Lyle’s lip twitched like he wanted to smile but couldn’t.
I squeezed his hand. “Hang tight. We’re gonna get you in that chopper, and Cassidy will get you to the hospital ASAP.”
Mitch and I lifted Lyle between us and carried him out. My arm screamed with every step. Lyle was lighter than I’d expected, but his weight was wrong—that dead-limp weight of a man who’d already given up. Outside, the rotors beat dust into a red cyclone around the chopper. We got Lyle into the back, and Mitch climbed in beside him.
I opened the pilot’s door. “Fly safe, Cass,” I yelled over the rotors.
Cassidy looked at me. “What about you guys?”
“The RFDS is coming for Frank. We’ll be fine.”
She nodded, and I shut the door. The chopper lifted, and as the wash hit me hard, I turned my back and braced against it. They rose up, banked east, and the noise dropped as they flew away.
I turned, searching for Sapphire. She was at the cave mouth, covered in dust and blood that wasn’t hers.
She looked wrecked.
I joined her, and we went back inside.
Frank had passed out. His breathing was still going, but it was slow and shallow. He was a tough old bastard, though. He’d probably live. Either way, I hoped Mitch was right about the spine. The best punishment for Frank was him not being able to get up.
Sapphire stood in the middle of the cave and looked around like she was cataloging evidence.
The rusty drum. Lyle’s blood pool by the entrance. Frank in the dirt. The unloaded gun she’d settled on that rock at the back.
“This whole place is a crime scene. Decades of it.” Her voice was flat with exhaustion. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“That’s not your job right now.”
“No. Right now, my job is keeping him alive.” She looked at Frank with something close to disgust. “Which is the part I’m finding the hardest.”
I crossed to her and put my good arm around her shoulders. She leaned her head against me. Her breathing was shaky, as if she were trying to get her body back under her control.
“Bob got away.” She sniffed.
“Yeah. But you’ll still get him, Fire. I know you will. Besides, once every cop in the country knows what an asshole Bob is, he’ll have a target on his back.”
She was quiet for a long moment. “That’s something, I suppose.”
“It’s a lot.”
She pulled back and looked up at me. Her eyes were tired in a way I’d never seen on her. “How’s your arm?”
“Killing me,” I said. “But still attached.”
She released a half chuckle, but a real one.
After checking on Frank, there was nothing for us to do but wait.
We moved out to the cave mouth and sat down on a flat boulder just inside the shade. The country stretched out in front of us—red dirt, blue sky, and heat shimmering off the ground in waves. Somewhere in that distance, Bob was running.
Behind us, Frank’s breathing was a wet rattle in the dark.
I looked at the woman I’d loved and lost and somehow found again, sitting on boulder after the worst day of our lives. “What are you going to do now?”
She stared out at the horizon for a long time. “I have absolutely no idea.”
I nodded. Neither did I.
