“Ja… son.”
“I’m going to tie a tourniquet below your knee. I’m sure it will hurt like hell, but I have to stop the bleeding. You’re going into shock.”
“My kit.” It was so hard to think and harder to speak, her body shaking now. “Ketamine. Seventy-five mgs. My quadriceps.”
But her kit was beneath her in her backpack.
“I’ll tie the tourniquet first and then get you pain meds.” He cut off her pant leg below the knee and then got the tourniquet ready. “I’m so sorry, Win. I saw the chain around the tree the second before you took that last step.”
“Not … your … fault.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
Her hands clutching at her thigh, Winona gritted her teeth against the pain as he tied the tourniquet. Then she slipped into blessed darkness.
* * *
Heart slamming,his mouth dry from fear, Jason worked quickly. He secured the tourniquet and checked for a distal pulse to make sure it was tight enough. Then he removed Winona’s backpack and took out everything he thought he’d need. Her medical kit. A warm woolen hat. An emergency blanket. An IV kit. A bag of lactated Ringer’s. Bandages. Then he spread the emergency blanket on the snow and settled Winona in the middle of it, taking advantage of her unconsciousness to move her. He used his pack to elevate her injured leg, then searched for the ketamine and a syringe.
Seventy-five milligrams.
He jammed the needle into her quadriceps and injected her with the medication, fears rushing through his mind. What if, in her semi-conscious state, she’d gotten the dosage wrong and he killed her? What if help didn’t get here fast enough and she lost her leg? What if she bled out?
Damn it! Fuck!
He’d seen it—the big chain tied around the tree—but she’d been beyond his reach, and his shout of warning had come too late.
Shit!
He drew a deep breath and fell back on his training. Because they spent so much time in remote locations, all Shadow Wolves had medic training. He had practiced starting IVs. He willed himself to focus on that and not let his thoughts drift.
He drew one of her arms out of her parka, pushed up her sleeve, found a good vein. In under a minute, he had fluids opened wide. Then he wrapped her in the space blanket, put the hat on her head, and tucked her backpack beneath her head as a pillow.
But there was one more thing he wanted to do while she was unconscious. He found a couple of dead branches close to the ground on some nearby trees and kicked them free from the trunks. Then he used a bandage from Henriksen’s medkit to build a kind of splint—just something to hold her leg steady and give it some support.
This was Graham’s fault. The bastard!
Jason had seen traps just like this one—illegal thirty-pound steel bear traps with teeth—in the asshole’s tent. The son of a bitch had probably strung illegal traplines through the forest, and the wolf had followed them, looking for its master. The animal knew where the traps were hidden—Winona had said wolves were notorious for their ability to avoid traps—and had rested next to one.
Winona moaned as he handled her injured leg, but he steeled himself against his emotions, focused only on the task at hand.
Then he heard it—licking and gnawing.
The wolf.
It was no more than ten feet away from him, lying on its belly, gnawing on the chunk of frozen beef it held between its front paws—the beef that Winona had tried to throw its way.
Damn.
It was huge, with dark gray fur and almost yellow eyes.
Jason’s gaze dropped to the blood on his hands, the blood in the snow, the blood on Winona’s leg. He had no idea how the hungry animal would respond to the scent of so much blood. Would it attack?
He took his Glock out of the holster, checked to make sure there was a round in the chamber, then slipped it back. Then he reached into Winona’s pack and drew out the bag with the frozen beef.
He spoke in a calm voice, broke off another chunk, and tossed it over. “Are you hungry, boy?”
The wolf was startled by his motions and withdrew a few feet before returning and feeding hungrily.