Trust in the Fast Lane Page 2

  Where the hell was Sullivan? I glanced around the inside of the car. The passenger side door looked like it had been ripped off. I crawled out the opening and damn near fell over top of him. Sullivan was sprawled mostly face down in a snow bank, limp and unconscious. I felt for a pulse. It was fast and steady. Thank God. But how bad was he hurt? I ran my hands down along his body. The only blood I saw was from a gash on the side of his scalp. Nothing felt broken, but what the hell did I know? He could have some massive spinal injury.

  Sullivan groaned and made a floundering attempt to roll over.

  “Don’t move. You got flung out of the car when we rolled.” I put a hand on his shoulder to keep him from flopping around anymore.

  He wiggled his fingers and feet, took a deep breath and squinted up at me. “My head hurts like hell and I’m kinda banged up, but I don’t think anything’s broken.” Snow was coming down hard. Maybe down was a misnomer, the wind was whipping the icy wetness in almost blinding gusts.

  I groped in my coat for my phone. When I pulled it out, I realized it was useless. Not only was the screen shattered, part of the back was broken off. “Where’s your phone?”

  He patted his own coat, shoved hands in his pants pockets, and came up empty. “No clue.”

  “Well, shit.” I looked around as best as I could in the whirling snow. It had probably gone flying when Sullivan did. We had no way to call for help.

  “Honest, I’m more or less okay. We can’t stay here. We can’t possibly be that far outside of town.”

  “Okay. I guess. Sit up slowly. Tell me if anything hurts, well hurts bad anyway.” It was the best I could come up with. I helped him sit up.

  He flexed his arms and legs. “There’s some aches and I’m probably gonna be black and blue tomorrow, but I think I can walk.” He slowly got to his feet, standing there a little unsteadily once he was up.

  “You were out cold when I found you. Chances are you have a concussion.”

  “And there’s absolutely crap all we can do about it right this minute.” He took a few steps and braced a hand on one of the tires. The car vaguely resembled a dead bug, all four wheels sticking up in the air, the body and frame crinkled and mutilated. He stood there looking at it, then glanced back at the depression in the snow where he’d been lying. “Why the hell am I still alive?”

  “I don’t have an answer, but I’m glad you are.”

  “You’re bleeding.” He pointed at my arm.

  There was a jagged tear in the sleeve of my coat and on closer inspection, in my arm, too. The blood had soaked the fabric enough that it was starting to drip into the snow. Sullivan yanked off his scarf and wound it tightly around my arm. It seemed to stem the flow for now.

  “We need to get walking, or we’re going to freeze to death.” I beckoned him to follow me up the shallow grade to the road. He was wobbly, his steps on the uncertain side. I took hold of his arm, guiding him.

  We walked down what might have been the middle of the road. With this much snow, all I could tell was that the surface under all the whiteness was hard enough to be pavement. No grass stuck up. We trudged for what may have been a mile, and saw nothing but some trees and fence posts. I hadn’t been paying all that much attention to exactly where we were going while we were following Ditweiller. The area outside of town was mostly farmland that much I did remember from a glance at my phone while we were killing time parked in front of the pawn shop.

  Even though we both had winter jackets, hats and gloves, we hadn’t worn boots and we weren’t truly outfitted for this raging cluster fuck of a blizzard. The snow was heavy and wet. We were getting soaked and if we didn’t find shelter soon, somebody was going to find our frozen dead bodies when the storm was over and done.

  Lurking in the gray white swirl I saw something that might be a building. “Sullivan! Is that a house?”

  “Not sure. Go that way anyway.” He was stumbling.

  I wasn’t doing a whole lot better. We slogged through the next hundred yards. Yes, it was a building. It was big, some kind of barn I thought. The door near the corner was locked with a padlock. Shit. Just great.

  “Stand back,” Sullivan said.

  I realized he had pulled his gun out. Okay that was one solution, probably the easiest.

  “We’ll be good honest cops later and pay for the damage.” He aimed at the lock and pulled the trigger. The shot broke the hasp rather than the padlock but either way it solved the problem. I yanked the door open and we staggered inside, pulling the door shut behind us.

  Inside…it was quiet. I hadn’t noticed just how loud the howl of the wind and driving snow had been in my ears. We both sank to the floor and sat immobile, trying to catch our breath. Eventually I looked at what was around me. Open half-doors lined one side of the building. We sat in a long wide hall. A partially disassembled pickup truck occupied all of one end of the hall. Hay bales and other things were stacked at intervals. Behind me was a room, more of a partially walled off corner that had a desk, some file cabinets, and office equipment.

  “I think it’s a stable,” Sullivan said.

  “No horses, as far as I can tell. I guess they’re shut down for the winter.”

  “Yuh.”

  His head hung down. He shivered weakly and struggled to pull off his gloves with his teeth.

  “We need to get warm and dry.” I got to my feet. Here, away from the snow, I saw how soaked we were. On top of a couple of hay bales, a stack of horse blankets lay. I took a look in one of the stalls. The straw strewn across the floor looked clean. No horse crap.

  “If we toss down a couple of layers of blankets, we can strip off all the wet stuff and cover up with a few more layers.” I turned. Sullivan had vanished. I walked a handful of steps back down the hallway. Sullivan was down on his knees next to the desk. A bulky kerosene heater sat on the floor in front of him.

  “The heater seems to be almost full,” he said. “But we need matches or a lighter.” We spent a few minutes digging through the desk and finally came up with a lighter. “We should be able to light a long piece of straw and use it to light the wick.” He gave the lighter itself a quick test to make sure it was functional.

  “If we push all the straw off to one side and put it in one of the stalls where it’s more enclosed, it’d go a long way toward getting us warm.”

  “It’s heavy. I think I’m going to need some help sliding it down the hall.”

  “Okay.” I started to help but it ended up being a one-handed affair mostly. My injured arm was not cooperating all that well. We did finally get the heater into the stall, as well as the blankets where we wanted them. God, we were both fumbling and uncoordinated from the bitter cold.

  Sullivan spent a couple of minutes getting the heater lit. It took several tries to get the wick up and a burning piece of straw in the right place. I started to remove my coat, but got hung up because of the scarf that was wrapped tightly around my arm. I tried to unknot it but my cold cramped fingers and the wetness of the fabric made it impossible.

  “Here, let me help.” Sullivan reached out and began to pull the knot in the scarf loose. “There’s a lot of blood.” He sounded concerned.

  “We’ve been moving nearly nonstop since the wreck. I’m sure that hasn’t helped.”

  By the time he got the scarf loose and gave me a hand getting the coat off, I revised my opinion. The scarf was soaked. Was that all my blood or was some of it wetness due to the snow? I was already feeling a little on the lightheaded side.

  “Sit down next to the heater. Let’s get your shirt off, too and see how bad it really is.”

  “The lighting in here sucks. I saw a light switch in the hallway. Is there any power?” I sat down, inches from the heater. Even the beginning warmth felt blissful.

  “I flipped it. Nothing. My best guess is the storm’s taken out the power.” He flailed out of his sodden coat and tossed mine and his over the half door to the stall.

  I began to shake. Why now? We’d finally gotten to shelter.

  “Arms up, if you can.” Sullivan removed my polo shirt. It was nearly as soaked as the coat. “We’re both likely to have h-hyp-pothermia.” He was shaking, too. “As soon as we stopped moving, the wet clothes are sucking what little body heat we have left. We gotta get your arm to stop bleeding though. Stay put.” He left the stall and returned in a couple of minutes with a few things in his hands.

  “Where’d you get the towel?” I asked.

  “It was on a shelf back near the truck. It looks fairly clean. It was folded up like somebody had run it through the laundry.” He pulled a Leatherman out of his pocket and cut the towel into segments. One he used to wipe off some of the still flowing blood. “This is undoubtedly going to hurt.” He held up a bottle of super glue. “It was on the desk next to a bridle.”

  “You’re going to g-glue my arm back together?”

  “You really need stitches. This is the best I can come up with. Poor man’s version of surgical glue.”

  “Enh, okay.”

  He squeezed the edges of the evil gash together, which made me grit my teeth in pain. The glue hitting my open wound caused a sharp burning sensation. And then he blew on it and he held it shut.

  “At least that mostly stopped the bleeding.” He bound my arm up with strips of the towel. “Try not to move it around too much.”

  I felt like I was going to pass out, so not moving sounded like a good thing…except for the fact I was shaking and my teeth were chattering.

  He yanked off my shoes and socks and gestured at my jeans. “Those have to come off, too.”

  “Y-yeah…they’re soaked, too.” I stumbled to my feet and wrenched my belt buckle open, unzipping in an awkward fashion. Sullivan shoved my jeans down and I stepped out. Letting some other guy help me undress was weird, but too damn necessary to agonize about it too much.

  Sullivan stripped naked, dumping all his clothes in a pile off to one side of the heater. He lifted up the stack of horse blankets and horse coats so that roughly half remained on the piled straw and half were held up by his hand. “Lay down.”

  I did. He flopped down beside me and dragged all the remaining blankets over top of us.

  We lay there, both shivering. At least we were dry, if you didn’t count my thoroughly wet briefs. Fuck it, I now comprehended why Sullivan had taken everything off. I squirmed around enough to kick my own underwear out from under the blankets.

  “I didn’t want to presume,” he said softly.

  “We’re adults. It’s fine.”

  Chapter 5: US Marshal Ken Sullivan

  I was so cold that I knew I wanted all the wet clothes off. Screw modesty. Screw embarrassment. I was counting on the blankets to absorb the residual melted snow off my skin. But…there were guys who would choose misery and danger over the possibility of another touching their junk. I had no idea where on that spectrum Branham fell.

  Apparently, not so uptight as to want to keep his drenched, icy tighty whites on. We were both still shaking pretty damn hard. The kerosene heater was turned up high but it was working against a building that started at about thirty degrees or so. Even in the smaller space of the stall, it was going to take a good long while to hit anywhere close to warm.

  My head pounded in time with my pulse. Concussion was probably right. At least I was laying down at the moment, stretched out on my side, arms around my body, hands under my armpits. What light had been coming through a window out in the hallway was fading. The glow of the heater remained, an orangey-yellow light.

  Both of us probably belonged in an E.R. somewhere. What with flipping the car, bashing my head hard enough to knock me senseless and his arm injury, neither of us was in spectacular shape. The god of dumb luck must have been in a good mood today.

  “Sullivan?” Branham said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t passed out from the head injury.”

  “I’m getting by. And call me Sully. Only my boss calls me Sullivan…Or my mom if I’m in deep shit and then it’s my full legal name.”

  Branham laughed. “I’m Michael. Cause my Dad is Mike.” A shudder ran through him, and he made a sound of pain.

  “Not that I expect your arm to stop hurting, but is it getting worse?”

  “I think it’s the lack of ice on my arm making it half numb, and the freaking shivering.”

  “If I put my arms around you, are you going to punch me?”

  “No.”

  “No, don’t touch you? Or no you won’t punch me?”

  “I won’t punch you.”

  I slid my arms around him slowly, giving him a chance to object if he needed to. His skin felt even colder than mine, and I wondered about his blood loss. He was obviously lucid, hopefully that meant he wasn’t headed into the deep end of shock. What was that phrase the EMT’s used? You’re not dead unless you’re warm and dead? Maybe that only applied in the whole lack of heartbeat thing.

  Our bodies were pressed together from the shoulders down to about the knees. His head was cradled against my shoulder. I could feel him shaking, feel him breathing. The breathing part was good, the shaking not so much. There was precious little we could do that we hadn’t already done.

  “I can still hear the wind outside and I’m assuming it’s still snowing,” Michael said. Being this close, his voice was a deep murmur near my ear.

  “I can see the edge of the window. All I see is swirling white. Does this qualify as a blizzard? I don’t think I’ve ever walked through a blizzard before.”

  “I think this definitely qualifies as a blizzard.”

  “Things I can add to my been there, done that list.”

  “Along with?” he prompted.

  “Trying to surf, and going zip lining and hang gliding.”

  “Was walking through a blizzard on your bucket list?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Mine either.”

  I could feel his body starting to go slack against mine. I thought about trying to rouse him, but I was exhausted, too. And then there was that nothing I can do if he was passing out, rather than falling asleep problem. I just held him and hoped we both didn’t wake up dead.

  * * * *

  I woke disoriented. Where was I? Who was in my arms? And what the hell had happened? I blinked in the not quite darkness. Barn…er, um, stable, Michael Branham, an epic level car wreck, if I had that in the right order. My head still hurt, just not as bad. I was moderately warm, which seemed to be a combo of the heater, the blankets, and the man against me.

  I lay there feeling the rise and fall of his chest. Too shallow? Was his arm bleeding again? I lightly slid my hand along his arm until I hit the makeshift bandage. It didn’t feel soggy or sticky. I debated on peeling back the blankets and trying to look by the light of the heater.

  “I don’t think it’s bleeding again,” Michael mumbled, voice thick with sleep. “Or at least it doesn’t feel like it’s dripping.”

  “Think I should lift up the blankets and look?”

  “Yeah, maybe just to be sure.”

  I folded down the layers of blankets. The air wasn’t frigid, but neither was it warm by usual standards. Peering at the towel bandage, all I could tell for sure was that the white of the towel wasn’t dark with blood. “It looks okay.”

  Michael propped himself up on his other arm and twisted to look at the sliver of window visible out the stall door. “Still looks like it’s raging outside.” He lay back down and dragged the blankets back into place. “Any idea what time it is?”

  I pressed the button on the side of my watch. “Seven-twenty.”

  “Guess we’ve been here about…three hours?”

  “Something along that line.”

  “I don’t suppose we’re going anywhere soon. Maybe we should spread out the clothes and see if they’ll dry faster?” He gestured to the heaps of still wet clothes on the floor. We’d gotten as far as hanging up the coats but nothing else.

  “Yeah, not a bad idea.”

  We wrapped up in some of the blankets and lay the clothes out on the straw on either side of the kerosene heater. The fabric was not as soaked as when we’d arrived but definitely not dry either. Both of us were moving pretty slow, muscles stiffening from napping after the wreck, followed by all the exertion.

  I had seen a ceramic mug on the desk in the office I thought. I shuffled back down that way and hunted it up using the teeny two inch flashlight on my keychain. There was an empty coffee maker near the wall, not that we had a way to power it, but there was a full box of instant hot chocolate, some plastic spoons and two more cups. I gathered up the cups, spoons, and hot chocolate and toted them back to the stall we were using.

  “Look what I found.” I set them near the heater. I was starting to shake again. I might be dry now but I was naked and wrapped in a blanket.

  “Uh, I guess we could melt some snow in the cups on the heater?”

  “Kind of my thought, but first I need to get warm again.

  “Yeah, me, too.” We burrowed back into the blanket pile and spread the ones we’d used on top again. We were both shivering pretty hard.

  “Everything’s sore,” Michael muttered. “I feel like my body got tumble dried with a pair of sneakers.”

  “Considering the way the car ended up on its roof, that’s probably not far off the mark.”

  “My memory of the rollover is kind of hazy, but I think we might have rolled more than once.”

  “When this is over I want two hours in the hotel hot tub,” I said.

  “And an Irish coffee, heavy on the whiskey.”

  We both lapsed into silence for a while. I noticed Michael was pressed up against my back. I was grateful for the way his body began to warm my skin after a few minutes. And if I wasn’t mistaken that was his dick prodding stiffly against the back of my thigh. I smiled. Maybe the Chicago detective was gay? Or at least flexible? Did I dare ask? I squirmed enough to lay face up and tentatively put my hand on his hip.