PART ONE
The trail was one used by half the state on weekends and during the summer, for afternoon hikes and as a staging point for back-packers. But on this Wednesday afternoon in February there had been no vehicles parked at the trailhead and no footprints in the sandy red gravel of the trail itself.
A snow-chilled wind from distant summits blew hollowly through pines and junipers scattered across massive outcrops of red stone. Jays called from the deeper valley bisecting the ridge, and smaller birds -- maybe siskins, Vin thought -- whistled softly in the denser stand of forest just upslope.
Denver was closer than Vin would've liked, but miles to the east anyway, a winding two-lane road its only connection to this wild area that still saw more than its share of traffic. Chris was maybe two yards behind him on the narrow trail, face pinched with thought as he replayed what he knew about the murder site they'd come to check out, and the evidence that might connect it to the gun runners they'd been trying to catch. Vin knew this because he'd just reflexively glanced over a shoulder to check their backtrail and Chris's gaze had shifted to meet his. With barely a perceptible tilt of his head, the older man had asked a wordless question about whether or not -- according to the description in the investigation report -- they were nearing the murder site. Vin nodded towards a rounded promontory that gnarled up out of the forest across a rugged ravine, and Chris's brows raised.
"We've come three miles?"
"'Bout that." Vin spoke softly. He pushed aside a pine bough that hung out over the trail and didn't let go until Chris took it from his hand so it wouldn't spring back as they passed. "Reckon that knob's another mile as th' crow flies. Fits."
"Lot farther than a mile as a man walks, though," observed Chris. Vin glanced back at Chris again, and flashed a grin. But before he could say anything, Chris scowled and beat him to it. "One comment about me being old and I'll make you write up the report on this."
"Ya' know, I *heard* a sense a' humor's the first thing t' go --"
Vin broke off mid-sentence, and faced into the wind with suddenly narrowed eyes and tight expression, every nerve in his body standing straight up for reasons he couldn't have explained if he had to. He started to raise his left hand, the one closest to Chris, to gesture him back and down into a more protected position, but at that exact instant he was slammed into a boulder so hard that it drove the air out of his lungs like a fist. The crack of a rifle echoed down the steep canyon to their left before he hit the ground, gasping for breath.
7*7*7*7*7*7*7
Chris was shaking his head to himself, smiling at Vin's laconic reply, when the sharpshooter stopped dead in his tracks and raised his head like a hound on a scent. The ATF leader's hand went to his weapon on the instant, knowing Vin's instincts were seldom wrong, but even then he was too late. His mind registered the fact of Vin being jerked like a marionette by some unseen hand, then he heard the report of the rifle. He ducked reflexively as splinters of rock from a second shot exploded off the granite inches from his head.
"He's up --" Vin was pointing, breathless and gasping, heels sliding against the rock as he struggled to get to his feet.
"I see him." Chris's face was grim, and his eyes caught the sun dangerously when he glanced up from beneath lowered brows at the 40-foot pine where he'd seen the muzzle flash of the last shot. Another shot spanged off the stone, six inches from Vin's knee, and whined away. "Let's get you outta' here first."
He wasn't even sure how he had hold of Vin, how he got the leverage to drag the man behind the boulder he'd been initially thrown against. All he knew was that there was more blood than he wanted to see, spreading all down Vin's left arm and the side of his chest, saturating the blue plaid flannel and turning it purple. The tracker was almost a dead weight in his grip, his efforts to help uncoordinated by shock. By the time Chris had them both out of the direct line of fire, he was panting heavily and Vin had gone a cold, pasty white.
"Where'd they *come* from," Vin growled crossly. "Fly in on a damn helicopter 'r somethin'?"
"Don't know," clipped the older man. He was watching the pine with a predator's focus now, gun steadied in the grip of both hands. He hazarded a lightning-quick glance at the man sprawled next to him, to see blue eyes looking back, a spatter of bright blood on the side of Vin's chin looking almost black against the sudden pallor. Chris smiled tightly. "And frankly," he added, "I don't give a damn right now. Later -- yes." The agent ducked as a ricochet whanged off the top of the boulder they crouched behind. "Now -- no." He turned his attention back to the pine, steadied his aim, and shot. A dark form plummeted to the ground through crashing, breaking branches, and Chris smiled grimly, angrily, slipping his gun back into its holster. He flipped out his cell phone the next instant and frowned as he snapped it off again just as quickly and tucked it back in his belt.
"Figures . . . 'd be no signal," panted Vin.
"Radio in the Ram'll work," Chris countered. "Let's get you out of here before the others show up." Left hand to Vin's right, he carefully pulled him up and away from the stone against which he was half-sprawled. He stooped to pull the injured man's arm over his shoulder.
"Damn." Vin's voice was tight, choked with pain. His left arm hung limply, blood saturating the sleeve and dripping from the tips of his fingers to the stone.
"Just hang on." Chris started pushing himself up from the crouching position he'd bent into, to get Vin's weight over his own legs. The younger man dragged so heavily against him that a shaft of deep alarm coursed like ice through Chris's gut. He could hear Vin's boots scrabbling against the gravely sand as the wounded man tried to get his feet under him.
"Chris . . . it's three miles t'--"
"We can get there." He tugged Vin's arm farther as both men struggled upright, wrapped his own left arm snugly around the injured man's waist, and was gratified to feel the weight shift as Vin found his feet again. He started down the trail immediately, Vin trying to walk but his knees buckling every few steps, his weight dragging heavily on Chris. Chris hazarded a look over his shoulder, behind them, as they broke cover lower on the trail than where they'd been ambushed.
"No sign of anyone yet," he said grimly.
"Pro'lly . . . 'cross th' . . ."
"Save your breath, Tanner. I know they're over on the knob where they killed the hiker. I saw 'em starting down the trail while their sentry was trying to shoot our heads off."
A sharp gasp broke from Vin's bloodless lips as he slid on a run of gravel funneled into a rut on the steep down-slope of the trail. Chris locked his knees and braced against the heavy tug, slid on the gravel himself, and then brought them both to an off-balance stop during which Vin fell to one knee and pulled them both nearly to the ground. A low cry of pain was jarred loose by the impact, and Chris looked back and up the slope behind them with foreboding. How long did they have before the group of men he'd seen crossed the ravine and topped the rise that protected them? He turned back to his friend with renewed strength and will.
"C'mon, Vin. It's all down hill. We can make it."
They struggled upright again, and this time Chris made sure Vin's weight was slightly behind his, so that his own body could serve as a brake if the smaller man started to slide or fall again. They traveled in rapid, breathless silence for maybe ten minutes then, the only sounds their own bootsteps on the gravely sand and Vin's labored breathing. The birds had stopped calling, Chris realized dimly. That had to mean something. A chill raced from the nape of his neck up his scalp, and he veered off the trail into a thick stand of juniper. The crack of gravel beneath their feet was replaced by the soft slapping of small branches as they forced their way into the dimmer light beneath the trees.
"Chris . . ." The drawl was unraveling and frayed. Chris shook his head without looking at Vin, afraid of what he'd see.
"We're about a third of the way there already. Just hang on. We'll make--"
"Dammit, Chris! Would ya' listen --"
"Just keep going."
But Vin dropped heavily to the ground instead. He sat on his heels, head bowed as he drew in great gulps of air. He waved his good hand around in a fairly unfocused way and managed to gasp, "Leavin' . . . a trail . . . even Ezra could follow." As his breathing steadied, he looked up at Chris and swallowed, then said more clearly, "They're travelin' . . . faster'n us, Cowboy. An' they're gonna' catch up long 'fore we get t' the truck."
Chris stared at the ground where Vin had gestured for a long moment, the shock of what he was seeing seeping into the marrow of his bones. Vin was right. Their trail was laid out with a red line of blood that wavered and spotted, but never failed. He looked back at Vin's shoulder and arm with a choking sense of despair, really understanding for the first time just how seriously the young agent was bleeding.
"Leave me," gasped Vin. "*Run*. Get to the Ram an'--"
"No." Chris shook his head and moved to pull Vin's arm up around his shoulder again, but the sharpshooter pulled loose of his grip. "Buck and the others could arrive any time now," growled Chris. "You know they're headed up. By the time we get another half-mile--"
"Aw hell, Chris. I'm already hurtin'. Don't piss me off on top a' that." Vin eyed Chris steadily. Beads of cold sweat glistened on the planes of his face, and his eyes were shadowed with pain. "Could be another hour 'fore they get here. Or two. We both know that."
Chris dropped to one knee, his face inches from Vin's. "I'm gonna' get you outta' here, you sorry son-of-a-bitch, whether you want to be rescued or not," he hissed. He could feel his heart pounding from something that wasn't exertion.
"I'll tuck myself into them rocks there." Vin inclined his head towards a clump of large boulders as if Chris hadn't said a word. "You stir up th' pine needles all 'round here, chance t' cover the sign. Reckon they'll give up lookin' for me but they'll nose around first. That'll give ya' a chance t' get t' the truck."
Chris set a hand to Vin's uninjured shoulder and their eyes locked for a long, silent moment. "And do what, when I get there?" Chris's voice was gentle.
"Survive." Vin's throat worked as he swallowed heavily, and Chris suddenly realized how much it was costing his friend even to sit on his knees here in the forest. He was bleeding too much, too quickly, his shoulder glossy-dark with the life pouring out of him. And he was right. They'd never beat their pursuers to the trailhead.
But to leave Vin behind . . .
As if he'd read that thought, Vin added softly, "You live, you can come back fer me. You die, we both die." He rubbed an unsteady hand across his face and sagged even more, but his eyes remained fixed on Chris's.
Chris nodded without saying a word, his heart sinking. Vin nodded with satisfaction and evident relief.
It took only two minutes to conceal the wounded man in a crevice between closely-opposed stones massive as stock trailers, and to pull pine boughs over the opening in a way that looked reasonably natural. Chris bit his lips as Vin's face disappeared from view behind the gray bark and rough fringe of needles, and hesitated with his hands still on the limb as if he might fling it aside and reconsider his decision. But instead he turned swiftly and kicked the area as clean of the blood sign as he could, doing the same along several hundred feet of their back trail to further confuse anyone following.
Then he broke into a loose-legged and graceful run across the slope -- not towards the truck, but on a path that would intercept the men following them. He'd damn well beat them to the trailhead and get help, Chris thought with grim determination -- but first he'd decoy them away from Vin's hiding place.
7*7*7*7*7*7*7
Vin closed his eyes, the shivering traveling deeper into his body. The stones to either side of him that pressed against his arms and legs were still cold with the deep chill of winter, as was the ground underneath. The sun didn't penetrate this niche to warm it, and snow had so recently melted out of the crevices that he could feel slick patches of ice under one hip and along the calf of his right leg.
At least their plan must be working, though, he thought. Several juncoes had returned to the forest floor to feed, close enough that he could hear their soft twittering as they poked through the litter of pine needles and juniper mattes. If the men chasing them *did* show up here, the buzz of little wings when the birds scattered would tell him where they were.
Instead, what told him where the men were was the distant rattle of sporadic gunfire.
Vin knit his brows in the darkness of concealment, and fear clutched the back of his neck. They sure as hell weren't shooting at *him*, that far away. And that left only--
"Chris." He said the word softly to himself, with anguish, and struggled to sit up. The niche was tight, so he tried twisting to get some leverage. That was a mistake. He'd been shutting his mind off to the pain in his shoulder as best he could, but trying to claw his way up to a sitting position made it explode like a skyrocket.
Vin drew in a sharp, hissing breath, and then lay still while he passed through a wave of darkness that wasn't from the lack of sunlight under the trees. When his head cleared, he rammed a hip against the stone on one side, braced a knee against the other side, and pushed. He felt his head and shoulders slide several inches in response, and repeated the actions with his teeth clenched, his right arm wrapped tight around his left to keep from jarring his shoulder.
Slowly, a little at a time, Vin pushed his way out of the niche between the boulders and far enough into the open that he was finally able to turn over and push himself off the ground with his good arm. He staggered to his feet, bent over and straightening slowly against dizziness that threatened to fell him again. Then he stood silently in the clearing, trying to hear over the sound of his own pulse pounding in his ears.
The gunfire had stopped after only a few rounds, and it didn't repeat. But now loud shouts peppered the air just to the east, sounding hollow on the cold wind. The men weren't very far away, and they were moving. Vin turned slightly, faced into the wind, and raised his chin.
They were heading for the knob of rock again, where they'd apparently been meeting when Vin and Chris had been spotted by a sentry. And from the sound of it, they were viciously jubilant about something. And taunting someone.
Vin glanced at what he could see of the sun through the trees overhead. It'd only been maybe 10 minutes since Chris had left him. No way he'd gotten to the Ram yet, which meant . . . Vin shook his head slowly. It meant they were in deep shit, both of them, and no help in sight. His gaze drifted only a moment down the slope towards the graveled parking area at the trailhead, wide and flat and empty save for the truck. At some point, and soon, these men would search Chris. When they did, they would discover his ATF identification. And that would be the end of it.
Vin swallowed against the deep, burning throb in his shoulder and set his jaws and neck against the sense that he was about to collapse. Slowly, one step at a time with shaking legs, he started walking back up the slope. As he did, he snaked a hand to the holster nestled against the small of his back, drew his gun, and somberly checked the clip.
7*7*7*7*7*7*7
The wind rising up the steep edge of the small canyon lifted a fringe of sweat-dampened hair from Vin's forehead. For a moment he leaned into the overwhelming desire to simply put his head down on his forearms, right where he was laying, and give in to the darkness and pain that were sucking the life out of him. But he couldn't. Not yet. Because when he lifted his head just the slightest bit, he could see Chris in a circle of men, atop the gnarled fist of stone just across the canyon.
Vin blinked against the spots that kept forming at the edge of his vision and then spinning slowly across his field of view. He couldn't see Chris very well, but what he could see didn't look good. The lithe figure was just a back-lit silhouette, but there was a stiffness and tilt to the posture that spoke of pain. Vin thought of the gunfire he'd heard, and winced as he stretched his arms out on the stone in front of him, pistol gripped in both hands.
His palms were slick with sweat and his arms were shaking like leaves in a high wind. But the stone would support his aim and he figured the distance was just this side of the limit to his pistol's range. If he focused.
Suddenly the group of men began to mill around with a pattern that suggested a purpose, and Vin frowned. They were moving to his right, and that would take them out of his line of sight. Two of them pushed Chris sharply in the back with rifle butts, and Vin saw his friend stagger and nearly fall, then slowly stagger in the direction he was being forced. Vin swore softly as the figures disappeared behind a ledge that blocked his view.
Vin tried to get up again and ground his teeth in pain and frustration. He'd dropped to the stone ledge barely a full minute ago, but now he could hardly feel his legs any more, the burning of his oxygen-starved muscles having long since faded into the dull roar of agony that seemed to be consuming him from the inside out. Getting up to move a few feet was going to be harder than struggling up the trail had been. He recognized the inevitable signs that his body was starting to shut down. He was running out of time to do anything to help Chris, and he had to act before he hit that wall.
Vin closed his eyes and willed strength into his back and legs, and slowly pushed himself up onto his knees and one hand. He reached sideways to the stone bluff that dropped in a series of short steps to the ledge he was on, forcing shaking fingers into the cracks where tiny plants had forced their roots into bare rock. Then he pulled himself up against the stone, leaning heavily on it for support, and started inching himself the few feet that loomed like impossible miles.
One shuffling, halting step, and then another -- shoulder and back pressed against the low, sloping bluff behind him, knees buckling but somehow holding as he wiped the sweat from his eyes with the back of his sleeve and looked, again and again, for his friend. He pushed on, jaws clenched, each step painfully small but sending bursts of agony through his shoulder and arm.
Finally, he saw the men, though with no sign yet of Chris. One of them had a weapon in his hands, arms extended full-length, somewhat downward, elbows locked.
Execution stance.
Vin's heart leaped as adrenaline surged like electricity through his body. Gravel rolled out from under his boot soles as he scrambled with new energy over a low trailing corner of the bluff to get a little higher. He knew what he'd see, but it still froze his gut.
Chris knelt, hands clasped behind his head and head bowed. The shooter was directly behind him with the barrel of his weapon only a few feet from Chris's neck. Chris was out of time. Now.
Vin felt himself shift into some other place, a different existence where time barely moved and his eyesight was sharper than an eagle's. Awareness of everything but the circle of men with his friend in the center dropped away like a shed skin.
He could see the shooter's finger tightening against the trigger -- impossible, but he could. He could feel the cold metal of that steel aimed for his friend's life. He saw Chris's face turn just the slightest fraction towards him, knew without doubt that green eyes were coming around to search the slope where he stood, feeling his presence, wanting to say a silent farewell.
Without further thought, Vin started shooting.
The executioner dropped like a slaughtered ox, a bullet through his forehead and his body a limp slither on the stone. A second man raised a pistol to Chris and Vin shot him through the heart.
Chris was on his feet now, hands bound but no longer behind him. The men were running, and there was confused fighting as Chris took the advantage Vin had given him.
The sharpshooter stood like a rock, arms straight out in front of him and elbows locked, systematically shooting down one target at a time with unblinking concentration. Any man who turned towards Chris and set his hand to a gun, died the next instant.
Vin ignored the men who raised weapons his direction, who watched to catch sight of his muzzle flare to return fire. He ignored the pain and exhaustion that he'd fought for too long now. None of that mattered. His world had shrunk to the radius of a man's safety, and he fought with single-minded purpose to clear a sphere of protection around Chris, no matter where he moved or how quickly.
A sharp smack to his right thigh drove Vin backwards a step, into the base of the bluff he'd edged his way over against. Somewhere he registered the fact of having been shot again, but dismissed the fact as irrelevant. He threw himself upright again, seeking and finding a new target, but realized he'd lost sight of Chris in the process. That was a problem, and Vin staggered a step forward, eyes squinting against the sunlight as he scanned the surface of the outcrop with rising dread.
A series of cries from farther to his right drew him several more steps, and Vin saw a knot of three or four men struggling, far too close to the edge of the promontory. He raised his gun again, and stepped farther into the clear to get a solid shot. It dropped one of the combatants, and another fled. One still fought with Chris. Vin took a deep, steadying breath . . .
And found himself sinking inexplicably to his knees.
His body slowly folded up on itself, pistol dropping from nerveless fingers to the stone in front of him. Vin looked across the narrow canyon-like valley, confusion and fear rising with a surge of something like nausea to choke his throat.
He could hear new shooting somewhere -- somewhere else, but not here. One man was running away from the edge of the promontory where they'd been fighting, and it wasn't Chris. He couldn't see Chris anywhere. Motion below the bluff caught Vin's eye then, and he saw with the aching clarity of a shattered life where Chris had gone.
The narrow form bounced off one rock and then another, turning end-over-end. Vin saw an arm flop unnaturally, its bones broken. Saw a hip impact with a sharp edge of rock in a way that snapped the back unmistakably. Saw the head jerk and then roll like a sack of grain on the neck when the body struck the wall and rebounded off it into freefall again.
It took forever. Chris's body fell for hours as Vin watched it, unable to look away, unable to move. He was dimly aware that he'd clamped a hand low to his abdomen, that something warm welled up there and ran out between his fingers. It seemed that ought to mean something. But it didn't.
Chris had fallen down the canyon. Chris was dead.
Oh God.
Vin choked on the pain of his grief as he fell helplessly to the stone, his whole body trembling with exhaustion and pain. He could hear voices calling, yelling, more shots. Chris was dead. Vin saw him falling again and struggled to sit up. Had Chris fallen yet? Could he stop it somehow? But he couldn't sit up, couldn't move, could only drop his head to the stone beneath him with an anguished groan.
A harsh grating of boots against gravel near his head -- someone was here.
"Chris?" He knew it couldn't be, but had to ask. Everything was so strange now, seemed so distant, maybe it could be, he thought. Maybe it could be Chris, coming to get him, flying up out of the canyon and soaring across it to Vin. To take Vin with him.
The injured man raised a hand weakly, searching for the grasp that always unfailingly folded his hand in its own when he needed it. But there was no returned grip there, no Chris, and his hand fluttered only a few inches above the ground before it fell back of its own accord.
Voices swirled more loudly, spinning around him like the sky was. They made no more sense than anything else. He twisted his head, trying to see what was nearing him, but the darkness didn't draw back this time when he blinked.
"Over here! I found Vin!"
Vin felt the life seeping out of him, running across the stone like a wide, slow creek dark with disaster, and found he didn't care any more. He didn't even care who was so excited to know where he was. Didn't they understand? Chris was dead, was dead, was--
"*Hold on*, Vin." Low and desperate, whoever it was. Vin blinked and tried to focus, but couldn't see anything other than shadows.
"Chris fell," he tried to say. They needed to know, whoever they were. They needed to know the world had changed forever, that life had come to a brick wall it couldn't ever go past. But the word came out like a small sound of choked desperation and Vin closed his eyes again, wearily. It was too hard to reach out, to communicate. Easier to fall faster instead, into the place he could feel himself spinning to.
"Don't let go on me now, Vin. Hold on. Hold on now."
But twin explosions of unbearable agony arched his back off the ground the next instant, and Vin couldn't help but let go. Consciousness was stripped away in a single, violent wrench, and he dropped backwards into the freefall of oblivion.
7*7*7*7*7*7*7
"I can't raise a signal, Nathan. All I can think of is to go back down to the trucks and use the radio." JD's face was drawn and white, his eyes on Vin's slack features. The healer's hands were red from the forearms down, his fingers slipping in the blood that saturated the wadded-up shirt he was holding pressed to Vin's belly.
Josiah, pressing likewise against the wound in Vin's shoulder, looked up with gentle but sorrowful eyes. He locked JD's gaze with his and said, urgently and powerfully, "*RUN*, Brother John."
The youth turned like an agile deer and sprinted down the trail, out of sight.
"Any sign a' Chris yet?" Nathan didn't raise his eyes, his face a mask of distress and helplessness. But Josiah didn't have to hear the words to know the healer was all too aware that they'd found only one man of two.
The preacher scanned the slope across the small canyon, watched Buck and Ezra climbing the last hundred feet of the trail beneath the summit. "Not yet," he rumbled softly. "They're just about to get up on the top, though."
"Damn fools! Couldn't wait just twenty minutes 'er so. No. Had t'--"
"Nathan?"
The healer looked up at Josiah, and the pain that glittered in his eyes like lance blades was at total odds with the sharp anger of the words he'd just said. He swallowed, eyes welling with emotion he couldn't afford to feel or express just now. He could feel the heat of Vin's blood cooling on his hands. He could count the respiration rate by the rise and fall of the abdomen beneath his fingers, and he knew what was happening. Josiah sighed deeply and looked down at Vin's bloodless face.
"Keep fighting, Nathan," he whispered steadily. "JD'll radio a medivac here in no time. That boy can really run." Pale blue eyes rose and met the liquid brown ones only a few feet away. "We can't lose this one."
PART TWO
There was something important Vin needed to remember, something dark and heavy that sat beyond the light no matter how he struggled to make it out. It was ominous, the shape of that memory, and it sat like a lump of foreboding in the pit of wherever he was right now -- someplace he only knew he didn't want to be.
Awareness rose with sharp discomfort, though of what he could not imagine. Only that it felt urgent, desperate. A voice spoke in the darkness, as if inside his own mind, as if it could read his very thoughts.
"Do you feel like you're going to throw up?"
That was it. That was the feeling -- only more urgent, more painful, more to be avoided than he'd ever felt it before. He thought he nodded, unable to speak, but wasn't sure. Somehow the message got through because he heard the voice again.
"Just hang on a second. I'll give you something for that right now. It'll take effect . . ."
He sank back into the soft-edged darkness that wasn't black or peaceful or dim or anything any more. It was just nothing. But at that, it felt better than where he had been.
7*7*7*7*7*7*7
He was in darkness again. Still. And the voice returned the same as before, seeming to speak into his mind from within. "Vin," it said. "Vin. Wake up."
If he could have spoken, he'd have said, "Leave me alone. Let me be." Because he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that waking up was not something he wanted to do. Too much awaited him there, things he couldn't remember or even imagine -- but he could feel them looming with the mass of a dark mountain wrapped in storm, leaning over him steeply and with menace.
But he couldn't speak to say "Leave me alone." He wasn't even sure if he had a throat any more, or a mouth -- or a body, for that matter. It seemed he floated disembodied, outside of himself and inside his own brain at the same time. But the voice kept at him, jabbing and pricking at the edges of his awareness like a straight pin.
Then a new voice -- deeper, more insistent and much more powerful than the other one -- stabbed his consciousness like a knife gutting a deer. "Mr. Tanner. Open your eyes and look at me," it demanded.
Eyes. Open your eyes. Somehow, Vin realized, he had forgotten that was an option. The lids felt like they'd been glued together, his eyelashes all woven shut. But this new voice was a winch with its chain wrapped around the part of him that'd had no intention of rising to the surface of awareness. It began to drag his eyelids apart. It felt like the skin was tearing, as if his eyes had never been opened yet, and weren't made to open. Eyelashes popped and pulled loose in sequence, like zipper teeth.
"That's it," said the voice. It sounded impatient instead of approving. "Open your eyes and look at me. I need you to wake up. I need to see how you're doing."
Light. There was a thin slit of light, far too bright, like a welder's arc. He blinked, and wanted to raise a hand to shade his eyes but couldn't for some reason. The light hurt. The voice -- which suddenly had a location, he realized, and one that was outside of him -- spoke again.
"Don't try to move. Just open your eyes and look at me. Do you see me?"
Vin realized he was lying on his back, on a bed. Near the foot of the bed, and standing several feet off like a boat near a pier, was a large man in a white coat. Vin blinked again, his vision slowly sharpening. The man was big, ruddy-complected, bald. He wore glasses that reflected a bank of lights over the bed and Vin couldn't see his eyes.
"Are you awake?" the man asked.
Vin nodded.
"Say something," demanded the man. He handed a clipboard to a woman standing next to him, one pace behind. A nurse, Vin realized slowly. So the man must be -- "Say anything. Say 'hello'," said the doctor.
Vin opened his mouth, but nothing came out. His throat felt as hot and dry as if it had been sanded from the inside out. The thought of speaking was suddenly very unappealing, and he closed his mouth again. The doctor frowned.
"Your blood pressure fell rather too low during surgery," he said. His voice was matter-of-fact, laced with a slight edge of irritation. "I want to make sure you didn't suffer any permanent damage before I leave. Say something. Tell me your name. I need you to talk to me."
Vin's eyes rolled up and to his right at the feel of a gentle touch to his forearm. A dark-haired woman -- another nurse, he supposed, smiled down at him. "You can do it," she whispered. Vin's eyes slid back at the doctor. He braced himself and opened his mouth.
"Vin . . . Tanner," he managed to grate out. His voice sounded like gravel dragged over asphalt, he thought, but it seemed to please the impatient doctor at last. He rocked back on his heels with a short beam of satisfaction, and almost smiled.
"Good!" The doctor turned so quickly that his coat billowed like the sail of a boat as he swept from the room. The nurse with the clipboard left close on his heels, her soft-soled shoes silent on the tiles.
Vin looked up again as the dark-haired nurse moved, this time actually turning his head just the slightest amount. An immediate avalanche of vertigo turned him head-over-heels and tumbled him back into the darkness he'd been called from. He tried to raise a hand as he felt himself fall, searching for the grasp that always unfailingly folded his hand in its own when he needed it. But there was no returned grip there, no Chris, and his hand rose only a half-inch before it fell back to the mattress and stilled.
7*7*7*7*7*7*7
Window blinds and the heavy clouds beyond them diffused the incoming sunlight into a bland paleness. It could have been morning or afternoon, summer or winter. But Nathan knew it was February, knew it was late afternoon, knew that it had started to snow again.
The healer leaned forward from the chair on which he sat, to carefully smooth down a corner of the surgical tape holding an IV needle in the translucent skin of Vin's inner arm. The man's long fingers were lax against the arm board, colorless except for a bright smudge of Iodine solution across the back of his hand. Nathan sighed, eyes dragging across the banks of monitors and then back again to the still face. Bandages swathed most of the man's slender torso, bruises from internal bleeding forming dark pools that peeped out from beneath the gauze at the edges. A light sheet and thin blanket were pulled up to his waist, but Nathan knew that his right thigh, beneath the covering, was bandaged as well.
The healer turned his head at the soft sound of an opening door. Buck stepped somberly into the room, coat unbuttoned, its shoulders flecked with fat snowflakes. His hat was in his hand, and he used it to gesture faintly at Vin.
"Any change?"
"None." Nathan nodded to a chair nearby, against the wall, and Buck lowered himself to its seat gingerly, running unsteady fingers through the shock of thick black hair at his temple.
"But JD said he came outta' surgery ok?"
"That's what the surgeon said. But that was nearly eight hours ago."
Buck sighed deeply. "I wish . . ." His voice trailed off.
"We all wish," agreed Nathan. He reached out an arm to set his broad palm on Buck's shoulder, and his expression warmed with affection. "That sleep did ya' good. I'm glad Ezra talked ya' into it."
Buck snorted and cocked his head, glancing at Nathan from the corners of his eyes. "Shanghaied me is more like it."
"But it helped."
Buck paused, and then nodded. "Yeah," he said. "It did." But his face was sad, his eyes unfocused with thought.
The two men sat in companionable silence for a time, the snow on Buck's coat melting to water droplets that slid down the leather and dripped silently to the tile floor. Buck's gaze shifted to Vin, finally, and he studied their friend with eyes dark as marbles. Then he slid down in the chair and stretched his legs out, and he turned his hat around in his hands as if the hatband was the most interesting thing he'd ever seen.
"So . . . Tell me what I need to know, Nathan." Buck didn't look up, didn't alter his expression when he said it.
Nathan sighed. His voice was soft with compassion and sorrow. "It don't look real good, Buck."
"I see." The tall man cleared his throat roughly, continuing to study his hat. "What about that . . .comin' outta' surgery . . . thing?"
"His blood pressure dropped real low durin' it, Buck. Even lower than it was in the chopper. They can't give 'im pain medication 'cause a' that, an' the body reacts t' severe pain by goin' into shock."
Buck's pale face rose and his eyes met Nathan's. "But he's already in shock? That's why his blood pressure was low?"
Nathan nodded, silently.
"So they can't give him stuff for the pain because his blood pressure's too low, but . . . the pain's causin' shock that'll make his blood pressure . . . even lower?"
Another nod.
"I suppose someone, somewhere, realizes this makes no sense." Buck's face had darkened a shade as he spoke, and his lips thinned. "They oughtta' give him some damn morphine or somethin' an'--"
"It's a fine line, Buck. There's no easy way out, no matter what. Pain meds'd drop his respiration rate below critical inside a' ten minutes, an' as bad off as he his, life support'd do irreversible damage. This ain't the solution anyone wants, but it's the best one we have."
Nathan leaned forward as Buck lowered his head then, neck bent. His eyes were dark with compassion. "If he comes 'round again, we got a decent chance. But he's gonna' have to fight hard t' do that."
Buck licked his lips. "He was awake once, though?"
"Yeah. He was."
"Has . . . has anyone told . . .?"
"No." Nathan leaned back in his chair again, voice and posture both despairing. "Was hopin' maybe you could do that. If . . . An' when."
The lanky man flipped his hat brim against the side of his boot with a gesture of finality, and stood. "Guess I'm glad I got that sleep, then." He looked at Vin intensely a last time. "You know where to find me, Nathan. I won't be far."
He slid into the hallway, nodded sadly to Nathan, and let the door shut softly behind him.
7*7*7*7*7*7*7
He didn't know where he was, or what had happened. He only knew he was in pain.
More than pain. Fires burned in his shoulder and low on one side of his stomach, and there were hot pokers stabbing in and out of them, deep in his flesh, with each beat of his heart and each breath that he took. So Vin held his breath, leaned against it, and broke the surface of consciousness on a flood of rising terror. What the hell was going *on*?
He writhed, the pain making it impossible to lay still, and what had been flames became an inferno when he moved. He gasped as a sharp pang lanced his leg out of nowhere and unbearable agony crushed his torso in a vice. He couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't even get his bearings to know where he was. There was only the pain -- all-consuming, devastating, wrapped around him like a giant fist. He gathered every ounce of strength he had and rolled to his right side in a single, sudden move, clawing at everything within reach to pull himself up so he could run and get away from it.
The nightmare exploded into a shrieking din of chaotic sound -- piercing alarms and the cold clank of metal against metal, urgent voices suddenly yelling at him and to each other over the racket. Vin's desperate fingers discovered something embedded in his arm and he yanked it out with a strength fueled by rage. There was one of the things hurting him gone! Damned if he wouldn't find all the rest and get out of here!
He could see then, blurry and indistinct shapes hurtling at him, faces grotesque with mouths moving in slow motion. Hands reached out and grabbed him, pulled him down, and he fought them with a strength born of primal terror. The pain was like broken glass now, breaking inside his flesh with each gathering instant, glittering sharp as a thousand razor blades.
They had his arms, and he couldn't pull free. His legs wouldn't do what he wanted them to, his strength drained as suddenly as it had swelled. He heard and felt the straps slapped over his forearms and buckled in haste, tying him down, and arched his back in wordless agony as the pain slammed him again and he had nowhere to go.
7*7*7*7*7*7*7
They'd called him. He hadn't been there, they'd had to call him.
Nathan knew even as he roared through the door to Vin's room that he wasn't going to like what he saw, and that he might never forgive himself for it's happening. He had steeled himself to it as he ran down the long halls. But nothing he'd imagined could have prepared him for the reality.
Vin lay trembling, chest heaving, breathing erratic. The fingers of his right hand clutched and opened spasmodically, shaking, his forearm restrained by straps over the bed rail. His left arm was restrained too, but the hand there was limp. Blood spotted the gauze on the shoulder wound above it, and there were patches of crimson on the sheet covering his abdomen. His eyes were wide and dark with shock and fear.
Nathan swallowed and stepped into the silence of the room. The staff had shut off the screaming monitors and backed away, realizing their attempts to help the injured man were just making things worse -- lethally worse. A nurse glanced at Nathan almost fearfully, her eyes moist. The dark man sighed and sank slowly into a crouch that put him at Vin's eye level, only a few inches from his face. He licked his lips and spoke tentatively, in a low voice.
"It's Nathan, Vin. Remember me?"
Vin blinked slowly. His head was turned to one side on the pillow already. It was what had allowed Nathan to speak to him with such quiet intimacy. Now the healer thought he saw awareness start to kindle in the wide-staring eyes.
"I know you're hurtin', Vin. An' scared. Don't know what's happenin' to ya'."
Vin was listening to him now. He was sure of it. Whether or not he was understanding yet . . . Nathan raised one of his hands with fingers spread, palm facing Vin so he could see it. When Vin's eyes tracked to it, Nathan wordlessly slipped his hand over the back of Vin's own, the tendons of which stood out in sharp relief each time he clutched at the railing beneath it, mindlessly trying to escape the restraints. Vin's fingers stilled. Blue eyes slid back to Nathan's face. The terror in those eyes had faded to a dull confusion in which there was burgeoning trust.
"I know ya' hate these restraints," Nathan said calmly. "If ya' promise t' be still -- real still, mind ya' -- I'll take 'em off. But ya' gotta' give me your word, Vin."
A nurse started to protest, but a sharp look from Nathan silenced her. He looked back at Vin, to see a very faint nod. Nathan carefully unbuckled the restraint on that arm, and slipped the strap off. He lifted Vin's forearm gently in both his hands, and set it back to the mattress.
"I'm gonna' get up now, an' walk aroun' t' the other side, and free your other arm. OK? You ok with that?"
Vin closed his eyes wearily in response, and sighed. He rolled his head on the pillow so that it faced up again. Nathan nodded to himself, stood, and made his way around the bed with calm, deliberate movements. When he'd removed that restraint, he paused before moving Vin's arm.
"Movin' this arm's gonna' hurt some, Vin. Nothin' I can about it, but I'll be as careful as I can. That ok with you?"
This time Vin's response was to turn his head slowly to face Nathan in his new position. He opened his eyes, and whispered roughly, softly, "Yeah."
Nathan couldn't help the smile he knew lit up his face at that word, and ducked his head as he tenderly took Vin's left forearm into his hands and moved it gently to the mattress. He heard a sharp intake of breath, but that was all, and when he looked at Vin's face, he saw that the man's eyes were staring into his own.
"Wha' . . . hap't?" The voice was tight with the anguish Nathan knew Vin had to be feeling. He still trembled so much that the vibration could be heard in the soft-spoken words. But he wasn't fighting now. He wasn't breaking anything open.
Nathan found himself looking to the resident who'd come into the room before he replied. Whatever he said now, they had to keep their story straight. Then he looked at a nurse, Charmayne, who'd been keeping close tabs on things right along.
"Do you know if --?" Nathan asked softly, and she closed her eyes briefly, shaking her head once. The healer looked back at Vin and made a decision.
"Ya' been hurt, but you're gonna' be all right. Ya' need t' lay still, an'--"
Nathan's words broke off as a tight coldness gripped his backbone. Vin's eyes were changing. A light flashed in them suddenly, a light of remembering and knowing, and with it came a flood of something that Nathan couldn't identify. It was almost as if he could see everything changing under the skin -- circulation, nerves, muscles. Things altering, memories rising, a mind waking to put the situation into a context.
The sharpshooter's eyes cleared and locked onto Nathan's. "Chris," he whispered raggedly, and his voice broke.
"Vin, don't worry 'bout Chris now. Just worry 'bout gettin'--"
But Vin's eyes were glazing with a new pain Nathan hadn't seen before. Something violent and overwhelming, a surge like death itself, rose as a tidal wave through Vin's chest, then his neck, and into his face. Nathan set his hands quickly over his friend's arm.
"Vin, it's all right now. It's all right."
But there was no stopping it. Nathan didn't even know what he was seeing, but he watched it consume his friend, helpless. Vin's mouth gaped soundlessly, wider and wider. The cords of his neck stood in sharp relief with the tension, and the crown of his head pushed back into the pillow. He wasn't inhaling, wasn't exhaling, and Nathan suddenly felt an icy shower of fear. He reached out to do something, anything, just as Vin's soundless cry rolled over in his throat and gained a voice.
It was a hoarse and throaty sound at first. But it rose quickly, and twisted around itself, pulsing with waves of unspeakable pain and grief that surged through the room and swept everything from its foundations like a storm tide. It was primal, visceral, the howl of a soul being ripped from its body by the most violent of means. And somewhere in the wordlessness of it, in the agonized keening outside even the existence of words, there was one. One word gleaming among the threads of a thousand agonies. A name.
And the name was Chris.
Because Chris was dead, Chris was dead, Chris was dead. And Vin remembered now.
He saw the body falling again, bones breaking, endless freefall, forever nothing else and no one else and never another day. The pain of his body was swallowed whole in the pain of his grief, the two things together twisting and wringing him out like a rag from which blood, not water, ran in multiple streams. He could still hear Nathan, but dim and distantly, telling him to breathe, telling him it would be all right, telling with him not to let go. And it didn't matter at all.
Then the cry finished coming out of him, and he knew the torn ends of his soul trailed out of his mouth like a vapor as it wrenched free, and he watched impassively as what had been whoever he was, whatever he was, dissipated into the air of the room.
Vin felt his body grow still, inside as well as out. He knew they were doing something to him again, but it was as if he was already far away from whatever was happening. Limp flesh registered the rapid removal of dressings, the sting of a needle, the deep throbbing pulse of wounds that didn't seem to matter any more.
He realized dully that someone had turned his head to one side, and that Nathan was in his field of view. The man had been pushed against the wall and out of the way by busy people Vin didn't know or pay attention to, and he was regarding Vin with a deeply stricken expression. A tear crested a dark cheek even as Vin watched impassively, and rolled down to drop off the healer's chin. The next moment, Chris tumbled past again, superimposed over Nathan, and Vin winced and jerked his head slightly.
Nathan saw that wince and the reflexive jerk of horror. He leaned towards Vin, taut as a wire and alert. He heard Vin's breathless words, low-voiced and rough, as he muttered softly to himself about what he was seeing that no one had even known about.
"Don't let 'im be fallin'," whispered Vin. His eyes filled with tears, unutterable sorrow welling in them to spill like the blood from his wounds. The bustle didn't even pause around the two men as Nathan stepped closer and lowered his ear to Vin's lips so he could hear the failing voice.
"Don't fall, Chris." Vin was pleading. "Can't get . . . there in time. God, please, stop 'im fallin'. Put 'im back. Put it all back." He was sobbing softly now, his body limp in the clinically professional hands that moved arms and legs, reattaching sensors and monitor leads. "It's all over. It's all over. My God, oh Chris, oh Chris, why'd ya' die?"
Nathan's heart broke. He set his hands to either side of Vin's face, and looked into the anguished eyes with all the power he had in him. "Chris is alive," he said firmly. "Listen to me, Vin. Chris is *alive*. Only reason he ain't here is --"
But the light of awareness had faded in those eyes, and the pupils were dilating. Nathan sucked in a horrified breath, stark certainty clutching his gut with metallic hands. Vin's expression began to alter subtly, and a new alarm shrieked.
Nathan broke and raced from the room like a man running for his life.
7*7*7*7*7*7*7
The light over the hospital bed glowed blue-white in the shadowed dimness of the room, reflecting off the planes of Josiah's face as if he was carved out of marble. JD stood in a far corner of the room staring sightlessly out the window at the falling snow, his hands in his pockets. He spoke without moving his gaze.
"Don't seem right."
Josiah silently craned his head around to eye the youngest member of their group, who stood in shadows from the knees up. The preacher could see only white Adidas with faded jeans over them, the rest indistinct in the darkness of the late afternoon storm, the overhead light off. The shoes were scuffed and worn, still marked with broad swipes of red mud stain from the trail the young man had run with such urgency. As if feeling the scrutiny, JD's face turned and he regarded Josiah with eyes as still and dark as deep ponds.
"We should tell him. He should know a thing like that."
"You haven't seen him yet," reminded Josiah. "You don't realize."
JD sighed and sagged, then scuffed his way into the circle of light cast by the single dim lamp over the bed. He looked down at the toe of his own shoe, rubbing back and forth against the tile, and then finally raised his eyes to meet the preacher's.
"Vin's gonna' wonder why Chris isn't there. And . . . well, it just doesn't seem right."
A low groan rose and fell, and both men looked expectantly at the bed, and the figure lying quietly upon it.
"I think this conversation'll have to wait for another time," said Josiah, and he got to his feet. The man on the bed groaned again, and a hand rose in a low arc to reach for his head. Josiah caught it gently, and held it. "Take it easy, Chris. You've had a hard time. You need to lay still."
The door opened behind the men, and JD looked around even as Josiah leaned over Chris to study his face. "Buck!" he whispered eagerly, "Chris is--"
The tall man's face lit up, and he strode to the foot of the bed in two long steps. Chris was making inarticulate sounds and shifting his legs slightly beneath the sheets.
"JD," Buck said softly, his voice gentle with contained excitement. "Go get a doctor." He moved up to lean over Chris's other side, and set a hand to the cap of his friend's shoulder. "Hey there, Buddy. Take it easy," he crooned.
"Ohhhh . . ." Chris's breathing changed, and a knee drew up beneath the blanket. "Shit," he whispered, breathlessly.
"Gonna' be all right now," Buck reassured. "Just take it slow."
"Buck? What'd ya' *do* t' me . . ." The gruff voice was sharp-edged with pain, querelous, ready to fight. Buck grinned and glanced across Chris's form to Josiah, who grinned back at him.
"Brother Buck's not to blame this time," rumbled the preacher, and he looked down at the awakening man again.
Chris opened one eye, the other swollen shut and discolored under a fringe of neat black stitches that looked like black spiders lined down his temple. He squinted against the light and frowned. "Josiah?"
"Yep." The preacher drew a chair closer to the bed and sat down slowly. "Welcome back."
Chris's gaze wobbled cautiously from one man to the other. "Back?"
Buck nodded and set a hand over Chris's. "You had a run-in with some bad guys, Stud. Seems they took a coupla' baseball bats or some rocks to that hard head of yours."
Chris exhaled suddenly through his nose, lips clamped tightly together. He shifted again, uncomfortably. "And . . . shot me in the leg. I think. And . . . broken ribs . . . on this side?"
"Yeah," Buck said slowly, "that's right." He glanced at Josiah again, and this time his eyes were fearful. Chris's hand suddenly tightened on the sheets, and he went rigid. Buck looked back down at his friend's face, and swallowed anxiously. "You're gonna' be ok, though. It was the concussion that had us w--"
"Vin," said Chris. The word was forced out between clenched teeth, and his open eye glittered with sudden suspicion as he scrutinized Buck and then Josiah. "Vin was . . ." A sudden memory flashed across his sight, an image sharpened by fear, of Vin's body slamming backwards into a boulder. "He was hurt. Where is--"
"He's in another room," Buck explained hastily. Then he cocked his head to one side, perplexed. "You . . . *knew* Vin got hurt?"
"Of course." Chris winced as his own words apparently lanced his skull. He took a deep breath and went on as if patiently explaining the obvious. "How else -- shit, my head hurts! How else do you . . . think he . . . got in there?"
Buck and Josiah exchanged a puzzled look. Josiah's massive brows knotted and he spoke very gently. "Got in where, Chris?"
Chris's body went very still. The door to the room opened and a doctor came in, flanked by a nurse on one side and JD on the other. "Well! Mr. Larabee!" he said jovially, "I see that you--!"
"*Wait*." Chris's voice was lethally soft, and he raised a hand that commanded the doctor as if their roles were exactly reversed. He fixed his eyes on Josiah and the preacher felt their intensity bore into him. "Vin wasn't in a crevice . . . between rocks . . . when you found him?"
"No." Josiah glanced at Buck again, and Chris caught the exchange. His face blanched and he grabbed the sleeve of Buck's coat with sudden energy. His voice strengthened on a rush of adrenaline.
"Where was he? Tell me, Buck. And where is he now?"
Buck swallowed miserably. He looked into Chris's face, and the injured man didn't look away. "He's in another room," said Buck. "Down the hall. Like I said." He paused, and Chris waited. The tall man rubbed his mustache nervously with the hand Chris didn't have pinned to the mattress.
"Mr. Larabee," chided the doctor, starting to step forward again, "you really should be --"
"I said *WAIT*."
The word was a furious bullet. The doctor froze. Buck cleared his throat.
"Vin was, um, right at the edge of the ravine. Across from the big rock where we found you."
"How'd he get there?" The question was a demand, and it was sharp.
"We don't know, Brother." Josiah intervened with a calm voice, one intended to gentle the increasingly agitated man who needed no agitation right now. "We aren't sure yet exactly what happened."
A glacier of silence filled the room, emanating from Chris's pale eyes. He stared into Buck's face, his jaws clenched, and his fingers tightened on the sleeve of Buck's coat and the wrist underneath it.
"Chris," Buck breathed at last, "Vin was hurt pretty badly. The fact is--"
The door exploded inward with a bang, and startled eyes jumped to see who had burst in, and why.
Nathan stood in the frame of light from the hallway behind him. His face was covered in sweat, and even as short as his hair was, it was disheveled and seemed to be standing on end. He stared, panting, for a long moment at Chris, and then staggered towards the foot of the bed with a look of desperation and gratitude.
"Thank God," he said softly, relief breaking in his voice like a sob. "Thank God, you're awake."
Josiah shivered and stood with a sudden, abrupt gesture. Nathan's eyes went to those of his oldest friend, and Josiah whispered, "Vin."
"We gotta' get Chris to 'im," nodded Nathan. "Right *NOW*."
7*7*7*7*7*7*7
He was in freefall, a dark stone plummeting through spiraling currents of black fog.
Vin could still see the nurses, far above him and at the wrong end of a magnifying lens, as if he was deep inside a well they were looking in to. He heard voices, dimly and at a distance, but they didn't match anything anyone seemed to be doing or saying up there, so far away. And everything he saw and heard was in slow motion, growing slower.
The pain was still there. But whereas before it had made him writhe helplessly, unable to be still, now it paralyzed him. The pain of his grief and that of his wounds had coalesced into something that hurt too bad to be felt any more, that was off the scale of human endurance. He knew it was there, but he just let it be there in its own place and have whatever it wanted of him.
Because Vin was falling away from it all, the bottom dropping out of wherever he was and him dropping too, a lead sinker through still water. The light dimmed as he fell, everything growing steadily darker as the top of the well receded like a train's tail lights, and Vin began to relax. He felt his breathing slow, felt his pulse spread out like a low floodtide and begin to quietly pool. He hardly took a breath at all now. He knew soon he wouldn't need to do it at all any more.
*Vin*
He wasn't sure what he'd heard, or even if he *had* heard. Had that been a whisper? His own breath? Cells releasing a final memory of a voice?
*Oh Vin*
What *was* that? Vin realized he had slowed, was spinning almost in place, deep in the dark currents that beckoned him downward.
Then -- words. Actual, soft, very distant words. "My God, Vin. Come back."
The words blew down through the mouth of the well and into his mind like a prairie breeze sweet with the smell of spring lightning. He felt a swallow move through his body somewhere, and it hurt like a son of a bitch. Vin frowned inside himself, so far away from the light. Why would mere words --
"Can you feel my hand?" said the voice.
Something jumped in his heart at that, at the sound in the voice this time.
"I've got your hand in mine, Vin. It's Chris. Feel my hand. I'm here now. I'm here."
No no no no no! Pain welled up fresh and raw, and burst like water through a broken dam. Chris is dead, Chris is dead, Chris is dead! Vin heard a distant cry that was like an animal being run over and killed. The cry left bleeding tracks in his throat. Tears ran down it backwards, filling his ears.
"I'm all right, Vin. I'm right here. You've got to hear me, Cowboy. You've got to stay with me."
Damn the voice! Vin gasped, caught in the cross-tides between the deep darkness and the light up so far away from him now. His whole body jerked and then shuddered, and he moaned as pain rose beneath him and lifted him bodily towards the light, towards --
The voice spoke again, damp and desperate, weak but urgent. "I'd have come sooner, Vin, but I couldn't. I didn't even know until . . . Damn it! You can't die on me. Not now. Listen to me, Vin! Can't you feel my hands? It's me, Chris, holding your hand, Vin. You've got to feel it! You've got to come back!"
. . . come back . . . come back . . . come back . . .
Slow motion. A body tumbling from stone to stone . . . upwards. Going back. Getting put back . . . Freeflight. Up. Back.
Silence.
Josiah set a comforting hand to Chris's shoulder, next to the neck bowed with grief and the pain of his own injuries. The nurses stood near the wall, hands at their sides, eyes on the monitors. The doctor stepped back a pace and glanced at the clock.
Chris Larabee bent over the limp hand he held between his own. His bare feet curled, cold and vulnerable, on the metal footrests of the wheelchair he sat in. Nathan stood behind him opposite Josiah, one hand still on the chair's push bar, still breathing hard from running the chair through crowded halls so quickly, Chris reeling in the seat with white knuckles gripping its arms, his face rigid with pain.
"Chris." The sound could have been the brush of snow against a windowpane, but it wasn't. Chris raised his head.
"Vin?" His voice was barely a whisper. He leaned forward as far as he could, trembling. Vin's eyes that had been sightlessly open, blinked slowly closed, then opened again and rolled towards Chris's face. "My God," said Chris softly. "Vin?"
"Chris . . . is dead." There was numb finality to the barely-audible words. Chris leaned closer, set his free hand to Vin's forehead and pushed back a damp tendril that had fallen across his face in his earlier struggle. Steady blue eyes regarded his own, round and still and impassive.
"No, Vin. I'm not dead. I'm all right. Look for yourself. Look at me, Cowboy." Chris rubbed his thumb very gently against Vin's cheekbone, and Vin's gaze darkened slightly as his eyes seemed to clear of a film. "It's you everyone's been worried about," continued Chris softly. "But you're gonna' stick around now . . . right? Not goin' anywhere?"
Vin closed his eyes and squeezed them tightly. The edges crinkled into the hollows around them, hollows carved out by pain and loss of blood. He spoke without opening them. "Hurts." He could hardly bear to breathe, Chris could see it. Could hardly bear to move even his head or a finger.
"I know. But it'll get better. And I'll be here. We'll all be here."
The doctor standing in the shadows near the door whispered a low instruction to a nurse, who slipped soundlessly from the room. Chris leaned closer to Vin, and the younger man's eyes slid open. Slowly, so slowly, he raised a shaking hand, searching for the grasp that always unfailingly folded his hand in its own when he needed it. And this time, it was there -- the firm grip, strong fingers around his palm, strength flowing into him as if it had always, always been there -- and always would be.
Vin relaxed with a deep sigh and closed his eyes to ride out a new wave of pain. But this time, his fingers were wrapped around the hand of the life given back to him.
7*7*7*7*7*7*7
"Is that gonna' be warm enough?" Buck straightened, frowning slightly as he eyed the wool blanket he'd tucked down into the space between the side of the patio lounger and Vin's legs. The breeze rising from the hay pasture out beyond Chris's barn freshened as it gusted across the deck, and the tall man shivered theatrically. Vin chuckled.
"It's fine, Buck. Thanks."
"Well, then I won't even *ask* if you'll be warm enough," Buck said to Chris. "If Vin's 'warm', you'll be wantin' a beer to cool off."
Chris smiled. "I could use a beer," he said helpfully. He was in a lounger identical to Vin's, the two separated only by a narrow patio table. He was dressed in loose black sweats that eased around bandages better than his jeans did, and the breeze tugged at gleaming strands of his hair. He raised his brows at Buck in a dare.
"Ohhhh no you don't." Buck's grin widened. "You've both got your apple juice right there in easy reach. I have no intention a' gettin' skinned alive by Nathan when he shows up. That man knows way too much about how to use a knife." He paused suddenly and pushed up the sleeve of his shirt, to look at his watch. "Damn! I nearly forgot your antibiotic, Vin!"
He fished long fingers around in his jeans pocket and came up with a pill bottle whose label he scrutinized carefully. "Here we go," we announced, and popped off the lid. "Take one every six hours with water . . . uh." He looked at Vin, his expression perplexed. "You think apple juice--?"
"I think juice'll be fine," Vin smiled. He took the pill from Buck's palm and sipped enough juice to swallow it, then set his nearly-full glass back on the table. Buck grinned and recapped the pill bottle, then jammed it deeply into his pocket again.
"OK. Chris, your next pill isn't 'til 8:00, and Nathan'll be here then, so he can give it to you. So!" He slapped his hands and rubbed the palms together like a coach. "What else can I do for you fella's?"
"How 'bout sittin' down an' takin' a load off for a while," suggested Vin softly. "Nursemaidin' ornery cusses like us can't be easy. Sure ain't the job ya' signed up for."
Buck's mobile face altered subtly as he pulled a deck chair close to both the loungers, and lowered himself slowly to its seat. "Oh, I don't know, Vin." His voice slid into a velvet register as he tipped his head back to regard Chris thoughtfully. "The job I signed on for was 'friend' -- Seems to me like this's just one a' those things that comes with the territory." He shifted his gaze back to the younger man, and smiled with gentle and genuine affection. "I'm just glad you both--" He stopped as his voice broke.
Buck turned his head away in the silence, as if to study the mountains. His throat worked and then he shrugged as he looked back at his friends somewhat sheepishly. "You know," he said simply.
"Yeah. I do know," nodded Vin. He glanced at Chris out the side of his eyes and then shifted uncomfortably. "Buck, I never did . . . That is . . . Well, why didn't Nathan tell me that Chris was alive, that one time I woke up before I remembered what happened?"
"Oh *that*." Buck rubbed a hand across the back of his neck and made a wry face. "Lord, we sure figured everything wrong." He dropped his hand in his lap and settled against the chair back with his long legs sprawled out across the redwood planking. "See, we thought you didn't even know Chris'd been hurt."
Vin and Chris exchanged a rapid look of confusion, and Buck shrugged again.
"Well, it made sense at the time. We could hear Vin shootin' as we ran up the trail -- and don't tell me I want to be in *that* situation again any time soon! -- so we figured he was set on rescuin' Chris -- well, *you*." He gestured to the older of the two men. "And we figured *you*, Vin, you'd been hit so many damn times . . ." Buck paused, and his eyes darkened at the memory. He rushed on, suddenly. "Well, we figured you had t' been fightin' there a while. Which wouldn't make sense if you'd seen Chris go down. I mean, stands to reason a man shot to pieces like that --"
A stricken look flooded Buck's face when he realized how that might sound to the man who'd *been* 'shot to pieces'. "'S ok," nodded Vin, and Buck relaxed and went on.
"Well, stands to reason you'd a' quit fightin' an' taken cover if it wasn't absolutely *critical* to keep standin' there. And if it was critical--"
"--then Chris was still fightin' an' tryin' to get loose of 'em," finished Vin. He was nodding to himself. "I can see where you'd figure that."
"But I'm missing a piece," said Chris slowly. "How'd that account for Nathan not tellin' him--"
"We figured Vin didn't know you were hurt. And, well, it was just so dicey at first, and we were worried that if the first thing outta' the hat, if Nathan just up and said, 'By the way, Chris got himself beat up an' shot, an' he has a concussion an' ain't conscious yet an' we don't know if he's gonna' be ok 'til he wakes up, *if* he wakes up. . . We were worried what that might do if Vin heard a thing like that."
Both the injured men had started laughing by the time Buck's litany reached the part about Chris not being conscious, struck particularly by the image of Nathan so casually informing any member of the team about another member's injuries with an introductory 'oh, by the way'. Buck looked from one man to the other and then grinned, pleased with himself for cheering them up so much.
Vin relaxed into the lounger, and his gaze trailed out across the pale winter grass waving in the breeze Drifts of feeding meadowlarks popped up out of the grass and then settled, again and again, and a blue heron flew slowly and with great dignity over a distant line of trees. Vin sighed. "Good t' be outside again," he said, "especially such a nice day as this. Sun feels real good."
Buck stood up and walked to the deck railing. He wrapped his hands over it and studied the ground near the house. "That reminds me, Chris. Mary wants to borrow the truck this weekend." He turned to face his friends again. "I told her I'd ask you. She's wantin' to go get garden plants and what-not. Gettin' spring fever I guess."
"Fine with me," said Chris evenly. "But we'll have more snow before it's done."
Buck waved his hand at the blue sky and sunlight, the birds feeding in the grass. "You don't think it's really come spring this time?"
"No." Vin and Chris spoke in firm unison, and then laughed. Buck shook his head.
"Aw now," scoffed Buck. "It might snow, but it won't stick. The ground's too warm for that. Where's your faith in the spring? Where's your faith in new grass an' flowers an' Easter bunnies an'--"
"*Easter* bunnies?" Vin and Chris eyed one another again, eyebrows raised in exaggerated surprise, and Buck's mouth pursed.
"All right then. Be grumpy ol' codgers if that's what you want. But when the snow's just a memory an' the blackberries are ripe, I'll remind you that ol' Buck was right."
"Buck, that's incredible." Chris eyed his friend with open amazement.
"What?"
"What you said -- it was poetic," explained Vin.
"Poetic." Buck looked sceptical.
"He's right," agreed Chris. "I didn't know you could talk like that."
Buck licked his lips thoughtfully. "Really? What part was so . . . you know. Poetic?"
"The part about the snow an' winter," supplied Vin. "An' it bein' just a memory by th' time the berries're ripe."
"Women like that stuff," mused Buck. "They get all soft and wriggly when . . . " His voice trailed off slowy, and then he suddenly stood up. "If you'll excuse me a minute, I'm gonna' go inside and write that down so I can remember it."
"There's paper and a pen in the desk, Buck," Chris called. Buck was already stepping through the sliding door into the house, and he nodded that he'd heard.
"Think he'll really write a poem?" wondered Vin.
Chris smiled. "Knowin' Buck, I expect the snow'll turn into women's breasts or some such if he does."
Vin laughed, and the two men sat in companionable silence for a while. The sun was warm, and Chris figured Vin would fall asleep. The younger man was still only able to sit up for about an hour at a time without going faint on them. So he was surprised when the sharpshooter's voice drifted to him on the fresh breeze.
"I ain't been able to wrap my mind yet around what 'xactly happened out there," Vin drawled. "I sure would like to."
Chris turned to look at Vin, and found the younger man was watching him with a relaxed but serious expression.
"I'm not sure I know, myself." Chris's eyes narrowed in thought, and then he frowned. "I don't even know how you got to the canyon."
"Slithered outta' that niche like a snake." Vin grinned a little weakly, but the sides of his eyes crinkled with genuine amusement. "Then I just walked right on up there like a hun'erd-year-ol' man."
Chris nodded slowly, saying nothing of the emotions that image created in his heart. They weren't ones to inspire amusement of any kind.
"I heard 'em shootin' at ya'," Vin continued. Chris compressed his lips and neither man spoke for a time.
"I was doing all right until I got hit in the leg. Took it in the calf, and it still woulda' been ok except I was right on the edge of a little bluff at the time. I lost my balance and fell. Landed practically in the middle of them." Chris took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair, then shifted his gaze to look out across the landscape.
"Roughed ya' up, I imagine." Vin's voice was raspy as fatigue began to settle him lower into the chair. Chris studied his posture to make sure he was all right, and then nodded.
"Some. I broke my ribs when I fell, though. They didn't know then who I was."
"And?"
"And we went to the knoll. They found my ID and weren't just real happy to discover they had an ATF agent in the middle of their buy. Or that they'd presumably just killed another one." Chris's eyes met Vin's when he said that, and Vin nodded almost imperceptibly. Neither one of them had known if the other had still been alive, throughout the ordeal.
"Anyway," continued Chris, "They didn't fool around after that. They intended to do an execution-style killing, as a message, and bug out. But you showed up and I got away. Hit my head damn hard on the rocks, I guess, at the very end when I was fighting them. Next thing I knew, I woke up in the hospital."
Vin looked like he was literally chewing on Chris's words for a while, his eyes scanning the distance as if looking for additional information. Finally he sighed and looked down at the blanket over his lap, long fingers picking at a fat thread at the edge of it. He chewed his lip, and then grew very still.
"I saw you fall," he said.
Chris nodded. "So I gathered, from Nathan. But I didn't."
"I saw you." Vin looked up, fixed Chris with an earnest gaze. "I watch your back. It's what I do. I know what you look like from a distance, how you stand, how you move -- no matter how far away or at what angle. It's my job." He paused, then said it again. "I saw you fall."
"I don't know what to say." Chris returned Vin's gaze, though his friend's simple insistence was beginning to make him uncomfortable. "I wasn't down there. Nobody was. I was on top, apparently about 50 feet from the edge."
Vin's brows knit very slightly. "Nobody at all fell? They checked?"
Chris nodded, silent. Vin's frown deepened.
"It was so clear . . . " he mused softly. "You were in freefall, bounced off the side an' I saw . . . I saw your arm break. I saw--" Vin broke off suddenly, and shut his eyes with an expression of pain. Chris reached quickly across the small table between them, and set a hand to his friend's forearm.
"But it's all right, Vin. It wasn't me."
Vin growled a response that was gruff with bitten-back pain. "I know what I saw, Cowboy. Just don't understand it."
Chris looked out at the land again, saw that a small thunderhead was starting to puff up over the front range. He chewed on his lower lip and then felt a chill shiver down his spine. "I . . ." He hesitated, afraid to go on and uncertain why that was so. He felt Vin's gaze on him, and shifted his weight nervously. "I *did* fall . . . you know, *earlier*. When they shot my leg out from under me."
He hazarded a glance at Vin, to see the younger man staring back with an intensity only Vin could accomplish, and then only when the gears of his agile mind were fully engaged. "Did ya' fall free -- out into th' air?" he asked hoarsely.
Chris nodded. "Hadn't thought of it that way until you brought all this up. But . . .yeah. And I bounced off a section that stuck out. That's how I . . . broke my . . ." His voice trailed off but he didn't need to complete the sentence for Vin to nod slowly.
". . . ribs," he said. The sharpshooter licked his lips and it was his turn to avert his gaze, to study the landscape while he tried to figure things out. After a time, he said very softly, still without looking at Chris, "Maybe somehow I saw you . . . only sorta' moved over. Like, the time was messed up . . . an' I saw you fall back in that other place, but in this one instead." He laughed suddenly, sheepishly, and cast an embarrassed glance Chris's direction. "Reckon that sounds pretty far-fetched."
Chris didn't laugh or even smile. He exhaled very slowly. "I don't know, Vin. I can't think of any other explanation. Maybe somehow, the way we sort of, I don't know, *connect* . . ."
"Guess we'll never know." Vin lay quietly, clearly still thinking. "Anyone ever find out how them bastards *got* there?"
"Motorcycles." Chris had to laugh at Vin's shocked expression. "They pushed them into a hiding place not thirty feet off the road, about two miles west of the parking area, and hiked in from there across country."
"Well I'll be damned. Motorcycles. An' me never thinkin' a' that." A broad smile lit Vin's face suddenly, and he relaxed against the lounger's back in a way that Chris knew meant he was going to change subjects and didn't want to be stopped. "One thing I know for sure," the younger man said, "it stays warm like this, I'm goin' hikin' just as soon as I get strong enough t' lace my boots."
"You'd hike again after what happened?" Chris was surprised how uneasy the thought made him. He hadn't expected that.
"Hell, Chris. They've already got the streets. Damned if I'll let 'em have th' mountains, too."
Chris nodded slowly. "Good point." He took a deep breath and nodded again.
"Ya' think Buck's right?" Vin asked unexpectedly. "That it's really spring this time?"
Chris closed his eyes and thought about a woman and a boy, about the fear of caring again, of believing again. He saw again a face disappearing beneath a pine bough, its features anguished, and then felt the grip of the shaking hand that had sought and found his. And held on. He opened his eyes and looked straight at Vin.
"Yes," he said. "I think maybe it is. I mean . . . spring has to come *some* time."
"Then here's t' spring," said Vin, raising his glass of juice.
Chris raised his own. "To spring."
Glass rims touched with a soft thunk and they drank the toast -- then turned their heads in unison at the sound of the sliding door, to see Buck step out onto the deck with paper in his hands and a pencil lodged behind one ear.
"I think I've got it!" he announced. "Listen to this!
"Here's to your bosom, as white as the snows,
"And to your tender, sweet lips, as red as the rose . . .
"Now wait a minute you guys. It's not supposed to be funny . . . "
Here's to spring.
The End
