him where to look.
* * *
Charlie saw her boot and then her leg and pushed through the brush to get to her, then dropped to his knees beside her, feeling for a pulse.
It was there.
“Thank you, God,” he muttered, and grabbed his radio. “This is Dodge. I found her! She’s alive.”
Searchers came running, and then radioed their location as Charlie was checking her wounds. She had a cut on her head, and another on the side of her neck. But it was the bloodstains on her shirt and pants that led him to the injuries. When he found the bullet wound in her shoulder, and then another one in her upper thigh, blood loss became an issue.
He dumped his backpack, grabbed a pair of surgical scissors to cut through her sweater to get to the shoulder wound, revealing the red-and-black dragon on her chest. To his surprise, the wound was barely seeping.
He pulled out the first-aid kit and began tearing open gauze pads to field dress the wounds.
“Unwrap these!” Charlie said, and tossed a couple of rolls of self-adhesive bandages to one of the men while he felt for an exit wound.
There was none, which meant that bullet could have ricocheted off bone and be anywhere inside her. He pressed the gauze pads onto the bullet wound, applying pressure while another man used the stretch bandage to keep them in place.
Once that was done, Charlie cut the leg of her jeans to get to the other wound, discovered it was a through and through, but the bleeding appeared to have stopped, which made no fucking sense. He applied more gauze pads and self-adhesive bandage to hold them in place, and then looked up.
“Do we have a stretcher coming?” Charlie asked.
“About a mile away!” Tulsa said.
Too far. “That’s time she doesn’t have to give. Jade! Can you hear me?” Charlie asked.
She moaned.
“It’s me, Charlie. Can you hear me?”
“Hear you,” Wyrick mumbled.
“Did you see who did it?”
“Chopper...rifle,” she said, and then grabbed hold of his hand and opened her eyes. “Cyrus...don’t leave.”
“I’m not leaving you. I promise,” Charlie said.
Wyrick sighed, remembering that was what her mama had told her, and let go, falling back into the shadows.
But Charlie wasn’t waiting for that stretcher to arrive. “Since she got herself out of the cockpit and crawled here, I’m taking a chance that moving her isn’t going to make anything worse,” Charlie said, then scooped her up into his arms.
Her head rolled toward him, her cheek resting against the bicep on his arm as he pulled her close.
“Lead the way,” he said.
After that, it was a scramble to get her to the stretcher and then to the waiting chopper from Medi-Flight.
Charlie was one of the men with the stretcher when they slid her into the back bay, and then he climbed in behind her.
One of the paramedics reached out to stop him.
“Sir, you can’t—”
Charlie shook his head.
“Sorry, dude. I not only can, but I am, so move out of my way. Someone shot her down. She took a bullet in the shoulder and another one in the leg and still survived the crash before crawling out of a burning cockpit into the brush. The last thing she said was ‘Don’t leave me.’ So move the hell over, because I am not letting her out of my sight.”
“Fair enough,” the medic said. “Just stay out of the way.”
Charlie crawled all the way past where she was lying, then settled in cross-legged and held on to the stretcher as the chopper lifted up and took off.
He watched in silence while one established an IV and another began to cut away the rest of her shirt and jacket to get to the field dressing. That was when they saw the dragon where her breasts used to be.
A paramedic looked up.
“Holy shit.”
“She’s already survived her own kind of hell. Don’t let her die,” Charlie said.
“On it,” he said, and started the drip.
“Where are we going?” Charlie asked.
“Memorial Hermann Med Center... It’s a Level II trauma center in the Woodlands.”
Charlie nodded.
They were on the way to Houston.
Seventeen
Wyrick kept fading in and out of consciousness. The sound of the rotors made her think she was still in her chopper—thinking she was still flying. And every time she’d reach for the cyclic stick, only one arm would work, which sent her into a panic, flailing her hand all about, trying to find the stick.
Finally, Charlie grabbed her hand.
“Wyrick! Wyrick! You’re safe. Just hold on to me. We’re on the way to