from a distance, Allie was easily recognizable as one of the officers with the injured individual—her ebony hair, gathered in a twist at the back of her neck, and her statuesque body were impossible to miss.

“I’ll check the pedestrian,” Flynn said. “You clear the driver.”

“Got it.”

Flynn jumped down from the cab, unlocked the side compartment on the medic unit, and pulled out the red field-trauma kit. As she jogged over to the scene, Allie looked up, and the beauty of her dark soulful eyes was like a kick in the chest. Painful and exhilarating. Allie smiled and said hi with a hint of Southern drawl, and Flynn smiled back. No point in avoiding the truth. Allie was Allie, gorgeous and sexy without ever trying. Fate had made another decision for her, bringing her face-to-face with Allie’s irresistible charm. Why fight it? Better just to let another piece of the past go, even if another part of her heart went with it.

“Hi, Allie.” Flynn deposited her kit on the ground and squatted next to the victim, a young woman, who lay motionless on her back in the street. The woman, in jeans and a blue tank top, appeared to be in her early twenties, dark-haired, Hispanic maybe, with nutmeg skin, bold dark brows, a strong nose, and a wide, full-lipped mouth. Right now, her lips were pale and her coal-dark eyes unfocused and stunned. Flynn reached for her BP cuff and glanced at Allie. “What do we have?”

“She was on a bicycle,” Allie said, “and she and the van over there met up in the middle of the intersection. According to the driver, he clipped the rear of the bike and she went over the handlebars. She was conscious when we arrived and moving all fours, but she’s disoriented.”

While Allie talked, Flynn wrapped the cuff around the young woman’s right bicep, noting a tattoo of a heart with a knife thrust through it high up on her deltoid. She leaned over so the girl could see her face. “Hi. I’m Flynn, a paramedic. Can you tell me your name?”

The girl didn’t answer.

Dave knelt down across from Flynn and smoothly slid a cervical collar around the young woman’s neck, securing it with the Velcro tab. “Driver’s okay. Shook up. How we doing over here?”

“Ninety over sixty,” Flynn said as the digital readout on the blood pressure cuff settled. “Confused, but no apparent loss of consciousness.” She tried again. “Hey, can you tell me your name? Do you remember what happened?”

The young woman muttered, “Mi—Mica. I’m Mica.” She struggled, twisting from side to side, trying to get up. “I have to get to work. I’m going to be late.”

“Don’t try to move.” Flynn rested her fingertips lightly against the girl’s shoulder. Just that little bit of pressure was enough to keep her down. She set her stethoscope onto the bare skin of Mica’s chest above the scooped neck of her tank top and listened to her heart and lungs. Everything sounded good, and she tossed the stethoscope back into her box. When she looked down, the girl’s dark eyes were focused on her, clear but wary. “Can you tell me where you hurt?”

“Nowhere. I’m fine. I have to go.” Mica looked past the blonde with the concerned gaze and gentle hands to the circle of uniformed officers surrounding her. A swell of panic flooded her throat. She couldn’t afford to be hurt—she had no insurance and almost no money. Worse, she couldn’t afford to be noticed, not by anyone, but especially not by the police. She needed to go to work. If she missed work, she could lose her job. Her boss hadn’t wanted to hire anyone so late in the season, but she’d promised to stay all winter and work for partial wages if she had to. She needed the job. She needed to stay anonymous, unknown, unnoticed. She tried to pull the blood pressure cuff off her arm. “Please. I’m fine. I have to go.”

“Whoa, take it easy.” The paramedic—Flynn?—had a deep voice, calm but commanding. “You need to be checked out. We’re going to transport you to the hospital in Hyannis.”