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 was a beat of silence. “I thought she fell.”
“It looks like it wasn’t an accident.”
“What?”
“Just put me through to Tucker, okay? Bert will fill you in when he gets there.”
The patch-through from radio to telephone took a minute, but was necessary. There was no cell coverage in the back of beyond, and even satellite phones were hit-or-miss. So the rangers often relied on radios, especially for the more out-of-the-way sectors: Seven and Eight on the eastern side, Thirteen and Fourteen on the western side, and good old Sector Nine, which formed the bridge between the two lobes of the huge park … where the crime usually ran to vandalism and careless fires, not attempted murder.
Matt took a long look at the scuffed-up sidewall of the gulley and the three ropes that snaked from a big boulder and disappeared over the edge. He didn’t need to glance down there to know that the bottom of the wash was churned up and littered with scraps from the med techs’ sterile packaging. The scene was seriously contaminated, and it was going to take a hell of an analyst to make anything out of it. Fortunately, the Bear Claw P.D.’s crime lab was staffed by a group of talented analysts who were the ultimate professionals … with one glaring, purple-booted, on-loan-from-Denver exception.
Matt grimaced at the intrusive image of sparkling gray eyes in a sharp face framed by sleek dark hair. Gigi Lynd. Even her name sounded expensive and citified, not like anything that belonged out in the backcountry.
He would tell Tucker to send anyone but her. Hell, Station Two’s nature trail would be a stretch for someone like her … and the last thing he needed to be doing right now was babysitting some city-slicker analyst who dressed like she was looking for trouble.
Chapter Two
Gigi nailed three bad-guy targets, skipped the little old lady cutout, tagged the last two baddies and slapped her Beretta on the counter with a flourish that might not have been strictly necessary, but damn, she was on a roll.
Granted, the firing range’s offerings were pretty basic, but still.
She slipped off her headphones and turned, just catching the tail end of her friend Alyssa’s impressed whistle. The heavily pregnant blonde’s eyes glittered with