Until I Die - By Plum, Amy Page 0,17

he added.

“Oh, hi, Gaspard!” I said to the air.

“Gaspard asked me to reassure you that he’s not crashing our date,” Vincent said.

“I don’t mind if you want to come along,” I said. “Knowing you, I doubt it’ll be your first time at the war museum.” Vincent offered me his arm and began leading me back in the direction we had come from. “Gaspard actually contributed the research done on the oldest pieces in their collection. He knows the place better than most of the museum’s curators.” He was silent for a few seconds, listening. “He says he’ll pass on the museum, but will accompany us for a few blocks since we’re going in the same direction he was heading.” We started toward the museum, a good twenty-minute walk away, carrying on our bizarre three-way chat for a couple of blocks before Vincent stopped abruptly. “What is it?” I asked, watching his face as he listened to words I couldn’t hear.

“Gaspard sees something. We just have a couple of minutes. Come on,” Vincent said, and, taking my hand, began running down a small street toward one of the larger avenues.

“Where are we going?” I asked as we ran, but Vincent was too busy listening to Gaspard and shooting questions like, “How many people?” and

“Where’s the driver?” My alarm mounted when we reached the boulevard Raspail and Vincent said, “Kate, stay back, and watch out—there’s a truck . . .”

And then we saw it cresting the top of the hill : a large white delivery truck careening down the middle of the four lanes. It weaved dangerously as it straddled the center line, obviously out of control. I gasped when I realized that there was no driver behind the wheel.

Turning to the crosswalk, I spotted several pedestrians crossing the intersection, completely unaware of the danger heading toward them.

Although it was still two blocks away, the truck wasn’t slowing. And at the speed it was coming, the people in the middle of the crosswalk had no chance of escaping its trajectory. “Oh my God. Do something!” I urged Vincent, horror coursing like ice water through my veins.

Vincent was already looking from the pedestrians to the truck and back as he gauged the situation. He hesitated for a split second and glanced quickly my way, furrowing his eyebrows as if weighing something. Something that had to do with me.

“What?” I asked, my voice panicky.

Something clicked in his eyes. His decision made, he shuffled off his coat, dropping it to the ground, and took off toward the oncoming truck.

My heart pounding, I screamed in French in the direction of the pedestrians, “Attention! ” A middle-aged woman glanced back at me, and then followed my gesture up the boulevard.

“Oh, mon Dieu! ” she shrieked, and turning, she threw her arms out wide to push the man and child flanking her back toward the safety of the sidewalk. They would never make it in time. Nor would the college-age girl wearing headphones who hadn’t even heard me yell.

Running faster than seemed humanly possible, Vincent reached the truck, leapt, and landed on the running board. The impact threw him backward, threatening to jettison him off into the road. He scrabbled to hang on to the door handle, steadying himself, and then wrenched it open, grabbing the steering wheel and jerking it to the right. In a screech of skidding tires, the truck jumped off the road and flipped onto its passenger side. It careened a few feet across the sidewalk before smashing with a sickening crunch into a stone wall, only a couple of yards short of the crosswalk.

A split second of shocked silence followed, before a cacophony of shouts and cries began. The couple and their child were on the ground, just short of the sidewalk, having attempted to throw themselves off the road. Passersby rushed over and helped them to their feet. Someone else ran up to the girl with the headphones, who stood in shock in the middle of the road, mouth open and bags spilled on the ground around her feet.

A police siren split the air, as a couple of cop cars pulled off the boulevard Saint Germain into the middle of the intersection, blocking vehicles from both directions. One policeman leapt out to divert traffic, while the others rushed for the accident site.

Vincent pushed himself off the driver’s door, which was now on the top of the flipped truck, and dropped to the ground. Lying on his back on the sidewalk, he folded