"Okay, get him up under the armpits," Luke told James. "We'll drag him off the bed and outside and pull him into the back seat of the truck, just like we did the first time."
"What about the casts and the bandages?" James said.
Luke looked at him as if he were crazy. "We're takin' him out in the desert to die. I'm not real worried about bangin' up his bones."
Grissom, clad only in sweat shorts, screamed in pain when they slid him off the bed and his broken leg cracked against the floor. He wasn't conscious, but he felt it nonetheless.
Firth stumbled back into the room.
"You can't leave those casts on him," he said. "There's records of me buying the stuff to make them. I'm only agreeing to your plan so none of this comes back down on us. The casts have got to go."
"So give us the tools to cut 'em off, and we'll do that after we dump him," Luke said.
Firth went off to get what they would need.
When they grabbed Grissom under the arms again, he began to wake up.
"Maybe we can get him to stand up if we support him so he doesn't have to put weight on the broken leg," James said.
Luke shrugged. It was worth a try. Helping him walk would be easier than dragging him.
They got Grissom upright and out the front door. He began asking muttering incoherently. They assured him they were taking him to get medical help.
They were about to start down the front steps when they heard the sirens and saw two state police cars and a sand-colored Chevy Tahoe bearing down on the house. Too stunned to act rationally, Luke and James both released Grissom, who reached out and embraced a thick post supporting the porch roof. Somehow, he managed to hold himself upright as he squinted against the sun and watched the police vehicles close the distance at 85 miles an hour. An ambulance trailed behind them. Grissom closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the pillar. He had no idea what was going on.
Four troopers were out of their units first, guns drawn. Four more people in civilian clothes got out of the Tahoe. The eight approached the porch cautiously.
Cassie chose that moment to return and watched the scene, transfixed. Her eyes were drawn to a tall, slender brunette, maybe a few years older than she. The woman would have been beautiful if she didn't appear so exhausted.
Cassie got out of the car and ran toward the front porch of her home.
"Stay right there," a trooper warned her, but she continued until she reached Grissom and inserted her shoulders under his left arm to help him remain standing. He gasped for breath. She noticed his neck. His carotid artery flexed way too fast. His heart had to be working overtime.
She could feel his intense heat through her clothes, feel the slick sweat from his bare back and chest on her skin. At a different time, in a different place, under different conditions, she would have found it totally erotic and arousing. Now, it just felt desperate.
"There's nobody armed," Cassie said.
It didn't seem to matter to the cops.
Cassie's eyes returned to the dark-haired woman. She was trying to get to the porch but was being restrained by an older man with a badge hanging from his jacket pocket. They were close enough now that Cassie could see the combination of joy and terror in the woman's eyes. Her lips moved, but Cassie couldn't hear her words.
Two troopers frisked Luke and James while a third held a gun on them. The fourth emerged from the house.
"It's clear," he said. "The doc's inside, but he's too drunk to be a threat."
The cop from the Tahoe released the brunette, who sprinted toward the porch.
Cassie both heard and felt the gasp from the man leaning against her shoulders.
"Sara," he whispered. "You came."
Cassie flashed on the realization that something of this man's memory had returned. But the thought evaporated as she struggled to keep him from sliding from her grasp as he began to lose consciousness again. She wasn't strong enough to hold him, and he collapsed down the stairs into the dust. He came to rest under the blazing sun, unconscious, on his back, with his encased left leg resting on the bottom step. The woman bent over him. Cassie saw that her wedding band matched his. The woman began to cry, her hands gently smoothing his face and his hair as she repeated his name over and over.
"Gil. Gil. Gil."
xxxxxxx
One of the troopers talked into the radio and the ambulance roared forward.
Three EMTs jumped out and swarmed Grissom.
They begged Sara to give them room to work, and Brass helped pull her back from the horribly battered body that was her husband.
She saw one of the medics lift the bloody gauze from Grissom's left breast and she recoiled from the sight.
"Oh, sweet Jesus," the young man said, and Sara seconded the thought. The puncture in Grissom's chest was swollen, inflamed and raw, leaking blood and pus. Blood leaked from the corner of Grissom's mouth.
The medics checked the taping around his abdomen and back.
"He's had ribs broken," one of them said. "That last fall must have punctured a lung."
"My God," said the female supervisor, "his temp's 104.4."
"Oh, fuck," the youngest said. "We don't have time to treat him here. We've got to scoop and run."
"Get him on the bus and prepare to intubate him," the supervisor said. "Break out the ice packs and call the ER for support."
"I want to go with him," Sara said.
"Not possible," the supervisor said. "We need room to work around him. Sorry."
"I'm going with him," Sara said, her voice low and absolutely determined.
The supervisor turned and took Sara by the shoulders. "I know who he is. I know who you are. I know what's at stake here. I can see what he's been through. He has a long, long battle ahead of him, or a very short one. The odds say he won't get out of this alive. Please, stay out of the way and let us try to save him."
Sara swallowed back her emotion. Her next words came almost as a whisper. "And if you can't save him, who will hold his hand as he dies?"
The medic looked stricken. Her shock turned to sadness. Then she nodded. "Get in. But when we tell you to get out of the way, duck."
Sara nodded her consent and gratitude.
xxxxxxx
She held Grissom's hand in the ambulance, just as he had once held hers aboard a helicopter. She stroked his face to the extent the oxygen mask would permit. She talked to him softly, encouraging him, making promises, loving him.
It broke her heart that he didn't open his eyes when she asked him to, didn't squeeze her hand when she begged him.
One of the EMTs pulled lightly at her shoulders, indicating she needed to move back for a moment. They were covering Grissom in ice packs, much as she had once been covered, but hers were meant to combat heat stroke caused by exposure. He was battling a brutal fever that had now spiked high enough to kill him. Somewhere within him an infection raged out of control. Unless it could be managed quickly, he would lose this fight.
As she watched the medics at work, she wondered what would become of the sorry foresome they had left under state trooper guard back at the Firth house. Luke and James Blount were dead-certain candidates for prison time. In addition to the poaching rap they faced, the feds likely would bring interstate kidnapping charges. Both Nevada and Arizona could charge them with reckless endangerment, and if Grissom died, manslaughter or murder two. Reckless endangerment was a sure bet against Firth, as well. Sara almost hoped prosecutors would give Cassie a pass. She was such a sad case: intimidated by dominating male family members, coerced into cooperation, damned to give up her own life to take care of an alcoholic father. She had suffered enough.
Sara glanced out the ambulance's back windows. The sand-colored Tahoe was right behind them, lights flashing, siren screaming. She had learned they were taking Grissom to a hospital in Kingman to try to stabilize him. If that could be done, he probably would be airlifted to Desert Palm in Las Vegas.
Sara tried to recall how much time members of the team had accumulated in beds at Desert Palm Medical Center. She and Grissom had logged a lot of those hours themselves. She pushed the exercise away as too depressing.
When the EMT nodded, Sara moved close to Grissom again, took his hand again, began talking to him again.
And still, she got no response at all.
She wondered if he was even self-aware any more. One of the medics had mentioned coma, not intending Sara to hear it.
Once again she considered turning to prayer. If she was right, and there was no supreme being, perhaps Grissom would hear her thoughts, somehow.
That would be enough.