Slade Read online

  She saw her broken suitcase near a tree. It was smashed and torn as if someone had taken an ax to it. She shivered. That could have been her or Slade if either of them had been thrown from the vehicle.

  “No!” Bart screamed.

  “Be a man,” Slade snarled at him. “You can’t hang there all day. On the count of three I’m going to slice your belt and pull you out. Your ass will fall but I have your head. One. Two—”

  “Don’t,” Bart screamed, sounding panicked.

  “Three!”

  Slade sliced the belt and dragged a howling Bart out of the vehicle. Trisha limped the remaining few feet to the man crying on the ground as Slade released him and stepped back. The look Slade flashed toward Trisha showed pure disgust. Slade shook his head, clenched his teeth, and stormed away.

  “You deal with him. I’m going to salvage what we can. It’s going to be dark soon.”

  Trisha lowered to her knees to examine the softly crying Bart. Sympathy welled inside her for the kid who was in his early twenties but was acting much younger. She understood how frightened he had to be. Her hands roamed over his body, the only thing she could do without her medical bag. All she had to assess him with was her touch and vision to try to triage him.

  She examined his hips and her hands cupped one of his thighs and inched down his leg to his ankle. He didn’t appear to have broken feet or ankles. She wasn’t about to remove his footwear to find out for sure, knowing that if he had broken any bones there the shoe would keep it immobile and control the swelling for the time being. She rose and gripped his other thigh, circling her hand around it high up, and inched her way down.

  “Do you want a room?” Slade sighed. “You touch me that way and I hope you have a wedding ring to give me, Doc.”

  “I’m checking for more broken bones.” She didn’t even glance over her shoulder at Slade. “So far so good.”

  Trisha leaned back and frowned at Bart. “Where does it hurt?”

  “My hand.”

  She’d explored his stomach and his head until she’d run her hands all over him. “How does your neck and back feel?”

  “They are fine. My hand hurts.” Bart cried softly with his arm cradled to his chest.

  Trisha turned her head to gaze up at Slade. “He could have internal injuries but I won’t know without getting him to a hospital. The only ones I know of for sure are his wrist and hand. Can you get my suitcase and pick up some of my clothes? I need them.”

  A frown marred Slade’s lips. “You want to change clothes? Give me a break, Doc. You can’t be that conceited.”

  “You stupid son of a bitch,” Trisha ground out, her anger flaring instantly. “I need to tear up some cloth to bandage his hand. The handle of my suitcase is the kind that extends. I can remove it and use it to splint his entire arm to the end of his fingers.”

  Slade blushed a little. “I’m on it. Sorry.” He walked away.

  Trisha sighed, allowing her anger to fade. They were all under stress. Slade returned within minutes. He used a knife to slice her nice shirts into strips. Trisha splinted Bart’s broken hand. He fainted when she did it, which was a good thing because Slade seemed really pissed that Bart kept crying. Bart wasn’t doing that for the moment while he was passed out cold.

  Trisha took advantage of it and bandaged his bleeding hand and secured it to the brace. She carefully assessed it, deciding that if they didn’t get him to a trauma room soon he’d lose the entire hand. She stated that assessment softly to Slade.

  “I’ll get right on that.” Slade frowned at her. “Right after I sprout wings to fly us out of here. What do you want me to say? We’re screwed.”

  “You could walk up to the road to flag someone down instead of standing there making smartass remarks.”

  “What about the two trucks up there that tried to drive us off the road? Oh yeah. They did that and they could still come back to make sure we’re dead. They did go to all that trouble to try to kill us in the first place. They also have guns.”

  “You didn’t see them coming down here, right?”

  Slade’s expression hardened with anger. “They might be picking up the jerks from the red truck I shot holes in. There’s possibly even more of them coming after us. Maybe they want to make it a party. They might be heading down this way right now. I’ll go check while you stay put.” He spun on his heel and disappeared around the SUV.

  Trisha sank down on her butt. Her head hurt and her knee throbbed. She avoided moving her sore shoulder. Every time she stirred her right arm she wanted to wince. She reached up with her left hand to rub her injured shoulder. It wasn’t dislocated and she didn’t feel anything broken. She hoped it was just a strained muscle or just a deep bruise. Bruising in soft tissue could be very painful.

  Bart came around. Trisha smiled at him. “How are you feeling?”

  “I hurt. I don’t want this job anymore.”

  Trisha nodded. “I don’t blame you. Why don’t you try to sit up?”

  “I don’t want to. When is the ambulance going to arrive? Did Slade go for help?”

  “He went to go make sure those people who ran us off the road aren’t trying to come down here to find us. He’ll be back and we’ll get out of here soon. Don’t worry, Bart. I’m a doctor, remember? You’re doing fine.”

  * * * * *

  Slade ignored his injuries. Anger helped as he climbed the hillside, every one of his senses on high alert. Gasoline messed with his nose, making it difficult to distinguish smells. Some of it had spilled from the destroyed SUV to leak through the debris he navigated and his gaze darted above for any sign of unnatural movement.

  Trisha could have been killed. Rage gripped him at the thought. She’d definitely been hurt. The smell of her blood still lingered in his memory despite the horrible gas smell. He half hoped one or two of the assholes who’d attacked them tracked them. He’d love to kill the bastards for harming her.

  A huge mass of rock stopped his progress as he peered up a twenty-foot wall. The SUV had dropped from above. The sight made him realize how lucky they’d been to survive. The front of the vehicle had taken most of the damage but if they’d hit it on the side… He shivered. Trisha would have died.

  The memory of trying to grab her, to shield her body with his through the worst of the crash would haunt him. She’d been torn from his hold at the end when his head had smashed into metal. It had dazed him enough to make his body go limp. It terrified him to realize how close she’d come to being ejected when he saw she’d ended up in the very back of the SUV.

  The human male at the wheel should have been stronger, tougher, and driven them to safety. Instead fear and panic had gripped Bart until he’d lost control of the situation and crashed the vehicle. He clenched his teeth.

  He should have insisted upon driving but Justice had wanted a human at the wheel to draw less attention. The tinted windows shielded the sight of Slade from passing vehicles on the road. He swore that was the last time he followed that certain order again. He’d be the one to drive if Trisha traveled in another SUV.

  Gratitude gripped him over demanding he ride with Trisha. The idea of her having been attacked without him there left him cold inside. He continued to scan the area above, watching for any signs of their attackers. Humans would follow the path of destruction to locate them. Perhaps they assumed they’d died.

  He relaxed. His people would realize they had met trouble when they didn’t arrive soon. It would be dark before help arrived but he could keep Trisha alive regardless of how long it took his people to find them.

  A sound reached him and a small rain of dirt trickled to his far left. He instantly honed his senses.

  “Fuck,” a male voice cursed. “I need gloves.”

  “Be happy we had some rope. Think they died?”

  “I’m not leaving it to chance,” yet another male voice stated. “We need to find the bodies to prove we killed those animal freaks. We’ll take pictures with our cell phones.”