In the Heart of the Wind Book 1 in the WindTorn Trilogy (40 page)

The heavy sweep of the ambulance’s emergency flashers cut through the pulsing rain, washing over the passing trees along the roadway, and cutting into the darkness beyond the road. A bright flare of lightning jagged through the heavens and turned the blackness of the night to a crisp, eye-hurting whiteness. The strange glow lasted only a second, but everything around the two moving vehicles looked like the decorations one might find in the ante-chamber of hell.

“Cobb?” Doc yelled as he turned on the lights in the back of the ambulance.

“Taking his pressure right now,” the orderly yelled back.

“Ain’t no cars coming, Doc,” Mary Bernice said. “Just stop and let me drive. You go back and see about Gabe.”

Doc didn’t answer. He glanced in both rear view mirrors, let his foot off the gas, and began braking the ambulance gently on the rain-slick highway.

“Ninety over seventy and his pulse is at fifty, sir.”

Doc was already out of the driver’s seat, Mary Bernice crawling over the console, and Kyle opening the back door when Delbert got out of the limo and shouted at them. “What’s happening?” He received no answer, only the slamming of the ambulance door and the vehicle’s burst of power as it shot forward.

Doc’s hair was dripping wet, rain falling down his nose as he took Cobb’s place beside the unconscious man. He ripped open his patient’s shirt. “Hand me my bag,” he demanded as he took the stethoscope from Cobb, put it on, and placed the instrument’s head against Gabe’s chest.

Kyle swung around, found the black medical bag and handed it to Cobb. “What you need, sir?” the orderly asked.

“My light,” Doc snapped. He didn’t like the sound he’d heard—the slow, irregular heartbeat, the faint respiration. Taking the instrument from Cobb, he lifted Gabe’s right lid and shone the light into the eye, then switched to the left eye.

“Shit. His pupils are fixed and dilated.” He jerked the ear pieces of the stethoscope from him. “Give me a hypo and some epinephrine.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Kyle asked.

“Don’t bother me, Vittetoe.” He tied a tourniquet around his patient’s left arm.

“Here you are, sir,” Cobb said.

Doc took the syringe and bottle and tore the protective plastic from the hypo. Taking off the needle cover, he plunged the needle into the rubber membrane of the bottle of epinephrine to draw the drug into the syringe.

“Put the oxygen on him, Cobb.” He tapped the glass cylinder of the syringe. “Can you start an IV?”

“Yes, sir,” Cobb answered. He slipped the nose piece of the oxygen into Gabe’s nostrils. “I was a combat medic with the 101st, sir.”

A faint smile stretched Doc’s lips as he tapped on a prominent vein in Gabe’s arm then slid the needle into the flesh.

“The Screaming Eagles, eh?” he asked as he tore off the tourniquet.

“Yes, sir.” Cobb took the empty syringe from Doc. “You, too, sir?”

“I was with them in ‘Nam in ‘67 and ‘70. Fine group of men.” He looked up. “Step on it, Mary Liz. We got a slight problem back here.”

Mary Bernice’s foot slammed on the accelerator, throwing those in back off balance. “Want me to open communications?” she asked.

“Wait until we’re out on the highway, then send the signal. Let ‘em know we’re coming. Edna Mae and Del will have their CB on by now.” Doc put his stethoscope back to Gabe’s chest and listened. “Push it, Mary E. I mean
really
push it, girl.”

“You got it.”

“Is it that bad, sir?” Cobb asked.

“I wasn’t expecting them to have tried to kill him, Cobb,” Doc said quietly. “But whatever the hell they gave him, they pumped him full of it. His heart rate is depressed and he’s not responding to the epinephrine.” He reached for the bottle again. “We don’t have all the stuff in this ambulance Dick and Jenny brought with them. If we don’t get to them soon...”

Andrew Tremayne’s
eyes were thin slits of malevolent rage. His nostrils flared and his lips clamped so tightly together one could hardly see a delineating line between them. His shoulders were hunched forward, his hands clenched at his sides, and he was fairly quivering from head to toe as he glared at the psychiatrist.

“I don’t know how this could’ve happened,” Lassiter explained, true fear in his soul as he stared up at Tremayne. “I had gone to the bungalow to—”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what you were doing, Lassiter,” Tremayne hissed, taking a step toward the smaller man. Satisfaction lit his stormy eyes when the doctor backed away. “You have allowed strangers to come in here and kidnap my brother!”

“How was I to know the Boudreaux s would do something like this, Mr. Tremayne?” Lassiter whined. He was already sick to his stomach, a sour taste filling his dry mouth. “They came highly recommended by one of the finest psychiatrists in—”

Tremayne spun away from the doctor and fixed Beecher with a stony stare. “Where were you when all this happened?”

“With him,” Beecher answered, nodding toward Lassiter.

Tremayne glared at the orderly for a split second then turned on his heels, stalking toward the ambulance that had accompanied him to the clinic.

“I’ll ride in back,” he barked to the two attendants who were standing outside. “Find that other ambulance.
Now!”

Beecher was about to enter the ambulance with Tremayne, but the lawyer held up a warning hand. “You’ll have to account to my father if James makes good his escape, Beecher.”

“He won’t,” the orderly pronounced. “I saw to that.”

“What do you mean?” Lassiter gasped.

Beecher snorted. “He’s shot so full of meperidine, he’ll be lucky to make it to the interstate before he kicks.”

Tremayne swung his eyes to Lassiter. “What’s he talking about?”

Lassiter took the orderly’s arm in a tight grip. “Tell me what you’ve done!”

Beecher tore free of the grip and pushed away the doctor. He looked back at Tremayne. “You want me to help or not? I was doing what your Daddy told me to.”

“Get in,” Tremayne snapped. “You can tell me on the way!”

“Breaker, breaker
,” came the slow, sweet, Southern drawl over the CB radio. “This here’s the Snowbird calling all you good ole pedal-stompers out there on this rainy Louisiana night. I’ve got my pedal to the metal and I’m rollin’ right at you.”

“That’s Mary Liz,” Delbert said as he heard his wife’s voice crackling over Channel 17. He listened as some truckers came on the air to flirt with his woman.

“Well, now,” the Snowbird said and giggled, “I sure do appreciate all the good wishes, fellow travelers, but I’m lookin’ for that special guy of mine.” Another giggle. “He calls himself the Ramblin’ Hawk. You out there, good buddy?”

“With my entire flock, Snowbird. How’s it goin’, darlin’?”

“That’s Dick,” Edna Mae and laughed.

“Got troubles with my engine, ramblin’ man,” Mary Bernice reported. “Best have your tools all handy for when I see you.”

Dick Warrington
looked at his wife, Jenny. “Something’s wrong,” she said.

He keyed the CB mike. “How serious is your problem, darlin’?”

“Close to an overhaul, I reckon.”

Dick closed his eyes. He keyed the mike again. “We can handle that, I think. Just roll your cute little caboose on in here, darlin’.”

“Much obliged, Ramblin’. I’ll be there in about eight shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

The Badger nodded
as he listened to the exchange. “They’re just now pulling onto the interstate. That means they’re about sixteen miles from us.”

“Hey, Ramblin’?”

Every ear on the team cocked toward the CB. There wasn’t to be anymore communication after that first message to let everyone know where they were. Snowbird signing back on meant even more trouble.

“Yeah, Snowbird?” Dick’s voice had turned hoarse.

“Did I mention I got myself a spoiler put on?”

Thais groaned.
“They’re being followed already.”

“Won’t make no difference, darlin’,” came a new voice over the CB.

Every one listening to the exchange, whether team member or not, knew that voice wasn’t Ramblin’ Hawk’s. The voice was deep, melodious, sexy as hell.

“Who’s that?” Mary Bernice asked.

“The guy with all the tools, baby,” the Badger said with a chuckle. “We can fix your engine without worrying about the spoiler.”

“That’s a relief, darlin’,” Mary Bernice said.

“See you on the flip side, Snowbird,” the Badger sighed into the mike. “Keep it cool ‘til I can get it hot!”

Delbert’s lips
tightened. The man might be some kind of supercop, and he might be their biggest help right now, but he damned sure didn’t like the way he’d just talked to his wife. He reached for the CB mike, but Edna Mae stopped him.

“It’s all part of the game, Del,” she said in an amused voice. “She won’t ever meet him.”

Del sniffed. “Well,
I’d
like to meet him.” He looked at his passenger through the mirror’s glass. “I don’t like nobody hitting on my ole lady!” As he looked at her, his eyes widened. “We got company, Miss Edna.”

Edna Mae turned and saw the watery glare of an ambulance pulling onto the interstate. “Floor it, Del,” she snapped and lurched backward in her seat as the limo shot forward. She heard Del’s voice speaking, not in the fear or anxiety she would have expected, into the CB mike.

“Breaker, breaker, this here’s the Raven coming at you. I’m a flying outta here.”

Mary Bernice watched
the limo shoot past her and whistled as she looked at her own speedometer and saw it edging toward 110. With emergency lights flashing and siren blaring, she posed no real threat to the cars she was passing, but the limo was like a great silver eel slithering through the rain-soaked night into the darkness beyond. The tail lights soon disappeared.

“How far are we from the ramp, Mary Liz?” Doc asked, injecting another drug into Gabe’s vein.

“About ten miles.”

Kyle was staring at the jagged scar on the sleeping man’s chest. He hadn’t seen it until that moment, but when its significance finally pierced through to him, he had squeezed his hands together.

“It’s really Gabe, isn’t it?” he asked in a quiet voice.

Doc grunted his answer. His eyes were glued to the ragged rise and fall of his patient’s chest. His ears were attuned to the spasmodic breathing that was getting softer and softer.

“Come on, Gabe,” Doc Remington whispered. “Don’t leave us, son. Hang in there.”

Kyle’s thoughts flew back to the day Gabe James had stumbled into old man Koontz’s barbed wire fence. They’d been out hunting—him and Gabe, Jake Mueller and one of Jake’s grandsons. They’d been after quail and hadn’t found a single covey until just before Gabe made contact with Koontz’s hidden fence.

“Son of a bitch!” Gabe had yelled as he began to fall, sliding chest-first over the sharp tines of the wire.

Birds had flown up all around them, four separate flocks. Jake’s grandson had hastily lifted his gun and fired off a round before his grandfather swatted him with his hunting cap.

“Gabe’s hurt! Can’t you see that, Rainor?” Jake had shouted.

When they had reached him, the front of Gabe’s hunting jacket was stained with blood and he was cursing so vividly, the men were stunned into stillness. Gabe was hanging upside down, his chest snared to the fence, his fists pounding the ground. It had taken then nearly half an hour to extract him and Doc Remington nineteen stitches to close the gaping wound left by the razor-sharp tines.

“I don’t care if I
never
see another quail again,” Gabe had mumbled on the way home, the pain killer making him irritable and unmanageable.

Looking at the scar, one Patrick Tremayne would never have thought to remove, there was no doubt in Kyle’s mind who this man was. Edna Mae had been sure of it from the moment she had come to realize who Jamie Sinclair might be, but Kyle had been reluctant to make that conclusion, needing more than just mere speculation to form his decision. He had always prided himself on being a rational, down-to-earth thinker—a man who formed his decisions with clear forethought.

And there had been another reason he hadn’t wanted to believe Jamie Sinclair was Gabe James—Jamie had been treated worse than an animal and had behaved like one. Jamie Sinclair had seemed quite mad.

“Lord,” Kyle whispered, looking away. His mind was tumbling with thoughts he didn’t want to acknowledge. Thoughts like, what if Gabe really
was
crazy now. He’d been through so much, suffered so greatly, been treated so badly. How had it effected him? Had it really driven him mad? If so, how would they all handle that?

The ambulance in
which Andrew R. Tremayne sat was speeding down the interstate, its own emergency flashers revolving. Cars pulled over to the side for it; some already idling along the breakdown lane for the first ambulance which had passed, remained where they were, expecting perhaps a third emergency vehicle to scream at them out of the rainy night.