Sticks and Stones (33 page)

A
S
Z
ANE
and Earl packed their bags at sunup, Deuce hunkered down, took Ty’s hand, and frowned at the wounds. “Does it hurt?” he asked as he poked at Ty’s palm. Ty nearly choked on the water he’d been gulping down and wrenched his hand away with a hoarse curse.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’,” Zane said wryly as he stopped next to them.

“We need to wrap it,” Earl advised. He turned around, his hands on his hips and a scowl set on his face. “You need to protect it while you’re walking. You need to keep it as still as possible, keep it up. We’ll have to immobilize it somehow.”

Ty resisted the urge to growl. It was a nuisance, but he knew his father was right. Bites were nasty business at any time, but out here where they were miles away from anything resembling sanitary conditions, it could turn deadly very fast. Of all the wounds the others had suffered during their escapades, this was probably the most dangerous, as embarrassing as it was. “Yes, sir,” Ty muttered with a nod.

“I’ll get a clean T-shirt,” Deuce mumbled as he climbed to his feet.

Zane’s lips twitched as he stayed there next to Ty. He crouched down next to his partner. “So. Just a nice stretch of the legs on the mountain. No problem,” he said conversationally.

“It’s not entirely going to plan,” Ty muttered as he looked away from Zane, flushing a bit.

Zane snorted. “With us, when does it ever?”

Ty glanced over at him, met his eyes for a moment, and smirked crookedly. “I can think of a few times.”

Their eyes met briefly, and Ty felt more words on the tip of his tongue, but the jarring sound of material ripping interrupted any further conversation. Deuce was methodically cutting a brown T-shirt into thin strips. “Hey!” Ty called out. “Not that one!” he protested as he pointed at the shirt. The Schitt Creek Paddle Co. shirt was one of his very favorites. “That’s a lucky shirt!”

“Deal with it, Meow Mix,” Deuce advised as he carefully draped the strips over his shoulder to keep them clean.

“The Phillies will never win again if you tear up that shirt,” Ty told Deuce threateningly.

“We don’t need your lucky shirts,” Deuce claimed with a smirk. “Save those for your damn Redskins.”

“You can get a new shirt,” Zane pointed out. “New hand, not so much.”

“New hand, nothing,” Earl broke in as he knelt and began rummaging through his pack. “It gets infected and you won’t make it off the mountain.”

“Being a little dramatic about it, aren’t you?” Ty asked him with a small, hopeful smile.

His father turned his head and met his eyes. “No.”

Standing up, Zane took Ty’s good hand and pulled him to his feet. When Ty stood, though, his head swam, and he wavered. Zane placed a supportive hand on his lower back. “You okay?” he asked, his voice exposing new concern.

Ty nodded and brushed him off. “I’m good,” he muttered as he looked down at his hand. “Okay,” he sighed as he started trying to think of a way to immobilize the wounded fingers. Earl was right—the less he moved them the better. If an infection did get into the joints, it would spread faster if he were using the fingers. Besides, they hurt like a bitch.

Ty looked around the clearing, frustrated by how muddled his thoughts seemed to be. The pain when he kept his hand at his side was distracting, and he raised it up and cradled it to his chest unconsciously.

Finally, he turned and looked back at Zane appraisingly. “How much of your gear do you really need?” he asked.

“Just the canteen. Everything else important is on me,” Zane answered. Ty knew he meant his weapons. “The duffel we can leave behind.”

“No, no,” Ty corrected as he made a “hand it over” gesture with his good fingers. “The duffel’s what I need.”

Frowning again, Zane shrugged and took the several steps to snag it and bring it back, holding it out for Ty to take.

Ty nodded his thanks and took the bag, unzipping it with difficulty as he knelt. He dumped the contents onto the ground and then slid the hunting knife from its sheath at his thigh and began slicing into the thick padding of the shoulder straps.

Zane watched as Ty started cutting up the bag. “Are you making a sling?” he asked after a few moments.

“No, but that would have been brilliant of me,” Ty answered as he glanced up at Zane and smiled slightly. “I’m making a splint,” he added as the smile fell. “Pretty sure something broke in there. A little wrapping with that damn duct tape and this padding should be hard enough to do it.”

Nodding, Zane knelt down next to him and grabbed the roll of silver duct tape they’d been using to tape the prisoners up. “Let’s get you wrapped up then,” Zane said to him.

Ty knew that he couldn’t manage the feat with just one hand, and he relented with a grunt of displeasure. “Try to mold it as you wrap it,” he advised as he held out his injured hand in the shape that would work best. “Just curve the end of it.”

“Leave the man alone, boy, he’s got sense enough to know basic first aid,” Earl chastised as he clunked down a small plastic box.

Zane raised an eyebrow as he followed Ty’s instructions, making the mold fit the natural curve of his hand. Ty watched him as he wrapped it rather than watching his progress. Every time he thought too hard on it, an uncomfortable tightness formed in his throat and butterflies assaulted him. At least he now he knew the truth about himself and Zane. Looking raptly into Zane’s dark eyes, Ty wondered why he hadn’t realized he loved the man earlier.

“How bad is it? Really,” Zane asked, looking up to meet Ty’s eyes.

Ty swallowed hard. “Hurts worse than I thought it would,” he answered in a barely audible voice. Whether he was talking about his hand or something more, he really couldn’t have said.

He shook off any more thoughts along those lines and cleared his throat. He would let himself ponder that once they were off this mountain and in the clear.

He looked down at his hand and examined it, holding it out toward Zane. His shoulders ached where the cougar’s claws had sunk in, but his hand was the true problem. The side of it where the shallowest punctures had been was bruised and swollen, and the entire hand was red and painful. The two knuckles of his pinkie and ring fingers were twice the size they were supposed to be, and all his fingers were swollen and bruised as well. There was a puncture on his palm that made it impossible to grip anything hard. And since he’d wrenched his hand away from the pain when the cat had bitten down, the punctures weren’t just deep, they were rips that had torn up the skin, making it harder for the wounds to close. In fact, he’d had gunshots that were less painful than his hand was right now.

“Hurts,” he repeated. “It ain’t infected, though,” he surmised with a shake of his head.

“Keep an eye on it, tough guy,” Zane murmured as he kept wrapping the modified brace with the tape to bulk it up and make it stiff. “I don’t want to have to carry you out of here.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Ty assured him as Earl stepped closer and handed him a small tin of Rawleigh’s antibiotic ointment. “Thanks,” Ty said as he looked up at his father and took the tin.

Earl swished a bottle of water at him. “Time to clean it again,” he said grimly. Cleaning it the night before had been painful enough. Ty thought he might have whimpered through the whole process.

“Great,” Ty muttered as his father chuckled and took the mangled backpack and Ty’s knife just as Deuce held up the cloth, indicating for Zane to take the canteen.

“Ready?” Zane asked.

Ty glared at him. “Just do it quick,” he requested.

Glancing to Deuce, Zane waited until he nodded to start pouring the water in a thin, slow stream. Deuce held the cloth under it briefly, took Ty’s hand, and began scrubbing at it, hard and fast. Ty just closed his eyes and turned his head slightly, breathing in the cool air of the mountain as the little torn bits of skin were ripped up and away. It wasn’t as bad as he’d been expecting. He supposed most of the pain was coming from the bruising rather than the open wounds. He was almost positive the nerves around those were all dead, now, anyway.

When he looked back down at it, most of the dried blood that had caked his fingers and palm was gone, and Deuce was slathering it with ointment and wrapping it carefully with the strips of his T-shirt.

Ty sighed and looked up at his father, who was standing aside and watching with a frown. He met his dad’s eyes and gave a weak smile. They both knew how bad this could turn.

Zane picked up the mold he’d made and held it out. “All right, into the splint,” he said.

Ty placed his hand into it, wincing as his palm settled. Deuce waited until Ty gave him a nod; then he began anchoring the splint to Ty’s arm with an Ace bandage from the first aid kit.

“I gotcha a sling, here,” Earl announced as he held up what had once been Deuce’s spare pack. “Might be better off without it,” he advised.

Ty shook his head. He needed to keep it up more than he needed that hand to walk. “Let me have the damn thing,” he muttered as he pulled his hand away from Zane and stood slowly. He’d found if he rose too quickly, his head would swim and his vision would blur. He pulled the straps of the mangled backpack close to his body, essentially tying his arm to his chest. It would fuck with his balance and probably end up making him fall on his face, but it was better than the alternative. When he’d adjusted it, he flopped his good hand to his side and looked around at the others. “Let’s divvy up the shit and get going,” he suggested.

As Earl and Deuce picked through the rest of the supplies spilled on the ground, Zane stood slowly, only a couple feet from Ty, keeping his eyes on him the whole time. He took a step closer and reached out to untwist one of the straps and tie it more securely. “There you go,” he murmured.

Ty found it difficult to meet his eyes as he thought about a similar action Zane had taken in a New York hotel room almost a year ago. Now, just as then, his heart beat a little faster because of it. But he nodded in thanks and smiled as he tried to fight back the hint of warmth it caused.
I love you
. The thought had haunted him all night, almost as much as the sound of the cougar’s scream.

Zane’s fingers lingered where Ty’s T-shirt met his neck, pressing against the warm skin for just a few moments longer than necessary. “Come on. There’s beer and apple pie waiting,” he said.

“Can’t wait,” Ty muttered. He reached out and socked Zane in the stomach as soon as the other two men had turned away and started off down the trail.

“Ow!” Zane huffed, rubbing the spot as he hefted the remaining backpack. “Asshole.”

Ty grinned crookedly and began laughing softly. “You’re carrying my shit over mountain trails. You’re officially a jackass.”

Zane skipped a step to catch up as they started walking. “I vaguely remember you carrying
me
around. What does that make you?”

“A hero,” Ty countered with a smirk.

Zane snorted as they sped their steps, hiking after the other two men. “So now you’re going to admit it, huh? None of that ‘I was just helping my partner’ shit you gave in the reports?”

“Shut up,” Ty grunted, suddenly uncomfortable with the discussion.

“Humility doesn’t suit you, Grady. Now step it up,” Zane said as he stepped over a log fallen across the narrow trail.

Ty muttered to himself as he walked ahead of Zane. His hand throbbed angrily with every beat of his heart, and the punctures burned under the makeshift bandages. He didn’t say anything to the others, though; he just tried to keep pace with them. The closer they got to civilization, the better off they were. And they had a long way to go.

“
M
RS.
Grady, I understand that you’re worried,” the ranger was saying patiently as Mara and Chester stood together in front of him. Mara’s jaw was set firm, and her green eyes flashed as Chester stood beside her, leaning on his shovel. “But they’re not even a day late,” the ranger continued, looking askance at the shovel. “Earl’s missed his schedule by a lot more than this before.”

“This time’s different, Dale,” Mara insisted stubbornly. She had awakened that morning with an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach, and she couldn’t seem to shake it. She tried to tell herself it was just the change to her routine that was causing it, or the fact that Chester had been awake and dressed, ready to ride with her to the ranger station. But deep down, she knew she’d never convince herself. Something was wrong on the mountain today.

“They’re not technically missing yet,” Dale tried to reason with her, putting his hands out almost defensively.

“Twenty-four hours could kill a man in those mountains, and you know it!” Mara told him angrily.

“Been awful cold up there,” Chester informed him calmly.

“Your boys are more than capable of handling themselves on the mountain,” Dale reminded with a hint of admiration. Dale had gone to school with Ty and Deuce; he knew them and what they were capable of. “There’s nothing I can do until we get some kind of word that there’s trouble,” Dale told them in a voice that was almost pleading with her to understand. “We’re short-handed as it is in the offseason.”

Mara lifted her chin and glared at him silently, looking around at the other two rangers who stood in the office, trying desperately not to get in the line of fire. “You’re not gonna go search for my boys ’til morning?” Mara questioned in a calm voice.

“Mrs. Grady, please—”

“Well then, we’re gonna need to borrow two guns, some britches, and a daypack,” she interrupted as she looked back at Dale.

He stared at her with his mouth hanging slightly open. “What?” he asked dumbly.

“You heard the woman, sonny!” Chester shouted as he brought the shovel up and slammed it onto the desk beside Dale, narrowly missing his fingers. Dale jumped and flinched away from the sharp tip.

“Yes, sir, but—”

“Well, I certainly can’t go up there in nothing but my dress,” Mara reasoned with him, “and I don’t have time to go driving all the way back home to get Earl’s rifle.”

He continued to stare at them, shaking his head helplessly.