Heston (In the Company of Snipers #25)

Chapter Seven

Heston caught sight of a tiny orange glow up ahead just as it exploded into a bright yellow fireball. “Straight ahead, guys. Run! Faster! People might still be in there!”

“Cripes!” London yelled. “That’s the old trailer I wanted you guys to see. Looked abandoned. No, no, no! This can’t be happening!”

Heston and Asher ran, but light-footed London beat them to the scene, where a small, old-style trailer was fully engulfed. Flames shot out all three windows that Heston could see. Heavy black smoke curled overhead into already smoking branches, poking at the pine like fingers looking for something to grab.

London disappeared around one side of the trailer. Asher ran the other way. Heston whipped out his sat phone and reported the disaster to Bates. The woman who’d answered before answered again. He told her what he knew. Just as quickly, she confirmed the location, told him help was on the way, and advised him to stay clear of the fire.

Not happening. There was no way to check for survivors. The flames were too hot to breach the door, and the ceiling had collapsed, blocking Heston’s entry. He growled at the helpless predicament he was in. The fire was out of control. All it needed was to reach the propane tank these crappy trailers came with, and this part of the campground would cease to exist. All the more reason to catch up to London. To protect her. To keep her safe.

Before he took one step, the trailer’s side panel popped off its rivets and curled down onto itself, nearly into him. Heston took a full step back to avoid the blow torch flaming out from the swiftly melting aluminum. The blazing heat proved brutal. He lifted the back of his arm to shield his nose and mouth. It was still hard to breathe. He took another step back, then another, looking past the flaming rig for London. Damn it. Where had she disappeared to so quickly?

Powerful heat forced him to retreat again. He could only hope she hadn’t done anything crazy, like crash through one of these burning walls. It’d be just like her, stubborn to the end, even if it meant dying.

The fumes were horrendous. The fire scorched his face until tears ran down his cheeks. In his haste, he stumbled over—

“Son of a bitch! Get the hell off me!” some guy bellowed.

“Boss?” Heston dropped to his knees. “Is that you? My God! It’s you!”

A hearty “Shit!” roared back at him. “You stepped on me!”

“Didn’t see you. Sorry.” Heston turned from where Alex lay cursing. Still looking for London, he yelled into the mic snapped on his jacket collar, “Asher. Found Alex. Bring London to the front of the trailer. We’re about twenty feet from it. Hurry!”

“On my way,” Asher responded hoarsely.

“I’m already here,” London replied just as hoarsely as she dropped alongside Alex, who was still face down on the ground. “Are you okay, sir?” she asked, her gloved hand on his shoulder, her head tipped forward as she leaned over to get him to look at her.

“Not me, damn it.” Alex groaned. He was hunched over into a push-up position, his weight on his knees and elbows, protectively shielding—

“Kelsey!” Heston cried out. “You found her. Boss! Thank you, God!” His fingertip snapped the button that would bring Decker back on-line. “Nine-one-one!” he barked into the mic, while digging into his smaller bag and grabbing his IFAK, his Individual First Aid Kit. “Deck, Asher, we’ve got them. Both Alex and Kelsey!” Then he repeated it because it seemed so extraordinarily rare that this bleak rescue mission had turned successful, “We’ve got them! Both of them, both Alex and Kelsey!”

But then he froze. Afraid. Just because Alex had Kelsey didn’t mean she was alive. How could she be? Heston didn’t know if she was breathing. He couldn’t tell as closely as Alex guarded his wife. His heart fell.

“Boss?” Heston asked more calmly, his finger off the mic, his joy restrained, all excitement gone from his voice. He peered closer at the still body beneath Alex. Kelsey had yet to move. But he could see she wasn’t breathing. Not even a puff of frosty breath whispered out of her partly open mouth. Shit.

“How’s … how’s your wife, Boss?” Heston asked cautiously.

“How do you think she is?” Alex bit out. He’d leaned sideways onto one hip, off her, still keeping his body between hers and the blazing fire, his back to the flames. “She’s hurt damned bad, and I can’t get her warm. She’s too cold.”

“I can take care of that,” Heston replied evenly. He pulled a dozen hand and foot warmers from his bag, activated them, gave one for Alex to hold, then placed the rest inside Kelsey’s too-big-to-be-her t-shirt, under the shirt on her belly, inside her pants pockets and into her socks. But Alex was right. She was as cold as a corpse.

By then London had her own IFAK laid out alongside Kelsey’s head and was expertly flashing a pencil light over her face and into her eyes. Cupping Kelsey’s cheek with her free hand, London asked Alex, “Was she breathing before? She’s not now. I’ve got oxygen.”

Heston noticed her fingers. No ring in sight. Just black nitrile gloves.

‘Not now!’ he commanded himself. ‘Stay on track. Focus!’

“Yes, but not nearly enough,” Alex answered, “and I had to get her out of there and—”

“Understood. No need to explain. Good job, sir. You saved her life. That was your first priority, saving this pretty lady’s life. Well done,” London shot back. “And now we’ll get her ready to transport. Anything broken that you know?”

Alex was on his butt now, sitting cross-legged, his powerful body shaking with an overload of adrenaline—which had most likely saved his life. “I didn’t have time to check. The fire… The river… Everything exploded. I… I should’ve been there…” His voice trailed off, but his steely gaze remained fixed on his wife.

“Nope.” London let the P pop. “You did everything right, sir. Same as I would’ve done. Now sit back and let us help you both.” With an authoritative snap of her free hand, she uncoiled the oxygen tubing included with her portable O 2 tank, adjusted the flow, and secured the unit’s full mask over Kelsey’s nose and mouth. “If she doesn’t start breathing on her own, we may need to begin compressions, Alex. But a breath of O 2 might just be enough to—”

Kelsey’s chest lifted the tiniest bit. Then lifted again.

“Hurry!” Alex ordered. “Save her! God, save her!”

London hurried. Heston, too. Peeling out of his work gloves, he donned a set of surgical gloves, not willing to risk causing any infections. The ABCDs of triage came as easily as they had when he was in combat. A irway. B reathing. C irculation/ C oma/ C onvulsion. D ehydration.

He opened his kit, grabbed the enclosed penlight, flicked it on, and stuck it between his teeth. “Hook her up to saline, Ash. STAT,” he mumbled around the light, finally noticing his buddy. “I’m assessing circulation.” Which meant he was looking for open wounds to tourniquet or pack with QuikClot powder and the thick rolls of hemostatic gauze from his kit. Kelsey was already in a coma, but bleeders left unattended led to dehydration which ended with convulsions. Shit, he hoped he didn’t find any. He began carefully at the sides of her head, feeling quickly for bumps and—

“Head wound,” he reported as clinically neutral as possible. Just as critically assessing. Heston tipped forward on his knees and leaned over Kelsey’s prone body to better see what he was dealing with. “Graze. Clean. No clotting. Definite skull impact. No fractures” —at least none he could see— “but I can see bone.”

“They shot her,” Alex growled. “Gawddamned bastards shot her. In the head! I was there. Saw the gawddamned pink mist!”

Heston wasn’t going to argue. The infamous pink mist from a headshot usually meant instant death. Not this time. “Well, they missed. Didn’t hit anything vital,” he told his boss calmly. The kinetic energy behind the round that grazed her skull had probably been enough to knock her out, but it hadn’t shattered the bone, and skull bones were hard. Kelsey might just pull through this nightmare after all. The pink mist Alex was positive he’d seen might be nothing more than the fact that head wounds bled like crazy. Or the panic of seeing his wife shot amplified and distorted what he’d thought he’d seen. That’d be enough to fry a man’s logic card.

Heston knew what a headshot looked like, and this wasn’t it. This was a graze, pure and simple. No longer bleeding. No blood seeping around it whatsoever. Kelsey’s scalp, along the length of the two-inch-long, one-inch-wide burn just above her left ear, was a whitish line of frayed, gray flesh. Not a hint of pink, signifying the wound had been washed clean, maybe too clean, by her time in the river. A damned cold river. For the first time, Heston hoped the river had been frigid enough to work the miracle she desperately needed.

Snow started falling again, dropping like wet, soggy spitballs through the tree branches overhead. Not the least bit pretty. Not here. Not now. Heston wished it’d quit.

“H-heat,” Alex stuttered, fumbling through the many flaps and pockets of the bag at his side. “She’s not warm enough. I need to get her w-warmer. Help me, damn it!”

Heston shot a cursory glance at Alex just as the hefty ‘whump, whump, whump’ of Decker’s helo sounded overhead. Alex was in shock. His lips were thin and his eyes were bleak. Too bleak. He had to know how bad the odds for Kelsey were. But the last thing Heston needed was Alex giving up on his wife.

“Stats,” he asked Asher at the same time Deck’s strong voice came through their earbuds. “At your location, boys. Touching down. Keep my kids alive, gawddamn it!”

By then, Asher had an IV line inserted into the back of Kelsey’s right hand, an automatically inflating pressure cuff on her right biceps, and a stethoscope plugged into his ears while he listened to her heart.

“Thready heart rate, Heston,” he reported quietly. “Damned low BP. Eighty-eight over fifty-one.” He tipped back on his haunches and squeezed the bag of saline hanging off the portable metal stand he’d retrieved from his IFAK. “She’s dehydrated so I’m pushing more fluids. Okay, Boss?”

“Yeah. Okay. Good,” Alex rasped. He’d stopped tearing his bag apart, but the man was clearly losing it, and Heston doubted he had what Kelsey needed in that bag anyway. Didn’t even look like his.

“I’m bringing two gurneys. Get my friends ready to travel,” Decker advised calmly from the helo’s cockpit. “University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle is on stand-by to receive.”

Heston’s eyes blurred at the steadfast strength and sacrifice of the nation’s first responders, men and women like Decker. It never ceased to amaze him how quickly medical professionals jumped to assist complete strangers. How damned loyal they were to people they’d never met. Or how much Decker loved his boss and his boss’s pretty little wife.

“I couldn’t get her warm,” Alex whispered. Which wasn’t exactly true, not as close as they still were to the burning rubble. But Kelsey needed blood and a trauma team more than she needed warmth. And Alex was in bad shape, too.

“Copy that. Two patients. Both with gunshot wounds. But Deck…” he murmured as quietly as he could. “Seattle’s not going to be close enough.”

“Understood. Requesting a facility closer to this LZ, right gawddamned now.”

“Copy that. We’re ready for evac.”

“Yup. I see you now.”

Heston looked up as Deck cleared the front end of what was left of the trailer, with two portable gurneys on his shoulder and barking orders into his cell phone. When he caught sight of everyone, he stuffed his cell into a pocket and ran straight for Alex. He dropped the gurneys near Asher, then took careful hold of Alex, and pulled him to his feet. “Boss. I’m here. Let’s get you and Kelsey safely out of here.”

“Deck? You came? You came for… for Kelsey?”

“You bet I came, Boss. For you and Kels, I’ll walk through fire. Wouldn’t be anywhere else but here now, would I? Can you walk? I brought gurneys if you’re—”

“I don’t need your help!” Alex yelled. “Help her! Help my wife, damn it! Save her, not me!”

Gently as all get out, London intervened, grabbed hold of Alex by his elbow, and told him, “Hi, Alex. You don’t know me but I’m an old friend of Heston’s. Maybe he told you about me, London Wilde? No matter if he didn’t. That’s not important, but Kelsey is. Listen, I came all this way to rescue you and your wife, and I’ve done the best I can, but Deck’s right. You’re bleeding. You, sir, need to be seen by a doctor, same as your wife. Kelsey, right? You love her, don’t you?”

Wordless, probably for the first time in his life, or maybe because he was as smitten by London’s charm as Heston still was, Alex merely stared at her and nodded.

“Well then, let’s get out of these professionals’ way, shall we? They know what they’re doing, Alex, and I trust them. While they wrap Kelsey in those toasty heated blankets” —she nailed Heston with a damned sharp eyebrow, spurring him to do just what London said he’d do— “and on her way to the nearest hospital, you’re coming with me.”

“But I… I…”

“But you’ve done all you can, Alex. Let’s watch these guys get her loaded, so we can get Kelsey out of here as quickly as possible, okay?”

“Yeah,” he answered more calmly. “That’s what I want. Her out of here. Right away. Yeah. That.”

“Well good, because that’s what these men are doing.”

Alex seemed appeased. At least pacified for the moment. Hurriedly, Heston jerked the pre-warmed, aluminum-wrapped blankets from inside the still folded gurneys. He’d never seen his take-charge boss this disoriented or looking so lost before. By the time Heston had a neck brace on Kelsey and had her wrapped up tight in the warm blankets, London had draped another heated blanket over Alex’s shoulders. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Kelsey, not once, and he was every bit as pale as she was.

“She’s ready to move,” Heston told Asher and Decker.

“Be careful!” Alex snapped when they crouched in tandem and gently lifted Kelsey off the cold ground and settled her onto the gurney. “Don’t you dare hurt her!”

“Never, Boss,” Asher replied smoothly as he tucked the blankets around Kelsey, then added the last heated blanket over her. “I’d never hurt Kels, you know that. She brings me cinnamon rolls from that bakery by Heston’s place every Tuesday, and I know damned well she’s going to bring me another one real soon.” For a big guy, he did have a gentle side.

“I know,” Alex muttered. “I do. It’s just that—”

“It’s just that you love her, Boss. Understood. But you’ve got to share her, because we love Kels, too.”

Alex was so damned lost. It was hard seeing him like this.

Deck strapped Kelsey onto the gurney. It took minutes to transport her to the helo, its rotors still whirling. Once there, Heston and Asher jumped inside the rear compartment and guided Kelsey’s gurney onto the locking floor stanchions. London climbed in behind Alex, instantly motioning for him to sit in the seat closest to his wife. Heston strapped both his boss and Kelsey in tight, then raised the stanchions until she was at the same level as Alex. Might as well. There was no way Alex would stay seated with Kelsey on the floor.

Decker closed the side door and took his place up front. Asher rode shotgun. Heston grabbed the seat across from London. He’d secured his IFAK inside his gear bag, but left its Velcro binding loose, in case. Kelsey was in bad shape. She had more wrong with her than just the bullet graze on the side of her head. Heston hadn’t wanted to panic Alex, but the woman was a mess of broken bones and hematomas, some of them damned serious. The most obvious, her poor fingers were twisted. If she lived—

Heston bowed his head the second his brain uttered that despicable if.

When she came to, she’d need Alex, and Alex would need her. She would live. Heston refused to throw anything but ‘when’ into the universe. When she was back on her feet… When. When. When.

London pulled a walkie-talkie out of an inside jacket pocket and radioed a hurried, “Lieutenant Wilde checking in. Missing persons Kelsey and Alex Stewart have been located. Both alive, but in critical condition. Transporting to the nearest hospital. Will contact you with more info later.”

The guy who answered—had to be Bates—sputtered something about fire or fired, Heston wasn’t sure. Fire at the trailer or London was fired?

She didn’t give whoever it was time to explain or argue. “Wilde, over and out,” she said, then stuffed the device back inside her jacket. “Might be looking for a job after tonight,” she said to no one in particular. “Never mind, forget what I said. I just really liked this job. Most of the time.”

“He’s an ass,” Asher muttered.

“You have no idea,” London agreed. Releasing her safety harness, she dropped to her knees beside Kelsey. Out came a stethoscope from inside her shirt. But instead of using it, she handed it to Alex and asked, “Would you please monitor her heartbeat for me while we travel?”

Heston could’ve cried the way Alex grabbed onto that lifeline and fumbled the listening ends of the scope into his ears, while London smoothed the monitor end beneath Kelsey’s t-shirt. “Can you hear it?” she asked, so damned kindly and sweetly.

And there she was, the only woman Heston could ever fall in love with. Yet, at the same time, the best part of his life slipped away. The woman he’d driven away.

He couldn’t help seeing London as only a former lover saw his woman. Her lips were fuller. So were her hips and chest. Might just be the winter gear she was wearing. Might be she wasn’t wearing her usual sports bra to contain her deliciously jiggly girls. A man doesn’t forget the plump flesh and pebbled nipples his lips, fingers, tongue, and heart had once enjoyed and memorized. The perky girls he’d assumed he’d always have. The generous lover he’d taken for granted. Separation didn’t make the heart grow fonder. It only sharpened the pain of his past mistake.

Many women cried after reaching their orgasm. Not London. She laughed when pleasure shuddered through her exquisitely expressive body. Sometimes, she giggled and writhed in his arms, undone by the magic of their lovemaking. He still recalled how she could purr like a sexy, satisfied kitten even while aftershocks consumed her. And consumed him.

It was clear to see she loved life and lived it to the fullest. Always had, and life, in turn, loved her. She used to dance when she wasn’t bogged down with coursework. He’d noticed she still moved with the efficient ease of a dancer. Graceful, yet controlled. So damned beautiful. She looked happy. But then that was London Wilde. His biggest, stupidest mistake.

The second Alex located his wife’s heart, his head bobbed and his eyes teared up. “Yeah,” he choked. “Got… got her.”

“I know a guy,” Heston whispered to London. “He’s a real hardass, but I think you’d like working for him.”

A smile tugged at the corners of her pretty mouth. Her pink nose twitched like it used to when she was happy. “I already like him,” she whispered back.

God, he’d missed her.