She saw something, but what?
My phone rang again.
I stepped closer, shielding my eyes from the rain as shouts hollered out behind me, more boots pounding the concrete, punctuated by the shrill call of my phone.
For long seconds, I saw nothing, rain pelting me, plastering my sodden hair to my face, obscuring my vision. Then movement caught my attention and the world slowed, narrowing to nothing but the tall figure walking calmly up the driveway, blood staining his face and hands.
And a body slung over his shoulder.
12
ORLA
It wasn’t a body. It was a living, breathing man. But the urgency lacing Locke’s shout for help was unmistakable. Déjà vu choked me, swallowing up the split second we had to lock eyes, then all hell broke loose.
River dashed past me, opening the gate. Locke staggered forward, Lida jumping at his legs, her frantic bark still piercing the early morning quiet. “Open the bunkhouse and get the medical bags.”
It was a blind instruction.
I was closest.
Spinning around, I ran back to the bar. Decoy met me at the door. He passed me one of the medical bags and gripped the other.
I turned around again and dashed to the bunkhouse.
Locke was already there, laying the mystery man down on a bottom bunk, stripping his wet clothes away, revealing his badly bruised torso. “He needs fluids and oxygen. If I can’t stabilise him here, we need to get him to someone who can.”
I knelt beside him. “Tell me what to do.”
Locke slapped gloves into my palm. “My focus is fucked. I need you to stick the IV.”
“What?”
Locke extended the man’s arm. “Just do what I say.”
He steered my gloved hands, murmuring low directions in my ear. The iron scent of blood thick in the air, his wet clothes against mine. Of all the sweet reunions I’d dreamt of, this wasn’t it.
We applied a tourniquet and searched for a vein among the mess of injuries already littering the man’s arm. Locke found one and passed me an alcohol wipe, tossing a plastic-wrapped contraction to Decoy. “You need to clean the skin, then stretch it.”
Somehow, that computed. Decoy slapped the cannula with the needle uncovered into my other hand. Under Locke’s guidance and Lida’s watchful stare, I eased the needle into the man’s vein, advancing it until blood flashed in the hub at the back of the cannula.
“A little more.” Locke held my elbow. “That’s it. Now hold it in place, drop the tourniquet, and fix it.”
I followed his instructions and secured the cannula in place.
Locke’s touch fell away from me.
Decoy connected the IV bag and hung it from the bunk. Then he sank back on his heels, gaze sweeping the unconscious man, recognition lighting his face as Rubi barrelled through the door.
Rubi careened to a stop. “Fuck me. Is that Vicky the Russian?”
Locke didn’t answer, his attention fixed onViktor, working on him with one hand, the other cradled to his side.
He’s hurt. The blood I’d seen outside not a figment of my nightmarish imagination, but a slow crimson tide staining his skin.
“Locke. Your arm.”
He ignored me, evading as Rubi reached his side. “Can you get me some food?”