Page 39 of Captive

The driver doesn’t look at them. He runs for my office.

“Don’t chase them,” I say into the radio. “Close the road. Open the recovery lot. I need the two gray panels by the bay.”

The state tech takes the road side. The ranch driver runs to the lot gate and stops, waiting for a job instead of inventing one. I pull the first panel free.

The red steer sees me and checks. Head up, nostrils wide, eyes hunting the widest way out. I stay at the edge of his space. A frightened animal doesn’t need six people proving they can run. He needs to see where to go and feel the pressure disappear the second he picks the right direction.

“Set your panel twelve feet from mine,” I tell the ranch driver. “Solid side to the road. No noise until both of them can see the lot.”

The black steer sees the red one and turns toward him.

The driver in the cap reaches my side service door, the one outside the taped corridor, and shoulders it. The old latch tears out of the frame.

Cole’s voice comes through the radio. “Scene command, intruder entering the clinic. Request to intercept outside only.”

He could have gone through the gate first and asked later. He asks. It costs him distance. I hear it cost him.

“Approved,” the commander says. “Nothing inside. Dr. Rios has the animal lane.”

“Cole,” I say, “take the service walk. Stay off the cattle path.”

“Understood.”

He comes around the concrete barrier and behind the bay without once crossing where the steers are moving. He gets to the service door as the driver comes out with a black document pouch.

The driver swings a short wrecking bar. Cole takes it on his left forearm, gets inside the second swing, and drives the man into the cinder-block wall. The pouch drops. Papers spill across the walk.

The black steer bolts at the sound, hits the edge of my panel wall, and turns toward the lot instead of the road. The red one follows him. I back out of their way and let them go.

The driver shoves Cole off the wall and runs for the trailer. Cole starts after him and stops at the edge of the animal lane. He looks at me.

Not at the man getting away. At me.

“Hold,” I say. “They’re crossing.”

He holds.

The red steer passes the recovery gate. The black one follows three seconds later. The ranch driver drops the latch behind them.

The man in the cap uses the trailer frame to change direction and runs for the gap by the equipment yard, where stacked pipe and mesquite break every line of sight. Cole moves to cut him off, and the peeled strip of trailer skin is shivering at thigh height in the sun.

I see it too late. The red steer hits the recovery fence behind me and the panel in my hands jerks six inches toward the trailer.

Cole sees it first.

He abandons the chase and catches me by both arms and throws me past that metal edge into clear ground, and his right leg goes into the space mine just left.

The torn aluminum opens his jeans from mid-thigh to above the knee.

Blood darkens the denim before he finishes turning. Not the bright pumping kind I’m afraid of first. Just fast. Fast enough to fill his boot if he stays standing.

The driver vanishes into the equipment yard. Cole takes one step after him.

“Down,” I say.

He looks at the gap.

“Cole. Down. Now. Becca, trauma kit. Somebody call EMS, deep thigh cut, active bleeding. Scene commander, suspect’s on foot, east through the equipment yard.”