Danica Winters - Wild Montana

He pulled out some string, threaded the needle and set to work as he sat in the pink vinyl seat beside her bed. When he’d been younger, his mother had told him that good domestic skills were the mark of a true man.

The stitches were even and as he mended, he kept looking up, hoping Lex would wake and everything would be okay.

He hated this. He hated hospitals—it brought up moments of his past that he never wanted to relive. The sooner they could be out of here, the better.

Every hospital he’d ever been to carried the same overpowering disinfectant smell. They could scrub away the blood and the waste products, but no matter how much they tried to hide it, he could still make out the pungent aroma of panic and fear. Yet as he sat there working, he wondered if the scent was carrying in from the patients or from those waiting for their loved ones to be helped.

He reached over and caressed Lex’s hand. There was no more fear for her, not now, not with the drugs that filtered through her system to numb her pain. Now the fear was solely his.

His phone buzzed. “Hello?”

“Agent Lawrence, this is Ranger Grant with the Glacier National Park Rangers Office. I was one of the responders at the scene of your accident. I believe you left me a message?”

“Thanks for returning my call. I appreciate it,” Casper said. “Did you manage to find the evidence?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “We found two large hiking backpacks—which I assumed were yours and Alexis’s—and there was an empty green military-style bag.”

“Empty?”

“Yep.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. You sure there wasn’t anything in the bag?” He pulled a hand over his face, trying to stave off the start of a headache.

“Yes, sir.”

“The drugs were packed into bricks. Were there any that had spilled out? Maybe into the truck bed or on scene?” He tried to sound calm as he thought about what it would mean if the drugs were truly missing.

“I didn’t find any bricks of drugs, but your topper took a pretty big hit when you rolled the truck.” The man paused. “When we pulled up, the truck’s topper door was open. I guess it’s possible they fell out and weren’t recovered.”

“Or they were taken...”

His mind raced. Who’d want to take the drugs? Only a few people had even known that they had them and were taking them back to Apgar. Was it possible that the coroner or one of the rangers had said something? Or was it completely a random occurrence that they had been in an accident and the drugs had been stolen?

He didn’t believe in coincidences, but he had a hard time believing that the rangers or the coroner would have any ill-conceived ideas of stealing the drugs. No one had seemed overly preoccupied with them on the scene. If someone had wanted them, Casper would have had some type of clue. He was jumping to conclusions... No doubt the drugs were probably scattered along the roadside near their crash site.

“Can you make a run back up to the site? Take another look around? We can’t have thousands of dollars’ worth of drugs get into the wrong hands.”

“No problem... I’ll call you when I get back into cell service and let you know what I find.”

Casper squeezed Lex’s hand. It had started to chill under the hospital’s air-conditioning and he carefully tucked her arms under the warm blanket.

“Thanks, Grant,” he said. “Appreciate your help.” He moved to hang up.

“Wait, Lawrence,” the man said.

He lifted the phone back to his ear. “Huh?”

“We did find a receipt inside the green bag. It was wadded into a ball and was stuck in the bottom corner.”

A receipt? He thought back to everything he’d dumped out of the bag. He didn’t recall a receipt. Was it possible it had been there the whole time, or had the person who’d stolen the drugs accidentlly, or purposefully, left it behind?

“What about the money?”

“No money. Just the receipt,” Grant said, sounding tired. “I’ll take a picture and send it your way.”

“Thanks, Grant.”

“No problem. We’ll start putting out feelers. If the drugs were stolen, maybe we can help you try to get a handle on this before word moves up the chain. Hate to see you get in trouble.”

“Let me know if you hear anything.” He hung up the phone.

He moved too fast as he pushed through another stitch and the needle jabbed into his finger, making him curse as he pushed his finger into his mouth to stem the blood flow.

He was going to be in deep trouble if the news that he’d fallen victim to a heist hit the Fed circuit. If it did, within twenty-four hours everyone from his boss to his old FBI buddies would know that he’d lost a vital piece of evidence.

Just when he thought things couldn’t get any worse.

He knotted the thread as he finished mending the hole and then put everything away.

He was going to need to get in touch with his boss. He glanced down at his watch. Midnight. No wonder Grant had been tired.

Instead of calling and waking up the captain, he wrote him a bare-bones email that emphasized the fact he was sitting in the ER. It was low, playing the mercy card, but he needed to buy some time and a little leniency. The last thing he needed his boss thinking was that he lost the drugs due to his incompetence.

The door to Lex’s room opened, but with the curtain drawn around her bed he couldn’t see who was coming in.

“Is this the right place?” a man asked, his voice tight and filled with panic.

“It is, Mr....” a woman answered.

“Yellowfeather. Travis Yellowfeather.”

Casper’s heart lurched in his chest. What was Lex’s ex-husband doing here?

He looked down at her sleeping face and contemplated waking her. Yet she looked so peaceful, her eyes fluttering with REM sleep and her hair, still specked with blood, haloed around her head. She needed her rest.

“Mr. Yellowfeather, I’m afraid she already has a visitor. We only allow one visitor at a time,” the nurse said.

“To hell with one visitor,” Travis said, pushing aside the curtain.

As soon as he saw Casper, Travis’s eyes darkened and his lips curled into a smirk. “I should’ve known it was you who would be here. I guess it wasn’t enough that you got her hurt, now you have to stay here to make sure she doesn’t die—all in an effort to save your conscience, I suppose.”

Casper went slack-jawed, but he quickly recovered his composure. “Who do you think you are, Travis, walking in here and accusing me of anything?”

“I’m her damned husband,” he retorted, moving to the side of Alexis’s bed.

“Ex, from what I hear.”

Travis’s scowl darkened. “She told you?” He snorted. “So she’s already on the prowl,” he said, half under his breath.

“Why don’t you leave, Travis? I know she wouldn’t want you here.”

“And you think she wants you?” His scowl turned into a dangerous smile. “If you think that, you don’t know Lex at all.”

Travis wasn’t wrong. He couldn’t tell anyone Alexis’s favorite sandwich or the color of her childhood bedroom, but that didn’t mean he was going to leave her here with the man whom, only hours before, she shied away from. He knew fear and hatred when he saw it.

“If you think she would want you here, then I may know her better than you do,” Casper said.

Lex’s hand tightened in his and he turned to see her eyes fluttering open. “Boys,” she said, her voice weak, “don’t fight.”

Travis pulled his lips into a tight line, but he shut up.

“How are you doing, honey?” Casper asked. He moved to caress her face but stopped as he felt Travis’s gaze searing into him. Lex didn’t need a fight, and no matter how much he disliked the man standing at the other side of the bed, he had been right—Casper barely knew her. They had talked a lot as they hiked, and there had been playful banter, but they were only friends.