Phoenix stayed out on the scene, as Joel called it.
Nikki wouldn’t hurt a fly.
She hadn’t deserved this at all.
Slater Davis, a guy Phoenix knew from L.A. who’d been in the movie filmed on his dad’s place three years ago, needed a ride to the hospital, too. He ended up being hauled off in the same truck as Hunter Clark.
It was a very real possibility he had frostbite on his hands and feet after all of this.
Phoenix wasn’t even certain why Slater Davis was there. Slater hadn’t hesitated to help Nikki, no matter what it meant for him.
Maybe Slater wasn’t such an asshole, after all.
Joel put a hand on his back. “Can you give Gil a ride in a few minutes? Fletcher took Nikki in his truck, along with your dad. Levi and Matt are going to see to it your dad’s truck gets back to his place. We’ll need to photograph the scene and do some documenting, that kind of thing. Same with that guy’s rental. The rest of your cousins and uncles are on their way to the hospital to see how Nikki is doing. Gil’s anxious to get there himself.”
His cousin Gil had headed back up to his own place to grab a tractor with a hitch. They were going to have to get the trucks off the highway soon. His cousins Monroe and Reese and Kaece had arrived and were already discussing how to make it happen with Monroe’s tow truck—once Joel gave the all clear.
Phoenix stood where he was for a moment and actually saw the men around him for what they were—women, too. Like it was the first time he was seeing them.
That FBI agent who was the granddaughter of the woman who owned the diner and the police deputy Sage Lowell were out there, too. They’d been a part of the search team. He actually saw them.
Competent, strong, doing what they had to do. Even though they’d all dealt with some seriously shitty things, too. Reece and Kaece had lost both of their parents in a flood. That FBI agent’s mom had died from cancer when she’d been a kid. Fletcher, Gil, Ben, and Nikki’s dad had had a heart attack five years ago. Their mother had died almost six years before that from some sort of bacterial infection they just couldn’t treat.
None of them had had it perfect and fine.
Yet there they were. Doing what they had to do.
He wondered if their ghosts ever haunted them.