Bad Penny by Sharon Sala Page A

Wilson, and to do that, she had to move.
     
    She stumbled through the pasture, falling to her knees more than once. It was the overwhelming need to survive that kept driving her to get back up and keep going. Too dizzy to focus and too determined to stay upright, she was oblivious to everything but the effort needed to keep walking until, in the distance, she thought she heard a helicopter—and beneath that, the sound of someone yelling. Someone calling her. But who? Where? Then she saw movement in the distance.
     
    Someone had found her! Someone was coming to help. A few steps farther and she realized she knew that voice—and the man behind it. She began to weep.
     
    She could see him clearly now and began to shake, her heart hammering against her eardrums until she thought her head was going to explode. It never occurred to her to be concerned that she was naked. She couldn’t have cared less if the whole world saw. All that mattered was the man who caught her up into his arms and swept her off her feet. The man who loved her. She heard him thanking God for sparing her right before he buried his face in the curve of her neck and began to cry.
     
    Cat felt the tremors in his body as sharply as the ones in her own. She couldn’t find the words to say what she was feeling. All she could do was hold on.
     
    Finally Wilson lifted his head, running his fingers over her face, then her
     
    body, oblivious to the transfer of mud from her to him. He saw some abrasions and scratches, but in the grand scheme of things, they didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she was still in one piece.
     
    “Catherine…Catherine…oh, God…I thought I’d lost you.” He shook his head, then pulled her to him again. “I don’t know what happened,” Cat said.
     
    “It doesn’t matter, baby,” he said gently. “In fact, it’s just as well. Revisiting hell is never a good idea.”
     
    Cat stifled a sob as Wilson resisted the urge to tighten his grip. He couldn’t tell if or where she was hurt and didn’t want to make things worse. But what he did know was that her presence was a miracle.
     
    Once, when he’d been a kid, he’d seen a whole house taken completely off its foundations and dropped into a pasture a half mile away, while leaving a cup and saucer completely intact on the kitchen table back where it once had stood. The fact that this tornado hadn’t skinned her alive was enough for him.
     
    All of a sudden he remembered the helicopter overhead and the approaching vehicles behind him. He popped the snaps on his shirt, yanked it off and then helped her put it on. His hands were shaking as he struggled to fasten it back up. The shirt covered her to mid-thigh. It would have to do.
     
    When he’d finished, he hugged her again, then laid his cheek against the
     
    crown of her head.
     
    “The truck is in the pond. I thought you were in it.” Cat shuddered, then closed her eyes as he held her.
     
    “I tried to tell myself it would take more than an act of God to take you down.” Then he stood back and fixed her with a pointed look. “You have, however, just used up your fourth life. I’m asking you to be a little more cautious with the last five.”
     
    His reference to the old wives tale about a feline having nine lives was not lost on Cat.
     
    She’d survived the car wreck that had killed her mother when she was six; then, at the age of thirteen, she’d lived even after having her throat cut as she watched her father being murdered. Less than two months ago, she’d been beaten to the edge of death by Solomon Tutuola. Now this. Wilson was right. She was pushing her luck.
     
    Behind them, she heard someone honking a horn. Startled, she flinched, then swayed.
     
    Wilson quickly steadied her. “Hang on to me, baby.”
     
    Reality was beginning to surface. People were approaching, and she was a disaster in progress. She felt her hair, then her cheeks, before peeling a leaf from her neck.
     
    “My