Page 14 of Bait and Switch (Subtle Deceptions #2)
Casey inched across to where he estimated the edge was; it was hard to tell with the tangled overgrown shrubs and woody plants that had found purchase. When he made it without a misstep, Casey flicked on his flashlight and shone it downward.
Wedged inside, about twenty feet down, was a man. A living man, but it was going to be a bitch to get him out.
“Carlos?” he asked.
The man managed a weak nod.
“Can’t move…” he whispered. “Leg.”
Crouching next to the edge with his light, Casey did a quick visual assessment, swallowing as he noted how Carlos’s lower body appeared to be twisted and caught in the fissure.
Behind him, he could hear Greta making the call to Tor and the rest of the team.
They would need a copter and more bodies to get Carlos out of the cleft in the mountainside and to safety.
Rummaging around in his pack, Casey located the emergency silver space blanket and began to lower himself into the crack in the earth. He was only able to get about ten feet down before it became too narrow. Fuck. Even if he took off his winter gear, it wouldn’t make his shoulders any less wide.
“I’m going to swap places with my partner, Greta. She’ll see what she can do to get you covered up.”
Casey clambered back up so Greta could take his place. He couldn’t imagine how Carlos had gotten so tangled up.
“Carlos.” The man moved his head. Hopefully that meant he’d heard Casey. “What happened, how did you end up here?”
It was always a good sign if Casey could get the injured person talking. But Carlos looked bad. He blinked up at Casey but didn’t reply, and one of his arms was also trapped underneath him. Casey’d seen injuries like this before, and right now the priority was keeping Carlos conscious.
“Are you thirsty? I think we can get you some water.”
Greta had made it down to him and done what she could to tuck the blanket around his body. She glanced back up at Casey, and that one look told him things did not look good. Over Greta’s shoulder, Casey saw Carlos’s head move a bit, and Casey decided he was nodding.
He reached for one of the bottles of water he’d packed in and tied a short piece of twine around it. Then he slowly lowered the bottle down. Greta grabbed it and held it to Carlos’s lips. Some of the liquid spilled out, but it looked to Casey that he at least got some down.
“Can you tell us what happened?” he asked gently as he tried to make himself comfortable on the rocky ledge.
“A wild man, a creature,” Carlos rasped, “chased me.”
Casey didn’t like that it was difficult for Carlos to speak and that he wasn’t shivering regardless of the below freezing temperature—that suggested hypothermia had set in.
He dug into Greta’s bag for the chemical heat packs.
They could be tucked around Carlos to create a barrier between him and the cold earth, and they just might help his body fight off the chill.
What Carlos had said coalesced into something meaningful. “A wild man?” Casey repeated. Casey had been prepared for Carlos to tell them how he’d ended up stuck in a crevasse, not that he’d been attacked by someone.
“Came out of nowhere. Screamed.” Carlos swallowed convulsively. “I ran, thought he was going to kill me.”
“Someone from the crew?” Greta asked.
He moved his head from side to side. “Stranger. Didn’t know.”
His eyes drifted shut.
Crouched awkwardly next to him, Greta looked up again, her expression more concerned than before. They both knew there was no way that the two of them alone would be able to extract Carlos from the fissure without hurting him, and maybe worse than he already was.
“Hey, we need you to stay awake. The rest of the team is on the way,” she told the injured man. “We’ll have you out of there ASAP.”
Casey knew speaking was taxing Carlos, but as long as he kept talking, he was alive. They needed to know more before he was medivacked out. If there was some nutjob loose in the forest, they had a problem in addition to a lost and injured worker.
“Yeah, stay with us, Carlos. Can you tell us any more about this man? What did he look like?”
The man’s eyes closed again. For a tense fifteen seconds, Casey thought he’d slipped into unconsciousness, but he must have been trying to recall what had happened.
“The wild man was big. Crazy,” he whispered. “Thought he was a demon at first. Charged at me, fire in his eyes. Screamed.” Carlos’s eyes drifted shut.
“Carlos, stick with us. Tell us more,” Greta encouraged. “We’d like to find this man.”
“I ran. He chased me.”
“You said he was big. Taller than you? Heavier?”
“Yeah, both. Long beard, no hair, camo… Face was green. Big gun.”
The prickle that had been forming in the back of Casey’s mind turned into a full-fledged rash.
“Sounds like that could have been Calvin Perkins,” he said to Greta. “I think this is the first sighting of him since Dwayne was found.”
It had been Karne who’d discovered Dwayne’s body but the fewer who knew that fact, the better. Gabe had just been unlucky enough to have the last known run-in with the two. Throw a rock anywhere in Twana County and you’d hit somebody who’d clashed with the brothers.
“I didn’t kill no one!” Carlos wheezed, fear and anxiety overwhelming him again. He started to struggle against the crevasse’s hold on him, using up energy he couldn’t afford to lose.
“We don’t think you did, Carlos,” Greta assured him as she tucked the space blanket around him again. “Everything is going to be okay.”
But was it? With the possibility of a rampaging Calvin Perkins, no one was safe on the mountain. Was he injured as well? Why was he chasing down innocent brush workers? Where the hell was he hiding out? The forest was over two million acres, he could be anywhere.
Greta caught his eye, and from her grim expression, he knew she was thinking along the same lines.
“We’re going to have to talk to Rizzi,” she said quietly. “And release a general memo to Fish and Wildlife so they keep their eye out. We don’t want anyone else hurt.”
Finally, from a distance but approaching quickly, Casey heard the sound of an approaching helicopter.
“Help’s arrived, Carlos. We’re gonna get you out of here.”