85. Chapter 85
“You’re lucky I don’t shoot you myself.”
It was a strange way for an EMT to greet Saul, Jase thought, until he read her name badge.
Jacinda.
The tall man really was crazy—and an enigma Jase couldn’t help admiring. While they waited for help to arrive, Jase had added coolant to the Squire’s engine. They’d know soon whether the car would finish the drive or had officially died in the desert.
“Sorry, honey,” Saul said, a twinkle in his eyes as he greeted the brunette who was at least a decade younger than him, wearing a dark blue official uniform. “Thought you’d be happy to see me.”
Shaking her head, the woman whose scorned lover had shot up the place pushed the gurney into Saul’s legs.
“Get on,” she said.
“Cripes, woman, I can walk,” he said.
“Not on my watch. On.”
“You just want to see me on my back.”
Saul climbed onto the gurney and Jacinda wheeled him to the rear of her ambulance. Jase took Lindsey’s hand and followed the gurney. He felt better, his heart beat a little slower, when he was touching her.
“I want to know about this,” he said, setting the picture of his dad he’d plucked off the wall on Saul’s stomach.
“Linda,” he said, tapping on the black-haired woman in the picture.
Jase noticed Jacinda’s eyes flick from the I.V.
she was securing in Saul’s uninjured arm to the photograph.
“My wife. This was back in the eighties. She’s been gone five years now.
A year before we took this picture, your dad saved her life. ”
“How?”
“Ask him about it sometime,” Saul said.
“We can’t,” Jase forced out. “He’s—”
“Gone,” Graham finished.
It was the first time Jase had ever been relieved to see his brother. Some of the burden left his shoulders when Graham and Helen came up to the other side of the gurney. This was different from running into Farmer Pederson and sharing a friendly story. Their dad had saved a life.
And Jase never even knew it.
He cleared the thickness from his throat and said, “It’s why we’re here.”
“No, it isn’t.” Saul handed the picture back to Jase. “I’ve got something for you. I was fixing it up for your dad, only I guess I didn’t call in time. I want you to have it.”
“I hate to break up the party.” Jacinda nodded at Jase. “You want to help me load him up?”
“Load me up?” Saul spun his loopy eyes to Jacinda. “We going to the place with the disco balls on the ceiling?”
“That’s the drip talking,” she said. Saul raised his bushy eyebrows and Jacinda rolled her eyes. “And no. I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“Can’t you patch me up here? You’ve got all the tools and whatnot.”
“I’m not staying out here a second longer than I have to,” she said. “What do you think’s going to happen to me—and you—if he finds out I came out here—alone—to help you?”
Saul’s head fell back with a groan, and Jase followed Jacinda’s instructions for lifting the gurney’s wheels and hoisting it into the back of the ambulance.
“No need to be gentle. He can’t feel a thing,” Jacinda said. She shrugged at Saul’s grimace when the gurney hit the side bench on the way in. “He can’t feel much.”
“Save it for the bedroom, sweetheart,” Saul groaned. He pointed to Lindsey. “Speaking of rough, Jacinda—you might want to check her over. She’s got quite a shiner.”
The EMT jumped down from the ambulance in front of Lindsey.
“Are you in some kind of trouble here?” she asked.
“Which one of you gave it to her? Better not have been you,” Saul told Jase. “I’m not too old to take you out back—”
“You aren’t taking anybody anywhere,” Jacinda said. “But I will.”
“It wasn’t me,” Jase said, putting up his hands.
“It was an accident,” Lindsey insisted.
“That your tourniquet?” Jacinda asked. “It’s good. You know, people who have a lot of accidents get proficient at cleaning up after them.”
“It wasn’t an accident.” Helen stepped forward. “It was me.”
Jacinda eyed Helen—the EMT had the biceps to take any one of them out back if she thought there was real danger—and asked Lindsey, “Do you need help?”
“You have no idea,” she muttered. Jase nudged her elbow and Lindsey said, “We’re all fine.”
Saul grunted with a lopsided grin. “You been in that car too darn long.”
“Wrap it up here,” Jacinda warned Saul. “We’re leaving in two minutes.”
“Okay, okay,” he said. Jacinda went around to the driver’s seat, and Saul smiled between the Young brothers.
“It’s fitting that the first time I met your dad, I was getting into an ambulance too.
Come back sometime and I’ll tell you the whole story.
For now, I want you to go inside the garage. All the way to the back.”
“For what?” Jase asked.
“You’ll know. Keys are in the ignition. There are a couple of helmets on the shelf behind it.”
Graham looked at Jase, then Saul. “Helmets? For what?”
“A gift,” Saul said, his eyes glistening. “Something I’ve been fixing up for your old man.”
“We’re moving,” Jacinda called back.
Graham closed one door, and was closing the other when Saul said, “If you take a left at the desk and keep walking, you’ll find my herb garden. Help yourself to a few samples. My treat.”