Wild Montana

by Danica Winters

  A thin bead of blood slipped down Casper’s hairline and stopped next to his earlobe. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  He nodded, reaching up and wiping the blood away, leaving a streak of red on his cheek. “I’m fine.”

  In the group of people beside Casper there was a man staring at her. He wore a black leather vest with the words “Madness and Mayhem.” Just below them was the word “Montana” and then a black patch with red stitching that read “Filthy Few.” On the other side of the man’s vest was a patch that read “one-percenter.” The man had gray hair and even though it was dark, he had on sunglasses.

  The man must have noticed her looking at him, as he lifted his chin in acknowledgment. This must have been the man who had been following them, the headlight in the mirror. Yet before she could speak, someone stepped in front of him and the man disappeared, becoming just another face in the growing crowd.

  On the rock wall beside them she could see the glow of red and blue lights. Tires crunched on the side of the road as the EMTs pulled to a stop.

  “Everyone out of the way!” the paramedic yelled as she pushed her way through people.

  The EMTs poked and prodded Alexis, taking her pulse and checking her reflexes with lights. Even without them telling her, she knew everything wasn’t right. She closed her eyes and when she reopened them she was already strapped down to a board, her head and back immobile, and they were loading her into the back of the ambulance.

  “Casper...” Alexis whispered as the female EMT stepped up into the back of the ambulance beside her.

  “What, honey?” the EMT asked.

  “Where’s Casper?”

  “Your friend?”

  Alexis tried to nod, but was stopped by the thick straps on her forehead. “Yes. I want Casper.”

  The woman jumped out of the wagon and a moment later, Casper was sitting beside Alexis. He smiled. The blood on his temple had dried. “I’m here.”

  There was so much going on. So much she didn’t understand. “Stay with me,” she pleaded, suddenly afraid.

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’m not going anywhere. I’ll stay by your side as long as you need.”

  * * *

  HE’D SEEN MORE people hurt than he could count, but he’d never felt as terrified as when he saw Alexis covered in blood and confused. Hopefully she would be okay. She was so out of it.

  She slept as they waited for the doctor to return with the results of her MRI. He hated the monotonous, shrill beeps of the machines that filled the emergency room.

  Reaching into the plastic bag at his feet, he pulled out the little sewing kit he’d bought at the hospital’s shop and grabbed her pants from the foot of her bed. He pushed his fingers through the L-shaped hole in her pant leg from where she had caught it on the deadfall. She probably didn’t care about the pants, but he couldn’t sit there with nothing to do but worry.

  He pulled out some string, threaded the needle and set to work as he sat in the pink vinyl seat beside her bed. When he’d been younger, his mother had told him that good domestic skills were the mark of a true man.

  The stitches were even and as he mended, he kept looking up, hoping Lex would wake and everything would be okay.

  He hated this. He hated hospitals—it brought up moments of his past that he never wanted to relive. The sooner they could be out of here, the better.

  Every hospital he’d ever been to carried the same overpowering disinfectant smell. They could scrub away the blood and the waste products, but no matter how much they tried to hide it, he could still make out the pungent aroma of panic and fear. Yet as he sat there working, he wondered if the scent was carrying in from the patients or from those waiting for their loved ones to be helped.

  He reached over and caressed Lex’s hand. There was no more fear for her, not now, not with the drugs that filtered through her system to numb her pain. Now the fear was solely his.

  His phone buzzed. “Hello?”

  “Agent Lawrence, this is Ranger Grant with the Glacier National Park Rangers Office. I was one of the responders at the scene of your accident. I believe you left me a message?”

  “Thanks for returning my call. I appreciate it,” Casper said. “Did you manage to find the evidence?”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. “We found two large hiking backpacks—which I assumed were yours and Alexis’s—and there was an empty green military-style bag.”

  “Empty?”

  “Yep.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. You sure there wasn’t anything in the bag?” He pulled a hand over his face, trying to stave off the start of a headache.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The drugs were packed into bricks. Were there any that had spilled out? Maybe into the truck bed or on scene?” He tried to sound calm as he thought about what it would mean if the drugs were truly missing.

  “I didn’t find any bricks of drugs, but your topper took a pretty big hit when you rolled the truck.” The man paused. “When we pulled up, the truck’s topper door was open. I guess it’s possible they fell out and weren’t recovered.”

  “Or they were taken...”

  His mind raced. Who’d want to take the drugs? Only a few people had even known that they had them and were taking them back to Apgar. Was it possible that the coroner or one of the rangers had said something? Or was it completely a random occurrence that they had been in an accident and the drugs had been stolen?

  He didn’t believe in coincidences, but he had a hard time believing that the rangers or the coroner would have any ill-conceived ideas of stealing the drugs. No one had seemed overly preoccupied with them on the scene. If someone had wanted them, Casper would have had some type of clue. He was jumping to conclusions... No doubt the drugs were probably scattered along the roadside near their crash site.

  “Can you make a run back up to the site? Take another look around? We can’t have thousands of dollars’ worth of drugs get into the wrong hands.”

  “No problem... I’ll call you when I get back into cell service and let you know what I find.”

  Casper squeezed Lex’s hand. It had started to chill under the hospital’s air-conditioning and he carefully tucked her arms under the warm blanket.

  “Thanks, Grant,” he said. “Appreciate your help.” He moved to hang up.

  “Wait, Lawrence,” the man said.

  He lifted the phone back to his ear. “Huh?”

  “We did find a receipt inside the green bag. It was wadded into a ball and was stuck in the bottom corner.”

  A receipt? He thought back to everything he’d dumped out of the bag. He didn’t recall a receipt. Was it possible it had been there the whole time, or had the person who’d stolen the drugs accidentlly, or purposefully, left it behind?

  “What about the money?”

  “No money. Just the receipt,” Grant said, sounding tired. “I’ll take a picture and send it your way.”

  “Thanks, Grant.”

  “No problem. We’ll start putting out feelers. If the drugs were stolen, maybe we can help you try to get a handle on this before word moves up the chain. Hate to see you get in trouble.”

  “Let me know if you hear anything.” He hung up the phone.

  He moved too fast as he pushed through another stitch and the needle jabbed into his finger, making him curse as he pushed his finger into his mouth to stem the blood flow.

  He was going to be in deep trouble if the news that he’d fallen victim to a heist hit the Fed circuit. If it did, within twenty-four hours everyone from his boss to his old FBI buddies would know that he’d lost a vital piece of evidence.

  Just when he thought things couldn’t get any worse.

  He knotted the thread as he finished mending the hole and then put everything away.<
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  He was going to need to get in touch with his boss. He glanced down at his watch. Midnight. No wonder Grant had been tired.

  Instead of calling and waking up the captain, he wrote him a bare-bones email that emphasized the fact he was sitting in the ER. It was low, playing the mercy card, but he needed to buy some time and a little leniency. The last thing he needed his boss thinking was that he lost the drugs due to his incompetence.

  The door to Lex’s room opened, but with the curtain drawn around her bed he couldn’t see who was coming in.

  “Is this the right place?” a man asked, his voice tight and filled with panic.

  “It is, Mr....” a woman answered.

  “Yellowfeather. Travis Yellowfeather.”

  Casper’s heart lurched in his chest. What was Lex’s ex-husband doing here?

  He looked down at her sleeping face and contemplated waking her. Yet she looked so peaceful, her eyes fluttering with REM sleep and her hair, still specked with blood, haloed around her head. She needed her rest.

  “Mr. Yellowfeather, I’m afraid she already has a visitor. We only allow one visitor at a time,” the nurse said.

  “To hell with one visitor,” Travis said, pushing aside the curtain.

  As soon as he saw Casper, Travis’s eyes darkened and his lips curled into a smirk. “I should’ve known it was you who would be here. I guess it wasn’t enough that you got her hurt, now you have to stay here to make sure she doesn’t die—all in an effort to save your conscience, I suppose.”

  Casper went slack-jawed, but he quickly recovered his composure. “Who do you think you are, Travis, walking in here and accusing me of anything?”

  “I’m her damned husband,” he retorted, moving to the side of Alexis’s bed.

  “Ex, from what I hear.”

  Travis’s scowl darkened. “She told you?” He snorted. “So she’s already on the prowl,” he said, half under his breath.

  “Why don’t you leave, Travis? I know she wouldn’t want you here.”

  “And you think she wants you?” His scowl turned into a dangerous smile. “If you think that, you don’t know Lex at all.”

  Travis wasn’t wrong. He couldn’t tell anyone Alexis’s favorite sandwich or the color of her childhood bedroom, but that didn’t mean he was going to leave her here with the man whom, only hours before, she shied away from. He knew fear and hatred when he saw it.

  “If you think she would want you here, then I may know her better than you do,” Casper said.

  Lex’s hand tightened in his and he turned to see her eyes fluttering open. “Boys,” she said, her voice weak, “don’t fight.”

  Travis pulled his lips into a tight line, but he shut up.

  “How are you doing, honey?” Casper asked. He moved to caress her face but stopped as he felt Travis’s gaze searing into him. Lex didn’t need a fight, and no matter how much he disliked the man standing at the other side of the bed, he had been right—Casper barely knew her. They had talked a lot as they hiked, and there had been playful banter, but they were only friends.

  She blinked for a few moments, as if trying to make sense of her world. “What are you doing here, Trav?”

  Travis stepped closer to her and took her other hand. “I heard you were in an accident.”

  He suddenly felt out of place as Alexis said her ex-husband’s pet name. Maybe he’d misread the entire situation. Maybe she didn’t hate Travis like he’d assumed. He let go. He was the interloper here, not Travis.

  “But why are you here?” She moved her hand out of Travis’s. Casper hoped she would reach over for him, but she remained still. “You and I are done. You made that abundantly clear.”

  “We may be divorced, Lex, but that doesn’t mean that I can just stop worrying about you.”

  She pushed the button that moved the bed up. “Actually, Travis, that’s exactly what a divorce means. If that’s not what you wanted, then maybe you should have treated me like your wife instead of just someone you could use and throw away.”

  Casper cleared his throat, his discomfort rising. He shouldn’t have come here and inserted himself into whatever domestic situation they had going on. “Hey, Lex, I’ll see you later.”

  “No,” she said, her voice strong. “You stay here. Travis, it’s you who needs to go.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Travis spat. “You are going to let this son of a—”

  Alexis stopped him with a wave of her hand. “Just go.”

  Travis looked at her and started to open his mouth to say something, but must have thought better of it. He turned to Casper. “You think she’s great now, but let me tell you a little something about Alexis Finch. She only cares about two things—the park and how she fits into it. She doesn’t care about anyone or anything else. If you think you are going to change her or if you got some notion that you are going to be someone she gives two shakes about...” He snorted. “You got another thing coming.” He turned and stalked out of the ER, rattling the curtain rings as he bulled through them.

  Casper stood in silence, staring at the curtain. He had no idea what to say. Divorce was never pretty—especially when it came to navigating the waters of a new relationship. Not that they had a relationship, but things could get a bit hinky when it came to seeing an ex with someone else.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Lex said. She tried to move her head, but it was still in the confines of a brace and as she moved, she winced.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, the tired edge returning to her voice.

  “I’m serious, I can go, Lex. I don’t want to...interfere.”

  Her lips turned into a thin smile. “You made a promise. You said you would stay by my side, remember?”

  He moved closer to her bed. He thought about reaching down and taking her hand, but now that Travis had been there somehow it didn’t seem right.

  “How’re you feeling?”

  “I feel like I was in a fight... Who won, me or the truck?” Her lips curled into a playful half smile.

  There was a knock on the door and the doctor pushed back the curtain. He had a black tablet hugged to his white lab coat.

  “Mrs. Finch?” he asked.

  “Miss,” she answered.

  “Right, Ms. Finch, I’m Dr. Tag, the neurologist here at Kalispell Regional. I just got off the phone with your brother, Dr. Paul Finch. He was very concerned about your well-being.”

  She cringed at the sound of her brother’s name. “I’m sorry, Doctor, he can be a bit...overwhelming sometimes.”

  Dr. Tag didn’t smile or nod, rather, he remained unflappable, making Casper wonder if that was exactly what had drawn the man to medicine.

  “It was no problem, Ms. Finch, but you should call him back when you get the chance. I think he wishes to speak to you regarding your accident now that you’re awake.”

  She nodded but looked down at her hands.

  “As for the results of your CAT scan, you are experiencing a slight bit of swelling, consistent with a mild concussion.”

  “What does that mean, Doc?” Casper asked, trying to mimic the man’s cool demeanor.

  “It means that for the time being, I’d like to have you stay here and be monitored for any residual effects. However, I think it would be safe to send you home tomorrow. You will just need to rest and everything should sort itself out.” He tapped on his tablet like he was noting something in her chart. “You are a lucky woman. A TBI, or a traumatic brain injury, can have a number of long-term effects, but from what I’m seeing on your scans, you should be okay.”

  Casper let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. In a day that had been filled with nothing but death, despair, accidents and blood...something was finally going right.

  Chapter Five<
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  Lex took a tentative step out of the car as Casper raced around from the driver’s side to help her into her house. He wrapped his arm around her waist and took hold of her arm as he cradled her body against him. He was so...warm. In fact, he was so warm that she wanted to move closer to him, to rest her body against him and let his heat ease the pain that seemed to pulse from her bruised and battered body. He smelled of hospital, but beneath the sharp odor of antiseptic was the heady scent of his sweat and the tangy edge of fresh air. She closed her eyes and took his scent deep into her lungs, trying to remember it for those nights that she would be alone.

  “Do you need anything for your house? Groceries? Anything?” Casper asked.

  “No, uh, I think I got everything I need.” She looked over at him as she spoke and saw his face was tight, just like it had been when the doctor had been in her hospital room last night. It was sweet that he was so worried about her, but he needn’t be; she was strong. “Thanks for giving me a ride—and for keeping the car on the road this time,” she joked, trying to make light of the accident.

  Her joke fell flat as his brow furrowed and a storm brewed in his eyes. “I’m so sorry, Lex. I...I never wanted you to get hurt—”

  She stopped him by pressing her finger to his lips. The instant she touched him, a strange buzz of energy filled her and she quickly lowered her hand. “You—it wasn’t your fault. It was unavoidable. That car came at us. Seriously, don’t worry. Everything is fine. And hey, at least it was a work truck, right?” She struggled to find the right words to make him feel better, and to quell the surging need to touch him again.

  He looked at her and some of the darkness in his eyes lifted. Before he could say anything, she stepped out of his cradling arms and hurried toward her house.

  The log cabin was dark brown and its windows were trimmed with white, and like most of the other buildings of the park, it radiated with a cozy, rustic charm that always beckoned her home. She’d spent the last few summers holed up in the tiny building with Travis, often hating its inconsistent hot water and the electricity that seemed to come and go depending on the weather, but regardless of its downfalls she loved the place.