Sand Angel Page 0,34

was giving him a horrible headache. His fear for Zoë wasn’t helping it. “What are we going to do now?”

“Pray.”

“Dammit, Josh, I mean it.” Tension crawled across Drew’s shoulders and up his neck.

“So do I.” He stood like a man carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. A huff of disgust left his lungs. “Man, I screwed the pooch on this one. Whatever made me think I could mend the rift between the two of you?”

“You can try to answer that question later. Right now we need to find Zoë.” Drew headed toward the door. “I need to explain. I need to tell her I love her,” he said more to himself than Josh.

Glamis was big. Really big.

After an hour of racing up and over hill after hill, Drew steered his quad over to the side and waited for Josh to pull alongside him.

“This is futile,” Josh said. “We’ve checked all the large dunes and exhibition sites. She could be anywhere.”

“Maybe the best thing to do is to go back to camp. She has to come back sooner or later.” Just then Drew heard the thump thump of helicopter wings. It was a familiar sound.

“God. No,” Josh whispered, gazing into the sky at the aircraft that moved quickly through the patches of clouds. His face lost all color.

“What?” Before Josh could answer, Drew heard the sirens in the distance. He knew they only called in the helicopter when someone was really hurt. He’d seen this scene over and over again in Iraq. Especially in places out of the way like Glamis. The helicopter and miles and miles of desert caused memories to swamp Drew. He could still hear the soldiers’ cries and screams sometimes at night.

Drew felt like one big bundle of nerves as he revved his engine and followed the crowd racing in an effort to see where the aircraft headed. Disaster was a magnet, pulling people toward it. Morbid really. Yet he had seen more carnage than he cared to ever see again.

Neither he nor Josh spoke what was on their minds.

Zoë.

Briefly, Drew lost control of his vehicle, nearly wiped out on a patch of soft sand. His quad swerved one way and then the other, making squirrellies, trails of waving lines, in the sand behind him.

Zoë had to be okay. There was so much he needed to tell her. So much of his life he wanted to share with her. His wrists and hands ached from the long ride to the restaurant. But he rode hell-bent, at the same time paying close attention to the shifts of the sand as they topped one hill and then another. The bottom fell out beneath him once and he went soaring through the air, leaving his stomach somewhere between where the ground disappeared and then reappeared with a thud. At the rise of a particularly large dune, Josh stopped. Drew pulled up beside him.

In the distance, the helicopter was landing. The lights on a ranger’s paramedic truck flashed as a crowd swarmed the area. It was difficult to see exactly what was going on, but it didn’t look good. And it was right around where their campsite was.

It seemed to take forever to get off the dune and make their way through layers and layers of gawkers. Josh and Drew parked their bikes between Zoë’s and Josh’s trailers and made their way on foot, pushing and shoving through the crowd. Drew moved like the devil was after him. Josh was right beside him.

The wall of people was too thick to breach. Josh turned to a bystander. Breathless, he asked, “What happened? Who’s involved?”

“Race gone bad,” the man said. “Damn shame too.”

“What?” Josh and Drew said in unison.

“She was a pretty thing.”

Drew held his breath. “What was she wearing?”

When the man said, “Pink,” something died inside Drew. Nothing could hold him back as he and Josh tore through the crowd. The masses broke and they stumbled into an opening.

Zoë was being loaded upon a stretcher, while two other people were being lifted into the helicopter.

As they tried to make their way toward Zoë, they were stopped by several rangers.

“She’s my sister,” Josh growled as he tried to pull away from the officers restraining him. His eyes were bright with emotion. “Let me go.” He jerked free and ran to Zoë’s side.

What was Drew to say? He couldn’t even claim to be Zoë’s boyfriend. He was probably the last person she wanted to see. In silence, he watched Josh rush