Gabe (In the Company of Snipers, #8)(13)
Gabe rolled the twinge of aggravation out of his neck. There was a helluva lot more than eggs in that grocery bag. Right out of California nights or not, Nurse Sullivan had a nasty air of superiority that tested his patience, and he didn’t have much. Ninety minutes could be a damned long time for a woman at risk.
As usual, Zack stuck his foot in it and the vehicle flew. There was no sign of Kelsey’s small blue sedan at the coordinates Mark sent—not that it mattered. You couldn’t miss the flashing red and blue emergency lights or the bright yellow police tape. By the time Zack rolled the vehicle to a stop, Gabe had his feet on the ground.
Zack headed for the sheriff’s car, Miss Sullivan on his six. Two local sheriff cars, one fire engine, a tow truck, and an ambulance stood with engines running and lights flashing. A long section of the road had been cordoned off with police tape while an officer routed traffic around the scene of what, Gabe couldn’t tell. No cars. No accident.
He ran to the rear gate of the ambulance where two medics leaned against the back bumper, their arms crossed, watching the tow truck winch a car out of the river. Kelsey’s car.
“Where is she?”
One medic lifted off the bumper. “Don’t ask us. All we know is we’ve got one car in the river, but no driver. If you know anything, you need to be talking with the sheriff.”
Gabe pivoted, his heart in his throat. He teetered back on his good foot, the life knocked out of him all over again. God. This can’t be happening.
“Kelsey Stewart,” he said hoarsely. “That’s her car. She’s my... friend.”
“Listen, man.” The medic cupped Gabe’s elbow. “You’d better take a seat with us before you fall down.”
“No. I’m good.” Gabe brushed the kind suggestion aside, not willing to admit he wasn’t as sure-footed as he’d like to be, but could things get any worse?
He headed toward the tow truck, its rear wheels still in the river, while Zack talked with one of the deputies.
Nurse Sullivan ditched Zack and tagged along with Gabe. “The deputy said if she’s not here at the scene then she’s in the river. He doesn’t think we’ll find her alive.”
“Not Kelsey,” Gabe ground out.
Sullivan seemed to be one of those types who needed to yak when they got nervous. “But he said it’s the only thing that makes sense, especially since she was a grieving widow. Said he sees this all the time. An emotional woman loses control of her car on a turn, and—”
Gabe spun on his good heel, not going to entertain that idiotic conclusion for one second. “Not Kelsey, damn it. You don’t know her like I do. And there’s no turn on this stretch of highway. Why don’t you look at the evidence before you jump to conclusions?” And why don’t you leave me the hell alone?
“What evidence? All I see is mud and first responders.”
He glanced over his shoulder, needing to put more distance between him and this annoying woman. She had one of those cute little perky noses that barely turned up at the end. For a scant second, remorse flickered across her face. And why Gabe noticed, he didn’t know, but she seemed—lost. Maybe baffled. Out of her depth.
He gave her the benefit of the doubt and explained a few things to set her straight. “Look at the debris field,” he muttered, pointing to the tire tracks leading down from the concrete highway all the way to the river. Another deputy stood in the center of the road with a camera and scribbling on his notepad, hopefully documenting the accident instead of just accepting his boss’s version.
The more Gabe looked, the more things didn’t add up to the sheriff’s hasty conclusion of a driver losing control. He pointed to the muddy trail between the road and the river. “See there? Do you see any plastic trim or shattered glass?”
Sullivan followed the direction of his index finger. “I see some red plastic pieces on the highway, but—”
“Probably brake lights. That’s all. But if a car rolled like the deputy said, there’d be a trail of litter and car parts all the way to the river. Side mirrors. Trim. Maybe hubcaps. Other stuff, too. And another thing.” He scrambled back to the roadway where the alleged rollover began, dragging the nurse along to make sure she knew better. He pointed at the overabundance of black rubber on the road, most of it fresh and dark, arcing across the four-lane highway. “She had to be travelling west to east. What do you see?”
Sullivan shielded her eyes against the weak morning sun with her right hand. “Umm, nothing.”
“Give me a break. Skid marks. You see skid marks. Look at ’em. See how they tend toward the river? Looks to me like someone hit their brakes and jerked their wheel hard to the right. And that one.” He indicated a clear set of rubber to the east of the first arc. “Someone else braked hard to the left. And those.”
He pivoted, needing Sullivan to understand the dynamics of what most likely happened on this stretch of road before she shot her big mouth off again. “Those wider patches are called yaw marks. All that rubber you’re looking at is what gets left on concrete when tires are forced sideways. Normal skid marks are narrow except for the point where they turn. You see anything that looks like a car rolled now?” he asked, his Irish up and his blood pressure with it.
He would know. His ex-Air Force father, now a police officer in Texas, had once testified against a mob killing along the Trinity River. At that time in his teenage life, Gabe only cared about hotrods and racing his sixty-three Chevy Nova.