WHEN THE TRUCK smashed through the department store window, Renata Soliz's first thought was of a promise she'd made to herself almost a year earlier. A promise that she knew she was about to break.
But even before the truck had hit, Renata was already moving, grabbing hold of her younger sister and dragging her out of the truck's path to the relative safety of the store's cosmetics counter.
Samantha Soliz covered her head and screamed as the air was filled with flying shards of glass and the pastel-coloured limbs of dismembered mannequins.
With an almost deafening screech of metal on stone, the truck scraped across the store's polished marble floor, point-of-sale displays crushed under its enormous wheels, and shuddered to a stop with its dented chrome radiator only inches away from the store-manager's terrified face.
"Stay down, Sam!" Renata hissed at her sister. She stood up cautiously.
The store manager began to scramble backwards, desperate to get away from the truck. Renata reached out and grabbed his arm, hauling him to his feet.
"Are you hurt?" Renata asked.
"I..." The man was shaking, unable to look away from the truck.
Renata squeezed his arm. He jumped, and spun his head to stare at her.
"Are you hurt?" Renata repeated.
"No, I... I'm all right."
"Good." She reached down and grabbed Samantha's hand, and placed it in the store manager's. "Take my sister through to the back. Try and find our mother. She was bringing our brother to the boys' department."
The man nodded dumbly, then asked, "But... how will I recognise her?"
Renata raised her eyes. "You won't have to recognise her. My sister knows what our mother looks like. Now move!"
As Samantha led the store manager away, Renata looked around.
The store had been relatively empty, and luckily no one apart from her sister had been directly in the truck's path.
A few feet to Renata's left, a young pale-skinned woman was lying on her back, unmoving, her eyes closed. Her left leg was twisted at a painful-looking angle.
Renata stepped over a fallen perfume display - its shattered bottles filling the air with an almost over-powering stench - and crouched next to the woman. She's alive, I think, Renata said to herself. Aloud, she said, "Are you all right? Can you hear me?"
The woman began to shiver and moan, but didn't respond.
From outside, Renata could hear approaching police sirens, and then - from somewhere nearby - the sound of another crash.
A man in a torn security-guard's shirt staggered around from the other side of the truck. Blood was dripping from a wound in his forehead. "Is anyone hurt?"
"Over here!" Renata called.
The guard approached, using one hand to steady himself against the truck. His other hand was pressed against his side. "Stand back, Miss! Don't move her!"
"But-"
"She might have damaged her spine! If you move her without taking the right precautions, you could make it worse."
"We have to move her," Renata said. "She's drenched in perfume from all these bottles."
The guard shook his head. "That's not a good reason."
"Perfume is flammable. One spark and-"
"Ah. Good point." He looked down at the woman. "I can't do it. I think I cracked my ribs."
"I can move her by myself. You see if anyone else is hurt. Did you check on the driver?"
The man frowned. "Driver?"
"Whoever it was who drove that truck through your window!"
"There is no driver," the guard said. "I was outside when it happened. The truck wasn't being driven. It was thrown."