by Cari Hunter
The numbers crept up to ninety-five percent and refused to go beyond, but the medics appeared to relax somewhat, and that was good enough for Sarah. They seemed even happier when the park ranger ran over to report that a rescue chopper was en route with an ETA of fifty minutes.
“We should let Harborview know about the pulmonary edema. She might need CPAP,” Renee said, her fingers pressing down Alex’s neck and spine. “Anything hurt back here, Alex?”
Alex shook her head before Renee could tell her not to.
“Think you might be happier if we don’t strap you onto a long board, huh?” The look Alex gave her must have been answer enough because Renee patted her arm and smiled. “You gonna behave yourself for Theo while I have a look at Sarah here?”
Alex gave her a weary thumbs-up and offered her wrists to Theo as he set down dressings and antiseptic.
“Now, where were we?” Renee said. Placing a hand on Sarah’s forehead, she frowned and used her free hand to pull her kit bag closer. “Dammit. Theo, have you got the tympanic?”
The thermometer beeped three times in Sarah’s ear. Sarah studied the ground intently as she waited for the verdict, which came with a low whistle of dismay.
“One-oh-one point eight.”
“Is that bad?” she asked, already certain that it was far from good.
“I’m guessing you’ve felt better,” Renee said evasively, beginning to select IV supplies from her kit. “Marilyn told us you got shot. That was a few days ago now?”
“Yes.” Sarah had no idea precisely how many days. She lifted her sweater away from the bandage on her side. “Alex had to stitch me up.”
A look of unguarded horror flitted across Renee’s face before she swiftly buried it beneath a mask of professionalism. She gestured to the stained dressing. “Okay if I take this off?”
Dirt filled Sarah’s fingernails as she gripped hold of the ground, but she nodded slowly. She could see now where the inflamed skin was bulging beyond the dressing, and the draft of cool air passing across it was enough pressure to make the pain nearly unbearable. She tensed when Renee’s gloved fingers touched her abdomen.
Renee quickly rolled a blanket to place behind her. “I think you better lie down for this,” she said. She helped her lean back onto the pillow and wrapped a cuff around her upper arm. “That’s gonna go tight for a minute.” She watched the monitor as the numbers calculated. “You been dizzy? Sick?”
“Yes,” Sarah said, feeling a combination of both as she answered. “It comes and goes. I could look after Alex okay for a while and then it’d hit me.”
“Certainly hitting you at the moment,” Renee muttered, unsheathing a needle that bore an uncanny resemblance to a drainage pipe. “Your blood pressure’s way low.”
“Mmm.” Clouds scudded across the sky, fading and sharpening as Sarah stared at them. Cold fingers prodded hard, just above the tattered skin on her left wrist, and she heard Renee warn her about a “sharp stick.” She nodded in sympathy; she had stood on a lot of sharp sticks when she had been running around without her boots on. The sympathy lasted right up until she felt Renee dig the needle deeply into her arm.
“God.” She moaned and tried to pull away, but hands gripped her shoulders, keeping her in place. Instead of struggling, she just started to cry quietly. “Please don’t,” she whispered, as someone began to unpeel the tape around the dressing on her side. “Please don’t do that.”
“Start her with five,” Renee said, somewhere beyond her line of sight. “She must be hurting like hell, the poor kid.”
There was a warm flush of liquid in Sarah’s arm, and a man’s voice telling her that she would feel better soon, and then everything turned soft and melted away.
*
“Sarah?” Alex kicked her blankets loose and, in defiance of all common sense, tried to move across to where Sarah lay.
“She’s okay, Alex.” Theo put out a hand to stop her, but she weakly slapped it away.
Sarah clearly wasn’t okay. She wasn’t moving, wasn’t reacting as Renee lifted the dressing from her side. Her chest rose and fell far too quickly, condensation building up on the oxygen mask that now obscured her face. The IV bag hanging from a tree branch above her head was already half-empty, the liquid entering the chamber in a rapid stream rather than the sedate, steady drip so beloved of all the movies.
“She has an infection,” Theo said. He shifted his hands to Alex’s shoulders; it took barely any pressure for him to persuade her to stay where she was. “I need to help Renee get her cleaned up and start her on some antibiotics. The morphine I’ve just given her should keep her comfortable while we do that.” He straightened Alex’s oxygen mask and rearranged the blanket she had thrown off, pulling it up beneath her chin. The foil inner layer crinkled as he tucked it in. “Just sit tight,” he told her. Then, seeming to realize she might need more incentive, he added, “I can’t help her if I’m worrying about you.”
His point hit home. She sagged back, watching as he connected a smaller IV bag to Sarah’s line. He moved closer to Sarah, blocking Alex’s view completely, and she thumped the ground with her fist in an impotent gesture of exasperation.
“Gotta let them do their job, Alex.” Walt’s voice came from behind her. For an old man with a rheumy eye, he missed very little.
“I know,” she admitted quietly.
“Twenty minutes on the chopper,” he said, taking the plastic lid from one of the medic’s kits and using it to perch upon. “You warm enough?” With the ranger’s help, he had rekindled the fire and rigged a canvas shelter that was protecting them from the worst of the sleet.
“Yes, thank you.”
He ran a hand over his chin and then gestured beyond the shelter to where one of the FBI agents stood watching them expectantly. “Feds wondered whether you felt up to answering a couple of questions.”
She pulled her oxygen mask down and nodded with some reluctance; even a rudimentary debriefing would take energy she didn’t have to spare. Still, she was moderately surprised they had waited this long to ask to speak to her. Walt beckoned to the agent and then brought a steaming cup to Alex’s lips.
“Figured you might need this first.”
She took a cautious sip and closed her eyes in sheer pleasure. The coffee was hot, rich, and deliciously sweet. Walt chuckled, keeping her hands steady when she lifted them to cradle the cup.
“Not too fast,” he said.
The liquid tracked warmth down into her stomach, but she heeded his advice and set the cup aside as the agent ducked into the shelter.
“Hi, Alex. I’m Agent Castillo.” He introduced himself with a firm handshake and sat on the lid Walt had vacated. If the six foot three federal agent found it incongruous to be cramped up on the floor of a makeshift field hospital, he showed no indication of it in his expression.
“This won’t take long,” he said. “I’ll come by and speak to you and Sarah properly once you’re safely at Harborview.”
Alex nodded, appreciating his consideration. She looked beyond him, trying to think past the tightness in her chest and the gathering fluid that was about to make her cough. Three numbers, there were three numbers she had memorized days ago, numbers this man would undoubtedly need―
The cough exploded out of her, pitching her forward, and she heard someone swear somewhere off to her right. The mask went back on, accompanied by a stern glare from Theo. She sucked in the mist, which initially made her cough even harder before gradually easing the narrowing and congestion in her airways. The numbers on the monitor skipped between ninety-three and ninety-five, and she gave a small smile of recognition.
“Thirty-seven. Fifty-one. Zero ninety-three,” she said, as soon as she was confident she could speak. “There’s a tree all weird and stunted at those coordinates. The keys to whatever Deakin was looking for are hidden under its roots.”
Castillo’s eyes widened; she had obviously pre-empted one of his most pressing concerns. He tapped the small radio on
his lapel and spoke rapidly into it.
“Do you know where Deakin was ultimately heading?” he asked her.
“We plotted it on a map when we were at the hut,” she said, having difficulty thinking that far back. “I might be able to remember…” Realizing that was doubtful, she shook her head and tried another approach, working it through slowly as she spoke. “Deakin didn’t trust Merrick not to double-cross him. That’s why he came to the park. His people packed Merrick’s supplies and they included a GPS, so Deakin must have known the location of whatever Merrick had stored for him. All he needed from Merrick was the keys.” She paused to take a couple of rasping breaths, uncertain how long she could continue not only to speak but to make sense. “We have Deakin’s GPS. If it’s anything like Merrick’s, the coordinates to whatever was hidden out here will be programmed into it somewhere.”
She licked her dry lips. The oxygen was making her mouth parched, and it was hard to make herself heard with the mask on. With a conspiratorial wink, Castillo unfastened the mask and handed her the cup of coffee.
“The keys were Merrick’s get-out-of-jail-free card,” he confirmed. “If he’d given those up to Deakin along with the coordinates, he’d still be cooling his heels in a cell.” He waited until she looked at him over the rim of the cup. “So how exactly did you two get involved in all this?”
“Sarah stole Merrick’s bag, ended up with the keys and his GPS.”
“Oh.” Castillo raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, that would do it.” He gave a short laugh, but all traces of humor quickly left his face. “We picked Tanner up by the camp. He’s in no condition to talk, and something tells me that even when he is, he won’t be willing to rat out the rest of the organization. These bastards are nothing if not loyal to the cause.”
Alex lowered the cup, relieved for Sarah’s sake that Tanner was still alive. Her hand shook, upending what remained of the coffee into the grass.
“Did you find Merrick’s body?” she asked quietly.
“No, not yet. But one of our teams fished Deakin’s body out the river about two miles from here and a second team apprehended an unidentified male as he approached an abandoned logger’s hut.”
“Aaron,” she said. “His name is Aaron. He’s one of Deakin’s men. I lied, told Deakin I’d hidden the keys at the hut.” The coffee seemed to roil in her guts, and she put her hands out to steady herself. Was that it? Was it really over? Could she and Sarah finally get some rest now?
Castillo seemed to read her mind, since he secured her mask again before standing. The low canopy forced him to stoop awkwardly as he laid a hand on her shoulder.
“Soon as we’re back in civilization and you’re able, I’m going to need a positive ID on Aaron. Somewhat predictably, he is being less than forthcoming.” He sighed. “He claims to be an innocent victim of the bad weather, although the Aryan fist tattoo covering his back would suggest otherwise. I’d have a mug shot to show you now, if this goddamn piece of shit had a signal.”
His colorful language and obvious disdain for his smartphone made her splutter in amusement.
He squeezed her shoulder, careful not to apply too much pressure, obviously mindful of what she had been through. “The agency has been watching Nicholas Deakin and his group for almost ten years now,” he said, going some way toward explaining the sheer scale of the FBI’s involvement in the search and rescue operation. “This is going to break the case against them wide open. You did a great job, Officer Pascal.”
She shook her head. “It’s just Alex now,” she said.
“Yeah, I know.” He shrugged. “Damn shame, if you ask me.”
He walked away then, leaving her to stare into the sleet and snow as it distorted the yellow lettering on his jacket, an effect that reminded her of watching interference on a television set. She looked toward Sarah instead. The medics seemed to have finished whatever they had been doing to her; she lay still and pale beneath a mass of thick blankets.
Theo noticed Alex watching them. “She’s just sleeping, Alex,” he said, wadding up a pair of soiled gloves and drying his hands so that he could put on a fresh pair. “She’ll need surgery to clean the bullet wound out properly, but she’ll start to feel better as soon as that’s done and the antibiotics kick in.”
“Did I…” Alex felt sick again. “With the sutures. Did I cause that?”
“I don’t think so,” he said gently. He pressed a button on Alex’s monitor, and the blood pressure cuff on her upper arm began to inflate. “Bullet wounds carry a massive risk of infection. If you hadn’t helped her, she would probably have bled out long before she ended up septic.” Whatever he saw on the monitor was reflected in his troubled expression. He quickly exchanged her IV for a new bag and adjusted its flow. “How’re you feeling?”
“Like hammered shit.” There didn’t seem to be any reason to lie to him. She was aware that her breathing was too shallow; her lungs felt like they were filling up with glue, and she couldn’t seem to do a thing to stop it.
His reply was cut off by a sudden draft of air that made the canvas above their heads billow upward and shook its supporting poles. It took Alex another few seconds to distinguish the repetitive thrum of the helicopter from the turmoil it had created on the ground.
“Just in time,” Theo yelled, a smile brightening his face.
Alex turned to Sarah, who, disturbed by the commotion, was blinking in confusion. She relaxed visibly when she saw Alex and wriggled a hand free from her blanket for Alex to grip hold of. The noise lessened as the helicopter regained altitude, a flash of red against the gray sky indicating it was circling for another approach.
Sarah watched its retreat apprehensively. “Did I ever tell you how much I hate flying?” she asked, her voice muffled by her oxygen mask.
Alex stroked her thumb across the back of Sarah’s hand. “Even if there’s a warm bed and a bath at the end of it?”
Sarah tilted her head to one side, giving the question careful consideration despite being half-doped on morphine. “Will you be there?” she said at length.
“Hell yes.” Alex’s heart rate skipped faster on the monitor as she smiled. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Chapter Eighteen
Nothing smelled like pine. That was Alex’s first indication that she might somehow have missed a fairly significant development. The constant white noise of the river had been replaced by the hiss of gas tickling her nose. The bed she lay on no longer squelched beneath her, and her feet were warm. Breathing didn’t seem to be too much of an ordeal, and Sarah was holding her hand.
Sarah was holding her hand. Even in her semi-conscious state, that conclusion seemed so natural to Alex. She knew the touch of Sarah’s fingers, the way Sarah would curl them around her own, and the gentle back and forth of Sarah’s thumb skimming across her skin. She felt herself relaxing, giving in to the pull of sedative-soaked sleep, and then realized there was one thing that she didn’t know: what the hell Sarah was doing out of bed.
Alex opened her eyes to the muted light of a hospital room. At first, she couldn’t distinguish much beyond the drapes that surrounded her bed and the lumps in the blankets where her feet were sticking up. As soon as her vision sharpened, she turned her head to look at Sarah. Her neck felt stiff and tender, but the smile Sarah gave her was more than worth the discomfort.
“Welcome back,” Sarah said. She raised Alex’s hand and pressed her lips against it.
“Where’d I go?” Confused, Alex coughed dryly, shocked by the croak to which her voice had been reduced and by the pain that reverberated through her throat.
“Ouch.” Sarah winced sympathetically. “Here, try this.” She held a glass of water close enough for Alex to catch its straw. Ice rattled as their combined efforts made the glass shake. Alex restricted herself to a couple of sips as an unwelcome yet familiar queasiness told her that she had recently been given an anesthetic.
“What happened?” she whispered when Sarah lowered the glass. Sarah lo
oked terrible. Her face was ashen beneath the layers of bruising, and she seemed to be keeping herself in the chair by force of will alone. All Alex could remember was a strange sensation of floating in midair, swiftly followed by a crushing darkness. With hindsight, she suspected the crushing darkness had not been a positive sign.
“You got too lazy to breathe for yourself.” Sarah tried to keep her voice light, but gave herself away by shivering and pulling her blanket more tightly around her shoulders. “They had to put you on a ventilator. I slept through it all and sort of hit the roof when I found out.”
“Oh,” Alex said. “Shit.” That went a long way toward explaining the haunted look in Sarah’s eyes. “I’m sorry I scared you.”
“You really did. We’d managed to get through everything and then to see you like that—” She squeezed Alex’s hand. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“Naw, no way.” Alex smiled. “I’ve seen you in action. You don’t scare that easily.”
“I might have yelled at my doctor a little bit,” Sarah said sheepishly.
“And now you’ve gone and gotten yourself out of bed.” Alex could see a plastic tube leading from the bullet wound on Sarah’s side, which strongly suggested she should not have been keeping her impromptu vigil.
“Yeah, I don’t think she’ll approve, somehow.” Sarah didn’t sound overly concerned. “But I’m not worrying about you so much, now I’m sitting here, so surely that’s better for my recovery.”
“Not sure your doc is going to see it quite like that.”
“No, probably not.”
Alex studied her carefully, mentally cataloging the injuries that seemed to stand out all the more for having been cleaned and dressed. Sarah sat patiently and made no comment despite obviously being conscious of Alex’s scrutiny.
