Page 21 of Into the Veins

She put her weight into her right hand and peeled her left from the tree. The wind shifted, blowing tendrils of her hair into her face, as she worked her free hand through coarse needles and branches. The tree groaned.

Her only source of support snapped.

“No!” Colson shot over the edge, the shale edge of the cliff dissolving under him, and he wrapped his hand around her wrist. He slammed both feet into the ground for purchase, but the stone wasn’t strong enough to hold them both.

Something landed on top of his legs as Blair’s weight pulled him over the edge. Shouts filled his ears as multiple sets of hands worked to pull him back to safety. Colson secured his free hand around Blair’s other wrist and used everything he had to haul her over the cliff’s edge. Her feet cleared the drop off, and he fell back. She collapsed to the ground in front of him, tremors wracking through her as they lay face down together.

Time seemed to slow.

“There’s a lot of blood pooling underneath him, but I can’t see the injury. I don’t dare turn him over myself. Get those EMTs up here! Now!” A flash of soaked blonde hair penetrated his peripheral vision. Agent January Reese covered Blair with a creased mylar blanket then tucked one around him, but Colson only had attention for the sheriff who’d put herself at risk by taking on a killer unarmed and drugged to save him. Pale hands rubbed violent lines down Blair’s back, and a similar pattern burned into his spine. “It’s okay, Blair. I’m here. Help is coming. We’re going to get both of you out of here. Stay awake. The EMTs are on their way.”

Colson stretched bloodied fingers toward Blair’s, and a rush of warmth battled to chase back the hollowness behind his sternum as he set his hand on top of hers. The tremors took control then. He counted off the pulses under his fingers mirroring her heart rate. He was going into shock. “To be clear, when…I told you I was looking for my…next adventure, this was not what I had in mind.”

“Noted.” Rain slid across her swollen smile as she closed her eyes. Dirt stained her pale skin and interrupted the flow of freckles across her cheeks, and it was only then he noticed a frozen section of her hair. Her jacket had darkened in color, soaked straight through, and temperatures were still dropping. The lethargy was clear in the way her fingers lightened their hold from around his hand and the smoothness to her expression. No. She wasn’t going to die out here.

“Stay awake, Blair.” Colson wrapped his hand tighter around hers, and her eyes flittered open once more. He wasn’t going to lose her. Not after everything they’d been through, not after everything they’d survived. The killer was still out here. Another victim had been murdered. They had work to do, and he couldn’t do it without her. “Stay…with me. Okay? Keep…talking. Tell me if you sleep with a stuffed animal.”

“You…ask the most inappropriate…questions.” Her voice barely registered. “Not fair...you know more…about me.”

He was losing her. An ache shot down his jaw from the pressure of his back teeth trying to counter the cold. “Then ask me a question. Come on. Give me the best you’ve…got.”

“What’s the weirdest thing you’ve done in front…” Her expression relaxed, the tremors running the length of her back quieting.

“No, Blair. Stay with me.” Colson tried to sit up, but his body wouldn’t obey his brain’s commands. Panic iced through him as the rangers, federal agents, and Search and Rescue operatives took control of the scene. “Help…her. Please. Blair, ask me. Weirdest thing I’ve done where? Ask me.”

“The EMTs are almost here.” Agent Reese checked back over her shoulder. “A couple more minutes. That’s it. Hang on, Blair. They’re coming for you. You’re not going to die out here.”

“Search and Rescue found a second victim in a clearing on the other side of these trees,” a deeper, unfamiliar voice said. The dark, suited outline of the man above them and commanding authority punctuated his federal origins, but Colson had never met the agent before now. “It’s Cardin Townsend. No sign of the killer, but it’s looking like the same MO as Blair noted in her files. I’m going to take the K9 unit to follow these tracks. We still might be able to catch up. Agent Reese, stay with them. No one gets access to the sheriff or Mr. Rutherford without your okay.”

“Understood, sir.” Agent Reese’s touch lifted from Colson’s back, and the cold worked into his muscles. “Wake up, Blair. Where the hell are those EMTs!”

Shouts echoed through the trees.

“…drugged.” Colson only managed the single word as the darkness around the edges of his vision thickened. They were going to make it. They had to make it. The burning sensation eating at him from inside ebbed and flowed right along with Agent Reese’s voice, then he was moving. Broken shards of shale bit into him as a blurred figure rolled him onto his back and prodded at his side. “Get…vest….off!” His hand slipped from Blair’s as two more outlines hauled her onto a litter and strapped her in. Too many trees and peaks to land an airlift chopper. Emergency personnel would have to take them down the mountain.

“Adult male, mid-thirties, single stab wound to the abdominal cavity. Blood pressure dropping. ID says Colson Rutherford.” The EMT at his head nodded to the other. “I can’t reach the hospital because of the storm. We’ll have to call ahead when we get back to the rig.”

The sky stirred above, the pounding sleet lightening to a mere drizzle as another medic increased the pressure on his stab wound. Agony tore through him, but he only had attention for Blair. The EMTs on either end of her stretcher rounded out of sight. “Blair.”

“We’re going to take good care of the sheriff, sir. Agent Reese is with her, too.” The EMT’s features melted together. “The other team is already transporting her down the mountain. We have to move slower with you due to the stab wound, but we have your bleeding under control for now. Try to relax. We’ll get you to where you need to be.”

Colson swallowed around the dryness in his mouth, his eyes heavier than a few minutes before. The trek down the mountain ingrained itself into the deepest recesses of his mind. Every jerk, every slip, every second carving a new memory until he caught sight of Blair being loaded into another ambulance.

An oxygen mask took up most of his view of her face as Agent Reese held the sheriff’s hand. And it was in that moment his own palm tingled to be the one holding Blair’s hand. To be the one telling her it would be okay. To be the one comforting her, holding her, soothing her. The professional barrier she’d placed between them had dissolved the moment she’d pressed her mouth to his. He could still taste the mixture of salt and fear on his mouth. It hadn’t been a kiss of passion, but of alleviation. He knew that, but that single crack in her control had been everything. It’d kept him conscious, kept him alive. Only the damn wound in his side prevented him from repaying the favor.

Blair opened her eyes, as though sensing him nearby, and centered on him. The pain, the investigation, the adventures he’d chased all his life, the chaos of searchers and the barking K9s in the distance, the violence and blood—it all slipped out of reach. There was only her. For the first time since hiking into those woods, Colson managed a full breath. He’d done everything in his power to stay detached from the people he’d met throughout his life, but Blair Sanders was an adventure all her own. One of the best he’d pursued.

The intense, at times cerebral and serious, sheriff of King County had shredded his defenses in a single act of self-sacrifice when she’d faced the killer to protect him and exposed the raw truth he’d hidden since he’d been a kid. Moving from job to job, city to city, educating himself to the point of obsession, and looking for the next adventure had all been a distraction. A defense mechanism he utilized to keep his distance from the potential neglect and rejection triggered with relationships. He’d taken his parents’ example and amplified it to the extreme to protect himself when nobody else would, but all he’d been left with was a life of empty experiences and nobody to share it with. But right then, Colson didn’t need to look for the next distraction. He just needed her.

The EMTs loaded him into the ambulance, and the doors slammed closed behind him.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“So that’s what death warmed over looks like.” Lawson Mitchell angled his head through the curtain cutting her view off from the rest of the hospital room. A high widow’s peak, broad nose that’d been broken too many times, and a square jaw shaped the FBI’s Violent Crime Unit’s most recently promoted director’s face. The dark blue pinstripe suit contrasted piercing gray eyes and framed the wall of muscle underneath. It’d been a few weeks since she’d seen him last, but the fist of dread finally unclenched.

“I thought I remembered hearing your voice out there while I was dying. I don’t remember calling you in on my case though.” Blair smiled up through the arms of the attending physician bandaging the cuts around her wrists. The effects of the drug had faded, leaving every nerve ending she owned raw and exposed, but she hadn’t been willing to take any other pain medication once she’d come out of unconsciousness. Her muscles protested the smallest of movements, but she’d live with the pain if it meant having survived. She thanked the doctor as the woman finished wrapping the wounds and stood to leave. “Engaged life looks good on you.”

“Thanks. You’re invited to the wedding. We’re thinking June. The Seattle Times is keeping Arden busy, but we managed to both carve out enough time.” Hands buried in his slacks, Lawson stepped fully into view.

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