Page 20 of Colton in the Wild
“I’ll set you down here. You hang on to my arm and try using your good leg to slip through. Stop there until I get in, and then we’ll pick a spot for you to get off that leg.”
It took her a moment to process what he was saying. It made perfect sense. It should have been easy to understand. Was she in shock? God, was she bleeding out? Was that why her head was fuzzy?
It took all she had to accomplish the simple thing he’d asked of her. And when she was inside, she had to lean on the cave wall to stay upright. Just seconds later, Spence was there and sweeping her up into his arms again.
To her surprise, he walked straight back then cut right slightly. He must have had time to explore a little or else he remembered the layout of the cave from the last time they’d been there. Knowing him, it was probably the latter.
A large piece of rock jutted out from the wall and he went past it. Then he stopped and lowered her gently.
“Why…?” she began, but didn’t have the energy to finish asking why all the way back here, away from what light was coming through the entrance.
“If somebody just looks in from the entrance, they won’t see anything,” he explained. With her current sluggishness, she didn’t realize right away that she hadn’t even gotten the question out, but he’d answered it anyway. As if he’d read her mind or something. And, for some reason, that gave her the strength to get out a complete thought this time.
“You think he could find it?” she asked, tamping down the apprehension that flared. “I mean we only found it that first time by accident.”
“Depends on if they know the territory at all.”
He didn’t even look at her when he spoke, he was busy checking her wound. He loosened his belt around her leg. Even that made her clench her jaw. But there was something she needed to tell him.
“I don’t think he does,” she said. “I saw him, Spence.”
He froze. Looked at her. She told him what little she knew, including about the color of his attire.
“Huh. You’d think somebody from here would know better,” he said.
“Exactly what I was thinking.”
“So maybe an import,” he muttered as he shrugged his pack off. He dug into it, bringing out the red box that was his basic first-aid kit. He dug out what else he wanted, went back for one more thing, then, oddly, wrapped what looked like a wooden tongue depressor in gauze. He handed it to her.
“Bite down. This is going to hurt, and we don’t want him to hear you.”
“Think I’m going to scream?”
He gave her a solemn look. “I would.”
She sighed. She’d had no room to talk, it had been her shocked cry, after all, that had drawn the shooter’s attention. She had nobody to blame but herself for ending up lying here with that burning agony swirling out from her leg. But who wouldn’t have done the same?
“I had reason, Spence,” she said, rushing the words out. “There’s a body out there, right by the waterfall.”
He went still once more, this time in the act of using his knife—carefully sterilized with a wipe from the kit—to cut a bigger hole in her jeans so he could work on the wound. “He’s already killed someone?”
“I don’t think so. It looks like it’s…been there a while. She. It’s a woman. Half buried.”
That information, that the body wasn’t fresh, was apparently what he’d needed to shove the revelation into a compartment for later while he worked on the here and now. He’d always been good at that, too—putting things aside in order to tackle the present.
It turned out she did need the gauze-encased wood to clamp down on as he worked. The exit was the worst, and he used the one haemostatic sponge he had there to stop the worst of the bleeding. He used the kit’s tourniquet up above the wound, a much better option than his belt. Then he dug out the roll of gauze and hoped there was enough.
When he was done, and the best bandage he could manage was in place, she let out an exhausted breath. The pain ebbed to a pulsing throb and she had to force herself to think.
“I don’t think I can walk, not over the terrain here. And I know I couldn’t keep up with you like this, even if I could walk.”
“You’re not even going to try,” he said in a determined, decisive tone she’d only heard in tense situations. Situations where Spence did what was necessary. It was one of the things that had proved to her that the depth she’d first seen in him all those years ago was still there.
“I agree. So—”
“I slowed down the bleeding, but if you try walking, it’ll be back to square one. You need medical attention.”
It was as if he hadn’t even heard her agree with him. Was he so used to her disagreeing with him he hadn’t even noticed she wasn’t? She spoke with more emphasis this time.
