At Home in Stone Creek

Jack sighed with relief. His clothes—the usual black jeans and black turtleneck sweater—felt clammy against his flesh. His teeth began to chatter as two figures unloaded a gurney from the back of the ambulance and waited for the blades to stop so they could approach.

“Great,” Vince remarked, unsnapping his seat belt. “Those two look like volunteers, not real EMTs. The CDC parked you at Walter Reed, and that wasn’t good enough for you because—?”

Jack didn’t answer. He had nothing against the famous military hospital, but he wasn’t associated with the U.S. government, not officially at least. He couldn’t see taking up a bed some wounded soldier might need, and, anyhow, he’d be a sitting duck in a regular facility.

The chopper bounced sickeningly on its runners, and Vince, with a shake of his head, pushed open his door and jumped to the ground, head down.

Jack waited, wondering if he’d be able to stand on his own. After fumbling unsuccessfully with the buckle on his seat belt, he decided not.

When it was safe, the EMTs came forward, following Vince, who opened Jack’s door.

Jack hauled off his headphones and tossed them aside.

His old friend Tanner Quinn stepped around Vince, his trademark grin not quite reaching his eyes.

“You look like hell warmed over,” he told Jack cheerfully.

“Since when are you an EMT?” Jack retorted.

Tanner reached in, wedged a shoulder under Jack’s right arm, and hauled him out of the chopper. His knees immediately buckled, and Vince stepped up, supporting him on the other side.

“In a place like Stone Creek,” Tanner replied, “everybody helps out.”

“Right,” Jack said, stumbling between the two men keeping him on his feet. They reached the wheeled gurney—Jack had thought they never would, since it seemed to recede into the void with every awkward step—and he found himself on his back.

Tanner and the second man strapped him down, a process that brought back a few bad memories.

“Is there even a hospital in this hellhole of a place?” Vince asked irritably, from somewhere in the cold night.

“There’s a pretty good clinic over in Indian Rock,” Tanner answered easily, “and it isn’t far to Flagstaff.” He paused to help his buddy hoist Jack and the gurney into the back of the ambulance. “You’re in good hands, Jack. My wife is the best veterinarian in the state.”

Jack laughed raggedly at that.

Vince muttered a curse.

Tanner climbed into the back beside Jack, perched on some kind of fold-down seat. The other man shut the doors.

“I’m not contagious,” Jack said to Tanner.

“So I hear,” Tanner said, as his partner climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine. “You in any pain?”

“No,” Jack struggled to quip, “but I might puke on those Roy Rogers boots of yours.”

“You don’t miss much, even strapped to a gurney.” Tanner chuckled, hoisted one foot high enough for Jack to squint at it and hauled up the leg of his jeans to show off the fancy stitching on the boot shaft. “My brother-in-law gave them to me,” he said. “Brad used to wear them onstage, back when he was breaking hearts out there on the concert circuit. Swigged iced tea out of a whiskey bottle all through every performance, so everybody would think he was a badass.”

Jack looked up at his closest and most trusted friend and wished he’d listened to Vince. Ever since he’d come down with the illness, a week after snatching a five-year-old girl back from her noncustodial parent—a small-time drug runner with dangerous aspirations and a lousy attitude—he hadn’t been able to think about anyone or anything but Ashley. When he could think.

Now, in one of the first clearheaded moments he’d experienced since checking himself out of the hospital the day before, he realized he might be making a major mistake—not by facing Ashley; he owed her that much and a lot more. No, he could be putting her in danger, and putting Tanner and his daughter and his pregnant veterinarian wife in danger, as well.

“I shouldn’t have come here,” he said, keeping his voice low.

Tanner shook his head, his jaw clamped down hard, as though irritated by Jack’s statement. Since he’d gotten married, settled down and sold off his multinational construction company to play at being an Arizona rancher, Tanner had softened around the edges a little, but Jack knew his friend was still one tough SOB.

“This is where you belong,” Tanner insisted. Another grin quirked one corner of his mouth. “If you’d had sense enough to know that six months ago, old buddy, when you bailed on Ashley without so much as a fare-thee-well, you wouldn’t be in this mess.”

Ashley. The name had run through his mind a million times in those six months, but hearing somebody say it out loud was like having a fist close around his insides and squeeze hard.

Jack couldn’t speak.

Tanner didn’t press for further conversation.

The ambulance bumped over country roads, finally hit smooth blacktop.

“Here we are,” Tanner said. “Ashley’s place.”

“I knew something was going to happen,” Ashley told Mrs. Wiggins, peeling the kitten off the living room curtains as she peered out at the ambulance stopped in the street. “I knew it.”

Not bothering to find her coat, Ashley opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. Tanner got out on the passenger side and gave her a casual wave as he went around back.

Ashley’s heart pounded. She stood frozen for a long moment, not by the cold, but by a strange, eager sense of dread. Then she bolted down the steps, careful not to slip, and hurried along the walk, through the gate.

“What…?” she began, but the rest of the question died in her throat.

Tanner had opened the back of the ambulance, but then he just stood there, looking at her with an odd expression on his face.

“Brace yourself,” he said.

Jeff Baxter, part of a rotating group of volunteers, like Tanner, left the driver’s seat and came to stand a short but eloquent distance away. He looked like a man trying to brace himself for an imminent explosion.

Impatient, Ashley wedged herself between the two men, peered inside.

Jack McCall sat upright on the gurney, grinning stupidly. His black hair, military-short the last time she’d seen him, was longer now, and sleekly shaggy. His eyes blazed with fever.

“Whose shirt is that?” he asked, frowning.

Still taken aback, Ashley didn’t register the question right away. Several awkward moments had passed by the time she glanced down to see what she was wearing.

“Yours,” she answered, finally.

Jack looked relieved. “Good,” he said.

Ashley, beside herself with surprise until that very instant, landed back in her own skin with a jolt. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

Jack scooted toward her, almost pitched out of the ambulance onto his face before Tanner and Jeff moved in to grab him by the arms.

“Checking in,” he said, once he’d tried—and failed—to shrug off them off. “You’re still in the bed-and-breakfast business, aren’t you?”

You’re still in the bed-and-breakfast business, aren’t you?