Read Online Why Lie? (Love Riddles #2) by Carey Heywood - Free Book Online Page B

only pro as the mud flow angrily pulls at both the branch and her car while the tree struggles to remain upright.
    I’m twelve feet behind her. The flow is spreading, flattening out as the ground levels off.
    She’s still too close to the center. Even if I can get level to Sydney, it will be impossible to reach her. My eyes scan my side of the flow. What I’m looking for I don’t know. It’s not like I expect to find rope and even if I did, without her being conscious to catch it, it would be useless.
    Past her is the paved road. Through the trees and the rain, I see our salvation in the form of flashing lights. My weary legs carry me past her, my eyes moving over her still body.
    Like a wind-up toy slowing before it stills, the branch and her car continue to jerk against the flow. Internally, I scream to stop as I pass her. Arguing with myself that I am strong enough to wade through the river of mud to rescue her. I want to be her hero. It kills me to admit to myself that if I tried, we’d both die.
    When I reach the paved road, I’m able to move faster than through the forest. On both sides of the mudslide, at a distance, are police SUVs.
    They are blocking off the road to oncoming traffic in either direction. A man climbs out of the driver side of the SUV I race toward.
    “Help,” I manage.
    Whether he can hear me I don’t know. With one hand, I motion for him to follow me. I don’t know how long or how far I’ve run but he easily overtakes me and, grabbing my arms stops me.
    “There’s a woman trapped in a car, in the mudslide,” I gasp, before he has time to ask.
    There’s a radio attached to his uniform. He reaches up, presses a button, and barks, “Need an ambulance. Send it up Overlook Lane so it’ll be on the west side of the slide. Get Jimenez and Cross to head up their side of the slide. There’s a woman trapped in a car.”
    He turns and races back to his SUV, opening the back and pulling a bag from it. While he does this, he shouts something to the other officer. He then runs back to me, a black duffle slung over his shoulder and passes me to charge up the way I just came. Following him, each step burns more than all the ones before it because now, I’m running uphill.
    There’s another police officer behind me. I’m guessing whoever was with him in the SUV. My focus remains forward as I try to keep up with the first officer and not get passed by the second.
    The car isn’t where I left it, the mudflow pushing it free from the tree. The officer pulls a length of chain from the duffle and circles it around the base of a large tree trunk.
    It’s a few feet from the edge of the flow. Using a carabineer, he secures it and then attaches a line of cable to it.
    Shaking my head, I watch as he attaches the other end of it to a vest.
    “You can’t go out there,” I argue, watching him pull the vest on.
    “Got any other ideas?”
    The other police officer reaches us. It’s a woman, older than the man now wearing a vest.
    He looks at her. “You good?”
    Holy shit. He’s about to wade into a mudslide yet is asking if she is good?
    Her face a mask of stone, she nods.
    The force of the flow has slowed. Instead of the rapids it was up the canyon, it’s now a thick, slow-moving sludge of peanut butter.
    He moves into it, somehow keeping his feet.
    The rain has let up but still gets in my eyes as it slides down my face. Unblinkingly, my hands in tight fists, my gaze moves from him to the car and back to him. Like some sort of crazy action stunt man, he surges to the car. Once he reaches it, he grabs onto her useless steering wheel.
    My jaw dropping, I watch as he unclips the cable from his vest and hooks it somewhere inside her car. If he falls, if a tree knocks them, he’ll go down. There’s nothing anchoring him to us anymore.
    “Help me,” the female officer rasps from behind me.
    She’s got a crank on the cable. Moving to her, together we turn the crank, each pass tugging Sydney’s