Protecting What's Mine(41)

“What have we got, guys?”

“Female. Twenty-five. Head versus steering wheel. Unconscious. Possible neck and spine injuries. Witnesses say the idiot pulled her out of the car.”

“Fuck.” Mack was succinct.

“Yep,” the female paramedic on her right agreed.

“Get off my girlfriend!” The man, still practically a kid, was stinking drunk…and quite possibly high on something. He was missing a canine tooth and had inch-wide holes in his ear lobes. His ball cap had seen better days fifteen years ago. Skinny and mean.

Mack had dealt with enough of his type to know that addressing him wasn’t worth it.

He tried to push his way into the circle, but Bubba hauled him back out. One of Linc’s crew stepped in to help.

“Stay over there, man. The sheriff needs a word,” Bubba said, pointing at Sheriff Ty Adler as the man approached.

“Fuck!” the drunk screamed, unhinged. “Fuck me!”

Mack ignored him. They ran through the patient’s vitals while stemming the flow of blood from her head wound. She had blonde hair turning pink at the roots.

She picked up pieces of the story while assessing injuries. Fighting with drunk boyfriend. Boyfriend grabbed the wheel and put them head-on into the tree. No airbags.

Another avoidable disaster. That pissed her off.

“Let’s get her on the board, guys. We gotta get her out of here. On three,” Mack ordered.

“I’m tellin’ ya. Leave ’er alone!” Skinny screeched.

“I’m gonna need you to calm down, son,” the sheriff insisted.

Mack slipped around to the patient’s other side, putting her back to the guardrail.

“One. Two. Three.” In unison, they team-lifted the girl and slid her carefully onto the board.

“Strap her in tight. We’ve got to get her over that fence,” she instructed.

With their patient snuggly braced and strapped, they lifted her. A chorus of cohesive strangers bound together by purpose.

“Incoming!” One of the EMTs at the head of the board shouted a warning.

Skinny had broken away from Ty and raged at them, shouting nonsense as he charged. She wanted to get in his way. To tell him he was the reason his girlfriend was strapped down and unconscious. But her skills were required here. She didn’t have the luxury of acting on that snap of temper.

And then that skinny dumbass made another big mistake.

Pointy elbows flying, he shoved his way between Mack and the EMT in front of her. “Katelyn, baby! Tell ’em it’s not my fault! Tell ’em you were driving!”

“Get the fuck away from my patient,” Mack snapped, baring her teeth.

She saw it coming. His pointy fucking fist hurled with more enthusiasm than finesse. But she was holding the litter. The asshole caught her in the cheek, and it sang.

“Goddammit. Get your guy under control!” Bubba hollered from the other side of the board.

Ty, holding his jaw, was jogging toward them, hand on his weapon. But Linc was going to beat him there, and that man had murder in those beautiful baby blues.

Mack body checked Skinny with her shoulder and hip. “Move!”

Completely in-fucking-sane, the kid grabbed her by the collar, causing the litter to lurch. It only served to enrage her. “Get her to the bird,” Mack yelled and let go of the board. She turned around, dodged another poorly thrown punch, and shoved the guy back a step.

“Back the fuck off! You’re the only thing keeping me from treating your girlfriend right now!”

But he kept coming.

Great. She was going to have to punch the motherfucker. That was going to be a hell of a lot of paperwork on everyone’s part.

“Calm the hell down, kid,” Ty said. He was close enough now that Mack could see the beginnings of a bruise blooming on his jaw. A sucker punch.

“Fuck off!”

Linc was coming full steam like a freight train. But he was too late. The guy grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her hard. She would have been fine had it not been for the med bag behind her.

Her feet caught it, and she fell back, catching the guardrail on the back of her thighs. And then she was tumbling over it.

“Mack!” She heard Linc calling for her.

She remembered to tuck, and that was the best she managed as her body hurled itself backward down the embankment.

Creek. Creek. Creek.

She skidded to a halt, fingers digging into the vegetation, stopping eight inches from the water. That would have been hard to live down.

She lay there for a full second, and her line of sight gave her the perfect angle to see Linc’s angry fist connect with the idiot’s jaw.

The kid went down and didn’t get back up.

“You all right, doc?” Linc jogged down the short embankment. He ran his hands over her legs and arms.

“Fine,” she muttered, brushing dirt and leaves off her flight suit. “I’m fine. I gotta get in the air.”

“Dreamy, that was a hell of a fall. You sure you didn’t hit your head?”

“Tuck and roll, Hotshot. How’s the dumbass?”

“Much quieter now.”

He helped her to her feet and didn’t miss it when she winced.

The lightning strike of pain in her ankle caught her by surprise. The fact that it was her bad ankle only pissed her off more. “Fuck,” she hissed.