That’s when I started to canvas the area, starting in short sweeps around the bike until I’d fanned out far enough to look into the ravine.
Maybe my instincts were off. Maybe the guy really did leave his wallet and bike behind to go find help. Maybe… there was a boot in the ravine.
I swallowed bile.
Running back to my car, I grabbed my phone and was dialing before I’d even made it back to the wrecked motorcycle.
“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”
The unflappable ER nurse started to come out in me, making me sound much calmer than I was as I gave the dispatcher a slow, methodical recounting of what was going on, where I was, and what I was seeing.
“We’ll dispatch medical and fire,” she said. “Stay on the line…”
Negative. I had more people to be calling.
I shook my head. “No. I have to make another call.”
Then I hung up and dialed the next in line as I started to climb my way down the steep ravine.
The water run-off had eroded the ground to where the drop off was sheer, and I had to slowly pick my way down the steep incline, finding footholds where there really weren’t any footholds to be found.
“Hello?”
Linc sounded tired as if I’d woken him.
I didn’t feel bad in the least.
“Linc?” I said quickly. “Listen, I’m on the way to your house, or I was. I stopped on the side of the road because I think someone wrecked their bike. At first, I thought he might’ve walked away to get help, but it’s not looking like that anymore. I called 9-1-1, and I know that the fire department is where you volunteer, but do you think that you can make sure that they come quick? I remember you saying that Bayou, your club president, was chief of the department. I’m having a really bad feeling that something’s wrong. I can’t find the man that was on this bike…but I found his bike, his wallet, and I can see a boot down in the ravine.”
“Where are you exactly?” he asked, sounding much more alert and oriented.
I gave him the details and then said, “I’m going to have to put the phone in my pocket now. I need both hands, and it’s hard enough trying to hold onto the flashlight, too.”
Linc didn’t squabble with me. He only agreed. “Just keep me on the line.”
I did, shoving the phone into my front scrub pocket while I inched my way down.
Finally, I hit the bottom and winced when my feet sank down a couple inches into the mud.
Ignoring the way that they squelched as I moved, I gingerly started to sweep my flashlight in shallow arcs again, pausing briefly on what looked like a snake about eight feet away from me.
Fear climbing in my throat, I moved my light away from the snake and went back to sweeping, gasping when I found a bare foot.
I followed that bare foot up, moaning when I saw the body attached to it.
The guy was big. Really big. And he looked like he was in really bad shape.
He wasn’t moving, but his eyes were wide open, and he was staring at the light.
“Oh, God,” I moaned, hurrying toward him.
The water slogged around my feet, and I knew that I was splashing mud halfway up my leg, but all I could see was that man lying there, halfway submerged by the same mud I was trying to navigate.
The moment I reached him, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and placed it to my ear. “Linc, there’s a man down here, I found him. Hurry.”
With that, I put the phone back into my pocket, still connected, and started assessing the man like the trained ER nurse I was.
I set the light down on the large boulder that was next to the man’s head, but was miraculously at the perfect height, and started cataloging the injuries.
He for sure had a broken ulna. I could see the white bone sticking out of his arm.
He had a nasty gash on his face that was pouring blood, but his pulse was strong.
“Broken arm, nasty gash on my head, what feels like a broken ass, and something’s impaling me so that I can’t move.”
I looked up to find the man’s eyes on me.
“You’re trained?” I asked, bending over him to see about the impalement.
He was right.
He had what looked to be a piece of rebar sticking out of his side, impaling his flesh about six inches above his hip bone.
“Holy shit,” I breathed.
Then the sirens started to sound.
“Glad you found me,” the man said.
I was, too.
Then the leather that was covering his chest caught my eye.
I touched the patch above his heart. “Hoax?”
The man, Hoax, did this grin/smile thing that said he was only doing it despite the pain. “Yeah. That’s my name.”
Then he closed his eyes, looking like he was on the verge of passing out.
I needed to keep him talking.
“Are you in the motorcycle club? Bear Bottom Guardians?” I pushed.
“Yep,” he agreed. “I am. How’d you know?”
I didn’t see any point not to tell him the complete truth.
“Linc James,” I started. “Linc and I have this…connection. I’ve known him since he first joined.”
“Conleigh.”
I blinked. “You know my name?”
“I know your name,” he agreed. “If you hadn’t said Linc and you had a connection, I wouldn’t have known who you were.”
Something warm and fluttery took up in my stomach, masking the fear for now. “Linc talks about me?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Talks about you a lot. Especially when he’s drunk.”
I groaned. “Oh, shit. I’m almost afraid to ask.”
Hoax chuckled, which quickly turned into a groan.
But the pain didn’t stop him from explaining.
“Always good things, honey,” he rasped. “The man is only a little infatuated with you,” he was quick to explain.
I smiled and shifted in the mud, feeling it creep up into my crotch.
Gross.
“Did he tell you about the mess I got him into this week?” I wondered.
“No.” He shook his head, causing blood to spill into his eye.
I looked down at my muddy shirt again, as well as my muddy hands.
I was torn in between putting pressure on his head wound and wanting to keep it as clean as possible. There was no doubt in my mind that there was bacteria down here. With all the trash that I could see lying around, paired with the stagnant, muddy water? Yeah, it was probably a breeding ground for all things bad for an open wound.
The sirens were getting closer, and I decided to wait to do anything with his head. The blood flow was lessening slightly.
“Linc and I have a history. He…well, let’s just say that we didn’t end things well. I’m still not sure why, by the way. Only one day he said, ‘this can’t happen yet’ and left me reeling.” I paused. “But he hasn’t completely left my life. He calls. Texts. Tries to stop over, but I make myself scarce when that happens.” I paused for a breath. “Anyway, he didn’t take no for an answer when he asked me out on a date, so to get back at him I accepted a date with a doctor from work…”
I went on to tell him everything. How I felt about said doctor. How I felt about Linc. How I’d inadvertently outed Linc as my baby daddy to my non-existent baby.
By the time I was done, Hoax’s smile was huge.
“I’ll bet that just made Linc’s day,” Hoax admitted.
I thought about that for a long moment and then grunted. “To be honest, he wasn’t really all that upset about it.”
Hoax grinned but didn’t laugh.
“That’s because you just gave him exactly what he wanted without making him work for it. You practically tied a pretty little bow to your sweet little head and then said, ‘Okay, take me, big boy,’” he explained.
I frowned. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
My brows went up. “Really? How?”
“Linc,” he said, shrugging his shoulder slightly, then wincing. “Linc’s been talking about you for so long that I can’t even pinpoint an exact day. I know it’s at least been going on since he joined the club, and when we were talking about switching the name from the Dixie Wardens MC to the Bear Bottom Guardians MC.”
“What?” I was surprised. “You were once a Dixie Warden?”
He nodded once. “Yep. Originally, anyway. We chose to set up here because it was pretty localized to clubs that were friendly with the Dixie Wardens already. Mostly all of us were sons of original members of different chapters. For instance, my granddad is a member of the Benton chapter. Dixie is his name.”
I blinked once in surprise. “My stepfather is Big Papa.”
“I know,” he replied. “I told you I’d know who you were despite the intro. But that is due to Linc never shutting his trap about you, not because I ever saw you there. I was in the Marines until we branched off and changed our name to Bear Bottom Guardians.”
“Hmm,” I finally said. “I take it that the older generation wasn’t happy about y’all wanting to change the name?”
How had I not heard this before? I felt really stupid for not knowing.
This time Hoax couldn’t hold the laugh in. “Oh, hell no. That was also when I started to hear about you nonstop.”
But before I could get him to expound on his answer, the sirens drowned out our conversation and the lights started to color our world with a wash of red and blue as the emergency personnel arrived on scene.
Something touched my arm while I was busy looking up, and absently I swatted it away before I could think too hard on it.
But something big splashed in the water to my side, causing me to turn and look at what, exactly, it was that I’d swatted.
And that was when I saw a large snake slithering toward me, pissed off as all get out.
Before I could scream, let alone even blink, Hoax’s hand flashed out, and he caught the snake around the neck. The massive slimy thing opened its mouth and showed off his impressive fangs.
I swallowed as the snake’s lower half started to twitch and writhe as it tried to get away, but with the hold Hoax had on it, I knew that wasn’t going to happen.
At least logically.
“If it’d have come up on my other side, we’d have been boned,” Hoax said just as my name was called.
“Down here!” I yelled, my heart still beating a mile a minute.
Picking up the flashlight, I aimed it in the direction of the voice and looked upward to find a man leaning over the guardrail staring down at us.
He obviously couldn’t see us since my light was shining him straight in the face, but he at least knew where we were.
“Okay, darlin’,” the man called back. “We’ll be down there in a minute.”
“You’ll need a backboard!” I called out. “Oh, and a gun. A bolt cutter of some sort that’ll get you through rebar, and possibly a neck brace!” The last muttered words were for Hoax’s ears only. “And a vomit bag. God, I hate snakes.”
Hoax laughed…or started to. That laugh turned into a groan when he jostled the rebar that was currently in his side.
“That was the club president,” Hoax said gruffly. “Bayou.”
I grunted. “Good. Before I got here, I called Linc and told his ass he better get the boys here fast.”
Speaking of, I looked back down to my pocket, only then realizing that it was partially covered with muddy water.
“Well, damn,” I muttered, looking at the now black phone. “Guess I’ll have to go get me another one tomorrow.”
Hoax grunted in affirmation. “Me, too.”
I smiled and moved to the side, hearing the men that’d come with Bayou tromping down the same trail I’d taken on my way down here.
Only, they did it much more expertly than I did.
I got to see because the lights at the top of the hill were suddenly blinding.
I tried to look up, but they were so bright that it was impossible to see.
They must carry emergency lighting on the trucks just in case something like this happened.
The snake continued to thrash, and I felt a shiver dance down my spine. “Can you drown snakes?”
Hoax, considering that question, dunked the snake under the water. “I don’t know. Let’s find out.”
And that was what he was doing when not only Bayou but also Linc, as well a woman who must have been on the fire department, came sliding down beside us.
Bayou came down on one side of me, and Linc started to come down on the other. I stopped him before he could set his knee on the snake by lifting my hand up to point toward the reptile.
Which also happened to be right where his dick was.
We both stopped there for a long second. The way he was semi-squatted down in those goddamn knit shorts he loved to torture me in, that made his junk swing free. And it was more than evident that Linc didn’t have a single thing on under the shorts.
“Here I am impaled by a goddamn piece of rebar, drowning a snake, and bleeding from a head wound, and you’re allowing her to feel your twig and berries up instead of helping me.” Hoax groaned.
There was also a smile on his face that clearly showed just how amused he was with the situation.
“Drowning a snake?” both Bayou and Linc said at the same time, glancing toward where I had been trying to point.
Still, Linc didn’t remove my hand.
It was quite obvious that he was enjoying the touch.
Why did I know that without him specifically saying so aloud?
What with his dick getting hard and all, it was more than obvious.
“Why are you not wearing underwear?” I finally asked, removing my hand with the utmost reluctance.
“Focus, children,” Bayou drawled.
“Because you woke me up, and I sleep naked,” Linc explained, ignoring Bayou.
He still wasn’t really paying attention to the thrashing snake barely being held underneath the water, either.
“It’s okay,” Hoax teased. “I’m only getting a nice mud facial over here. I can wait.”
The female firefighter—or at least I assumed she was a firefighter—scoffed.
That was when I turned to her to see her glare firmly on me, bouncing between where I was, and where my hand was still hovering.
The thrashing in the water finally halted, and I shined my flashlight at the water, causing Linc to curse.
“What the fuck?”
“See, I saved you and your testicles,” I added helpfully.
“Was that what the gun was for?” Bayou asked, ignoring the dying snake and getting a good look at the piece of rebar that was in Hoax’s side.
“Yes,” I answered, leaning over Hoax to get a better look myself. “I think if you cut it here,” I pointed to where I was suggesting. “It should be enough to allow the backboard to slide under him without causing the rebar to shift, or at least not shift much.”
The rebar kind of looked like a fish hook piercing into Hoax’s side. I was guessing that he must have landed on it before he fell into the ravine, and as he rolled down the side, the rebar already partially embedded in him, it must have curved into the hook shape as the momentum took him down the side of the ravine. Unfortunately, enough of it was still sticking out that it would be impossible to move him without jostling the rebar and causing him more internal damage and pain.
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, too,” Bayou confirmed. “Good eyes.”
“He has a broken arm,” I said, continuing with my list of injuries. “If y’all take care of the rebar and the head wound, I can secure his arm for transport.”
So that was what we did.
Linc took over dressing the head wound, the woman and Bayou worked on the piece of rebar, and I secured his arm. All the while, Hoax didn’t utter a single sound of pain.
“You ready, Hoaxie?” I teased, looking at him with a teasing expression.
Hoax grimaced but nodded once. “As long as you never call me ‘Hoaxie’ again.”
I bit my lip to keep my smile inside, then tilted my head and said, “Hoaxster?”
Hoax shook his head again.
While I was teasing him, Bayou and Linc got him onto the backboard.
It was then that another round of sirens sounded, signaling the arrival of the medic. Finally.
They must not have been at their station for this kind of response time.
“Finally,” Linc muttered, mirroring my thoughts.
“We’re going to strap you down good and get you into the basket,” Bayou explained what he was going to do. “Then we’re gonna heft your fat ass up.”
Hoax flipped him off. “I’m not fat.”
Hoax most definitely was not fat. He was ripped like Linc was…like Bayou was.
What the hell did they put in the water here?
I stood up, my legs screaming in pain from having been crouched down like that for over twenty minutes. “Let’s do this. Who do you want up there?”
Bayou grunted. “Linc and I’ll both have to go up there. Are you two ladies okay with staying down here with Hoax just a little while longer?”
I poked Hoax in the chin. “The Hoaxmeister and me are BFFs. We’ll be okay.”
The snake was now dead…I thought.
Yet Hoax still held him in a death grip under the water just in case.
The woman beside me scoffed again, and I would’ve tossed her a look over my shoulder and glared had we not been in the middle of something extremely important.
“Brielle…” Hoax grumbled. “You need to get rid of the attitude. She’s just trying to lighten the mood.”
Truth.
I looked over at the woman out of the corner of my eye and wondered what, exactly, she had a problem with.
It would appear that this problem was with me, but I didn’t know what I had done to her.
Nothing, really.
Maybe it was just my presence?
Linc and Bayou were halfway up the steep incline, and I watched as Linc limberly climbed up the muddy slope as if he did something like that every day of his life.
Talkin' Trash (The Bear Bottom Guardians MC Book 2) Page 8
