be there any minute. How is she?”
“Banged up.” The faint noise of rotor-thwack saved him from having to elaborate. “Chopper’s here. Patch me through will you?”
As he was talking options with the pilot, a trio of climbing ropes sailed over the edge and slithered down, followed moments later by Bert. Raising his voice over the increasing noise of the helicopter, the grizzled ranger called, “They going to stay in the air and drop a basket?”
Matt shook his head. “The pilot thinks she can land on that flat section beyond the wash. We’ll use the ropes to bring Tanya up and out.” It felt good to have a plan, better to know she would soon be getting the medical help she needed. Turning back to the injured ranger, he gentled his voice and said, “The chopper’s almost here. They’ll get you down to the city, and—” He broke off when her eyelids fluttered. “Tanya? Can you hear me?”
She shifted uncomfortably and frowned, then lashed out with a fisted hand as though trying to physically fight off unconsciousness. Cochran and his wife made soothing noises but stayed back, yielding to Matt. He caught her flailing fist. “Easy, killer. You fell off the ledge and banged yourself up a bit, but the med techs are on their way.”
Her lips moved. “Didn’t … fall.”
He blew out a relieved breath that she was making sense. “You hit your head. It’ll come back.” Maybe. Maybe not. At least she was talking.
But she shook her head, wincing at the pain brought by the move. “No fall. Ambushed.”
His blood chilled, but it didn’t make any sense. Ambushes were for narrow alleys and drug dealers, not wide-open skies and park rangers. Hallucination? Maybe. He didn’t know. Leaning closer, he said urgently, “What happened?”
Her eyes opened to slits as she tried to focus on him. “Two men grabbed me … wanted …” She struggled to say something more, but then her body went lax as she lost her brief grip on consciousness.
“Wait!” He surged up onto his knees and bent over her, gripping her fisted hand in his. “What men?” The controlled crisis mode he’d long ago perfected lost out to anger at the thought of someone doing this to one of his people, on his territory, his watch. “Tanya, what men?”
“Matt.” Bert gripped his shoulder. “She’s out.”
Damn it. He subsided, loosening his grip on her hand. When he did, something fell free and floated to the ground.
Cochran leaned in. “What’s that?”
Catching the small, colorful scrap between his thumb and forefinger, Matt lifted it. “A feather.”
The shaft was thin and curved, and the barbs ran a wild-colored gamut from white-and-black at the top to a deep reddish orange in the middle, then back to black at the base. He frowned at it, but there was no time to really get a good look, because right then the rotor noise increased to a roar and the chopper appeared overhead.
It paused, spun, and then dropped in for a more-haste-than-grace landing. Moments later, shouts and the sound of thudding footfalls up above announced the arrival of the med team.
Matt stuck the feather in his breast pocket and buttoned it in for safekeeping.
The next few minutes were ordered chaos as the medical team rappelled down and hustled to get Tanya stabilized for transport, with a rapid yet thorough triage, warming blankets and an IV line of fluids to combat the shock. The techs didn’t say it, but he could see from their faces that they didn’t like her continued unconsciousness any more than he did. Working quickly and efficiently, they strapped her down and okayed her for travel.
Working together, Matt, Bert, the Cochrans and the med team hauled her out of the wash and loaded her onto the chopper.
Matt heard the copilot radioing ahead to let the hospital know they had a serious head injury on the way. He wanted somebody to look at her and say that she’d be fine, but it didn’t happen.
He slid the door closed, then ducked out of range as the rotors screamed and the chopper lifted up and away, heading for the city. He was relieved to have Tanya in the care of professionals, but there wasn’t any time to stand around congratulating himself on a job well done … especially when he hadn’t done his job well at all.
It was his responsibility to make Sector Fourteen as safe as he possibly could. His mind churned. Two men, she had said. What men? What had happened, and why was she out of her normal range? Had she followed them and been discovered, or had they brought her all this way and dumped her? And what was the deal with the feather? Was it important, or just something she’d been carrying when she was ambushed?
He winced as phantom pain sliced through his lower left abdomen, where a gnarled scar and low-grade ulcer formed a pointed reminder that it wasn’t his job to be asking those questions. Hadn’t been for a long time.
As the rotor noise dimmed, he pulled Bert aside, out of the Cochrans’ earshot. “Take those two back to the station and keep them there.”
The other man darted a look at the hikers. “You think they hurt Tanya?”
“No. But they may have seen something and not even realized it.”
Bert craned around, eyes widening as he followed Matt’s thought process. “You think the guys who got Tanya are still around?”
Probably, said Matt’s instincts. “Just get back to the station and put them in separate rooms so they can’t compare stories any more than they already have. Then you can relieve Jim on the radio so he can go to the hospital. If he balks, make it an order.”
He didn’t think the younger man would give even a token protest. Jim and Tanya had been circling around each other for the past six months, ever since she transferred up from Station Seven, and the fear and emotion in the younger man’s face had been real. While that kind of romantic connection didn’t work for Matt, he wasn’t about to make the choice for someone else. He had sworn off trying to run other people’s lives.
“Aren’t you coming back with us?” Bert asked, still looking around, searching for monsters in the shadows. But that was the thing about monsters. Most of the time, you couldn’t see them until the damage was already done.
“I’m going to stay and look around, scare off any scavengers who might be interested in the scene.” Human or otherwise. Matt tapped the butt of the shotgun riding over his shoulder. “I’ll be fine.”
Bert looked unconvinced, but there was enough of an enlisted man still left in him that he followed orders without further argument, collecting the Cochrans and getting them moving back toward the Jeeps.
When they were gone, Matt was left alone beneath a brilliantly blue sky, warmed by the summer sun. But the beauty and isolation didn’t settle him like they normally did. Instead, there was a heavy weight on his chest as he lifted his radio. “Jim, you reading me?”
“Here, boss. She get away okay?”
“Yeah. They’re en route. You can go down to the city as soon as Bert gets there. Right now, though, I need you to patch me through to Tucker McDermott.” This wasn’t a case for Homicide, really, but Tucker was a friend. One of his very few.
There
