Brace For Impact (HQR Intrigue)

by Janice Kay Johnson - His Best Friend's Baby

Soldiers? No, they weren’t that, he thought grimly. Call them mercenaries. Killers for hire.

  The marshal had saved Maddy’s life by sending her on the run. Now it was on Will to bring a seriously injured woman to safety despite the men who would soon be hunting them.

  * * *

  MADDY AWAKENED WITH a start, staring upward at raw rock and a crack of blue sky. Completely disoriented, she didn’t understand where she was. Pain pulled her from her confusion. Staying utterly still, she strained to listen. Was Will back? But what she heard was far more ominous.

  A helicopter.

  Her panic switch flipped. Will had sent them to pick her up. He hadn’t believed her. He’d betrayed her.

  Run.

  But he’d promised, and he’d made her promise to stay where she was. He hadn’t said, ‘Whatever you hear,’ but that was what he’d meant.

  Here, she was hidden. Stay still. Stay still. What if they’d captured him, or even killed him? She knew exactly what that looked like. Shivering despite herself, feeling like a coward, she nonetheless refused to believe they’d surprised Will. He’d said he was army. A medic, yes, but didn’t they fight, too? Have the same training? She hoped he’d taken the handgun with him. At least he knew how to use it.

  The terrifying drone grew louder and louder. Maddy forgot to blink, staring at the thin sliver of blue sky. When darkness slid over it like a shadow, the helicopter was so loud she pressed her good hand to one ear. It thundered in her head, but the streak of blue reappeared and...was the racket diminishing? She thought so.

  Did that mean they hadn’t taken any notice of the tumble of boulders that had made a cave?

  What had Will done with the gun? Maddy tried to remember. Before, she’d believed she could shoot someone, and she still thought so. His pack was right there. She groped all the outside pockets but didn’t feel anything the right shape. He wouldn’t have just dumped it inside, would he? Even so, she unzipped the top and inserted her hand. The first hard thing she found was a plastic case holding first-aid supplies. Packets of what she guessed were food. Clothes—denim and soft knits, something puffy with a slippery outside. A parka. A book?

  She gave up, lay back and waited, staring now at the opening she’d crawled through.

  Once again time blurred—or maybe it had ever since the crash. Had that really happened today? Was she forgetting a night? Maddy clung to a picture in her mind of Will Gannon, alarmingly tall as he looked down at her. That too-bony face with a nose that didn’t seem to quite belong, but eyes that were kinder than she deserved, considering she was holding a gun on him.

  Hearing that deep, husky voice saying, I was shot, so you’ll excuse me if I don’t love seeing that gun pointing at me.

  The relief of letting it sag, of feeling his big hand close over hers as he deftly took the gun.

  Her head throbbed even as the pain radiating from her arm and shoulder worsened.

  Please come, Will. Please hurry.

  * * *

  HE STOPPED UNDER cover twenty yards or so from the boulders to use his binoculars again. He could no longer hear the helicopter, but after a slow sweep he found it, deep down in the Stetattle Creek valley. Down there only fools would think they’d see anything from the sky; the Stetattle and Torrent Creeks ran through tangles of vegetation as thick as any jungle. When Will was reading about routes into and out of this wilderness, he’d seen several references to “bushwhacking.”

  If he could get Maddy down to that low elevation, they’d be hard to find. On the other hand, he didn’t have a machete or any other tool that would be good for clearing their way.

  He wondered if he wouldn’t be able to find something like that in the airplane wreckage. Crap, he wished he’d beaten the damn helicopter there, had time to search.

  Couldn’t be helped.

  He rose and scrambled the distance to the two largest boulders, steadying himself on other large rocks.

  “Maddy? It’s me.”

  The silence stretched. He was almost to the opening when she said, “Will?”

  “Yeah, I’m coming in.”

  He parted the pile of fir branches and crawled between them. Same response he’d had earlier. Disliking the cramped space, he wanted to back right out. Tending to claustrophobia, Will had been especially unhappy when his unit was assigned to search caves in Afghanistan for the Taliban. Until today, he’d hoped he would never see a cave again.

  Fortunately, this didn’t quite qualify.

  White-faced and tense, Maddy seemed to be holding herself together by a thread.

  “Hey,” he said. “You heard the helicopter?”

  “It went overhead.” She gestured upward. “It blocked the sky.”

  “Damn.” He took her hand in his. “I’m sorry. Ah...hold on. Let me put the branches back in place.”

  Once he did, he found he could sit up and stretch out his legs if he didn’t mind the top of his head grazing rock.

  “Did you find the plane?” she asked anxiously.

  “Saw a few pieces, but that’s all before the helicopter showed up.” He couldn’t look away from her eyes that were filled with fear. “They didn’t see me. The helicopter dropped two men. At least two,” he corrected himself. “Only heard two voices. Your marshal was right. These guys look paramilitary and they’re armed to the teeth. This was no search and rescue operation. The man I saw was carrying a heavy pack. They’re prepared to hunt for you once they don’t find your body.”

  Her eyelashes fluttered. He’d have understood if she had broken down, but she didn’t. All she said was, “What are we going to do?”

  “Not get caught,” Will said flatly. “This is a vast wilderness. They’re naive thinking they can track someone. Of course, they’ll assume you’re on your own, potentially injured, not equipped for such rough conditions.”

  “They’re right.”

  Had he heard a hint of humor? Maybe.

  But she was completely sober when she said, “I’m sorry I got you into this.”

  “I’m not sorry.” Good thing he could be completely honest. “I always liked challenges.” Medical school was the one he’d had in mind, not going to war in his own country, but he couldn’t wish he hadn’t found this woman.

  Her smile shook, but it was real. “Thank you.”

  He smiled, too, and they studied each other openly, he aware of her vivid bruises, the swelling and wild hair, the dirt and scrapes, but also of her delicate beauty beneath. Disconcerted, he knew he had to shut down that kind of awareness. She needed a protector. Period.

  “We need to stay here,” he said. “At least for the night. The copter is still searching. At some point it’ll have to go back to its base, wherever that is. Until it’s gone, we can’t risk making a move. I want you to rest up anyway. Get some food in you. Your knee might feel better by tomorrow.”

  “Okay.”

  Will suspected docility wasn’t a normal part of her makeup, but was glad of it for the moment.

  “I have a camp stove I can use once it’s dark to make a real meal, but you need to eat right now.” He dug in an outer pocket where he’d stowed snack food: peanuts, almonds, beef jerky and a bag of caramels.

  She wrinkled her nose at the beef jerky, but accepted his water bottle, two ibuprofen and a packet of peanuts. Will found a spot where he could rest his back against a rock wall, and made his own selections for a midafternoon snack. Now that he’d stopped, he was even more aware of the fierce ache in his hip and down his thigh. With a few almonds in his stomach, he downed painkillers, too.

  “You’re hurt,” she said unexpectedly.

  “Not that serious.”

  “You said you were shot.”

  “Yeah.” Will tried not to twitch. He’d done his time in counseling while he was in rehab for physical therapy, too, but he’d never been a big talker. “Just thoug
ht I’d take the edge off.”

  Even as she took a long swallow from the water bottle, her eyes stayed on him, but to his relief she didn’t ask any more questions.

  * * *

  HOW COULD SHE feel so safe in such a strange setting, with a man she hardly knew? Maddy could only be grateful that neither her body nor her subconscious had any reservations about this man. Given the cramped space, they couldn’t avoid each other.

  The floor of dirt and rock was far from flat, of course; since it tipped downhill, once she and Will had finished eating, they stretched out side by side with their heads at the top of the slope. Still cold, Maddy wore the parka she’d found in the tail of the plane, while Will wadded his up under their heads. He made sure she wasn’t lying on her more damaged left side. They had to do a lot of squirming around until no sharp edge dug into either of their hips or shoulders.

  “Use me as a pillow,” he suggested, holding out an inviting arm.

  As miserably uncomfortable as she was, Maddy took him up on the offer. At first, she lay stiffly beside him, trying to keep some space between their bodies, but he finally exclaimed, “Damn it! Come here.” He tugged her closer and gently lifted her arm in the sling and laid it on his chest.

  The initial movement hurt, and she cried out, but as soon as she let herself relax, relief washed over her. The weight of her arm no longer tugged at the broken collarbone.

  “Better?” he murmured.

  “Yes,” she admitted. “Thank you.”

  He made a grumbly sound she took to mean he didn’t want her incessantly thanking him, but how could she not?

  She tried not to think about tomorrow, about more scrambling on this mountainside, whether going up or down—or sideways. Will thought her knee might feel better, but didn’t injuries usually hurt more the next day? Stiffen up?

  Well, they couldn’t stay here, not for long. Even stepping outside this cubby beneath the boulders would leave either of them too exposed. Her worry was how drastically she’d slow their pace. The only positive was that they wouldn’t starve to death for a while—there were those energy bars she’d stuffed in her duffel, never mind what Will still had in his pack.

  At a funny chirping sound outside, followed by a shrill whistle, she stiffened and raised her head.

  “Pika,” he said. Since she’d never heard of any such thing, he had to explain that pikas were brown mammals that looked somewhat like a rabbit without the ears and tended to live in rockslides. “They’ll have dens down below.”

  “Like ours.”

  “Smaller.” His voice conveyed a smile.

  Sleep tugged at her even as she tried very hard after that to imagine herself home again, and was distressed because she had trouble pulling up faces from her former life.

  She woke up enough to notice the light had changed. Of course it had; the sun would have moved across the sky. Okay, really the earth did the moving and the turning, but that was just a technicality. And why was her mind wandering like this?

  Because pain was responsible for dragging her out of sleep. Distraction was a form of protection.

  Also...she thought her leg might be lying across Will’s. In fact, she’d practically climbed onto him.

  Embarrassed, she started to shift. The white-hot stab of pain pulled a deep groan from her throat and had her seeing spots.

  “Maddy?” His roughened voice was close to her ear. “You hurting?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Are we going to run out of painkillers?”

  His “I hope not” failed to reassure her.

  “Let me up and I’ll get you some. Water and a bite to eat, too.” He shifted her as gently as he’d earlier pulled her close, until he was able to sit up and root in his pack. It only took him a minute to produce the water bottle and three capsules.

  She gulped them down without asking what she was taking. Without comment, he then handed her a small box of raisins. The sweetness with each mouthful was just right.

  “I keep falling asleep,” she said. “I never nap!”

  “That’s an expected symptom of both your injuries and the sheer trauma. You need extra rest to heal.”

  He had produced a watch at some point, so he was able to tell her it was nearly five o’clock.

  She grappled with that. She, Scott Rankin and the pilot had left the small airport near Republic around eight that morning. It couldn’t have taken them that long to get deep into the Cascade Mountains. An hour? Two? Of course, she had no idea how long she’d been unconscious, or how long she’d nodded off for when she first hid herself—or now. Still.

  She said, “It won’t be dark until something like nine.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “The sun goes down below the mountains long before it’s close to sunset.”

  “Oh.” Was that two hours from now? Three? Her bladder was beginning to nudge at her. Could she hold out even that long?

  Something else. “Was the bomb on a timer, do you think? If it had gone off earlier...”

  “Before you got deep in the mountains.” He’d obviously thought about this. “It could have been on a timer, calculated to bring the plane down in the most rugged terrain, or triggered by a radio signal.”

  “What?” She stared at him. “I didn’t see any other planes anywhere near.”

  “If that’s how they did it, they knew the route your pilot planned to take. Although...” He frowned. “Do you know why you were so far north?”

  “I think Scott was trying to give me a treat to take my mind off the upcoming trial,” she said with difficulty. Having lost him, she realized that she’d come to think of the marshal as a friend. “It worked, too. I was dazzled. Until—”

  “Then he must have told someone what he planned. I’d guess somebody was stationed down below to send off a signal once they saw the plane cross over into the most remote and rugged landscape. They could have been in Diablo or someplace along Ross Lake. Could have just pulled off Highway 20 at an overlook and gotten out of the car. No reason anyone would notice someone fiddling with his phone.”

  “No.” She didn’t know if it was worse to think the cold-blooded calculations had been made in advance, or that someone had tipped his head back and watched as the small red-and-white plane buzzed across the sky, then punched a combination of numbers to set off the bomb. He would likely have seen it start to plummet. Had he felt even a grain of conscience, or only satisfaction?

  “They brought the plane down too soon,” Will said, the set of his jaw hard. “Just a little farther and you’d have come down in the Picket Range. Seems to me, your path was taking you north, maybe toward the pass between Mount Terror and Mount Fury. The view would have been spectacular, and then you could have flown just south of Shuksan. The pilot probably wanted to give you an up-close view of some of the most awe-inspiring country in North America. If you’d hit the side of McMillan Spire or Mount Terror—” He broke off. “I’m not helping, am I?”

  She tried to hold herself together. “I want to know. But... I’m not so sure it would have made any difference. The plane was torn to pieces, you know. It was sheer luck that my seat belt held and my section of the cabin got hung up on a tree.”

  “There wouldn’t have been any trees at a higher elevation, say on a glacier. Only rock and ice and snow.”

  She closed her eyes. “I wanted to bury them. Or cover their bodies with rocks, at least. Leaving them there like that...”

  “Was the smart thing to do.” Once again he squeezed her hand.

  Had Will been as caring with the horrifically injured soldiers he must have helped in Afghanistan or Iran or wherever he’d been? Yes, of course he had. By his standards she was barely banged up. She wasn’t gushing blood, hadn’t lost a leg or an arm or—an awful picture entered her mind: the grotesquely twisted bodies of the two men who’d also been on that plane.

  Something el
se she shouldn’t think about. Later, yes. Not now.

  “He knew he was dying,” she heard herself say.

  “I’m guessing he held on for all he was worth until you found him.”

  How Will could pitch that deep, almost gravelly voice to be so comforting, she had no idea. Even the expression in his clear gray eyes was a kind of caress.

  “He’d have known that if you were alive, your instinct would be to stay with the plane,” Will went on. “Maybe activate the beacon, or call for help if you had a phone. He died knowing he’d given you a fighting chance. That would have been important to him, you know.”

  She ducked her head and nodded at the same time, hoping he didn’t hear her sniffling. She’d done a lot of that in their brief acquaintance. He probably thought she was always weepy, which was far from the truth.

  “Have you peed yet today?” he asked bluntly.

  “How could I? You told me not to move.”

  He frowned at her. “Then you haven’t had enough to drink.” He thrust the water bottle at her.

  “We’ll run out.”

  “You brought a gallon from the plane. I can treat stream water as we refill both bottles.”

  Instead of glugging, she sipped. “I thought I should wait until dark to go out.”

  “Dusk is early here. You don’t have to go far.”

  Maddy hoped she could be as matter-of-fact as he was about the call of nature. So what if he heard her?

  “Is the helicopter still around?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so. I’m sure the men are, but I haven’t taken the chance of searching for them with binoculars.”

  They talked quietly. She drained the bottle; he refilled it from the gallon she’d lugged along with her. Eventually they ran out of impersonal things to talk about. She wanted to know more about him; natural, when she had to trust him, Maddy told herself, but was afraid her curiosity was part of her fascination with this man, a warrior and yet so gentle.

  At her question he hesitated but told her he’d enlisted in the army right out of high school. “There was no money for college. It seemed a way out.”