Only We Know (6 page)

Then there was a noise, a crunching metallic scrape, and her car engine stopped. A hand was on her shoulder and there was a deep voice in her ear.

‘Can you hear me?'

Calla moaned. ‘Yes.' Adrenaline coursed through her until her stomach roiled.

‘Are you all right? Can you open your eyes, Calla?' Someone was leaning over her, squeezing into the car. On top of her, all around her. She heard the sound of her seatbelt unclip.

‘Did you knock your head?' A warm hand brushed back her curls and was firm on her forehead.

‘I … I don't think so.'

Strong fingers were on her wrist, pressing down at her pulse point.

‘Do you know where you are?' The question was calm and considered, though almost drowned out by the whoosh in her ears.

‘Some road. Not exactly.' Calla turned to the voice and slowly prised open her eyes.

And then Sam's face was all she could see. His dark eyes stared back at her, right into her eyes, glancing from one pupil to the other and back again. His mouth was a grim line but his manner was steady and authoritative.

‘You're on Kangaroo Island.'

‘I know that much. What's happened?' Calla's voice sounded a long way away.

‘You skidded on the wet road and ran into my car.' Sam let go of her wrist and put her arm in her lap.

‘Oh, shit.'

‘Stay right here. There's been an accident just ahead of us. I'm turning on your hazard lights. Don't move until someone comes for you, do you understand?'

Calla raised a hand to cover her eyes, to stop the throb. Her arm felt heavy. ‘Okay.'

And then he was gone.

Sam threw open the back of his four-wheel drive, grabbed his trauma pack and ran.

When he'd come over the rise a minute before, he'd skidded to a halt in front of the accident scene. His training took over in a millisecond. He'd quickly reversed and swung his car round to block the road. First, protect the scene. He didn't want another vehicle coming up the highway and making the whole thing worse.

As he got closer, his breath clouding as he ran in the cold, he scanned the road. Up on the left, a white sedan had pulled over to the verge, the driver's door already open. He could see movement in the cabin. To his right were two leather-clad bodies, lying crumpled and indistinct on the ground. Their motorbike had skidded into a gum tree, gashed it.

He reached the motorcyclists first. Both rider and pillion had been tossed onto the grass and dirt on the side of the road. Ahead of them, the metallic shards of the motorbike had splintered and twisted beyond recognition. He could smell burnt rubber and fuel leaking from the petrol tank. Neither victim was moving. He knelt down close to the nearest one, a woman, and shouted at her helmet, ‘Can you hear me?'

His knee was instantly wet from the grass. She didn't respond, but he heard sounds from inside her helmet. Was she breathing? He scrambled to the other person, repeated the question, but there was nothing there either.

Sam slipped his fingers through the handle of his trauma pack and ran to the sedan on the other side of the road. New South Wales plates. The bonnet was smashed in, the front window a spiderweb of broken glass. Sam leant down to look inside the open driver-side door. The airbag had deployed and was now a withered pouch on the steering wheel. Sam recognised the metallic smell.

‘Can you hear me? You folks okay?' Two pairs of wide eyes turned to him. Mid-sixties, maybe, both conscious. Pale as ghosts.

‘That m-motorbike,' the woman in the passenger seat stammered.

‘Bloody hell,' the driver added with a cough, his voice thin. ‘It came right at us. On the wrong side of the road.'

‘You okay, ma'am? I can see there's no airbag on that side. Did you hit your head?'

The woman shook her head, sobs rising as her shock set in. ‘The seatbelt cut into me, I think. It hurts.'

‘Are they all right, the people on the motorbike? I'll come and help.' The driver undid his seatbelt and moved to get out of the car.

Sam rested a firm hand on his shoulder, pressed him back down in his seat. ‘I do need your help. Do you have a mobile phone?'

The driver nodded.

‘I need you to ring triple-zero and ask for an ambulance. Tell them we're on Hog Bay Road out of Penneshaw on Kangaroo Island, just past the marina. Can you remember that?'

The driver retrieved his phone from a cup-holder between the seats and dialled.

‘I need to go back to the others. Stay here in the car. It's cold and it might rain again and this is the safest place to be. Do you understand?'

As soon as they nodded, Sam sprinted back to the motorbike victims. Still no movement from either of them. He knelt down on the soggy grass, unclipped his trauma pack and found plastic gloves, snapped them on. He bent down close to the matte-black helmet.

The rider's head was bent back at an odd angle, exposing the skin of his neck between the helmet and the collar of his leather jacket. Sam could see the skin was blue. He pressed his fingers to the carotid artery. Nothing.

‘Can you hear me?' he shouted. No response. Even in the dim morning light he could see blood on the inside of the clear visor. He worked it open. The face inside was still, blood pooling under the nose. There was no sign of life.

He scooted to the woman and searched desperately for a pulse, first at her wrist and then at her neck, and then putting his ear right down to her chest.

That's when he heard it.

There were no breath sounds, no moaning.

There was music coming from her helmet.

It was the same song he'd been listening to when he'd heard the squeal of brakes and seen Calla's red car in his rear-vision mirror, skidding into his.

The flashing lights got brighter and the sirens wailed louder.

Calla watched as an ambulance manoeuvred around Sam's four-wheel drive, followed by a white truck with Country Fire Services in letters on the side. They pulled up ahead and a whole lot of people in uniforms jumped out.

Something terrible had happened. An accident. Isn't that what Sam had said? There had been an accident on the road and, by the look on his face as he'd told her, it was much more serious than the bingle she'd caused by running into him. She wiped the inside of the window, which had fogged up again with her breath. She went to turn on the engine but realised her keys were gone.

Calla felt around on the floor in front of the passenger seat where her rucksack had been tossed. She shoved a hand inside, feeling around for her mobile, but it wasn't there. When she sat up and peered through the window at the flashing lights on the road ahead, she was relieved that her head didn't seem to be pounding so much any more.

Where was Sam? What was going on?

Calla slowly got out of her car, took a few cautious steps. Her back and arms ached. Her head pounded like a heavy metal song in her ears. She felt a chill, and it wasn't from the cold. Her coat was back in the car but she didn't turn around to get it. She began walking as fast as she could, closer to the emergency vehicles, to the flashing lights. Something bad had happened and she had to help.

As she got closer, the damp grass smell became burnt rubber. Fuel and exhaust fumes. Car smells, like a mechanic's garage. The wind was cold and she shivered again. She could hear sobbing and muttering, low voices, but couldn't quite pick where they were coming from.

To the right of the road, two people were hunched over on the grass, one in an ambulance uniform, shoulders and head bobbing up and down. Then the other person moved in and Calla guessed they were performing CPR. She knew what that meant and it made her head throb even more.

She was closer, just metres away.

She could smell petrol, so strong it made her wince, and sulphuric acid. Murmuring voices. Her footsteps crunched on the gravel at the road shoulder, and then softened as she hit grass.

‘Get her out of here.' It was a shout. It was his voice cutting through the chill air. ‘Get her back to her car.'

And then a uniformed arm was around her shoulders, shepherding her away. It was a young woman, her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her face was serious, a smudge of dirt across her cheek.

‘I should help,' Calla said with a shaky voice.

‘They're doing all they can but it's best that you stay back.'

The police officer urged Calla away, but she looked back over her shoulder. The whole thing looked like a movie. All she could see was the top of Sam's head, and his shoulders pumping, fast.

‘It's bad, isn't it?'

‘We're doing all we can. Why don't you go back to your car? I'll get an ambulance officer to come and check you as soon as one can.'

All Calla could do was nod. She walked back to her car in slow motion, her feet moving in direct contrast to her racing heartbeat, which was thumping in her chest like an exploding pulse. She couldn't get the image out of her head. Two shapes in the grass. Black leather and twisted limbs at odd angles. The crumpled mess of a motorbike in a pile of silver and black.

She made it back to her car just before her knees buckled and the pounding in her head turned into messy weeping she couldn't control.

CHAPTER

8

Sam's feet crunched on the broken glass on the road as he walked back to Calla's car.

There was nothing more he could do. The ambos were on it. The smashed vehicles would be towed, including Calla's. He'd given his statement to the local police, who'd told him that Major Crime officers were on their way from Adelaide to investigate the scene and the two fatalities. He'd done all he could, all that his training and experience as a firefighter allowed. And now he was turning his back on it. There was never a happy ending to an accident like this one. At least the couple in the sedan had survived. He'd seen a lot worse, had run into death too many times for it to rattle him.

He knew he was good at his job. He hadn't been made a Station Officer because he had a pretty face. Despite the death and destruction and sadness he saw at work, he had a sense of pride about knowing that he'd done as much as he could to assist those who hadn't made it. Not everyone survived. But some did. He'd learnt to hold on to that and put the rest behind him.

He hadn't stopped thinking about Calla the whole time he'd been dealing with the accident and the victims. The stranger he'd stumbled upon with the flaming-red curls and the big green eyes. The full mouth and the stubborn stare. He knew she was okay — he wouldn't have left her in her car if he hadn't believed that. He hoped like hell she hadn't seen too much.

As he got closer to his car, he could hear her crying softly. He quickened his pace, his heart rate picking up as he jogged to her. Shit. What if he'd been wrong and she was hurt, in pain? He got to her and saw that she was hunched over the steering wheel, her arms crossed on it and her head buried in a damp nest of curls. Her shoulders shook as she cried.

‘Calla.' His voice was louder than he'd planned, more urgent than he wanted.

She looked up, glistening tears streaking down her cheeks. He felt something knot and pull in his stomach. He went to her, crouched down at the driver-side door, reached a hand to her forehead. She was clammy and cold. He couldn't hold her. The best he could do was rest a hand on her shoulder. She fell back against the car seat and looked straight ahead through the windscreen.

He was well aware that he'd shouted at her before. So he found the calmest, quietest voice he could manage. Inside, he was half in turmoil for this woman but he couldn't show it. No good would come from panicking her. ‘How are you feeling?'

Calla let out a deep breath, and he felt her shoulders shiver with it. ‘I can't seem to stop shaking.' Her quivering voice, the tears, the tremor. She needed help. Something stirred inside Sam. This wasn't one for the ambos. He knew what to do. He could take care of it. Of her.

He squeezed her shoulder. ‘I'm sorry I shouted at you before. You should have stayed in the car. You might have a concussion and I didn't want you wandering around.'

Calla turned tearful eyes to him and shook her head just a little. ‘I'm not concussed.'

Sam couldn't see if there was any dilation in her pupils. ‘You don't know that.'

Her breath hitched and she sniffed. Instinctively, he covered her hand with his. She looked down at where they touched. ‘You smell like petrol.'

He managed a chuckle. ‘Yep, probably do.' Her fingers were icy and the denim covering her thigh felt cold under this fingertips. They had to get out of there, to somewhere warm. And soon.

Calla pulled in a shuddering breath. ‘How bad was it?'

‘Bad,' Sam said seriously, matter-of-factly.

‘Did someone die over there?'

Sam hesitated. She didn't need to know the details, not now, anyway. He changed the subject. ‘Listen. We need to get you out of the cold, and judging by the way your car is wrapped around my tow bar, and by the radiator fluid all over the road, your little red wagon is cactus.'

Calla's bottom lip trembled. ‘You're kidding.'

‘No.'

‘Oh, shit.'

Sam lifted his hand to stroke her cheek. It was meant to be a comforting gesture, something to slow down her breathing, get her heart rate to settle. Instead, it sent his racing.

‘Listen. It's cold out here and it's starting to rain again. Between us we have one car that works. What do you think about loading any stuff you've got into my car and me taking you wherever you need to be?'

Calla had a big coat over her like a blanket and she pulled it up to her chin while she looked to be considering his offer. The way he saw it, she didn't have any choice. If she thought he was going to leave her on the side of the road, freezing, scared shitless, possibly concussed, crying and upset, she was crazy.

‘Where do I need to be? Back in Adelaide, that's where. Not in the middle of nowhere on Kangaroo Island with a smashed car. With you. Sam. Sam whose last name I don't even know.'