“Shh, shh. I’ve got you.”
My hand comes back covered in blood, and the panic surges again. There’s raw flesh on her side, a chunk ripped open, and blood streams from it. When I try to check, she convulses in pain, and I take more deep breaths and fumble with a syringe, pulling sedative from a bottle.
“You are under arrest for the murder of your husband,” Dalton says to Gretchen.
“What?”
I don’t hear the rest. I give Storm the needle, all the while praying it’s the right choice. Not enough to knock her out, but enough to relax her.
Dalton starts talking on the sat phone. When I glance up, his handgun is trained on Gretchen as he tells someone—Anders, probably—to bring the ATV and bring it now.
I block everything again and turn my attention to Storm. She’s quieting, the sedative pulling her down, and I gently prod the chunk of flesh back and—
My heart seizes. Bone juts through just below the bitten chunk. It’d been covered in bloody fur and I hadn’t seen it. Her rib has broken and jabbed through, and her breathing is still labored, still raspy, even with the sedative.
Is it worse? Did Imakethings worse? She’s punctured a lung and a second rib has punctured her side, and I don’t know what other internal injuries she has.
A grizzly crushed her. All that weight falling on top of her, and I don’t know how badly she’s injured, and maybe I just made things worse by sedating her. What if she can’t breathe? What if—
I take deep, ragged breaths myself. I’m ready for that. If she stops breathing, I am ready.
“Casey?” Dalton says, his voice low. “Will’s on his way. What can I do?”
“Just make sure that woman doesn’t fucking run away again. Because if anything happens to our dog because we had to rescue her,aftershe ran away yesterday…”
I don’t finish that. It’s probably not in my best interests to threaten someone with bodily harm if they stick around and things go wrong. But Dalton only comes over and kneels beside Storm.
“Gretchen’s not going anywhere,” he says.
I look over to see he’s tied her up. I don’t know when that happened. I know I should feel sympathy for her ordeal, but Storm’s hurt, and right now, I’m blaming Gretchen for that, justified or not.
“Make sure Storm’s breathing,” I say. “I gave her something to calm her, and now I’m afraid I shouldn’t have and—”
“She’s relaxed and breathing.”
“But she punctured a lung. I can hear it.”
“So can I.” His voice is wonderfully calm, and as long as I don’t look into his eyes and see the panic there, I can draw on that calm, believe in it, let it tell me everything is fine.
He continues, “I’m listening to her breathing, and I will tell you if it changes, okay?”
I nod.
“Then we’re all set. I’m here. Focus on what you need to do.”
He runs his hands down Storm’s back, and if those hands seem to shake, I tell myself it’s just becauseI’mshaking. He’s not freaked out. He’s calm because Storm is fine and I have this under control.
I don’t have it under control.
She’s bleeding, and her lung is punctured, and I have no idea what else is wrong.
I take more deep breaths and concentrate on that rib poking through. It looks horrible, but I need to leave it be. It’s only trickling blood. Let April handle that. The same with the chunk of missing flesh. While blood keeps seeping, it’s not gushing, and there’s no major artery there. It’s just ripped muscle and skin.
Look for more. What else—
The roar of the ATV cuts me short. Anders whips into the clearing. The first thing he sees is Gretchen, sitting with her hands bound behind her. His lips compress, and his eyes shoot daggers her way, but after that, he ignores her, running instead to us.
He drops down beside Storm. I quickly tell him what happened and what I can see.
