Sheer Dynamite

JACK DAVIS FOUGHT DOWN the air bag and scrambled from the cab of his truck. The woman he'd rammed into was already out of her sporty red mini-SUV and on her hands and knees looking beneath the vehicle. "What are you doing?" Jack swallowed the epithet he'd been about to use. He'd learned to apply politeness regardless of the circumstances. Still entranced with the underside of her car, the woman didn't respond. Standing in the center freeway lane, Jack surveyed the slow-moving traffic on both sides of him. For once, he could appreciate a Silicon Valley rush hour. If they'd been going faster, they wouldn't have made it through the collision without serious injury. Christ. Jack turned to the gold Cadillac that had rear-ended him when he'd slammed on his brakes. The Caddy's driver hadn't moved yet, though his air bag had deflated. Jack ran back. Squatting by the Caddy's closed window, he shouted through the glass. "You okay?" No answer, but at least the old man's eyes were open, though dazed, and he'd turned his head. Jack whipped his cell phone off his belt and punched in emergency. With the call made, he opened the door slowly. The cars in the commute lane to his left moved over to the shoulder, giving him room. He held the man back against the seat when he tried to move. "Just stay put until the ambulance gets here. They need to check you out. Feel like anything's broken?" The old man shook his head, but would he really know? His eyes couldn't seem to focus on Jack's face. At least there wasn't any blood. Jack stood. Then he saw the woman again, the one responsible for the accident. This time her head was underhistruck, her butt in the air, short skirt barely covering her essentials. "What are you doing now?" Stalking back, he grabbed her arm and pulled her out. Still on her knees, she stared up at him with the bluest, most freaked-out eyes he'd ever seen. "Didn't you see it?" "See what?" he asked as calmly as possible. She'd started to worry him. He looked for blood on her head, or any sign of trauma. "The body. It fell off the overpass right in front of me. I ran over it." She was young, mid-twenties or so. Blond hair that curled softly over her chest, ocean-blue eyes, a healthy bloom to her cheeks and, from his vantage point as she knelt beside his truck, nice...nice everything. Despite being nuts. "I didn't see a body flying off that overpass, ma'am." Jack struggled to retain that ingrained politeness. She bit her lip, then looked through his legs at the Cadillac. "Maybe it's under there." Jumping up, she tipped sideways on her high heels, leaning dangerously close to the commute lane. Jack reached out to grab her, but she recovered on her own and rushed around him to peer beneath the old man's gold car. She leaned into the open door of the Caddy. "Did you see a man fall off the overpass?" The old man shook his head. He still hadn't spoken, and Jack was anxious about him. The gas fumes and the noise started a pounding in his head. "You could have killed someone slamming on your brakes like that." She sucked in a breath. "Oh, my God, I didn't...are you all right?" "Fine. Thanks for asking." He didn't point out she should have shown the concern before she crawled under his truck. She put a hand on the old guy's shoulder. "What about you?" He smiled up at her blissfully. And nodded. "I'm so sorry. But the body fell right in front of me." Jack closed his eyes and shook his head. "There is no body." She stared at him with guileless eyes. "But I saw it." He didn't know why he was trying to convince her, but he walked to the front of her car, leaned down to look under it, did the same with his own truck--aw, Jesus, the crushed bumpers and tailgate made him wince--and finally the Cadillac. Then he spread his hands. "Nothing here." Sirens sounded in the distance. Behind them, traffic was stacking up. "NSkully, Jennifer is the author of 'Sheer Dynamite', published 2006 under ISBN 9780373771325 and ISBN 0373771320.