Ghost Dance (Tulsa Thunderbirds Book 3) (8 page)

As fast as I could, I assembled my wheelchair and transferred myself over to the seat. Then I dug a credit card out of my wallet to use in the pump and dumped my purse and keys on the driver’s seat. Only then did I realize the machine had a message scrolling across it in flashing neon green: PAY INSIDE, CARD READER OUT OF SERVICE.

Lovely.

The thought of putting myself and my chair back in my car, driving to a different pump, and doing it all over again wasn’t my idea of a good time. I grabbed my purse, set it on my lap, and took off across the lot to prepay for some gas.

A bundled up woman was racing out as I reached the door, and she held it open for me. I made my way to the end of a line that had to be seven or eight deep.

Then I realized Dmitri Nazarenko was in front of me, holding a red gas can.

“Think we’ll get enough to take your snowmobile out or something?” I asked him.

He spun around and, once his shock at finding me there wore off, glared at me. “It’s for snow blower. Helping neighbors.”

“What a guy,” I teased, winking up at him.

He turned around and ignored me.

“I’m heading over to my brother’s house. They want me to join them now so I’ll be there for Christmas. You know this is all going to turn to ice before long, right?”

“Was here last season, too,” he grumbled after a moment. I noticed he didn’t bother to face me when he spoke.

“Is Sergei still around?” I asked, determined not to be swayed. I had way too much fun digging at this man. “You didn’t leave him in the car, did you? Those titanium legs get cold—”

“Sergei flew back to Russia. Home to his family.”

“I guess you don’t get enough time off to go back to see your family, huh?”

“Sergei is my family.”

The way he said it, I was almost positive he meant that Sergei was his
only
family. Despite my intention of poking the bear, a piece of my heart broke for him.

“Are you spending Christmas with Hunter and Tallie, then? Or one of your other teammates?”

The line thinned in front of us, and he moved forward without responding.

“What, so does that mean you’re staying all by yourself?”

“Going to blow snow for neighbors,” he said. Then he got to the front of the line and passed some bills into the cashier’s hand, mumbling a pump number. As soon as he was done, he took his gas can and headed for the door.

“Merry Christmas, Nazarenko,” I shouted at his retreating back.

“
Schastlivogo Rozhdestva
,” he called over his shoulder.

I wheeled up to the counter and passed the harassed-looking cashier my card. “Can you put twenty on pump ten?”

He glanced out the front windows, squinting into the snow. Then he shook his head and looked at some monitor that was angled in such a way I couldn’t see it. “There’s no vehicle at pump ten, miss.”

“Pump ten,” I said. “The one I buzzed you from a few minutes ago. Gray Chevy sedan.”

He shook his head again and scanned the monitors some more. “There’s no gray Chevy out there. There’s no vehicle at pump ten.”

Of all the insufferably stupid people… Fuming at his idiocy, I snatched my card out of his hand and wheeled myself back outside, ready to get back into my car and keep driving until I got to the next gas station.

Only he was right.

My car was gone.

My car, with thirty thousand dollars worth of modifications to make it accessible, might as well have just vanished into thin air. The mods had cost me more than the car. That thing was my lifeline. It allowed me to live on my own, without the need for people to constantly help me do every tiny thing.

In shock, I shoved my hand into my coat pocket, digging for the keys. Nothing. Checked the space in my purse where I would have put them. Not there, either.

Then it hit me. I’d tossed them on the seat along with my purse when I’d taken out my card to pay. But once it was clear I needed to go inside to pay, I had only grabbed my purse. The keys had been sitting there, just waiting for someone to come along and take them. And my car.

“Well,
fuck
! Goddamn fucking piece of shit,” I shouted, causing a few people to turn and stare from their gas pumps. I tried not to curse like that under normal circumstances, but this didn’t quite fit into the
normal
category. Didn’t want to slip up in front of Gray’s kids. I was supposed to be the awesome aunt, but he wouldn’t let me be around them too much if I started cussing like a sailor.

Nazarenko was just pulling away from another stall. He stopped in front of the store when he saw me and rolled down the passenger-side window of his vehicle.

“Where’s your car?” he demanded, his voice gruff. “It’s cold.”

Pretty sure I already knew how cold it was, thanks. I had to fight down the urge to roll my eyes at him. “I think some asshole stole it.” Because I was a freaking idiot.

WHO THE FUCK
steals a disabled woman’s car in the middle of a snowstorm? I’d been in that car. It wasn’t like the asshole could’ve gotten in and missed the fact that it had been modified.

I didn’t want anything more to do with London Hawke—I’d told myself that I shouldn’t have to deal with her again after that night a week ago—but I couldn’t leave her sitting there in her wheelchair.

Grinding my jaw together, I leaned across the seat and opened the door for her. “Get in.”

“Why?” she demanded. Clearly, the damned woman was determined to be obstinate about everything.

“Because it’s cold as balls and car is stolen. Get in.” I put my car in park and got out to help disassemble the wheelchair and put it in the backseat. It wouldn’t be as easy to maneuver things to lift it all behind her without the modifications she’d had made to her car, so I assumed she’d need some help.

She glared at me when I reached her side, but she lifted herself into the seat. Maybe she had some sense, after all.

“Tell me how to take it apart,” I said.

Instead of telling me, she pushed a few levers and took the wheels off herself. I put the wheels in the back and then the body of the chair, then shut the door and returned to the driver’s seat.

She was still glaring at me. Damn, but she was hot when she did that.

I drove out of the parking lot and turned right, with the snow coming down harder than ever. Snow had never bothered me any, but it was like a unicorn around here—such a rarity that people acted like it had to be all in their imagination. I’d learned last season just how stupid these people could be when it came to winter weather. I’d hoped to do my business and get home before the roads got too bad, and before too many of the stupid people were trying to get wherever they intended to go for the next few days, but it didn’t look like that would happen.

“Wrong way,” she said. “You need to turn around and go left.”

“Police station is this way.”

“I want you to take me to my brother’s house.”

“Need to file police report.”

“I can call them to report it.”

I supposed she had a point about that. Not that I’d ever admit it to her. I found an open lot and used it to turn around. “Then call. And tell me where to go.”

“Just get on the highway and stay on it for a while,” she said, taking out her phone and dialing a number. She explained what had happened to the officer on the other end of the line. Within a few moments, she’d hung up. “They said to get home first and then call to file the report. They don’t want people out in this.”

We were still on the service road, about to enter the on-ramp, when I saw all the brake lights up ahead. Then a car on the highway swerved to avoid hitting someone in front of them and ended up in the ditch.

“Maybe not the highway,” I said.

“The highway will be safer than the side streets.”

“Don’t think anywhere is safe.”

She sighed, but then she pointed me toward another street up ahead. “Try taking a right at the light.”

The light turned red before we reached it. I carefully braked, but without snow tires, we slid a lot more than I would have liked. The car came to a stop before we ended up in the intersection. A big pickup truck that had been waiting at the light had a hard time getting enough traction to move, and once he got started, he almost slammed into us.

“How far your brother lives?” I asked. My house was only a couple of blocks away. The sooner I could get back there, the better. There were too many people in this city who didn’t know how to drive in this stuff, and I wanted to be as far away from them as I could get.

“He’s about four miles northwest,” London said. “Takes less than ten minutes, in good weather.”

But this wasn’t good weather. Even if I managed to get her there safely, the return trip to my house was going to be treacherous.

“Not sure we can make it there,” I said. “How far is your house? Might be better to just go home.” I fully expected her to argue with me, to try to convince me we’d be just fine and I should take her to her brother’s house anyway.

“Half a mile. But my keys were in the car. I can’t get in without busting a window or breaking down the door.”

That wasn’t going to happen. No way in hell would I leave her alone in a house with cold air coming in, let alone one where she couldn’t lock the door for protection.

I turned to look at her, hating myself more with each second that passed for what I was about to suggest, but I couldn’t see any way around it.

“Need to take you back to my house,” I said. “It’s close. We can get there.”

Between the angry tic in her jaw and the glare drawing her eyebrows together, there was no chance she would agree. She hated this as much as I did. Maybe more. But then she sighed and shrugged. “I suppose you’re right. Let’s just hope we don’t kill each other before we thaw out.”