Nick had already questioned Hatch and exposed his chest, cutting away his clothes to assess for additional wounds. “No.”
“Get him on a backboard,” Dilinger advised. “We need to get him to Baldwin Memorial. The ER and surgical staff can determine more once they examine him.”
Nick and Perez worked together to strap Hatch to the backboard. Perez went through the motions of applying a cervical collar to prevent movement.
As Perez and Dilinger moved Detective Hatch to the open doors of the ambulance, Nick exchanged a glance with the officer standing by. “Officer O’Connell,” Nick said with a nod, recognizing him.
“He’s going to be okay?” O’Connell asked.
Nick remembered that O’Connell had married Hatch’s youngest daughter, Vada, last spring and rushed to assure him, “The bullet went through. The bleeding’s currently under control, but it’ll be up to the surgeons to determine whether any internal damage has occurred.”
O’Connell nodded grimly. At the sound of a struggle, they both looked around to see one of the smugglers, a young man with a spotty growth of stubble crawling up his cheeks, resisting the restraining hold of Hatch’s partner. Red-faced, sweat clinging to the skin of his neck, he looked to be little more than a teenager.
“Bastards have been moving through here too freely under the cover of night,” O’Connell muttered. “They’re pouring drugs into the cities. My cousin from Moab OD’ed two months ago. Been in a damn coma ever since.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Nick said, still watching the detective struggle with the smuggler.
The detective reached back for his cuffs. The smuggler took his shot, knocking his head back into the detective’s nose. The detective grunted, his grip loosening on the smuggler’s arms.
The kid didn’t hesitate. He leaped for the chance of escape, bolting for the wide, empty embrace of Utah’s dark countryside.
Nick and O’Connell moved at the same time to intercept him. O’Connell bobbed. Nick weaved.
Together, they took the kid down in a rough tangle of limbs, Nick’s arm wrapped around the kid’s middle. As soon as his arm made impact with the ground beneath the smuggler, he felt his wrist torque. Hot, sharp agony went through the joint, up into his arm.
“I’ve got him,” O’Connell announced, cuffs out and snapping into place to lock the smuggler’s wrists at the small of his back.
Nick rolled away, groaning.
“Malone?” Dilinger called from the ambulance. “You thinking about trying out for the force?”
He glanced at the smuggler’s seething face, or what he could see of it in the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles. “I’m happy where I am, thanks,” he decided, gaining his feet.
“You’ll need to ice that,” O’Connell pointed out as he waited for Hatch’s partner to escort the suspect to the back of a squad car.
Nick tried moving his wrist. It screamed at him to stop. “I’m good,” he lied and hopped into the back of the ambulance as the siren wailed.
Perez frowned at his lame hand, already running fluids for their patient. “Can you get him on the monitor?”
Nick was already in motion. His wrist wailed, but their patient’s life was on the line.
He’d think about his wrist after he, Perez and Dilinger got the detective safely to Baldwin Memorial.
* * *
Sassy didn’t walk to the emergency department. She ran. The color-coded lines down the corridor pointing visitors toward the different divisions of the hospital—red for cardiology, blue for general surgery, green for radiology—blurred, giving her tunnel vision as her boots rapped against the floor, echoing through her ears.
She tackled the double doors to the ED open and stumbled to a halt in the waiting room, surrounded by people in various stages of pain or panic.
Her purse hung from her hand by the strap, all but dragging along the blinding-white tiled floor to the registration desk, where an efficient-looking man with a topknot greeted her warmly. “Sassy Colton. What are you doing here?”
“Evander,” she said between pants. She pressed a hand to her ribs and fought for breath. “Nick came through here about twenty minutes ago. I was told he’d been brought to the ED.”
“Oh, they didn’t bring him in, sweetie,” Evander explained, toying absently with the cord of his lanyard. “He walked in all on his own and would’ve left, too, if his lieutenant hadn’t insisted on him getting his arm looked at.”
“What’s wrong with it?” Sassy asked. “Do you know?”
“Gina in triage said it may be broken.”
