Free Lone Star Burn: Taken by Surprise (Kindle Worlds Novella) by Desiree Holt

this distance, he could see the man’s face was flushed red and his chest heaved with his breathing. The other EMT, whose name Jack didn’t know, was still checking the man’s vitals.
    “He was drunk.” Jack made it a statement, not a question.
    “Yes.” Andy clipped out the word. “We gave him a Breathalyzer, and he blew the top off it.”
    Jack started toward him, but Andy grabbed his arm.
    “You won’t do yourself or Jessie any good if you get into a fight with this guy. As soon as we wrap up the scene, we’ll cart him off to jail.”
    “He could have killed her.” Jack barely got the words out through gritted teeth.
    “But she’s still alive.”
    “Are you sure?” Jack looked through the window on Jessie’s driver’s side. Fear choked him as he saw that she was unconscious, her head lolling to one side, the deployed airbag surrounding her and the steering wheel pressing her into the seat. “Is she breathing?” He was almost afraid to ask.
    The EMT—Jack thought his name was Casey—had come up next to him and nodded his head. “Yeah. I got a good look through the window. But she’s out cold, so the faster I can get to her the better.”
    “Any second,” Andy told them, his words immediately followed by the sound of clanking chains, a heavy motor and the screech of metal being separated from metal. The offending vehicle was jerked away from Jessie’s car and dragged out onto the highway.
    Immediately, the two deputies went to work opening Jessie’s driver’s side door and then stepped aside so the EMT could get her out of there. The airbag had deflated by now and the electrical system, still worked, so they could slide the seat back to remove her. But everyone was being careful not to jar her body in case of injuries they couldn’t see. Jack could barely keep himself still while he waited. It seemed to take forever for them to get her out of the car. One of her legs was injured and her left shoulder was at an unusual angle. He nearly decked the EMT who wouldn’t let him get close until he had Jessie on the stretcher and was checking her vitals.
    “She’ll be okay,” he told Jack. “But she’s got a head injury and her leg may be broken. Let us get her into the ambulance.”
    It took longer than Jack would have liked before they actually had Jessie loaded and the ambulance on its way.
    “I’m going to the hospital,” he told Andy. “You guys can make do without me.”
    “No sweat.” Andy clapped him on the shoulder. “I don’t think you’d be much use to me right now, anyway.”
    Even though he had the lights on and the siren wide open, it seemed to take forever until he got to the hospital. Then he had to fight his way through Emergency and their red tape to even find where they’d taken her. They finally told him which treatment room she was in after he threatened to arrest everyone.
    He had to stop and pull himself together when he saw her lying on the bed, whiter than the sheets, a doctor on one side of her and a nurse on the other. But he breathed a small sigh of relief when her eyes opened.
    “Give us a few minutes here, Deputy,” the doctor said when he tried to get next to her.
    “Is she all right?”
    The man smiled “I can tell you better if you let us check her over.”
    “I’ll need the details of her condition for my report.”
    “I’m aware of that, Jack. And I’ll get to it a lot quicker if you leave us to it.”
    “Fine. But I’m not going far.”
    Jack paced the waiting room after they shooed him out, ready to bite nails if someone didn’t tell him something soon. He’d been waiting about half an hour when Rona and Alton showed up from the diner.
    “Diane and Bob made us promise to call as soon as we got here.” Rona held up her cell phone. “And a bunch of the customers said they want to hang out there until we know something. We all decided just to keep the place open until whenever.”
    Jack could hardly swallow past the lump in his