Free Fractured by Erin Hayes Page A

sensory overload. It took her several moments to place together what she had seen, corresponding those shapes with the three dimensional forms she knew well from her sense of touch.
    It was a face.
    Whose face it was, she had no idea, it was so quick. She also didn’t have enough time to register what expression the face had, but there was something about it that made her think the expression wasn’t a good one. It looked like an old woman had been glaring at her.
    And just like that, the movement in her vision disappeared into black. Bash was thrown into her sightless world once again.
    A familiar scream interrupted her thoughts and she stopped short on the trail.
    “Seth?” she called out, panicked. “Seth?”
    “I’m here.” He stopped next to her and reached out and touched her arm.
    “What happened?” she asked.
    “I’ll go check it out,” Rodney said from her opposite side.
    The snow crunched under his skis, announcing that he was moving perpendicular to their path. A few moments later, Bash heard the unmistakable peal of a walkie talkie. “I need medical attention,” he was saying. He sounded far away. “I have one snowboarder down...”
    One snowboarder.
    Bash suddenly had a sense of dread rising within her.
    “It’s Scott,” Seth said through gritted teeth. He unclipped his boots from his skis.
    “I’m coming too,” Bash said, and followed suit. Seth took hold of her hand and they made their way across the slope.
    Bash’s heart was pounding in her ears. What were they going to find? How badly hurt was Scott? The teenager was moaning loudly as they approached. The rest of their little group was chattering around them.
    “What happened?” she asked.
    It was Rick who answered. “We were just coming down when Scott went off that way and...and...”
    “And hit a tree,” Maria completed for him.
    “Is he going to be okay?” Bash asked. Seth must’ve been an absolute wreck at that point. She couldn’t see what was happening, but based upon Scott’s groaning, it was pretty bad. Seth’s hand had a tight grip around hers.
    “Darius already left to go down to get some help,” Rick said helplessly. He sounded like he was going to be sick. “He’s going to be fine, Seth.” He didn’t sound convinced of it.
    “It looks like his arm’s broken,” Rodney said, both for her benefit and to the people on the other side of his walkie talkie. “There’s bone poking through the skin.”
    “Oh my God,” Bash gasped, feeling sick.
    “It hurts,” Scott moaned in pain. “Hurts so...bad.”
    “Hang on, bro,” Seth whispered. He let go of Bash’s hand and knelt next to his little brother.
    “Hanging on” took about half an hour for an EMT on a snowmobile to meet them. The entire time, Seth was either comforting Scott or pacing about angrily. Bash tried to help whenever she could, yet there was no helping her fiancé at that moment.
    “Shouldn’t have brought him along,” Seth muttered. “Not safe.”
    “He’s sixteen years old, Seth,” Bash said, trying to sound comforting. She knew she sounded irritated, even though she was trying not to. “He’s capable of making his own decisions.” It was a broken arm. Bash had broken her arm years ago, and it was fine. In fact, she knew the entire procedure.
    The EMT came on a snowmobile with a gurney sled. Scott was speaking by that time and kept complaining about how much it hurt. Seth wouldn’t say how bad it looked in front of him, but from everything that Bash gathered, it was pretty bad.
    Strapped in securely, Scott rode down the mountain behind the EMT.
    “I don’t want to go down,” Maria said. “I’m not going. Not after Scott...”
    “Babe, you’ll be fine,” Rick told her. He sounded tired.
    “Just follow me,” Bash offered, trying to salvage what was left. “Or...Rodney, rather. We’ll be taking the easy way down. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”
    Seth cursed under his breath. “Maybe we should quit this