Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Luke ran his hands over his head, pushing away his wet hair, and ran toward where Ben was talking to two sheriffs and five state police officers.
Two more officers were checking on the four victims Holly had already triaged.
And the medevac helo had disappeared. The sharp tang of diesel and smoke hung in the air, cut only by the acrid sting of burning rubber and wet pine.
He’d already explained to everyone that Holly was a doctor and filled them in on what they’d found, what was going on.
Now, the problem was, how to save the man beneath the truck and get the other victims to a hospital as quickly as possible.
“Can we carry the four victims out?” Ben pointed to the other two sheriffs. “Between us, we have three vehicles on the other side of the landslide. And there are ambulances on their way from Milltown. If we get them on the road, we can meet the ambulances on their way here.”
“How will we carry them?” One of the sheriffs, whose name tag said Peyton, pointed toward the bend in the road that hid the landslide. “These men have broken bones and head injuries. And it wasn’t easy climbing over the debris on the road.”
“There is also the risk of more landslides,” one of the state policemen said.
“We’ll have to take that risk.” Ben surveyed the area and sighed. “I’m guessing Holly doesn’t have any stretchers in her pink suitcase.”
Luke laughed, more from a release of stress than anything else. “No—”
“Would cots work?”
Everyone turned to see the truck driver, with the aluminum blanket wrapped around his shoulders and blood on his face, standing a foot away.
Luke nodded toward the truck. “Do you have cots in there?”
The trucker gave one nod. “Camping equipment. But I know there are a few camp cots in boxes.”
“If we can get the camp cots,” Ben motioned to sheriffs and officers, “we have enough people to carry out the wounded.”
The two sheriffs followed the trucker toward the back of the truck that stuck into the middle of the road.
“What about the man beneath the truck?” one of the officers asked Ben.
“We’re on our own to save him.” Ben stared up at the gray sky. “We have to be careful how we move that truck. We don’t know how badly he’s been hurt.”
“According to Holly,” Luke said, “he may have a compound fracture and once he’s free, she’ll probably need to use a tourniquet.
He studied the heavily wooded side of the mountain, with its steep grade down to the road and all of the fallen trees and other woodland debris.
Then he looked at the situation on the road.
Pieces of motorcycles lay twisted everywhere, metal and chrome shone, slick with rain.
“I’ve done something similar to this before, on a logging site in Washington State a few years back.
First we stabilize the truck. Then, if we can get enough leverage, we’ll pull the victim out. ”
“What if the truck shifts,” Ben asked. “Will he bleed to death?”
“I don’t know.” The trailer creaked, probably from the men in the back looking for camp cots. “But I think we’re out of time.”
“Agreed,” Ben said. “But we need a way to lift that semi.”
“We have chains in the back of our vehicles,” one of the officers said.
Luke was already moving. “Grab them. I’ll tie the chains off to those pines.
” He pointed to a group of huge pine trees growing near the side of the road, not far from his white pickup.
“We’ll anchor the truck from three sides and wedge the tires.
” He pointed at a nearby officer. “Find some large logs we can use to block the tires and use as fulcrums.”
“I’ll grab a tarp,” another officer said as he ran back to where he’d parked his patrol car. “We can use it to pull out the victim.”
Even though the drizzle had ceased, the wind howled down the road like it was chasing ghosts, throwing mist against Luke’s face as he headed for the patrol cars with their red and blue blinking lights.
All together, they numbered eleven people, including nine men and two women. And Holly made twelve.
Everyone, except for Holly who was still with the man beneath the truck, worked without hesitation.
Two handled the four victims, making sure they didn’t go into shock and stayed dry with more aluminum emergency blankets.
The truck driver and two officers had pulled out boxes of camping cots and were cutting open the cardboard.
The rest, including Ben, obeyed Luke’s sharp commands like it was war.
A few minutes later, Luke knelt near one of the tires, closest to where Holly still lay in the ground, her arm still extended beneath the truck, holding on to the man’s wrist. He’d already told her the plan about carrying everyone out on camping cots, as well as his idea to lift the trailer enough to pull out her patient.
As he shoved logs behind the tires to block them, he asked her, “How is our victim?”
“Not good.”
He couldn’t see her face, but heard the worry in her voice.
“Right now, Luke, every second counts.”
“Got a pipe here!” one of the officers came around Luke’s side of the semi. “Will this work? I found a bunch of these up on the hill, behind those maple trees.”
It was an old steel fence post, maybe part of a gate. Luke stood, took it, and tested the bend. “Good enough. Get a few more. We’ll need at least four.”
When the officers had collected four steel fence posts, along with four logs that had to have been eighteen inches in diameter, they placed them around Holly, two on either side of her.
“Doctor?” One of the officers came over with a blue tarp. “You’ll need to let go now.”
She met Luke’s gaze, and his heart clenched at the deep sadness he saw in her gaze.
When he nodded that it was okay to let go, she slid away from the truck and stood.
She wobbled, and he took her arm to lead her to the other side of the truck, near where the truck driver sat on one of the camping cots
“It’s okay, Holly.” He kissed the top of her head. “Let us do this part.”
While he hated leaving her alone on that side of the road, she’d been right. Every second counted.
Once the logs were in position as fulcrums, he and all of the officers slid the pipes into place, beneath the axle. With two men braced at each end of each pole, the truck groaned when they pushed. Just an inch. But it was enough.
Luke dropped flat, mud soaking through his shirt. “Hold it,” he barked. “Just hold it—”
Ben crouched next to him, and together they spread out the tarp. Then Luke slid beneath the truck and said a prayer that those steel poles would hold.
Luke reached out for the man’s wrist. “Pressure is erratic. But he’s still with us.”
Slowly, Luke gently dragged the man out, making sure the tarp was beneath him. Ben helped the best he could, but there wasn’t much room to work.
“Almost there,” Luke said. “Just—damn it—his leg’s caught between the axle and the frame. I need more lift.”
One of the levers slipped, and the truck groaned. Ben moved quickly to take over and add weight to that pole. A few of the men cursed. Then the trailer did something unexpected. It shifted with a wet, sucking sound as it slid toward the edge of the road—the edge that fell off into the deep ravine.
Luke’s heart nearly stopped. “Lift, now!”
They heaved. Luke pulled until the man was mostly on the tarp.
Slowly, Luke backed out from beneath the truck.
Two officers shoved the broken bike away and then helped drag out the tarp.
Once Luke was clear of the undercarriage, he rolled onto his hands and knees and coughed from the stench of fuel and oil that burned his throat.
He used the bike’s wreckage as leverage to stand—until he noticed something duct taped to the bottom of the bike’s seat.
The officers started murmuring, and Luke glanced back at the pale, unconscious man lying on the tarp, now on the road’s shoulder, only a few inches away from the sheer drop off.
Holly appeared with her trauma bag and pushed everyone aside.
Ben came over and pulled Luke away, keeping his hand on Luke’s shoulder.
The victim was in terrible shape, his leg mangled but still attached, both arms broken, and what appeared to be a puncture wound through his abdomen.
There was more blood than Luke had ever seen, even after witnessing a shark attack while surfing in Hawaii.
One of the officers started shouting orders about loading up the other victims onto the cots so they could begin their trek over the landslide, toward Ben’s vehicles, and Milltown.
While Holly began a tourniquet on the victim, Luke leaned against the trailer, his breaths sounding hard and ragged. Ben stood next to him, his face streaked with mud, but his attention was on the man on the tarp.
“Luke?” Ben squeezed Luke’s shoulder. “Is that man who I think he is?”
Holly’s body obscured the man’s face, so Luke moved a few feet away. Then he froze.
Blood and grime covered his face, and dark lashes pressed against bruised cheeks. And that jawline… even unconscious the man resembled their father. No, he looked like Caleb.
His grandfather’s ghost stared back at him through that broken body.
Luke’s heart twisted, memories flashing like lightning—fights in the yard, stolen cigarettes, blood on Caleb’s knuckles, the slow unraveling of their mother’s smile, at least according to Jacob, the eldest brother.
“It’s Damian,” Luke said, barely hearing himself.
Ben’s jaw clenched.
Luke and his five brothers had known Damian their entire lives.
They’d grown up with him, fought with him, sometimes beside him, sometimes against him.
They’d even joined the MC with him. But it was only recently that the truth had come out.
The same blood flowing out of Damian’s body was the same that ran through all the men in their family.
And all Luke could think of was their father’s mistakes. Their mother’s eventual leaving. Caleb’s collusion that had kept his family mired in secrets. And now Damian lay broken and bleeding at their feet, halfway off a mountain, a few heartbeats from death.
An officer carrying a folded cot and an emergency blanket ran over, out of breath, his chest heaving. “The four other victims are loaded and ready to go.”
Ben didn’t speak. He just squeezed Luke’s shoulder, grounding him there like a promise.
“Holly?” Luke looked at the road behind them, around the bend where the landslide had closed the road, washed in gray and danger. “Can we take him now? We’ll transport him on a cot.”
She packed up her trauma kit, slipped the heavy strap crosswise over her body, and met his gaze. Her brown eyes were weary and woeful. “Just be careful. He’s fragile.”
Ben took the cot from the officer. “Thanks.”
Luke held Holly’s arm and led her toward the back of the truck’s trailer.
“One of the officers, Sheriff Peyton, will stay behind with my truck.” He motioned toward her open, pink suitcase with all of her belongings on the road, scattered and wet.
“Peyton will pack up your stuff and wait for the wreckers so we can clear the road from the accident and the landslide. Then Peyton will drive my truck back to my brother Kane’s house.
We won’t make it to the realtor’s office in time.
But we’re both staying at Kane’s tonight.
He and Eve have plenty of room and know we’re coming. It’ll all be okay. I promise.”
She nodded, brushed wet hair off her cheek, and nodded again.
He understood. She was in crisis/action mode and fully focused on her patients.
“Holly, can you monitor the victims while we walk out of here?”
“Of course.” She finally faced him with squared shoulders and a determined light in her gaze. Then she adjusted her trauma kit across her body—which had to be heavier than her pink suitcase—and headed for the first cot that held the truck driver.
Along the way, she paused in the middle of the street to pick up something that she slipped into her back pocket.
Even though he hardly knew her, he couldn’t have been prouder.
“Luke!” Ben’s voice echoed, and Luke hurried back to his brother to help unfold the cot. Together, they used the tarp to carefully load Damian onto the cot. Then they covered him with the aluminum emergency blanket.
While Ben responded to a call on his radio, Luke went back to the mangled motorcycle.
He untaped the map taped to the seat’s underside and shoved it into his back waistband.
The map, covered in a heavy-duty plastic wrap, felt cold and damp against his bare back.
After making sure no one had seen him, he pulled his T-shirt out of his jeans, hiding the map from view.
He wasn’t sure why he was protecting Damian.
But if the map meant what Luke thought it meant, he wasn’t ready to have his family dragged through another scandal.
If he decided to hand the map over to Ben, he’d deal with his older brother’s admonitions about stealing things from accident scenes then.
Sheriff Peyton appeared near the truck’s cab, holding a two-way radio. “The wreckers should be here in a few hours.” He paused and his eyes widened when he saw Damian’s face.
Yeah. Pretty soon both Milltown and Kingsmill would know what happened to Damian Fawkes, the bastard son of Isaiah Mosby. Luke’s father.
Luke handed Peyton the keys to his white rental pickup. “I suspect we’ll be at the hospital for a while.”
Sheriff Peyton cleared his throat and shoved the keys into his jacket pocket. “Do you two need help?”
“No.” Ben’s gaze mingled with pity, shock, and frustration at the fact that, despite their father’s part in this play, all this trauma could be laid at the feet of Caleb, their dead grandfather.
“Damian is our brother,” Luke said softly, wondering if Caleb was listening from whatever Hell he inhabited. “Ben and I will carry him down.”