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As he stepped between two pines to get a closer look, Rusty spotted something red half buried in the snow and knelt to dig it out.
“I’ve got what looks like a piece of side paneling over here,” Rusty announced, “and it’s got flames airbrushed up the sides.”
“The chunk I found came from the hood,” Cage announced. “There’s a busted headlight and a chunk of the Howling Devil’s emblem right under it. There’s no doubt in my mind this is from Flame’s snowmobile. Where do those tracks lead?”
Rusty left the broken plastic where it was and stood, dusting snow off his knee while his heart hammered, eyes seeking the tracks and following them.
“Move to the left,” Rusty said as he waded through the snow toward a tree bearing a scrape of red along one side. “He missed the curve. Look right here, he hit this tree. There’s another one back there that looks like he clipped it too.”
“There’s another piece,” Cage said, pointing to what looked like part of a snowmobile’s skid sticking out of the snow, and just beyond it, the dropoff over the bank, which was where the trail led them. “Oh shit. Oh fuck.”
Rusty couldn’t say a goddamn thing as he sprawled on his belly to peer over the edge of the bank, fear clawing at his gut as he stared down at the wreckage of the snowmobile lying on the thick ice several feet away from a crumpled body.
“Flame!” Rusty bellowed, scaring a nearby flock of birds that exploded into the air, squawking loudly.
His brother, on the other hand, didn’t make a sound. He didn’t even twitch. He just lay there as Rusty and Cage scrambled over the edge and dropped onto the frozen creek below. Ten feet, easily, and the ice was solid enough that the snowmobile hadn’t broken through it. As Rusty reached with trembling fingers to check his brother’s pulse, Roark’s voice crackled through his mind, asking if everything was okay.
It wasn’t, and he couldn’t make himself touch Flame, so Cage pressed two fingers to the side of Flame’s neck while Rusty held his breath and thought back.
I think my brother is dead.
Chapter Twenty-One
(Roark)
First official family emergency, and Roark had never been more grateful for their unconventional arrangement, because it allowed him to take off for town immediately to meet Rusty and Cage at the clinic where Flame had been taken.
Week pulse.
Barely clinging to life.
But alive when Doc arrived at the scene with a backboard and sled to stabilize him so they could transport him to the clinic. Logan was closer and already on the way there. Kale and Charlie would bring Wren home the same as they normally did, they just wouldn’t wait around for Rusty to join them. Through the link they shared, all Roark could feel was fear and stress radiating from his normally unflappable mate. That alone told him that the situation with Flame was critical.
When he pulled up behind the clinic, Roark didn’t rush in right away. Instead, he took a moment to compose himself so he could be a rock for his mate. Flame was a fucking knucklehead, but he’d also saved Roark’s ass more than once, and when he wasn’t going out of his way to be a dick, he wasn’t half-bad to talk to, even about serious stuff. If Rusty lost him, Roark didn’t want to think about how much it would change his mate, the same way the loss of Flame and Rusty’s sibling in childhood had damaged them both.
Fuck.
Rusty still hadn’t talked to them about what happened that day. Roark tried to wait him out, worried that if things took a turn for the worst today, Rusty wouldn’t let him or Logan help, which terrified the fuck out of him. He reached for the handle, intent on getting out and going inside, when it dawned on him that someone else might be affected by Flame’s death if the irritating wolf didn’t pull through.
Son of a bitch.
He couldn’t play the wait and see card with Emari and run the risk of his brother being unable to get here in time if he wanted to come see Flame while the fucker was still breathing. He scrolled his contact list and pressed the button beside his brother’s name, nervously drumming his fingers on the steering wheel while he waited for Emari to answer.
“Roark,” his brother’s voice greeted through the line. “Please tell me you’re finally on the way down here to see those new charcoal drawings I’ve been raving about.”
“No, um… I do want to see them, though, at some point, I um…”
“Oh boy,” Emari said, cutting him off. “You stammering is never a good sign. What’s happened?”
“Flame, um…”
“Did they find him?” Emari asked, her voice having grown harsh in the fraction of an instant. “Do I want to know who they found him with?”
“They found him,” Roark replied. “He was alone. I’m at the clinic. I’m about to head in. He was in an accident out near his grandparents’ place. Rusty and Cage found him. From everything they’ve shared so far, it isn’t good.”
“Isn’t good, as in he fucked himself up and is going to be stuck in bed for a while, or…the other isn’t good?”
“The other.”
