Ricochet (Renegades #3)(79)
Author: Skye Jordan

Tires ground on gravel, and the truck shot forward. Ryker gripped Ray’s wrist and held it over his head to hinder blood flow. “Hang tough, Mikey. We’ll be at the hospital soon. They’ll get you fixed up.”

Before they’d reached the main highway, Ray had fallen unconscious. But Ryker kept his fingers pressed to the main artery feeding Ray’s hand, and his pulse was strong.

When they were on the freeway, speeding through the dark, Jax said, “He’s breathing, right? He’s got a pulse?”

“Yeah. Just passed out.”

In the passenger’s seat, Charlie turned and glanced over his shoulder. “Rachel found three fingers.”

Ryker slammed his eyes shut and spewed a stream of curses. “When I said find his fingers, I didn’t expect her to do it.” He dropped his head back against the seat. “Jesus Christ.”

“Don’t underestimate her,” Jax said. “She’s as tough as they come.”

Maybe on the outside, but inside… Inside she had a heart of liquid gold that spilled with every stick.

“Do you think they’ll really be able to do something with them?” Charlie asked.

Images of Carmello’s severed limbs flashed in Ryker’s head. All the blood. The terror and pain in his voice. Ryker swallowed and rolled his head back and forth on the seat. “A better chance than if we didn’t have them.”

“Fuck,” Charlie breathed, paused, then asked, “Ry, who’s Mikey?”

His stomach iced over. “What?”

“Mikey. You were calling Ray Mikey.”

Christ. He knew he’d been thinking about Mike but hadn’t known he’d swapped his name with Ray’s.

He ground his teeth. Forced everything from the past out of his mind. Focused hard on the moment. “Nobody. I just…got confused.”

Rachel startled awake to the sound of her cell. She lifted her head from her arms and straightened from where she’d slumped on the dining room table, waiting for word on Ray. And Nathan. When Nathan had carried Ray into the truck, he hadn’t looked a whole lot better than the man missing fingers.

She saw CHARLIE on the display and hit Answer. “Charlie?” she said, breathless, glancing at the clock on the wall. It was 2:00 a.m. “What’s happening?”

“He’s out of surgery,” Charlie said, his voice rough and tired. “They replaced all his fingers, but won’t know how well it will take for a few days.”

Rachel flashed back to the image of a severed finger in her flashlight beam, and her stomach rolled toward her throat for the tenth time since she’d picked them up. She still had no idea how she’d done it.

“Okay,” she said, disappointed there wasn’t better, more miraculous news. “How’s Ryker?”

“Uh…” His voice trailed off, then grew quieter. “Not great. How long has he had this PTSD?”

“PT what?” It sounded familiar, but her brain wasn’t functioning well at all.

“Posttraumatic stress,” Charlie said, voice low. “This triggered something bad for him. He hasn’t stopped pacing. He’s pale, jittery, irritable, and fragmented.”

“He’s broken—on the inside. He’s hurting in a place that can’t always be healed.” Troy’s words filled her head.

“I’m, um, not sure, but I think it was relatively recent.”

“Well, we’re headed out. Ray’s going to be sleeping for a while. His parents are on their way from Ukiah. They’ll be here when he wakes up.”

A fist of pain gripped Rachel’s heart out of nowhere, and she grimaced. An accident was an accident, but she was tortured over how this accident would affect Nathan. “Charlie?” she said before he hung up. “Do you… I don’t know, do you think I should call Troy? To be here for Ryker?”

He hesitated. “Hard to say since I don’t know him all that well, but my guess would be no. I think he’s going to need you more.”

Rachel disconnected and dropped her head into her hands. Thoughts pinged through her mind in all directions.

The door opened behind her and she lifted her head, glancing over her shoulder. Josh sauntered in, his hair a wild mess, his shirt untucked, his eyes tired, and—unless she wasn’t reading him wrong—haunted like Ryker’s.

So many secrets, she thought, turning to face him.

“Hey,” she said. “What did you find out?”

He pulled out a chair , propped his forearms on the table, and turned the charred piece of metal between his fingers. “It wasn’t his fault,” he said, his voice flat and exhausted. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault, really.” He dropped the metal on the table as if he couldn’t stand to hold it any longer and sat back. “Bad cap.”

“Bad cap?” she asked, wondering if she’d missed part of their conversation.

“The blasting cap,” he gestured toward the metal. “It was defective. When Ray was picking up supplies to put them away, it went off in his hand.”

Rachel exhaled long and slow, staring at the metal, knowing the fact that it was just defective wouldn’t help any of the men deal with this better, but it sure as hell would alleviate Nathan’s conscience.

“This is why I’m such a hard-ass for precision,” Josh said. “Because I may not be able to stop the true accidents, like this one, but I can minimize the careless mistakes, so these incidents happen less often. In this case”—he shook his head—“there was no way for any of them to know and no way to stop it from happening. That cap just came from the factory defective. It was the luck of the draw. Ray ended up with the short stick, but it could have just as easily been Charlie or Ryker.”

Josh met Rachel’s gaze, and she saw that the sharpness had returned. “In fact, it should have been Ryker. He should have been the one cleaning up and putting supplies away. He should have seen the explosion through to the end. Put it to bed himself.”

She stiffened. “You just said it was an accident that wasn’t his fault.”

“Yeah, but—”

“No.” She pushed her chair back and stood. “Nowhere in the SOP did you require Ryker and only Ryker to handle the blast beyond the post check for undetonated explosives. Charlie is licensed and qualified as well. He was just as capable of handling the cleanup.”

Josh’s jaw hardened; his gaze turned smoky. And he opened his mouth to say something that might just push Rachel over the edge.