Breaking Free: A Colorado High Country Crossover Novel

by Pamela Clare

  “You’re the person who can help us answer that question. If you see fresh sign, we’ll have some idea where to set up traps.”

  “Traps?” Winona looked alarmed. “You’re not planning to use leg-hold traps, are you? I was thinking about the big steel cage traps, the kind used to lure problem bears.”

  Henriksen shook his head. “The only way to get one of those up there is to chopper it in, and the Forest Service won’t commit to using a helicopter. That rules out aerial darting, too. I already asked. What other choice do we have?”

  The answer was obvious to Jason. “We find fresh sign, track it, tranquilize it, and tone out the Team again.”

  “I’m not sure about your employer, but the Forest Service isn’t going to want me to be tied up with this for the next month.”

  Jason started to say that it wouldn’t take him a month, but Winona spoke first.

  “Leg-hold traps can be dangerous. We could injure the animal—or it could injure itself trying to escape. Besides, wolves are notorious for being able to avoid leg-hold traps. You might not capture it.”

  “I don’t like this either.” Henriksen shrugged. “It’s a risk we have to take.”

  Jason could see that Winona wasn’t happy about it.

  Henriksen pulled a tablet out of his pack and pointed to a map on his screen. “Here’s the location of the illegal camp, and here’s where the four-wheeler flipped and the wolf was last sighted. We head up in my truck, hike to both locations, and set out traps with wolf attractant.”

  Winona pointed to the screen. “The wolf might go back to the Cimarron. That’s where his food came from, and he knows it. Wolves can go without food for several days, but he will get hungry. You should contact the Wests and put a trap there, too.”

  Henriksen nodded. “Good idea. I’ll check the traps every day and call you when we catch it. I don’t want this boy to get hurt, either.”

  “I know.” Winona drew a breath, clearly not happy with her options. “Once he’s trapped, I’ll come up with the Team, tranq him, and we’ll carry him out. I’ll care for him at the clinic if he’s injured in the process.”

  “It’s not ideal, but it’s better than letting him starve or get shot by an angry rancher.” Henriksen put the tablet back into his pack.

  Jason wasn’t a wildlife expert. “Don’t you risk trapping something else?”

  Henriksen shook his head. “The wolf attractant takes care of that problem for the most part. Other animals stay away.”

  “Even animals that have never smelled a wolf?”

  “I guess we’ll find out.”

  Winona shouldered her pack. “We should get going.”

  “All aboard.” Henriksen gestured toward his vehicle.

  Winona held back while Jason moved through the site of the camp, cutting for sign. How he could make sense of it was beyond her. So many people had walked through here, the muddy earth a confusion of boot prints. Though the Forest Service had already removed Thomas Graham’s structures, belongings, and trash, signs of environmental damage were everywhere—the trunks of felled trees, a pit toilet that had held human excrement, a wide area of mud where there should have been grass and duff.

  Jason knelt, touched his fingers to the soil. “The wolf has already been here. These tracks are from early this morning. He was walking around the area where the smokehouse used to be.”

  Winona glanced at the forest around them, wondering whether the wolf was still nearby. “He’s hungry.”

  “I’ll set a trap there.” Ranger Henriksen got to work.

  He had his job, but Winona had hers. She wanted to find the wolf before it stepped into a trap.

  “He went west from here.” Jason followed the tracks, and Winona followed him.

  They hiked up the mountain, snow crunching beneath their boots.

  Owoooo!

  Winona stopped, listened. She heard the loneliness and fear in that howl, and her heart broke. “He’s searching for his pack. He’s all alone.”

  She needed to find him, to reunite him with his mate and pups.

  Jason’s gaze was on the snowy ground. “This way.”

  They’d gone another ten minutes when Henriksen caught up with them. “Did you hear that howl?”

  Winona nodded. “He’s close, and he’s scared.”

  “We should head in this direction.” Henriksen pointed to the northwest. “Up there is where the four-wheeler overturned.”

  This time, Jason answered him. “That’s not where the wolf went.”

  Henriksen stared at them for a moment. Winona didn’t begrudge him. She knew he had a supervisor to please and different priorities.

  He relented. “I’m going to call this in and tell them we spotted it. That’s not exactly true, but you’ll back me up.”

  “I will.” No problem there.

  “It will at least buy us time to pursue. But if we don’t make visual contact within an hour, we’re going back to the original plan. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.” Winona was genuinely grateful. “Thank you.”

  They trudged on, stopping once for water and a snack. Then the wind picked up, clouds moving in from the west.

  Henriksen reached for his hand mic, asked dispatch for a weather update, got no answer. “I’ve lost radio contact.”

  Winona checked her cell phone. “No service.”

  Owoooo!

  Another plaintive howl.

  “We’re getting closer.”

  They hiked on, leaving behind a meadow for a thick stand of lodgepole pines.

  Jason stopped. “He was just here. He rested.”

  There at the base of a tree was a depression in the snow. Winona could see not only paw marks, but also dark fur that had been rubbed off by the bark. There were fresh tracks in the snow heading due west now.

  Then Winona spotted the animal. “Stop. He’s still here.”

  She dropped her backpack, took out a block of frozen beef, cut off a piece. Then she walked between the trees to get a clear line of sight to toss the meat and—

  “Win, stop!”

  Click. CRACK!

  Agony.

  Winona screamed, collapsed to the ground, pain shattering her left leg, the shock of it driving her to the brink of unconsciousness.

  “Jesus!” Jason was there beside her, but he sounded far away. “It’s an old, steel bear trap. Help me get it off her—now!”

  “I’ll open it. You pull her leg out.” That was the ranger.

  Fresh pain brought her back as they moved her. “Stop!”

  “We have to get this off you.” Jason caught her beneath her arms. “You ready?”

  Winona heard Henriksen grunt with effort, opened her eyes, saw blood.

  “It’s stuck!”

  “We have to break her free, or she’ll bleed out. You can do it, Henriksen.”

  The ranger tried again. “Got it!”

  Jason dragged her backward, pulling her free, the pain of having her leg dragged over the snowy ground making Winona cry out, driving her once more toward darkness.

  The trap closed with a sharp snap.

  Hands touched her leg, the pain terrible.

  “She probably has a tib-fib fracture.” Henriksen sounded afraid. “She’s bleeding pretty badly. I think it severed an artery.”

  “Do you have a medkit? She needs a tourniquet.” That was Jason again.

  “Just basic first aid, but there is a tourniquet. No pain meds.”

  Something landed in the snow beside her. She willed her eyes to open, saw an orange bag with a white cross on it.

  “You go for help. I’ll do what I can for her.”

  “I’m going to head back toward the campsite and try to get a radio signal. I’ll have to wait there and lead rescuers to you.”

  “Do it. Go!”

  Boots in snow, moving fast.

  A zipper being ripped open.

  “Win, can you hear me?”

  “Ja… son.”

  “I’m goin
g to tie a tourniquet below your knee. I’m sure it will hurt like hell, but I have to stop the bleeding. You’re going into shock.”

  “My kit.” It was so hard to think and harder to speak, her body shaking now. “Ketamine. Seventy-five mgs. My quadriceps.”

  But her kit was beneath her in her backpack.

  “I’ll tie the tourniquet first and then get you pain meds.” He cut off her pant leg below the knee and then got the tourniquet ready. “I’m so sorry, Win. I saw the chain around the tree the second before you took that last step.”

  “Not … your … fault.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Her hands clutching at her thigh, Winona gritted her teeth against the pain as he tied the tourniquet. Then she slipped into blessed darkness.

  Heart slamming, his mouth dry from fear, Jason worked quickly. He secured the tourniquet and checked for a distal pulse to make sure it was tight enough. Then he removed Winona’s backpack and took out everything he thought he’d need. Her medical kit. A warm woolen hat. An emergency blanket. An IV kit. A bag of lactated Ringer’s. Bandages. Then he spread the emergency blanket on the snow and settled Winona in the middle of it, taking advantage of her unconsciousness to move her. He used his pack to elevate her injured leg, then searched for the ketamine and a syringe.

  Seventy-five milligrams.

  He jammed the needle into her quadriceps and injected her with the medication, fears rushing through his mind. What if, in her semi-conscious state, she’d gotten the dosage wrong and he killed her? What if help didn’t get here fast enough and she lost her leg? What if she bled out?

  Damn it! Fuck!

  He’d seen it—the big chain tied around the tree—but she’d been beyond his reach, and his shout of warning had come too late.

  Shit!

  He drew a deep breath and fell back on his training. Because they spent so much time in remote locations, all Shadow Wolves had medic training. He had practiced starting IVs. He willed himself to focus on that and not let his thoughts drift.

  He drew one of her arms out of her parka, pushed up her sleeve, found a good vein. In under a minute, he had fluids opened wide. Then he wrapped her in the space blanket, put the hat on her head, and tucked her backpack beneath her head as a pillow.

  But there was one more thing he wanted to do while she was unconscious. He found a couple of dead branches close to the ground on some nearby trees and kicked them free from the trunks. Then he used a bandage from Henriksen’s medkit to build a kind of splint—just something to hold her leg steady and give it some support.

  This was Graham’s fault. The bastard!

  Jason had seen traps just like this one—illegal thirty-pound steel bear traps with teeth—in the asshole’s tent. The son of a bitch had probably strung illegal traplines through the forest, and the wolf had followed them, looking for its master. The animal knew where the traps were hidden—Winona had said wolves were notorious for their ability to avoid traps—and had rested next to one.

  Winona moaned as he handled her injured leg, but he steeled himself against his emotions, focused only on the task at hand.

  Then he heard it—licking and gnawing.

  The wolf.

  It was no more than ten feet away from him, lying on its belly, gnawing on the chunk of frozen beef it held between its front paws—the beef that Winona had tried to throw its way.

  Damn.

  It was huge, with dark gray fur and almost yellow eyes.

  Jason’s gaze dropped to the blood on his hands, the blood in the snow, the blood on Winona’s leg. He had no idea how the hungry animal would respond to the scent of so much blood. Would it attack?

  He took his Glock out of the holster, checked to make sure there was a round in the chamber, then slipped it back. Then he reached into Winona’s pack and drew out the bag with the frozen beef.

  He spoke in a calm voice, broke off another chunk, and tossed it over. “Are you hungry, boy?”

  The wolf was startled by his motions and withdrew a few feet before returning and feeding hungrily.

  “He’s… hungry.”

  Jason was relieved and surprised to see Winona’s eyes open. “How much ketamine did you want me to inject?”

  He wanted to double-check.

  “Seventy-five milligrams… every thirty minutes. Keep track … how much. Tell the Team.”

  He glanced at the time. “Twenty minutes until your next injection. Are you getting relief?”

  “Enough.” There were lines of pain on her face, but her gaze was on the wolf. She spoke to it in her mother tongue, her voice reassuring, both of the animal’s ears turned toward her. “He’s … beautiful. We should … dart him.”

  Leave it to Winona to think of the wolf when her own life was in danger.

  “How do I do that?”

  “The darts… my medkit. They’re ready. The dart gun. Strapped to the side of my pack. It’s easy.”

  Jason had qualified as an expert marksman with rifles, so he ought to be able to figure this out. That’s what he told himself, anyway.

  Without moving Winona, he managed to get the dart gun. He played with it for a moment, examined the action, saw that it was essentially an air gun that used compressed gas to propel the dart, which was, from the look of it, a ballistic syringe.

  Okay, he could play.

  He loaded a dart into the contraption.

  “How long … before they come?”

  Jason had been too busy to ask himself that question. He glanced at his watch. “It’s only been about twenty minutes. I don’t know how far Henriksen has to go to get back into radio contact.”

  When Henriksen did reach dispatch, it would take several minutes to tone out the right people and another hour for the Team to get to the parking area. They’d hiked for three hours to get to this spot.

  Jason’s heart sank.

  They won’t make it in time to save her leg.

  Not unless they came by helicopter, and even then…

  With a tourniquet, she had two hours, and that was it. After that, the tissue damage from lack of blood flow would be too severe. Though he’d originally been trained to release the tourniquet every thirty minutes, that recommendation had changed after too many people had slowly bled to death, one release at a time.

  Winona put her hand on his. “Wait. We can’t … dart the wolf yet. Too long … until they get here.”

  Jason’s chest constricted to think that she’d been asking about time for the wolf’s sake and not her own. “Okay, then. We’ll wait.”

  He set the dart gun aside and got the next syringe of ketamine ready for her.

  Chapter 20

  Jason injected Winona with another seventy-five milligrams of ketamine, watched the pain on her face ease a little, her suffering tearing at him. “Better?”

  She nodded, her eyes drifting shut.

  And for a few minutes, she seemed to sleep.

  The wolf sat nearby, watching through those golden eyes. It hadn’t shown aggression or gotten closer, which was a relief. It also hadn’t run off. If it stayed here, he’d be able to dart it, and Winona’s suffering wouldn’t be for nothing.

  He broke off another chunk of meat, tossed it, watched the wolf snap it up with powerful jaws. “You really are hungry.”

  “He wants … to be with people.” Winona’s eyes were open.

  “You think he’s lonely?”

  “He’s … alone and scared. He misses ... his pack. He’s not used … to being by himself.” She spoke to the wolf in Lakota.

  As if it understood, it whined and crept a few inches closer, still sitting.

  She had such skill with animals—and more than her share of courage. Jason had never been this close to an apex predator, and he couldn’t say he felt comfortable with two hundred pounds of hungry carnivore sitting ten feet away.

  The minutes ticked by with agonizing slowness. Though it was mid-afternoon, the sun had moved far enough to the west to leave them in
shadow, and the temperatures were dropping. The IV of fluids he’d set up had run, the bag empty.

  It had been an hour since Jason had applied the tourniquet. In another hour, it would be too late to save Winona’s leg. By his estimation, help was still a good two hours away.

  Goddamn it.

  Winona moaned, her eyes flying open. “Jason?”

  “I’m right here.” He took her hand, held it tight. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Winona drifted in and out, sometimes lucid, other times seeming unaware of her surroundings, speaking in Lakota. Was it dissociation from the drug? Shock? Blood loss?

  God, he wished he knew. He’d never felt so helpless.

  He found himself humming an O’odham basket song, the music played for his grandmother and other women at basket dances. The sound seemed to comfort Winona, who, for fifteen short minutes, fell asleep.

  Moving slowly so as not to alarm the wolf, he checked her leg to make sure there wasn’t any bleeding that he’d missed.

  The wolf crept closer.

  Jason tossed it more meat, but he was running low. He didn’t want to run out before it was time to dart the animal. “That’s all for now, boy.”

  The wolf ate, licked its paws, stared at Winona.

  “My leg.” Winona’s eyes opened. “I’m going to lose it… I know. But I don’t … want to die here.”

  Jason hoped it was the drug talking, her words cutting through him. He squeezed her hand. “I’m not going to let you die, angel.”

  “I’m … so cold.”

  He dug in her pack, drew out a couple of hand warmers, got the exothermic reaction going, and tucked them inside her parka close to her heart, wrapping the emergency blanket around her once again. “Is that better?”

  She nodded. “Thanks.”

  Hurry the fuck up, Henriksen!

  “Jason, I want … to tell you … to thank you. I’ve never … felt so close to … or cared about a man more ... than you.” A tear slid from the corner of her eye. “You … You’re the best.”