right to her head. She jerked and writhed away. A whimper came from her throat and she tried to curl up. One arm went to protect her face.
Wynn had a hand on her shoulder and he was talking fast, saying, “Whoa, whoa! You’re okay, you’re okay! We’ve got you now, you’re all right, please don’t move, don’t, hold still, hold still.” The struggling subsided and she lay curled. “I’m Wynn, this is Jack. We’re here to get you out of here.” Wynn put his hands gently to her head and neck and kept talking, and it took a minute for the words to register, but she began to emit what sounded like sobs and her arm relaxed. Wynn glanced at Jack. He said softly, “Hey, we’re gonna roll you over, make sure your back’s okay. We’re gonna get you out of here.” It seemed to him she was listening. Her body went limp and he nodded to Jack and Jack went to her hips, and Wynn nodded again. “Ready?” “Yep.” “Okay, three, two, one…” And they rolled her. Ever so gently they turned her together full on her back and laid her on the sandy loam at the top of the berm.
She was covered and stained with dirt and lichen. Her mouth was working. “Okay, hold still.” Jack got his sweater off and Wynn pillowed it under the hollow of her neck. “Water bottle,” he said to Jack. Jack ran. Wynn reached a hand to the side of her throat and pressed gently. Thready pulse and fast. Shock. Hypothermia. Lucky she survived the night. He reached for his clip knife and thumbed it open and cut into his left sleeve at the elbow. He slashed it as best he could and ripped it free. When Jack came back with the bottle he doused the sleeve and began patting away the oozing blood at the side of her head. And then she began to moan. The boys glanced at each other and Wynn said, “Clean that up very gently.”
He reached for his belt and lifted the handset and keyed the mike, and said, “Pierre? Pierre? We found her! She’s alive but—” and she moved, lurched beneath them, and then he heard Jack hiss, “Fuck!” and Wynn felt the sting of his backhand and the walkie-talkie went flying onto the stones below.
* * *
Stunned. He turned to Jack, who still had a hand on her head, trying to calm her. But Jack was looking at the walkie-talkie shattered on the rocks. As if he himself couldn’t believe he had knocked it there.
“Sorry,” Jack muttered. “Fuck.”
“What?” Wynn blinked. “What was that? I was just telling him—”
Jack held up a hand. He was shaking his head as if to clear it. “We don’t know, but now he does.”
“We don’t know what?” Wynn said.
“What if he did this, Big? What if it was him who tried to kill her?” Jack was trying to keep his voice low. Wynn stared. Jack said, “I’ve been thinking about it the whole way back here. While we were carrying up, paddling. Pierre said he lost her the night the fog came in. Bullshit.”
Wynn looked over his shoulder back at the woods as if someone might be listening. “What?”
Jack whispered fast. “We heard them on the beach. Arguing, remember? They were shouting at each other. In the fog. You heard it.”
Wynn had never seen Jack so agitated. “He said he lost her the night of the fog. Maybe he meant the night after.”
“That’s not what he said. I asked him that, remember? To clarify, and he backed off.”
“Well.”
“I’m telling you, the guy was lying from the start. I got that hit, I should’ve paid attention.” Jack looked down at the blood-soaked rag in his hand, blinked. He blew out. “I mean, okay, we can’t be sure of anything, but if he was the one who did this, now he knows we found her and she’s alive.”
* * *
None of that made sense. Wynn didn’t speak after that. While Jack cleaned her up Wynn did his first-responder assessment, working from the head down. She had bruises on her abdomen. Her left shoulder appeared to be dislocated. They’d have to get to that. Full sensation and movement in fingers and toes. Her back, thank God, seemed to be okay. There was old vomit on her rain jacket, probably from the convulsions and nausea of a concussion. She drifted in and out of consciousness. They needed to get her stable.