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licking along its length and up along the dried grass.
    The smell of gas and flames and blood hit him hard. Jake hesitated long enough to report the accident from his cell phone. Leaping from the Ferrari, he sprinted toward the closest car, the crushed Volkswagen. The road was strewn with shattered glass and metal fragments. Shaina and her new boyfriend lay motionless on the ground in the distance, blood running from them in streams. Neither had been wearing a seat belt and both had been thrown several feet from the car. He doubted if anyone could have lived through the force of that head-on collision, but something propelled him forward in spite of the flames moving quickly along the road.
    Gas was everywhere, even splashed along the mountain-side where the Volkswagen had tumbled end over end. Inside the Volkswagen, two occupants were hanging upside down, held by their seat belts, heads and arms dangling limply. He pulled at the nearest door. It was already hot with the flames licking at it from the flaming grass on the mountain. With superhuman strength he tore it open and reached inside to unsnap the passenger’s seat belt. The body fell into his arms.
    It was a woman, covered in glass and blood but alive. The burning gas left him no time to examine her first. He lifted her out of the crumpled vehicle, closing his ears to her cry of pain. He ran a distance from the cars to deposit her on the grass. Blood was pumping from a terrible gash in her leg and he yanked off his belt and wrapped it tightly around her thigh, just above the gash.
    When he turned back, the Volkswagen was already engulfed in flames. He had no hope of bringing out the other victim. He hoped the occupant had been killed instantly. Resolutely he turned toward the convertible. He had covered half the distance when an agonized cry froze him in a fragment of time that would remain etched in his mind forever.
    “Andy!”
    The woman he had rescued had somehow managed to get to her feet, which was a miracle, considering her injuries. She stumbled back toward the Volkswagen. For a moment he could only stare incredulously. She had broken bones, was covered in deep, ragged gashes, her face was a mask of blood, yet she was running back, right into a wall of flames, and she moved with astonishing speed.
    For a split second, pure shock held Jake frozen to the spot. The gasoline on the road had ignited. The flames actually licked at her legs, yet she continued to race toward the fiercely burning vehicle. The woman had to have known the car was going to explode at any moment, yet still she ran toward it.
    Jake cut her off just a few feet from the car, snatching her up into his arms, sprinting away from the intense heat and building conflagration. She fought like a wildcat, kicking, scratching, the blood making her so slippery he lost his hold more than once. Each time he dropped her, she didn’t hesitate to turn back, her eyes on the burning car as she tried to run and then crawl back toward it.
    “It’s too late,” he cried harshly, “he’s already dead!” Ruthlessly he flung her to the ground, covering her body with his own, pinning her down while the earth beneath them rocked with the force of the explosion.
    “Andy.” She whispered the name, a lost, forlorn sound wrenched straight from the heart.
    In an instant, all the fight went out of her. She lay motionless in Jake’s arms, small, completely vulnerable and broken, her eyes staring up at him, unseeing. Again, time seemed to stand still. Everything tunneled until he was focused wholly on her eyes. Enormous, tilted like a cat’s, aquamarine with dark orbs, unusual and mesmerizing, now haunted. She seemed familiar—too familiar. He knew her, and yet he didn’t.
    For the first time in his life he felt a strong protective urge welling up out of nowhere. He became aware of the gathering crowd staring down at the woman as others leaving the party came upon the scene. Instinctively he shielded her, barking