Chapter One
Nothing good ever came of a half-assed plan.
Ben Rivers stood with his arms folded across his chest, staring down at the mangled four-wheeler lying on its side about twenty feet down a pucker brush-covered hill. Though a half-assed plan was still better than no plan, he had to admit.
“The handlebars are going left and the wheels are going right,” he pointed out.
Matt Barnett—who was with the Maine state warden service—and Josh Kowalski both shrugged, but it was Josh who spoke. “Yeah, you’ll have to figure out how to compensate for that.”
“Me? Who decided I was going down there?”
“I’m running the winch,” Josh said, pointing to his ATV with its spool of heavy-duty winch cable bolted on the front.
“And I’m in charge of the investigation,” Matt said, “so I can’t risk breaking my paperwork hand.”
Ben snorted. “And I’m the paramedic, so I should probably stay up here and be ready to patch up whichever of you idiots draws the short straw.”
“Hey, I’ve had first aid training,” Matt protested.
They laughed because they all knew Matt was a guy you’d definitely want around in a crisis, but his first aid training didn’t exactly match up to Ben’s years of being a paramedic in the city. That was why Drew Miller—Whitford’s police chief—and Josh, both of whom Ben had known his entire life, had called and offered him a job back in his hometown. Now that their part of the state had become a vacation destination for ATV and side-by-side enthusiasts, they needed somebody who could ride a four-wheeler, knew the area like only a native son would, and could offer advanced medical care while victims were slowly carted out of the woods to a waiting ambulance or helicopter. Ben had fit the bill and his phone had rung at a time he was staring down the barrel of burnout and looking to make a change.
“If Matt wasn’t here we could just push it off the tree it’s hung up on and let it roll the rest of the way down the hill into the pond,” Josh said.
“We’d never get the equipment we’d need for extraction down there,” Ben said.
“That’s between the owner and his insurance company.”
“We’re not pushing it into the pond,” Matt said firmly. “Do you want the lecture on water contamination, wildlife impact and EPA fines or can we just go withbecause I said so?”
Josh groaned. “Hell no, I don’t want a lecture. And you know I was kidding, but since you won’t let us do it the easy way, we’ll watch you do it the hard way.”
Matt looked at Ben. “Rock, paper, scissors?”
“I saved the rider. You save the machine.”
The game warden snorted. “Saved the rider? You cleaned the scrape on his elbow and gave him a Band-Aid.”
“Hey, infected wounds are no joke.” He managed to saywoundwith a straight face, but it wasn’t easy.
The rider had bailed when the machine started to roll, throwing himself free. He’d skinned his elbow when he hit the ground and he’d be finding new bruises for a couple of days, but he’d been lucky and Ben’s services hadn’t really been needed. Unfortunately, the information that the rider wasn’t still on the ATV when it rolled over and went off the trail and down a hill wasn’t relayed to the dispatcher right away and hadn’t been relayed to Ben at all. So he hadn’t saved anybody, but that wouldn’t stop him from trying to pawn the physical labor off on one of the other guys.
In the end, both Matt and Ben ended up over the edge while Josh ran the winch. After they secured the steel cable to the frame of the ATV, they had to guide the ATV as Josh reeled the cable back in. It was slow work, and they had to constantly move to make sure they were never in a position to be swept down the hill on the odd chance the winch cable snapped.
By the time they had the four-wheeler back on the trail, Ben was sweaty and cursing himself for not leaving as soon as he’d slapped a Band-Aid on the machine’s rider. Instead, he’d hung around after Andy went back after a truck and trailer, the so-called victim riding behind him since Andy had a two-up, chatting. Then the chatting became a discussion of how to retrieve the ATV and here he was.
“Now comes the hard part,” Josh said, and Ben’s groan was almost drowned out by Matt’s. “We have to get it two miles to the closest spot Andy can get the truck and trailer to.”
“We’re not driving it, that’s for sure.” Matt was circling the ATV, taking pictures. He’d taken some while it was hung up on the hill, too, as well as a few of the marks on the trail leading up to the spot it rolled over.
It looked to Ben like the rider had simply caught a rut wrong and it was a straight-up accident, but that was Matt’s job.
“I don’t see why we don’t leave it and let the guy who owns it worry about it,” Ben said. “You’d have to be one tricky son of a bitch to steal it in the condition it’s in.”
Josh shook his head. “Because guess who’s going to get asked to bring him back out here and then get the machine back to the road? I’m here now. And you guys are here. I’d rather do this with you than a guy who managed to roll his machine on a dirt road.”
“Thereareruts,” Matt pointed out.
“How are you planning to get it to the road?” Ben asked Josh, hoping they could move the process along so there was at least the hope of having lunch in the near future.
