The Final Tap Read Online Free

placed a finger to his neck, leaning close to his face. I felt a pulse. It was faint but there. “He’s still alive. Call 911!” I ordered Benji.
    She yanked her cell phone from her coat pocket and made the call. I heard her rattle off the address for the Farm.
    â€œThey’re on their way,” she said. She held the phone away from her ear. “They told me to stay on the line.”
    â€œOkay, do that and run back to the visitor center and tell them what’s going on. You’ll have to direct the ambulance here too.”
    She hesitated. “You want me to leave you here with him?”
    â€œYes! Go! You have to tell Gavin and Judy what’s going on. The school group will be here any minute. It would be best if Gavin took the children to the sugarhouse first to keep them out of the way of the paramedics.”
    Benji shook her head as if clearing away some cobwebs. “Right!” She took off for the visitor center. She hadn’t been kidding when she said she could run fast.
    After the sound of her footsteps in the snow faded away, I turned back to the injured man. I wasn’t a medical professional, but I knew he didn’t have much time if help didn’t arrive soon. As much as it pained me to see him lying there with the drill sticking out of his chest, I knew not to remove it. The risk was too great that I would cause more damage by removing the drill bit, and it would only make his bleeding worse. The drill stuck out of the left side of his chest. I hoped that meant it had missed his heart, not that an injured lung was so much better.
    I leaned close to his face. “Help’s on the way, Dr. Beeson. You’re going to be okay.” I didn’t know he would be okay, and I didn’t know if he could hear me. It seemed to be the right thing to say. When my mother had been in hospice before she died, the nurses had told me to talk to her even when she could no longer respond. They said she could hear me, and it would help her. I still didn’t know if it helped my mother. I might never know, but talking to her during those last, long—but at the same time fleeting—hours had helped me. It gave me a chance to say everything that I’d needed her to hear.
    If Beeson died out here in the freezing snow, his family would never have the chance to do that.
    I squeezed his hand. “Help is on the way.”
    I was so glad my son Hayden was at school, and that he wasn’t one of the children who would be visiting the Farm for the field trip. Had he been, he would have insisted on being with me the entire time. I didn’t want him to see this. I’d been able to shelter him from what had happened during the Civil War reenactment last summer, and I planned to do that again.
    The wail of sirens broke through the frozen air. I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding, and it came out in a white puff.
    â€œThey’re almost here,” I said in my best upbeat voice.
    â€œ Th-they … ” the professor whispered. His eyes were still closed.
    Maybe I imagined that I heard it. I leaned close, just in case. “They who?”
    â€œ Th-they did …”
    â€œDid what? Did someone do this to you? Can you tell me who?”
    â€œ Th-they .”
    There was the sound of people running and crashing through the trees. I ignored the noise of the approaching voices and focused all my attention on the professor. “They who? Please tell me.”
    â€œ Th-they ,” he said through parched lips.
    â€œEMS!” someone cried.
    â€œThey’re over here,” I heard Benji shout.
    Benji and three EMTs broke through the trees. The first of the EMTs was Chase Wyatt, a sometime–Civil War reenactor who I’d met the previous summer during Barton Farm’s reenactment.
    Since the reenactment, we’d developed a friendship, but I knew that Chase wanted it to be something more. He’d asked me out on a date