Hidden Embers Read Online Free PDF Page A

digging in the trunk for her spare tire. Work-related injury, her ass. More like getting blown to hell and back by some amateur idiot’s idea of a bomb. Because of it—and the numerous surgeries she’d had to repair all the damage—she was sidelined for another four to six weeks before the CDC would even let her back in the door. And at the rate things were going, it would be at least another six months before she could even think about getting back into the field.
    Being denied access to her work was as close to death as she could get and still be breathing—much worse than the car bomb that had gotten her in Sierra Leone. Which was why she’d jumped into her car and headed for New Mexico almost as soon as she’d gotten off the phone with Phoebe. She’d been too itchy to sit still for much longer.
    Her arm twinged as she yanked out the tire, but she ignored it. It had only been two days since the cast had come off—of course her muscles were going to complain a little bit. It had been weeks since she’d done anything more strenuous than flipping the channel on the remote control.
    But as she positioned the jack under the tire, her side did more than twinge, and she had to stop to catch her breath. When was the damn thing going to heal? Jasmine wondered as she braced her palms on her knees. When was she going to be back to normal? This whole weakness thing sucked ass.
    The doctor side of her felt obligated to remember that it had only been forty-nine days since they’d pulled some heavy duty shrapnel out of her side.
    It had been only forty-nine days since she’d broken four ribs, shattered an elbow, punctured a lung, cracked her ankle and sustained a pretty heavy-duty concussion.
    Not to mention that it had been a whole lot less than that since the last of the surgeries to correct the muscle and ligament damage to her hip and shoulder. Maybe changing a tire was pushing things just a little.
    The thought grated, and she blocked out the searing pain as she bent and started pumping at the jack. She’d been on her own since she had left home at sixteen, and she took pride in the fact that she was almost completely self-sufficient. She didn’t need—or want—some man to take care of her, to change her tires and tell her what she could or couldn’t do. She would rather eat dirt.
    But self-sufficiency was one thing and stupidity another, she reminded herself as her torso caught fire. The ribs obviously weren’t healing up as fast as she’d thought—and taking off the binding today had been pretty damn stupid. But the thing had chafed after a few hours of driving, and she’d slipped it off in a restroom in Mississippi. Clearly, doing so had been a bad move. Maybe there was a reason doctors weren’t supposed to treat themselves, after all…
    When the pain grew bad enough that she had trouble breathing, Jasmine stood up and leaned against her car. She gave up on changing the stupid tire by herself. Reaching into her back pocket, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed AAA. One of the things about having a classic car was that she had the auto service on speed dial.
    Within minutes, she’d arranged for someone to come fix her tire, though the estimated time of arrival was about an hour and a half, which meant she had to put her plans of stopping in El Paso that night on hold. Her experience with tow trucks told her that an hour and a half was really more like two to three hours, especially after working hours, and she really didn’t want to be pulling up to a motel at five or six in the morning, hoping to get a little sleep just as the sun came up.
    Which meant she was stuck here in Fort Stockton for the night. Fantastic . She looked around the deserted street, noting lights about half a mile away, but decided she wasn’t comfortable leaving her baby alone on the side of the road. So, with a disgusted sigh, she crawled back into her car, locked the doors and prepared to sleep until the tow truck finally showed