Rizzoli & Isles 8-Book Set

artery. He rocked back to stare at the torn flesh and protruding bone, at a limb so twisted that the foot jutted in one direction, the knee in another.
    “Arlo?” Elaine said.
“Arlo?”
She shook him, but he had fallen limp and unresponsive.
    Doug felt Arlo’s neck. “He’s got a pulse. And he’s breathing. I think he just fainted.”
    “Oh my God.” Elaine rose and stumbled away. They could hear her throwing up in the snow.
    Doug looked down at his hands, and with a shudder he scooped up snow and frantically scrubbed away the blood. “The tire chain,” he muttered, rubbing snow against his skin, as though he could somehow purify himself of the horror. “One of the broken links must have snagged his pants. Wrapped his leg around the axle …” Doug rolled back on his knees and released a breath that was half sigh, half sob. “We’ll never get this Jeep out of here. The chain’s broken all to hell.”
    “Doug, we have to get him back to the house.”
    “The house?” Doug looked at her. “What he needs is a fucking OR!”
    “He can’t stay out here in the cold. He’s in shock.” She rose to her feet and glanced around. Grace was huddled off by herself, her back turned to them. Elaine was crouched in the snow, as though too dizzy to stand straight. Neither of them would be any help.
    “I’ll be right back,” said Maura. “Stay with him.”
    “Where are you going?”
    “I saw a sled in one of the garages. We can drag him back on that.” She left them and started running toward the village, her boots slipping and sliding in the ruts left by the Jeep’s ascent. It was a relief to leave behind the bloody snow and her shell-shocked companions, a relief to focus on a concrete task that required only speed and muscle. She dreaded what came after they moved Arlo back into the house, when they’d be forced to confront what was left of his leg, now little more than mutilated flesh and splintered bones.
    The sled. Where did I see that sled?
    She finally found it in the third garage, hanging on wall pegs alongside a ladder and an array of tools. Whoever lived here had kept an organized household, and as she pulled down the sled, she imagined him hammering in these pegs, suspending his tools high enough that young hands couldn’t reach them. The sled was made of birch and had no manufacturer’s label. Handmade, it had been crafted with care, the runners sanded smooth and freshly polished in readiness for winter. All this she registered in a glance. Adrenalinehad sharpened her vision and made her reflexes hum like high-voltage wires. She scanned the garage for anything else she might need. She found ski poles and rope, a pocketknife and a roll of duct tape.
    The sled was heavy, and dragging it up the steep road soon had her sweating. But better to labor like a draft horse than to kneel helplessly by your friend’s mangled body, agonizing over what to do next. She was panting now, struggling up the slippery road, wondering if Arlo would be alive when she got there. A stray thought slipped into her head, a thought that shocked her, but there it was nonetheless. A little voice whispering its cruel logic:
He might be better off dead
.
    She yanked harder on the towline, pitting her weight against the drag of snow and gravity. Up the road she trudged, hands cramping around the rope as she curved up hairpin turns, past pine trees whose snow-heavy branches hid her view of the next stretch of road. Surely she should be there by now. Hadn’t she been climbing long enough? But the Jeep tire tracks still curved ahead, and she saw the shoe prints she’d left when she’d run down this same road a short time earlier.
    A scream pierced the trees, a pain-racked shriek that ended in a sob. Not only was Arlo still alive, he was now awake.
    She rounded the curve and there they were, exactly where she’d left them. Grace was huddled by herself, hands clasped over her ears against Arlo’s sobs. Elaine cringed back against the Jeep, hugging herself as though she were the one in pain. As Maura dragged the sled closer, Doug looked up with an expression of profound relief.
    “Did you bring something to tie him to the sled?” he asked.
    “I found rope and duct tape.” She positioned the sled beside Arlo, whose sobs had faded to whimpers.
    “You take the hips,” said Doug. “I’ll move his shoulders.”
    “We need to splint the leg first. That’s why I brought the ski poles.”
    “Maura,” he said softly.