fresh surge of panic rose in her chest. “I can’t... I don’t know what to do. I hear the ambulance, but it’s not here yet. I don’t know what to do,” she cried.
“Put pressure on her wound, Julie.” He sounded calm and in control. She would’ve paid money to be calm and in control.
“I’m doing that.” She continued to rock back and forth. A helicopter came into view overhead and circled. The car continued to burn and the black noxious fumes billowing high made her sick to her stomach. The longer she sat there the more her leg hurt.
“Stay on the line with me. Don’t hang up.”
Julie shook her head. “She was going to take my car to Arizona. It just blew up. She was walking back to get inside and it just...” She took a ragged breath. “She can’t die. She can’t die.”
“Keep pressure on her wound. She’s breathing, right? She’s going to be okay, sweetheart. I’m on my way.”
The wailing sirens got louder and a couple of minutes—that felt like forever—later, two fire trucks and paramedics pulled to a stop in front of her house.
“They’re here. Help is here. I have to go.” She disconnected before he said anything, not that she’d have heard him anyway between the sirens and the helicopter overhead. Hot tears scalded her cheeks as men rushed in to help. Firefighters leaped out of the truck and pulled off hoses from the back.
“The car just exploded,” Julie said as a firefighter eased her away from her mom and paramedics went to work. She took a step and her leg gave way. The man caught her and helped her to the ground.
“Need some help over here,” he called to one of the paramedics. A tall muscular blond with dark eyes rushed over and quickly sliced off Julie’s jeans at midthigh. A deep gash bled down her leg onto the grass.
The paramedic looked up and did a double take. “Hey, you’re Julie Fraser. I loved you in Dangerous Race. Great movie.”
Julie nodded and shifted, trying to see what the paramedics were doing to her mother. Firefighters doused her car with foam. An ambulance pulled up and two EMTs quickly wheeled out a gurney. “I’m going with her,” she said. She didn’t care if she sounded like a bitch, but she didn’t plan to let her mother out of her sight until she had to.
The house. She needed to lock up the house. Close the garage door. Julie took a closer look. The frame of her garage had warped from the heat of the fire. Her garage door wouldn’t close. She could lock the inside door, but everything in her garage was fair game to anyone walking by.
She didn’t give a shit.
With support from the firefighter, she got what she needed and locked up the house. By the time she came out, her front yard swarmed with uniformed men, police and firefighters alike. Minutes later, she sat in the front seat of the ambulance headed to the Cedars Sinai emergency room.
They made her sit in a wheelchair and rolled her into the E.R. as they pushed her mother’s gurney into a treatment room. Photographers came out of nowhere and bulbs flashed in her face, leaving spots in front of her eyes. Dried blood had caked along her leg and she looked like an extra in a zombie movie. She could only imagine her face had similar cuts to her mother’s.
Agonizing minutes passed as she waited for a doctor in a treatment room. One of the paramedics from the scene stopped in to say her mother was stable, but after a few minutes, his partner grabbed him to respond to a nearby accident. The longer she waited, the more she started trembling again. Every muscle shook out of control.
The fact that someone wanted to kill her so desperately didn’t make sense. Who had she pissed off so badly that they resorted to shooting at her and making car bombs? Her eyes stung and a knot lodged in her throat. She wanted her mother, but her mother was in another room, unconscious. She covered her face with her hands and tried to get a grip, tried to control her sudden erratic breathing.
She’d never felt more alone in her whole life.
* * *
Allen stared at the news bulletin with wide eyes. The Channel 5 helicopter had captured it all. This had to be the tenth time he’d seen it and his stomach still twisted as he watched. She’d nearly been