Chapter Seven
The gunshot wound victim was one of Dark Canyon’s own boys in blue after a sting operation gone wrong.
Detective Abraham Hatch was a twenty-year man on the job who’d been working to disrupt a cocaine supply route.
The hundreds of empty miles surrounding Dark Canyon made it an ideal place for large stash movement.
Nick and his team had arrived ten minutes after a smuggler’s bullet had entered and exited through Detective Hatch’s left shoulder.
Even with a through-and-through track, Nick had no idea what the extent of the damage was internally.
The bullet could’ve hit bone on its way out.
His longtime emergency medical tech, Raquel Perez, ensured that Hatch was breathing freely, that his airway was secure.
They put him on high-flow oxygen and worked to control the bleeding with pressure bandages and direct pressure to both the entry and exit sites.
“Any other wounds?” their lieutenant, Marshall Dilinger, asked.
Nick had already questioned Hatch and exposed his chest, cutting away his clothes to assess for additional wounds. “No.”
“Get him on a backboard,” Dilinger advised. “We need to get him to Baldwin Memorial. The ER and surgical staff can determine more once they examine him.”
Nick and Perez worked together to strap Hatch to the backboard. Perez went through the motions of applying a cervical collar to prevent movement.
As Perez and Dilinger moved Detective Hatch to the open doors of the ambulance, Nick exchanged a glance with the officer standing by. “Officer O’Connell,” Nick said with a nod, recognizing him.
“He’s going to be okay?” O’Connell asked.
Nick remembered that O’Connell had married Hatch’s youngest daughter, Vada, last spring and rushed to assure him, “The bullet went through. The bleeding’s currently under control, but it’ll be up to the surgeons to determine whether any internal damage has occurred.”
O’Connell nodded grimly. At the sound of a struggle, they both looked around to see one of the smugglers, a young man with a spotty growth of stubble crawling up his cheeks, resisting the restraining hold of Hatch’s partner.
Red-faced, sweat clinging to the skin of his neck, he looked to be little more than a teenager.
“Bastards have been moving through here too freely under the cover of night,” O’Connell muttered. “They’re pouring drugs into the cities. My cousin from Moab OD’ed two months ago. Been in a damn coma ever since.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Nick said, still watching the detective struggle with the smuggler.
The detective reached back for his cuffs. The smuggler took his shot, knocking his head back into the detective’s nose. The detective grunted, his grip loosening on the smuggler’s arms.
The kid didn’t hesitate. He leaped for the chance of escape, bolting for the wide, empty embrace of Utah’s dark countryside.
Nick and O’Connell moved at the same time to intercept him. O’Connell bobbed. Nick weaved.
Together, they took the kid down in a rough tangle of limbs, Nick’s arm wrapped around the kid’s middle. As soon as his arm made impact with the ground beneath the smuggler, he felt his wrist torque. Hot, sharp agony went through the joint, up into his arm.
“I’ve got him,” O’Connell announced, cuffs out and snapping into place to lock the smuggler’s wrists at the small of his back.
Nick rolled away, groaning.
“Malone?” Dilinger called from the ambulance. “You thinking about trying out for the force?”
He glanced at the smuggler’s seething face, or what he could see of it in the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles. “I’m happy where I am, thanks,” he decided, gaining his feet.
“You’ll need to ice that,” O’Connell pointed out as he waited for Hatch’s partner to escort the suspect to the back of a squad car.
Nick tried moving his wrist. It screamed at him to stop. “I’m good,” he lied and hopped into the back of the ambulance as the siren wailed.
Perez frowned at his lame hand, already running fluids for their patient. “Can you get him on the monitor?”
Nick was already in motion. His wrist wailed, but their patient’s life was on the line.
He’d think about his wrist after he, Perez and Dilinger got the detective safely to Baldwin Memorial.
* * *
Sassy didn’t walk to the emergency department.
She ran. The color-coded lines down the corridor pointing visitors toward the different divisions of the hospital—red for cardiology, blue for general surgery, green for radiology—blurred, giving her tunnel vision as her boots rapped against the floor, echoing through her ears.
She tackled the double doors to the ED open and stumbled to a halt in the waiting room, surrounded by people in various stages of pain or panic.
Her purse hung from her hand by the strap, all but dragging along the blinding-white tiled floor to the registration desk, where an efficient-looking man with a topknot greeted her warmly. “Sassy Colton. What are you doing here?”
“Evander,” she said between pants. She pressed a hand to her ribs and fought for breath. “Nick came through here about twenty minutes ago. I was told he’d been brought to the ED.”
“Oh, they didn’t bring him in, sweetie,” Evander explained, toying absently with the cord of his lanyard. “He walked in all on his own and would’ve left, too, if his lieutenant hadn’t insisted on him getting his arm looked at.”
“What’s wrong with it?” Sassy asked. “Do you know?”
“Gina in triage said it may be broken.”
“His arm?” she asked, incredulous.
“Wrist, I think,” Evander said thoughtfully. He splayed his long, manicured fingers over his keyboard and click-clacked the keys to life. “Let’s see. It looks like he’s already been seen by a doctor. He referred him to Imaging.”
Sassy swiped the hair from her eyes. It was still wet from the shower she’d hopped out of when she’d received multiple phone calls from Nick’s EMT partner, Raquel Perez.
“Look,” she said, prepared to beg if necessary.
“Do you think you could get me back there to see him? I know I’m not family.
I know it probably goes against protocol.
But you know his situation. His mom is in a long-term care facility and his dad… ”
Evander waved his hand. “Say no more, girl. I’ll buzz you in.”
Sassy breathed a sigh of relief. “Evander Rosenberg, I’m going to kiss you right here in front of all these people.”
He winked. “Wait until I’m off duty. The other admins are threatened by my good looks and excellent people skills. They’ve been cruising for a good reason to get me fired.”
“A drink then,” Sassy offered, “at the alehouse. Friday after work?”
“Make it the Bootleg,” Evander countered. “They wrap up the week with line dancing and I’m all for it.”
“A drink and a dance, then,” Sassy decided.
“It’s a date,” he returned, hitting the switch to unlock the triage station’s door from the outside. “Your man’s behind curtain number three.”
Your man… Those words blazed across her consciousness like an ill-fated comet whizzing in the wrong direction.
Gina in triage showed her onto the floor of the ED. She ignored the smells of antiseptic and bodily fluids, counting one, two closed curtains.
The third was open to reveal an empty bed with rumpled white linens.
He’d been here, she surmised. Wondering how long he’d spent in Imaging, she sat on the edge of the abandoned sheets and worked on some deep breathing exercises.
He was okay. Nick was okay. Raquel had been too rushed on the phone to offer Sassy details on Nick’s status. Admittedly, all Sassy had really heard was Nick…hurt…hospital…
Sassy couldn’t remember if she had washed the soap out of her hair before sprinting from the shower to the closet and haphazardly throwing on enough clothes to be deemed decent.
That’s a stretch, she thought, eyeing the pointy toes of her boots.
She’d gotten her hands on a black maxi skirt with a slit up the thigh.
From her drawer, she’d blindly chosen an overlarge ’90s crewneck grandpa sweater she’d stolen from her father, complete with russet and beige pattern.
It was falling off one shoulder, displaying the full strap of the black lace bralette she’d snatched from the clean clothes basket almost as an afterthought.
She attempted to draw the sweater neckline back up into place.
In response, it slumped over the slope of her shoulder once more and she rolled her eyes.
Some of the panic was fading. Since her Bronco was still out of commission, she’d had to knock on her neighbors’ door to ask if she could borrow their minivan.
They were a young couple she’d bonded with when their twin girls had painted their shared driveway with hearts, right up to Sassy’s porch steps.
When they had come over to apologize, she’d assured them that she thought the trail of hearts livened up the place and that the girls could come use her paints after school, if they liked.
The key fob to the minivan bit into her palm and she relaxed her grip on it.
The indention in her palm told the story of the tense few minutes it had taken her to get from her neighborhood to the hospital, all the while assuming the worst. She’d thought of Ava’s kidnapping, Fern’s memory of her abductors, the body of Annie Ross, who had been found in Dark Canyon Wilderness, and the frickin’ Ford that had nearly taken her out on the sidewalk this morning.
She’d thought of the warnings that Dark Canyon wasn’t the safe place many assumed it was anymore.
Terror had taken a firm hold as she’d envisioned Nick locked in the crosshairs of whoever was attempting to turn their hometown into the Upside Down from Stranger Things.
If she lost Nick…if anything happened to him…what was she supposed to do? He wasn’t simply her best friend. He was often the first person she spoke to in the morning…the last person she spoke to at night…the person she spent the most time with…