Point Last Seen: Blood Will Tell Part 2

"An accident!" Lucy hissed. "Don't give me that. It didn't even look like your guys' first kiss."

"It's because you won't move in with me." Cooper's voice was low and urgent.

"That doesn't make any sense."

"I just wanted to make you jealous."

She found the flaw in his argument. "And just how was that supposed to work if I never found out?"

"Everyone who comes here is a big gossip. You would have heard."

"That's ridiculous," Lucy said, wondering if his version of the event could possibly be true. "I'm going home now."

Cooper put his hand on her wrist and leaned close. Despite herself, Lucy still felt a flash of desire.

"Let me come with you."

"No!"

Heels clacked down the stairs as Jasmine joined them. "Cooper's the one who brought me here," she told Lucy. "This wasn't my idea. It was his. He's been asking to go out with me for weeks."

"That's not true!" Cooper protested.

Lucy didn't wait to hear any more. She turned on her heel and set off at a determined pace, her head held high. But as she walked, her courage and strength began to leak away. The cold crawled up her sleeves and wrapped around her neck like a m.u.f.fler. She must have left her scarf at the bar. Along with everything else. Her happiness. Her so-called boyfriend. Her blissful ignorance. She was crying in earnest now.

Her head was a balloon, and her feet didn't belong to her. It was hard to walk when you couldn't see through your tears. As she crossed the street, an old pickup had to stop short, but she barely saw it. A minute later, Lucy's foot slipped on a skim of ice that had glazed a puddle.

"Are you okay?"

She started and turned. A guy. She hadn't even heard him pull up across the street. He had just gotten out of the pickup that had narrowly missed her.

He lifted his empty hands in the air, palms toward her. "Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. It's just that I heard you crying. Is everything all right?"

"I'm fine." With a sodden mitten, she swiped at her nose.

"Pardon me for saying so, but you don't look fine."

Lucy opened her mouth to speak, but the words wouldn't come. Instead, she just shook her head.

"Can I call you a cab?"

She shook her head again, tears blinding her eyes.

He leaned into his truck and came up with a roll of white paper towels. Holding it ahead of him, he crossed the street. "Sorry I don't have a handkerchief. But how about a paper towel?"

The ridiculousness of it made Lucy half smile.

He stepped closer.

CHAPTER 8.

ALEXIS.

SUNDAY.

AN OPEN WOUND.

Alexis hurried over as Nick and Ruby climbed out of a police cruiser holding their backpacks. "Are you guys okay?" she asked as the cop pulled away from the apartment's parking lot.

She hadn't seen the accident or the aftermath, but all of them had heard it. Unlike a wilderness rescue, when only Base heard everything, tonight the teams had been close enough to catch each other's transmissions. Close enough to hear the wailing sirens of the ambulance and police cars when things went terribly wrong.

Alexis's team hadn't even made it back to Base before the ambulance had done a scoop and run. The guy who'd hit Mariana had also been taken to the hospital for blood tests to see if he'd been drunk or drugged. But it sounded like it had just been a terrible accident.

At her question, Nick shrugged, but his too-wide eyes, shiny in the glow of the streetlight, gave him away. "It was a little gory, but we handled it. Dimitri stayed behind to talk to the cops."

"At least we didn't have to use the ten-code for a deceased subject," Ruby said. The only clue that she had been affected by events was how fast she was chewing her gum. Deaths were one of the few times SAR didn't transmit in plain English. The families of the missing usually hung out around Base, meaning they were often within earshot of a radio.

From behind Alexis, Mitch.e.l.l demanded, "How in the heck did you guys let a subject get hit by a vehicle? We're going to have to do a boatload of paperwork to explain it!" Even though he had been team leader for only a few weeks, Mitch.e.l.l was fully invested in the role. He was an Eagle Scout who wanted to be a cop.

"There wasn't any time to react," Ruby said as she stripped off her purple vinyl gloves.

Mitch.e.l.l's eyes went from her hands to Nick's bare ones. "Nick, where are your gloves? Please tell me you were wearing them on scene."

Nick winced. "Sorry. I forgot."

"Let me see your hands." Mitch.e.l.l's tone was exasperated as he turned on his headlamp and leaned close. "If you have an open wound, then you just got exposed to a biohazard."

"I didn't get any blood on me." Nick held out his hands. They trembled in the beam of light. He made a show of shivering as if he were cold.

Mitch.e.l.l pointed to the sleeve of his parka. "What are those wet spots?"

He hesitated. "Vomit. Um, my vomit."

"It was pretty gross," Ruby said. "Compound fracture."

Alexis was very glad she hadn't been on scene.

Mitch.e.l.l blew air out of pursed lips. "That is so against protocol. We're going to have to debrief tonight."

Ruby stepped in front of Nick. "His skin appears intact, which means his risk is very low. Especially given that the victim is a seven-year-old girl, which means she's probably not infected with hepat.i.tis or HIV. And it's not like he suffered a percutaneous injury with a large, hollow-bore needle."

Alexis nodded at Ruby's words, even though part of her was thinking: Who even talks like that?

An hour later, everyone who had responded to the callout was seated in a circle at the sheriff's office, listening to Dimitri try to explain what had happened.

"The girl, she hid in bushes." Dimitri was rolling his Rs and hacking up his Hs even more than usual.

As he sought the right words, Alexis shifted in the uncomfortable plastic chair. Jon had said this was an informal debrief. Still, a lot of people looked tense, and Jon had begun by saying there would be a chaplain available to talk to them. Search and Rescue was supposed to help people. To find an uninjured subject and then see her get hurt while she was being rescued was unheard of.

Dimitri slowed as he sought the words. "First we saw a cat. Then Nick saw girl and called out. Before we realize what was happening, she ran to us."

Alexis had volunteered for SAR because she was determined to have a better life, a life that didn't include food stamps, thrift store clothes, and Medicaid. To do that, she had to go to college. But her guidance counselor had said that if she wanted to snag a scholarship, being poor wasn't enough, not when her grades were unexceptional Bs. Alexis needed something to make herself stand out. And it wasn't like she was a left-handed ba.s.soon player.

So she had joined SAR and then promptly regretted it. Sure, the outdoors was pretty, but not so pretty when you were freezing and your thrift store boots were rubbing your heels raw. Not so pretty when you were crawling inch by slow inch through a muddy field, looking for evidence the cops thought a bad guy might have discarded. Plus there had turned out to be a lot more math than she had expected.

But when Alexis had helped find a hiker lost in the mountains, her feelings had done a 180. The guy-his name was George-had been on the verge of hypothermia. If SAR hadn't found him, he could have died. When George had hugged Alexis, pressing his wet, cold cheek against hers, she had realized it was all worth it.

Now Dimitri made the fingers of one hand run in midair. "At the same time, the pickup came around corner"-he balled his other hand into a fist and b.u.mped it into the running fingers-"and hit girl. Her leg, it was broken. Nick held C-spine, Ruby stopped bleeding, and I checked the life threats."

Jon held up one hand. "And who was responsible for stopping traffic?"

Dimitri, Nick, and Ruby just looked at one another.

Jon spoke into the silence, his voice surprisingly gentle. "Your first responsibility is your own safety."

Nick kicked the carpet with the toe of his boot. "But it all happened so fast."

"I'm sure it did." Jon leaned forward. "The adrenaline rush usually makes people forget step one, which is"-he turned to Dimitri-"what?"

"Scene safety." Dimitri looked down at his hands. His fist was still b.u.mping into his two fingers.

"That's right. Our first instinct is to save. That's why we're all here. When you see something go down in front of you, you want to help, so you dive right in. But if we don't take steps to keep ourselves safe, then things could get a lot worse instead of better. We're just lucky we didn't end up with four injured people instead of one." He looked at Ruby. "And what's step two after scene safety?"

Ruby straightened up. "PPE. Personal protective equipment."

"Right." Jon looked around the circle. "We'll be talking about this more on Wednesday, but we need to make sure that gloving up is second nature." Nick's shoulders rose, as if he was waiting to be yelled at.

Instead, Jon said, "This is a learning experience. For all of us. Over the next few days, we'll be looking at what we did right and what we could have done better. What happened today, a subject getting hurt, was very unusual. Thankfully we are hearing from the hospital that the girl should recover fully. Still, we want to make sure everyone is feeling okay. We don't want you freaking out on the drive home when you think about what happened. So if any of you would like to talk to the chaplain, he's out in the lobby. We also have some free resources for therapy visits through the sheriff's office." Jon looked at the back of the room. "And good, it looks like TIP was also able to spare us some folks."

As she turned to look, Alexis would not let herself hope. But then she saw the familiar dark head. Something bloomed in her chest. Bran was here!

Bran-short for Brandon-Dawson was a teen volunteer for Portland's Trauma Intervention Program. He and Alexis had met a few weeks earlier on a different mission, one where her team had found a body. And later, when her mom's health had taken a turn for the worse, he had been there for her.

Now he and Alexis were-something. They hadn't put a name to it. They didn't go to the same school, so they mostly just texted. In some ways, Alexis preferred texting to real-life conversations. You could be light and funny and just present the side of yourself you wanted someone else to see. You could skip over the depressing or boring parts, and you never had a bad hair day. And if you didn't want to answer a text, you didn't-and then later made up an excuse.

She had even kissed Bran once. In a coffee shop in front of a dozen other patrons. Did that really count as a kiss? Because so far the experience hadn't been repeated.

She grinned at Bran. But Bran didn't grin back. In fact, he barely even looked at her. Her stomach lurched. Had she done something to make him mad?

After Jon dismissed them, Dimitri ended up talking to Bran in a corner of the room. Alexis didn't talk to anyone from TIP. Nick didn't, either, although Alexis guessed he needed it at least as much as Dimitri. Ruby, of course, seemed unfazed.

Alexis loitered in the corner, watching Bran. His mouth was crimped, his face more serious than she had ever seen it. At one point, he put his arm around Dimitri's shoulders. His straight black hair fell across his eyes, hiding his expression.

Ruby came up to her. "Need a ride home?"

Bran glanced over at them. "I've got it, Ruby."

Alexis flushed as people turned to look, trying to read between the lines. TIP volunteers weren't allowed to give rides to people they counseled. Friends-and girlfriends-were different.

But when Bran was finally done talking to Dimitri, he didn't even look at her. He just took his keys from his pocket, saying, "You ready?"

"Sure." In silence, they walked out into the parking lot toward his small brown Honda. Was he angry with her?

"Is something wrong, Bran?"

"No. Of course not."

But Alexis heard the lie in his voice.

CHAPTER 9.

NICK.

SUNDAY.

HOT AND BITTER.

On his way out to the parking lot, Nick walked behind Alexis and Bran. What kind of a name was Bran, anyway? It sounded like some boring, healthy cereal. Something that would get stuck between your teeth.

Neither one of them seemed to even notice that Nick was right behind them. Alexis was holding on to Bran's arm, her face turned toward him as if he were the sun.

With her free hand, she reached up and pushed the hair out of Bran's eyes. Suddenly Nick's chest hurt, a pain so fierce and sharp it felt like someone had slipped a knife between his ribs and given it a good twist.

The two of them climbed into Bran's small brown car. And they still hadn't seen him. Nick got into his mom's car and slammed the door.

Alexis was nice to Nick, sure. Alexis was his friend.

But that was all.

Even though he had met Alexis first. Even though they sat together in SAR cla.s.s every Wednesday night and Alexis saved a place for him if she was there before him. Even though she laughed at his jokes and had admired his drawings.

Even though Nick had once saved her life.

But Bran had four inches and forty pounds on Nick. All of it muscle. Plus he was a senior, which meant he was two years older than Nick. And he had his own car, while Nick had a car only if he could wheedle his mom into letting him borrow hers.