“With me,” Kyle barked, nudging me in the side to jar me into motion. I bobbed my head, his words slicing through the panic. I threw myself into the cab and then time seemed to stand still as if we were driving into a vortex. I knew we were in a truck barreling over pastureland at breakneck speed, but I was somewhere else. Somewhere back in time when Devon had called me from the hospital to tell me to get back now. I’d only left to go home and shower. By the time I waded through quitting time traffic in Chicago and sped into the pediatric ICU, Kailey had died. I never got to say goodbye. And in some terrible sick way, I felt that if it had been me there with her, I’d have been able to keep her alive another day. It was a twisted form of deflection, putting my guilt onto Devon. It was shameful and pitiful. And it drove a wedge between us that eventually broke us up. When they say that only the strongest couples survive losing a child, they’re not wrong.
“Nate, you need to snap out of it!” Kyle shouted, ripping me out of that dark past. I blinked at the darkness that had fallen over the land. “We got incoming!”
No sooner had he said that a pack of four-wheelers sped past us, lights out, they split like the Red Sea before Moses. I spun around in my seat, trying to make out the machines or the riders, but it was simply too dark.
“Do we follow?” Kyle asked as we streaked along, the dry creek bed leading us to the site.
“No,” I ground out, my fingers gouging the dashboard. “I have to get to Bishop. I can’t lose him. I can’t be late!”
Kyle said nothing as he focused on driving. The lanterns at the site came into view. I nearly climbed out then, but I waited, somehow, until the truck stopped. Then I threw the door open and ran as fast as I could into the tangle of downed tarps.
“Over here!”
I spun to see Veer over by the latrine, waving his hands over his head. The camp was now flooded with headlights. I ran over to him, and he was sporting a gash on his cheek.
“We tried to fight them off but there were too many,” Veer’s apology turning into white noise as I leaped over a cooler of spilled soft drinks to kneel beside Bishop. He was flat out, blood running from his scalp down over his forehead. His eyes were open and for a second, all I could see was Kailey’s lifeless stare. Then, he blinked at the blood in his eyes, and I exhaled a breath I didn’t even know I’d been holding.
“Hey, cowboy,” Bishop groaned and tried to sit up. “Oh fuck, yeah no.” He wobbled a bit. I slid my arms around him and eased him back to the hard dirt. “They rode up on us from that way,” Bishop said while waving a bloodied hand in the general direction of the Hollow Wind land. Kyle was yelling at the others. Someone was shouting directions into the walkie talkies. Landon, I think, telling Montrell to send out a paramedic unit. “Did they get the bones? I swear I will kill those bastards if they got more of my trike.”
“Just rest. We’ll worry about bones later.” I ran my hands over his arms. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“No, just my head. Veer, did they get anything?” He tried to sit up again, blanched, and then threw up all over himself. Stubborn ass. I eased him back down. There was so much going on at once, Bishop bloody and sick, the others shouting to each other. People running around the dig site, and all I could do was cradle Bishop in my arms while I dabbed at his bloody head with my hankie. “If they stole more bones, I want you to round up a posse.”
It took over forty-five minutes for the Copper Falls ambulance to arrive. By then Bishop had gotten to his feet so he could wobble around the site checking on his bones, in particular one of the horns that they’d lovingly gotten out of the ground just two days ago. Thankfully, the poachers had struck out this time, probably due to the two rabid paleontologists defending their site with shovels and picks until the cavalry could arrive.
“I really think you should go to the ER,” Ronnie, one of two first responders who had arrived, was telling my boyfriend. Again. “Your symptoms sound like it could be a concussion.”
“I’m fine. They’ll do nothing for a concussion but watch me. Nate can watch me. We have to get this area secured and my students—”
“We’ll do that for you,” I interjected as we sat in the back of the ambulance, Bishop’s head being tended to by Pauline, the other paramedic. “You’re going home to bed where I can supervise your condition.”
He winced as Pauline apologized but continued to apply some sort of glue to his four inch laceration. His face was a mess, dirt and blood dried everywhere, not to mention his clothing was ruined and stank. No, he was not lingering around out here. He was going to my cabin to get cleaned up and into bed. And if he thought to argue with me, I’d remind him just who the foreman of this ranch was.
“You’re awfully demanding suddenly,” he whispered, grimaced, and started talking to Pauline about a skull he had read about that had been found during an excavation in Britain. Seems there had been a Viking bone spoon with the fractured skull, but he had hypothesized that the spoon was not the murder weapon, but then again, it could have been.
“You know how those Vikings were. Ouch!” he hissed. I held his hand and smiled, like a dolt, I couldn’t stop smiling. And the more he rambled on the wider my grin became. He was okay, or would be, I was pretty sure. Worry still clawed at my guts but he seemed all right. There had been so much blood…
But he hadn’t died before I could get here.
Kyle rapped on the open door of the ambulance. “Can I talk to you privately?” he asked then gave Bishop a thumbs-up.
“I’ll be right outside,” I told Bishop. He nodded, incredibly slowly, and I gave his hand a squeeze before slipping out into the cool night. Kyle and I walked a few feet from the ambulance, the flashing red lights bouncing off the trucks and tents. “What did you find?”
“We followed the tracks to the property line. Someone cut the fencing, and they hightailed it onto the Hollow Wind land. I say we go pay the fucking McCrary’s a social call and ask them where the bones are. And if they don’t tell us we’ll give them what they gave to Veer and your man.”
“No,” I replied with a shake of my head. “We’re calling the sheriff.” My number one started to protest. “Kyle, do not fight me on this.” He snapped his jaw shut. “We have no proof that the poachers have any ties to the McCrary’s.”
“But the tracks led right to their land,” he argued anyway. Knowing his hatred for the neighbors was pushing him to be such a hardhead, I let it go but stuck to my guns. After a ten minute discussion with Landon making the call that finally shut up my first-in-command, I left them to handle the law aspect. I was more concerned with getting some hands back on watch out here and getting Bishop home.
Both were done within the hour, and I had just eased Bishop into bed after a long, hot shower and some of that rooibos vanilla chai tea that he enjoyed. A box had miraculously turned up in my cupboard a few weeks ago, right around the time his toothbrush took up residence beside mine in the holder.
“Lay back now,” I instructed while lifting the half empty mug of tea from his hands.
“I like it when you pamper me, but you don’t have to.” He leaned back into the mound of pillows I’d stacked up behind him. His hair was still damp. I could see the bright red gash on his scalp where his flesh had been glued back together. It had taken me using just the tips of my fingers in the shower to gently wash away the blood while not disturbing the adhesive.
“Humor me,” I replied, pulling the covers up to our chins after I had doused the light. “You have no idea how terrified I was when Veer’s panicked voice came over the walkie talkie.”
“Yeah, I think I do.” He rolled to face me, his fingers dancing up my face to stroke my beard. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily. Someone has to help you work on your surfing form.”