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“Maybe that’s why they want to hug my bumper,” he said, checking the mirror. The bike was now so close to their tailgate that he could no longer see the headlight—it was nothing more than a reflective glow.
He moved to slow down, but as he did, so did the biker, moving back so far that he lost track of the headlight around a corner.
“What’s that guy doing?” Alexis asked, a whisper of fear creeping into her voice.
“Who knows, but don’t worry. We’re fine. The guy’s probably just drunk or something.” Casper had driven this road a few times over the summer, but normally when he got off work he’d just avoid the park and drive home to the tiny town of Babb outside the park, where he had a little apartment on the second floor of a local auto mechanics shop. “Where’s the next pullout?”
Alexis shook her head. “Not for a mile or two.”
He was blinded as a car turned the corner ahead. It was moving fast and hugging the center line of the narrow road. He gripped the steering wheel, his fingers digging into the hard vinyl.
At the last moment, the car swerved into their lane. He jerked the wheel, running the truck off the road and toward the rock wall.
He reached across the truck, trying to stop Lex from lurching forward, but there was nothing he could do. The old Chevy’s tires squealed as the steel body ran against an outcrop of unyielding stone in a mess of metal and sparks.
The truck’s tire caught and, almost in slow motion, it twisted. The world shifted and what had once been up was now down. As they slid to a stop, the truck was lying on its roof. Lex was held in place by her seat belt, her body slumped against the straps and her eyes closed. Blood dripped down her hair and fell onto the gray roof.
“Alexis? Lex?” he called frantically, hoping she was still alive. “Lex, are you okay?”
He started to move, but his strap held him in place upside down. The blood started to rush to his head, making his face feel heavy and bloated. Reaching up, he tried to unclasp his belt, but his fingers fumbled as he tried to make them work.
The deafening beat of his heart started to slow and as he looked at Lex his vision distorted, making her look as though she were a picture going out of focus. His vision tunneled until he could only see her face. A wave of peace filled him.
If this was it, the last thing he was going to see—her long hair and full lips—he could think of no greater goodbye.
Chapter Four (#u6a77f333-7a0f-5c4e-bf16-f4852752ef79)
Alexis opened her eyes. The world was awash with the sounds of frantic voices. She didn’t know where she was; the world floated around her, moving and swaying like she was watching it through a pool of water.
“Alexis?” A man’s voice broke through her thoughts. “Are you okay? Lex?”
She blinked and there, kneeling beside her, was Casper with his silver badge on his belt and hair the color of chestnut, reds and browns that reflected the lights that filled the night, and shoulders so muscular that she was certain he did push-ups as a hobby. As he looked at her, his eyes were wide with fear.
She tried to speak, but nothing more than a slight squeak escaped her lips. Her head ached and as she drew a breath, her chest ached. Swallowing back the pain, she tried again to speak. “What...happened?”
Casper leaned closer and moved her hair out of her face. The strands stuck to her skin and she moved to reach up, but he stopped her. Then she tasted the blood. It filled her mouth, giving it the iron-rich taste of spilled life.
“Don’t worry. You’re going to be okay. The EMTs are almost here. It’s just important that you stay awake. Got it?” He spoke in fast, clipped words that she struggled to understand.
“How?” she asked, groping for the words that seemed to jumble in her mind.
“We were in a car accident.”
It all came flooding back. The car flipping through the air. The screech of metal on stone. The scent of gas in the air. She drew in a gasp, but was stopped by the pain in her chest.
She tried to sit up, but stopped as Casper shook his head. “Don’t move.”
A thin bead of blood slipped down Casper’s hairline and stopped next to his earlobe. “Are you okay?” she asked.
He nodded, reaching up and wiping the blood away, leaving a streak of red on his cheek. “I’m fine.”
In the group of people beside Casper there was a man staring at her. He wore a black leather vest with the words “Madness and Mayhem.” Just below them was the word “Montana” and then a black patch with red stitching that read “Filthy Few.” On the other side of the man’s vest was a patch that read “one-percenter.” The man had gray hair and even though it was dark, he had on sunglasses.
The man must have noticed her looking at him, as he lifted his chin in acknowledgment. This must have been the man who had been following them, the headlight in the mirror. Yet before she could speak, someone stepped in front of him and the man disappeared, becoming just another face in the growing crowd.
On the rock wall beside them she could see the glow of red and blue lights. Tires crunched on the side of the road as the EMTs pulled to a stop.
“Everyone out of the way!” the paramedic yelled as she pushed her way through people.
The EMTs poked and prodded Alexis, taking her pulse and checking her reflexes with lights. Even without them telling her, she knew everything wasn’t right. She closed her eyes and when she reopened them she was already strapped down to a board, her head and back immobile, and they were loading her into the back of the ambulance.
“Casper...” Alexis whispered as the female EMT stepped up into the back of the ambulance beside her.
“What, honey?” the EMT asked.
“Where’s Casper?”
“Your friend?”
Alexis tried to nod, but was stopped by the thick straps on her forehead. “Yes. I want Casper.”
The woman jumped out of the wagon and a moment later, Casper was sitting beside Alexis. He smiled. The blood on his temple had dried. “I’m here.”
There was so much going on. So much she didn’t understand. “Stay with me,” she pleaded, suddenly afraid.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’m not going anywhere. I’ll stay by your side as long as you need.”
* * *
HE’D SEEN MORE people hurt than he could count, but he’d never felt as terrified as when he saw Alexis covered in blood and confused. Hopefully she would be okay. She was so out of it.
She slept as they waited for the doctor to return with the results of her MRI. He hated the monotonous, shrill beeps of the machines that filled the emergency room.
Reaching into the plastic bag at his feet, he pulled out the little sewing kit he’d bought at the hospital’s shop and grabbed her pants from the foot of her bed. He pushed his fingers through the L-shaped hole in her pant leg from where she had caught it on the deadfall. She probably didn’t care about the pants, but he couldn’t sit there with nothing to do but worry.
He pulled out some string, threaded the needle and set to work as he sat in the pink vinyl seat beside her bed. When he’d been younger, his mother had told him that good domestic skills were the mark of a true man.
The stitches were even and as he mended, he kept looking up, hoping Lex would wake and everything would be okay.
He hated this. He hated hospitals—it brought up moments of his past that he never wanted to relive. The sooner they could be out of here, the better.
Every hospital he’d ever been to carried the same overpowering disinfectant smell. They could scrub away the blood and the waste products, but no matter how much they tried to hide it, he could still make out the pungent aroma of panic and fear. Yet as he sat there working, he wondered if the scent was carrying in from the patients or from those waiting for their loved ones to be helped.
He reached over and caressed Lex’s hand. There was no more fear for her, not now, not with the drugs that filtered through her system to numb her pain. Now the fear was solely his.
His phone buzzed. “Hello?”
“Agent Lawrence, this is Ranger Grant with the Glacier National Park Rangers Office. I was one of the responders at the scene of your accident. I believe you left me a message?”
“Thanks for returning my call. I appreciate it,” Casper said. “Did you manage to find the evidence?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “We found two large hiking backpacks—which I assumed were yours and Alexis’s—and there was an empty green military-style bag.”
“Empty?”
“Yep.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. You sure there wasn’t anything in the bag?” He pulled a hand over his face, trying to stave off the start of a headache.
“Yes, sir.”
“The drugs were packed into bricks. Were there any that had spilled out? Maybe into the truck bed or on scene?” He tried to sound calm as he thought about what it would mean if the drugs were truly missing.
“I didn’t find any bricks of drugs, but your topper took a pretty big hit when you rolled the truck.” The man paused. “When we pulled up, the truck’s topper door was open. I guess it’s possible they fell out and weren’t recovered.”
“Or they were taken...”
His mind raced. Who’d want to take the drugs? Only a few people had even known that they had them and were taking them back to Apgar. Was it possible that the coroner or one of the rangers had said something? Or was it completely a random occurrence that they had been in an accident and the drugs had been stolen?
He didn’t believe in coincidences, but he had a hard time believing that the rangers or the coroner would have any ill-conceived ideas of stealing the drugs. No one had seemed overly preoccupied with them on the scene. If someone had wanted them, Casper would have had some type of clue. He was jumping to conclusions... No doubt the drugs were probably scattered along the roadside near their crash site.
“Can you make a run back up to the site? Take another look around? We can’t have thousands of dollars’ worth of drugs get into the wrong hands.”
“No problem... I’ll call you when I get back into cell service and let you know what I find.”
Casper squeezed Lex’s hand. It had started to chill under the hospital’s air-conditioning and he carefully tucked her arms under the warm blanket.
“Thanks, Grant,” he said. “Appreciate your help.” He moved to hang up.
“Wait, Lawrence,” the man said.
He lifted the phone back to his ear. “Huh?”
“We did find a receipt inside the green bag. It was wadded into a ball and was stuck in the bottom corner.”
A receipt? He thought back to everything he’d dumped out of the bag. He didn’t recall a receipt. Was it possible it had been there the whole time, or had the person who’d stolen the drugs accidentlly, or purposefully, left it behind?
“What about the money?”
“No money. Just the receipt,” Grant said, sounding tired. “I’ll take a picture and send it your way.”
“Thanks, Grant.”
“No problem. We’ll start putting out feelers. If the drugs were stolen, maybe we can help you try to get a handle on this before word moves up the chain. Hate to see you get in trouble.”
“Let me know if you hear anything.” He hung up the phone.
He moved too fast as he pushed through another stitch and the needle jabbed into his finger, making him curse as he pushed his finger into his mouth to stem the blood flow.
He was going to be in deep trouble if the news that he’d fallen victim to a heist hit the Fed circuit. If it did, within twenty-four hours everyone from his boss to his old FBI buddies would know that he’d lost a vital piece of evidence.
Just when he thought things couldn’t get any worse.
He knotted the thread as he finished mending the hole and then put everything away.
He was going to need to get in touch with his boss. He glanced down at his watch. Midnight. No wonder Grant had been tired.
Instead of calling and waking up the captain, he wrote him a bare-bones email that emphasized the fact he was sitting in the ER. It was low, playing the mercy card, but he needed to buy some time and a little leniency. The last thing he needed his boss thinking was that he lost the drugs due to his incompetence.
The door to Lex’s room opened, but with the curtain drawn around her bed he couldn’t see who was coming in.
“Is this the right place?” a man asked, his voice tight and filled with panic.
“It is, Mr....” a woman answered.
“Yellowfeather. Travis Yellowfeather.”
Casper’s heart lurched in his chest. What was Lex’s ex-husband doing here?
He looked down at her sleeping face and contemplated waking her. Yet she looked so peaceful, her eyes fluttering with REM sleep and her hair, still specked with blood, haloed around her head. She needed her rest.
“Mr. Yellowfeather, I’m afraid she already has a visitor. We only allow one visitor at a time,” the nurse said.
“To hell with one visitor,” Travis said, pushing aside the curtain.
As soon as he saw Casper, Travis’s eyes darkened and his lips curled into a smirk. “I should’ve known it was you who would be here. I guess it wasn’t enough that you got her hurt, now you have to stay here to make sure she doesn’t die—all in an effort to save your conscience, I suppose.”
Casper went slack-jawed, but he quickly recovered his composure. “Who do you think you are, Travis, walking in here and accusing me of anything?”
“I’m her damned husband,” he retorted, moving to the side of Alexis’s bed.
“Ex, from what I hear.”
Travis’s scowl darkened. “She told you?” He snorted. “So she’s already on the prowl,” he said, half under his breath.
“Why don’t you leave, Travis? I know she wouldn’t want you here.”
“And you think she wants you?” His scowl turned into a dangerous smile. “If you think that, you don’t know Lex at all.”
Travis wasn’t wrong. He couldn’t tell anyone Alexis’s favorite sandwich or the color of her childhood bedroom, but that didn’t mean he was going to leave her here with the man whom, only hours before, she shied away from. He knew fear and hatred when he saw it.
“If you think she would want you here, then I may know her better than you do,” Casper said.
Lex’s hand tightened in his and he turned to see her eyes fluttering open. “Boys,” she said, her voice weak, “don’t fight.”
Travis pulled his lips into a tight line, but he shut up.
“How are you doing, honey?” Casper asked. He moved to caress her face but stopped as he felt Travis’s gaze searing into him. Lex didn’t need a fight, and no matter how much he disliked the man standing at the other side of the bed, he had been right—Casper barely knew her. They had talked a lot as they hiked, and there had been playful banter, but they were only friends.
