Shawn's Law by Renae Kaye Read Free Book Online

standstill. I looked at Shawn.
    “Shall we help?” he asked. “Do you think anyone is hurt?”
    A flash in my rearview mirror caught my attention. I shook my head in disbelief. “You wouldn’t believe it. What good luck. There’s an ambulance and a police car about three cars back. The police car has already parked itself across the three lanes to stop the traffic.”
    “Good luck?” echoed Shawn. “You think it’s good luck to get in an accident?”
    “No,” I said, “I think it’s good luck to have an ambulance and police car behind you if you’re going to get into an accident.”
    The van driver was already getting out of his vehicle to inspect the damage. We were one of four cars stopped on the accident side of the police car, but not involved. “Did you see anything before the accident that could help the police?” I asked Shawn. He shook his head. “Do you have any first aid skills that could be used?”
    He gave me a look to say I was being a dumbass. “I have trouble putting Band-Aids on.”
    “Alrighty, then. I guess we’re not any help and should get going to clear the area.” The road ahead was now empty, with the tail end of the traffic snaking up and around the bend. I drove off, carefully maneuvering around the van driver and picking up speed on the now-unoccupied freeway. My adrenaline was still pumping and my heart racing. That part usually came at the end of my dates, not the beginning. I smiled at Shawn and reached for his hand. “Lucky, weren’t we?”
    He squeezed my fingers and grinned back at me. “Let me check my undershorts when we get to the restaurant before I count myself lucky. When that bang came I—Look out!”
    By this time we were tooling along at nearly the maximum speed allowed on the freeway. I hadn’t yet caught the traffic jam, but other cars had joined the road from the on-ramps and were racing beside me. I caught the flash a moment before Shawn’s warning cry. An older model red car was towing a rusty old trailer, and it was trying to merge into the sparse traffic up ahead. I caught the motion as the car suddenly swerved around something on the road. I saw a flash of black on the road—probably someone’s tire blowout—as the red car and trailer jerked to the side. The trailer blindly followed the car, but its right tire didn’t. Like a goofball movie scene, I watched the trailer jerk to the left, and its right wheel slip off the axle and continue on its merry way, veering slightly to the right—directly into our path.
    It lost momentum almost immediately, which meant we were on a direct collision course. Fortunately that adrenaline was still pumping around my body, making my reflexes superquick. A brief glance in the mirror to check if there were any other cars traveling beside me, and I swerved around the tire. The trailer had dropped to the road and was throwing off sparks as it was dragged along the tarmac. I dashed between the rolling wheel and the sparking trailer, and skirted the braking car. Then I made for the emergency lane on the left where I halted suddenly, leaving black rubber in two strips because I had stomped the brake pedal.
    There was silence in the car as we both struggled through the last four seconds of our lives until I could finally reach over and turn the car off. My hands were shaking.
    “You okay?” Shawn asked.
    “I’ll need to check my undershorts at the restaurant before I can answer that,” I quipped.
    He laughed and looked over his shoulder, back down the road. At the rate we’d been traveling, the car and broken trailer were a sizeable distance away. “We’re going to have to stop this time,” Shawn said, and I had to agree with him. I took a glance in the mirror and scoffed in disbelief.
    “Oh, my God. You wouldn’t believe how lucky we are. A cop car just pulled up behind us.”
    “Lucky?” Shawn asked drolly. “We were just nearly cleaned up by a stray wheel, and you think we’re lucky?”
    “Yep. Lucky