Page 1 of Buried Past (First in Line #3)

Chapter one

Matthew

Kayla's hand hit the siren before I could reach for the mic. "Shit night for this," she muttered, yanking us across two lanes of sparse traffic. The fog had been rolling in since dinnertime—thick, gray stuff that swallowed headlights and made everything beyond twenty feet disappear.

I checked my trauma kit for the third time in an hour—an old habit. Gear squared away before boots hit the ground . That was Dad's voice even years after he passed.

The small leather keychain was clipped to my belt—a piece cut from Dad's old turnout gloves before Ma boxed them away. All of my brothers carried something. Michael got the pin, Marcus got the helmet, Miles got his watch, and I got this. Small. Practical. Worn smooth from years of holding on.

I leaned toward Kayla. "How many vehicles?"

"Dispatch says at least four. Semi jackknifed across the northbound lanes." She took the on-ramp hard enough to rattle our equipment in the back. "Fire's already on scene."

Kayla had her collar zipped all the way up, breath fogging in front of her. I kept flexing my fingers—half from nerves, half to fight the cold creeping in through my gloves.

The collision site materialized out of the fog with red and blue strobes cutting through the murk. It painted the damp asphalt in violent splashes of color.

A delivery truck lay on its side, cargo scattered across three lanes. Steam rose from crushed hoods, and shattered glass crunched under our boots.

The screaming hit me first—a woman's voice, high and ragged, calling someone's name over and over. Then, the mechanical noise: car horns stuck blaring and the hiss of escaping steam and fluids. Smoke curled around the concrete median, full of the acrid smell of burnt rubber.

"Jesus," Kayla breathed, surveying the wreckage.

I was already moving. A firefighter waved us toward a blue sedan pancaked against the guardrail. "Woman and kid here, conscious but shocky."

I dropped to one knee beside the driver's door, where a young woman sat twisted in her seat, phone pressed against her ear with a shaking hand. Blood trickled from a gash across her forehead. In the back seat, a toddler wailed in his car seat—more scared than hurt, from what I could see.

"Ma'am, I'm Matthew with Seattle Fire. Can you tell me your name?"

"Jessica." Her voice was thin but alert. "I called my mom. She's coming, right? My head feels... strange."

"You're going to be fine, Jessica. Let me take a look at that cut." I kept my voice level and steady. The same tone I'd used on dusty roads in Afghanistan when mortar rounds were falling. It still worked.

Around us, chaos reigned. Kayla worked on an older man thrown from his motorcycle, calling out vitals to the arriving backup unit.

Firefighters moved with practiced efficiency, checking for fuel leaks and directing the few cars still moving around the wreckage.

Someone walked past us barefoot, dazed, and holding a torn jacket against his shoulder.

Amid everything else, the silence underneath the overturned delivery truck drew my attention. I saw a dark shape wedged in the shadows. No movement. No sound.

Jessica was still conscious and still breathing. In a mass-casualty scene like this, my work was about managing limited time and attention. She was stable. Whatever was under that truck might not be.

"Kayla, I need to check the vehicle under the semi."

She nodded without looking up from her patient. "Watch for shifting metal."

I left Jessica with a pressure bandage and clear instructions to stay still. A second EMS unit had arrived, and one of their medics was already easing the toddler out of his car seat while another knelt beside Jessica to take my place.

I caught her eye long enough to nod, knowing she and her child were in good hands, then ducked under the truck's twisted chassis. Choking odors hit me immediately—gasoline, antifreeze, and the copper tang of blood.

The SUV's roof had been compressed nearly flat on the driver's side. For a moment, I thought it was empty.

Then I saw the hand.

Pale fingers pressed against the spider-webbed passenger window, unmoving. Blood streaked the glass. A dark shape slumped behind the wheel, barely visible in the compressed interior.

"Got someone in here!" I called to the nearest firefighter, already reaching for my flashlight.

Captain Rodriguez jogged over with a Halligan bar and bolt cutters. "Alive?"

"Can't tell yet. We need to get in there."

We worked fast, cutting through the buckled door frame while I squeezed halfway into the wreckage. The smell was even more pungent.

"Can you hear me? My name's Matthew. We're going to get you out."

No response. I angled my flashlight to get a better look—male, mid-thirties maybe. Dark hair matted with blood, but even unconscious, there was something about his face. Sharp cheekbones. Mouth that looked like it didn't smile often but would be worth the wait when it did.

Focus, McCabe.

Breathing shallow, rapid. Classic shock. I ran my hands along his torso, checking for obvious trauma.

That's when I felt it.

The wound near his ribs was wrong, too clean and precise. It wasn't a jagged tear or the broad impact bruising I'd expect from a crash. I moved my light closer, pushing aside the torn fabric of his shirt.

Bullet hole.

Small caliber, close range. The entry wound was neat, surrounded by powder burns that had singed the fabric. The blood was fresh but not arterial—he'd been lucky. The bullet missed anything immediately fatal.

Someone had shot the man before his SUV ended up crushed under a delivery truck.

The pieces didn't fit. Gunshot victims didn't just turn up in random traffic accidents. Not in Seattle on a Tuesday night on I-5.

Rodriguez called to me. "What've we got?"

"GSW to the torso, need a backboard and C-spine immobilization."

I continued my assessment while the firefighters worked to widen the opening.

The man's airway was clear. His pulse was weak but present. No apparent spinal injury, but with the roof compression, I couldn't be sure. The bullet lodged somewhere near his ribcage—close enough to vital organs to be dangerous if we moved his body wrong.

I stared at the lean, angular face momentarily.

In his left hand, clutched against his chest, was a folded photograph.

Blood soaked the paper, but he held it like it was the only thing keeping him anchored to the world.

I carefully pried it from his fingers and slipped it into my pocket.

Whatever it was mattered to him and shouldn't be lost in the rescue efforts.

"Almost got you." I rechecked his pulse. "Hang in there."

Kayla joined me, and his eyelids fluttered as we maneuvered the backboard into position. Dark, brown eyes opened wide, looking right at me. His lips moved as he tried to speak, but no sound escaped.

Then, his eyes closed, and he was gone again.

"Let's move," I told Rodriguez. "This one's critical."

As we extracted him from the wreckage and loaded him onto our gurney, an icy sensation spread through my veins. For some reason, I knew this wasn't just another call. It wasn't random. As I stared at his pale face in the strobing emergency lights, I knew it was only the beginning… of something.

The ambulance became our world, leaving the rest of the accident scene behind. Kayla drove with controlled urgency, taking corners just shy of what the gurney restraints could handle. The radio chattered constantly: other units clearing the scene, traffic control, and hospital notification.

I kept my hands busy with standard protocol—monitoring vitals, adjusting the IV drip, and checking the oxygen saturation. It was routine enough that my eyes had time to wander to details unrelated to medical assessment.

Fingernails bitten to the quick. Raw. Worried down to nothing. The kind of damage that came from having too much time to think and nowhere safe to do it.

A thin scar ran along his left temple, old enough to be silver-white but deep enough to suggest severe trauma. On his right wrist, just below where I'd placed the IV, I spotted a circular burn mark the size of a cigarette.

I pulled out the blood-soaked photograph and placed it on the edge of the equipment tray. Through the red stains, I saw two figures in what looked like a desert landscape. The image was too damaged to see clearly.

In the bottom right corner, a faint shadow stretched across the sand, like someone just out of frame, watching.

"How's he looking?" Kayla called from the driver's seat.

"Vitals are stabilizing. Pulse is stronger." I adjusted the oxygen mask over his face, noting how the plastic fogged with each shallow breath. "ETA to Harborview?"

"Four minutes."

The ambulance hit a pothole, jostling the gurney. The man's eyes fluttered open, dark brown, almost black in the ambulance lights. For those few seconds, he looked directly at me, and I saw something I'd learned to recognize in Afghanistan.

It wasn't the dazed confusion of an accident victim. This was the flat, watchful stare of someone who'd been expecting violence to find him. Someone who'd stopped being surprised by it.

And there was something else. Help me, those eyes said. Not the words, but the look underneath—raw and unguarded for a moment before his defenses slammed back into place.

I knew that look because I'd worn it. In a field hospital, when the morphine wore off. In therapy sessions I'd quit attending, and in mirrors on the bad days.

When his eyes closed again, I spoke, keeping my voice low under the radio chatter and road noise. "You're going to be okay. We're almost at Harborview. They have the best trauma team in the city. They'll take good care of you."

The words were automatic and hollow. How many times had I said them? In field hospitals in Afghanistan, in the backs of medical transports, and in situations where "okay" was something none of us could guarantee.