He gave the nod and the signal to go never felt so good.
Wade flexed his knees and vigorously pushed away from the skid gear. He let the rope pass through his brake hand to his guide hand. The descent sped by at eight feet a second, with no jerky stops. The rope zipped through his hands smooth and clean.
Wade shot a look at the car, now barely above the surface, speeding his way.
When his feet touched, he quickly cleared the rappel rope through the rappel ring to free the rope. Samson signaled above that he was off rappel, and he dropped the rope away from the helicopter.
Wade turned around and took off in a run on cracking ice. He pushed faster to get to the car; now only the front bumper protruded.
A loud burst from below his feet knocked him to his knees. The seeping, freezing water barely fazed him as he elbowed the rest of the way to the car and to Lacey.
The sheet of ice beneath him pushed up. At the same time the car slipped below the surface in a blink of an eye.
“Lacey!” Wade called and reached for a connected piece of ice. He slid over to it just as a hand reached out from the water.
Lacey!
Wade reached the edge and grabbed hold of the hand splashing the icy water.
It was not a female’s.
Wade shimmied over to his left and grabbed the forearm of the man to get a better grip. The man came up sputtering and heaving for air. It was Clay.
“Where’s Lacey?”
Clay still heaved on his belly, but gestured with weak hands that she was down below. “Backseat. Tied up. She made me leave her. I’m so sorry!” Clay could be heard yelling, but Wade was already entering the water.
The water sliced right through him like a million sharp knives. He ignored the pain and moved his arms to pull his whole body down. The car was just within reach, still floating with its back end deeper. Wade debated which side he should try for. Would the door be unlocked?
With time so critical, he could only pray. Lord, guide me and I will steer Your way.
Wade went left.
The front seats were empty as expected, and Wade reached for the handle of the back door. He fumbled when he saw Lacey floating in the backseat, unmoving.
He was too late, the thought came, but he still pulled the door wide and swam in to pull her into his arms and out of the car.
With her cradled in his arms, her head floating back to expose her slender neck, Wade kicked up with all his strength to the surface.
Ice blocked his path above, but a quick maneuver opened his passage clearly enough for him to push through with Lacey headfirst. Wade could only hope it would be in time.
Her body was quickly removed from Wade’s arms. He grabbed hold of the ice and used the edge as leverage to free himself from the water. It cracked and broke off beneath him. He reached for a large broken-off piece to climb up on and get out of the freezing water.
Clay held Lacey, crawling with her to shore. Wade’s grandfather and Samson could be seen running down the road from where they’d landed the chopper, a bag and blanket in hand. Would they reach Lacey to help her in time?
Wade pushed his piece of ice closer to the large one Lacey was on. The ice popped and cracked when he got on. “I can’t get to her!” he yelled to Samson, who ran up to the shore. “The ice is breaking!”
“Come in a different way! I can get her from my side!” Samson crawled his way out onto the ice toward Lacey, taking her from Clay, who couldn’t pull her anymore. He needed medical attention, as well. His body seemed to be fading fast from his cold plunge.
Wade moved as close to Lacey as he could without causing her to cave back into the ice-cold water. Samson moved her onto a wool blanket and tried to revive her, but Wade was too far to touch and too far to help.
His gut twisted at the sight of her unconscious face. Lips of purple surrounded by stark white undid him. “Come on, Lacey!” he yelled to her. “You’ve got to wake up. Please, Lacey. Don’t give up. Come back to me!”
Wade couldn’t take his eyes off her for one second. Not even to hear the uncommon bark of his dog. Promise waited for him to look her way and to assure her he was all right. Her barks picked up to a crescendo.
“Wade, you’re hyperventilating,” Samson said from across Lacey. “Take slow, deep breaths through pursed lips, or you’re going to go into cold shock. Get yourself to shore quickly.”
Wade followed the directions for the breathing, but he couldn’t leave Lacey. He spared a glance at his barking dog, but Promise wasn’t looking at him. She was facing the woods. Her barks continued, but the sound of Lacey coughing stole his attention.
Water spurted out of her mouth and Samson turned her on her side. More ingested water released from her lungs and her eyelids parted but quickly shut again. Samson turned her onto her back.
“She’s breathing. But I need to get her off the ice and warmed. Wade, we have to get her to shore without falling in. I’m going to try to pull her along.”
Wade couldn’t feel his hands against the ice anymore, but he managed to move toward shore little by little. Ice cracked beneath him. He dared not move closer to Lacey in case it broke through. But this meant he couldn’t help Samson pull Lacey in. His weight wouldn’t allow it.
Promise barked and padded onto the ice in a run toward him. She reached him, but her face seemed a little blurry, and her barks seemed to be growing softer. She licked him, but even that he couldn’t feel. He figured he must be frozen to the point that his senses were shutting down. He reached for Promise’s furry neck and saw how his fingers barely bent. They didn’t look real hanging there in front of his face.
But they also weren’t shaking.
“See, P-Promise, I’m okay, girl. But Lacey needs you. H-h-help L-L-Lacey.”
The dog bumped her head to his.
“Help L-L-Lacey.”
Promise ran over to Lacey as she was told to do.
Wade hoped the ice would hold his dog, especially when she started pulling on the blanket with her teeth. Each pull, Wade held his breath then released it when they moved a little closer to shore.
“Keep going!” Wade yelled. At least he thought he yelled. A slow realization came to his mind that he didn’t actually say anything. Samson’s words flashed in his mind. He’d warned Wade about cold shock.
Wade’s eyelids grew heavy, but he shook his head to keep them open. He would be no use to Lacey if he went into shock, too. He looked to shore and saw her being picked up and transferred to the ground. Wade saw Clay draped in a blanket with Michael standing by him, a hand on his shoulder. A movement in the trees behind them caught his eye.
Someone was watching from behind a tree.
Wade looked to the face of the man.
Chuck Teigen.
Air whooshed from Wade’s lungs. He tried to push up off the ice, but his appendages had shut down. This was the man who’d put the deaths of Wade’s family into action when Wade had opened his mouth and told.
Wade opened his mouth again to alert his grandfather to the danger in their presence, to finally speak the truth and end the hold Teigen had had on his life for so long. Wade opened his mouth to talk, but no matter how much he tried, no words would come out.
Not even when the man stepped out of the trees and lifted a gun, aimed straight for Lacey.
Wade slapped the ice, hoping to get someone’s attention. Promise ran back out to him, pacing around him. Wade grabbed the fur at her neck. He turned her to face the trees. “At-tack.” Wade was unsure if Promise even knew that command.
But the smart dog shot off. Her strong muscular body took her back to shore; her legs lifted her high off the ground in her swift sprint. She zeroed in on Teigen’s back, coming up behind him without his knowledge. With stealth and precision she took her last leap and soared through the air just as the gun exploded.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The beeps of the heart monitor assured Wade that Lacey was still with him. Thanks to Promise, Teigen’s gun had mi
ssed its mark, but that didn’t change the doctors’ diagnosis of her.
Too long under freezing water, they said. Low cardiac output in the rewarming phase after rescue. Extended time of hypoxia. All things Wade had heard spoken by medical personnel over the course of twenty-four hours. But the worst thing uttered: possible low functioning capabilities when she awakened, if she woke up at all.
Wade dropped his forehead to her weak, lifeless hand, so unlike her strong hands that controlled two thousand pounds of metal and six hundred horses under the hood.
But would she again?
If what the doctors said about her being low functioning did occur, would Lacey ever drive any car again?
“I’ll take you anywhere you want to go,” Wade said aloud, but he knew it could be so much worse than that. It could mean an inability to speak. It could mean she would be forever wheelchair bound. It could mean a totally different Lacey.
“Hey,” a whisper came from the door behind him.
Wade looked up to see his sister coming in with two cups of coffee. She stopped at the foot of the bed. “No change,” he told her before she asked for the tenth time that day.
Roni brought the cup to him, but he wasn’t ready to let go of Lacey’s hand. She put it on the side table with the other coffee she’d brought in that morning. His breakfast also sat there uneaten.
“You were admitted, too, Wade. You need sustenance to get well. If you won’t do it for yourself, then do it for Lacey. She’s going to need you to be strong.”
Wade swallowed hard. “You’re right. She’s going to need someone who’s strong…and whole. Someone who’s capable of not losing it when she needs him most. Someone who’s not me.”
Roni was quiet for a few minutes. Then she slumped down in the corner chair. “I did this.”
Wade questioned her with a silent look.
“I’m sorry, Wade. I haven’t been fair to you. I’ve guilted you every chance I could get to make you come home, throwing out that you needed to heal, as if there was something wrong and sick in you.”
“There is.”
“No, there isn’t. Yes, you’re injured. You’ve had to face a lot of heavy, scary stuff that left a mark on you no different than the marks on my neck and arm. You’ve never made me feel inadequate because of my wound, but I haven’t done the same for you. I’ve reminded you constantly that it exists, and that’s made you think something is wrong with you. But Lacey…” Roni drifted her attention to the bed. “She’s been able to do what I never could.”
Wade studied Lacey’s soft, relaxed face. Her coloring had returned, but the smudges beneath her eyes still remained. “What’s that?”
“Love you the way you are. She’s not blind. She knows you hurt. She knows you might never love her back.”
“I love her back,” Wade said. “I love her so much it scares me. What if…”
“What if you live to be a hundred with her by your side? What if she wants to support you on your good days and your bad days?”
“That’s the problem. You heard the doctor. Lacey hasn’t woken up yet, and they’re already prepared for the worst. What if I can’t be there for her because of my bad days? That’s the what-if I’m talking about.”
Promise lifted her head from her slumber at his feet. She sniffed the air and resettled herself when she saw she wasn’t needed to calm him. But that could change at any moment.
“Lacey deserves someone who can support her all the time, someone who can guide her and be her spotter for the dangers that come her way. And trust me, there’re plenty of them. I’ve never seen a person get herself in so many mishaps.” Wade felt his lips tug into a smile.
“Which you were there for, right down to dropping out of a helicopter and diving into freezing-cold water to get to her in time.”
Wade knew what his sister was trying to do. “Because I was having a good day. But what if—”
“Oh, stop with the what-ifs. Nobody can be on 24/7. And if Lacey only loves you when you’re perfect, then she really doesn’t love you at all. She’s seen you at your worst and she’s seen you at your best, and her love stays the same. The question is, will you love her at her worst?”
*
Lacey heard the question clear as day. No longer were words muddied in her brain. Nothing was distorted or confusing, as they were when she was pulled from the water. She held her breath now and waited to hear Wade’s answer before opening her eyes.
“No.” His reply came sharp and resonated in the room.
Tears instantly filled behind Lacey’s closed eyelids. The stab of pain was worse than she thought possible. Wade would never love her.
“I see,” Roni said quietly, as though she could read Lacey’s heartbreaking thoughts.
“No, you don’t, Roni. You don’t understand. I don’t consider anything to be Lacey at her worst. Even her impulsiveness is who she is, and I would never want to change that in her. I love everything about her, and if she wakes up a different person, I will love that Lacey, too. But it will not be me loving her at her worst. It will be me loving her as the person she is.”
After a few quiet seconds, Roni said, “I stand corrected. What say you, Lacey?”
Wade turned away from his sister. Lacey could barely see him through the blur of tears spilling down the sides of her face, pooling into her pillow. He jumped to his feet, still holding her hand, closing in on her. His free hand cupped the side of her face.
“Lacey, you’re awake. Does anything hurt? Roni, get the doctor!”
Roni ran from the room as Lacey tried to push up.
“Wait, don’t move. How does your head feel?”
“Foggy but okay.”
He looked to her legs and she moved them under the blankets.
“Legs, check,” he said. “And arms? How are your arms?”
Lacey lifted her arms and reached for him. At his sigh, he leaned in so she could wrap them around his neck and assure him she really was all right. He breathed deep against her ear, praying thanks to God for her healing.
Lacey pulled back, needing to see his face to be sure. “Wade, does this mean you’ve accepted God’s love?”
“And anything else He wants to give me.”
More tears sprang to her eyes. Could she hope that he would accept love from others, too? “How about Promise’s love?”
Promise appeared beside Wade with her two front paws on the edge of the bed. Her tongue hung out in excitement.
“Down, Promise,” Wade commanded. “Sorry, she just wants to make sure she did her job. You’ll get your treat later, girl.”
“She saved me?”
“Yeah, took Teigen right down. There’s no denying it, she loves you.”
“And you.”
Wade smiled. “And me.”
More hope blossomed in Lacey. Could he accept her love, too? There was only way to find out. “I lo—”
Voices from the door interrupted her. People elbowed each other to get in first, only stepping aside for the doctor.
“Well, well, you gave this group a big scare, young lady. I’m Dr. Monroe and I’m glad to see you awake and looking so much better than you did when you were flown in.” The doctor studied her vitals as Lacey tried to make sense of what he was saying.
“Flown?”
“The helicopter on-site made all the difference for you. It’s not too often an accident victim has a chopper ready and waiting to whisk them off to the hospital.”
Lacey looked at Wade behind the doctor, then to the rest of the people at the door. “Mama, Daddy, what are you doing here?”
Her parents stepped up to her bedside, opposite the doctor. “We came right away, and thanks to Wade’s grandfather, we had our own private plane waiting for us at the airport.”
“What grandfather?” Lacey asked. There was so much she was missing.
A man in the doorway said, “That would be me. I’m Michael Ackerman, Wade and Veronica’s grandfather.”
“Ackerman?”
Lacey pushed up on her elbows and heard the heart monitor pick up beeps.
Michael raised a hand. “I apologize for abducting you. When your brother started asking questions about my daughter’s accident, he became a person of interest. Unfortunately, that carried over to you when you picked up the baton after his death. I wish I could have met him. He was a hero.”
“Jeffrey was a hero?”
Wade stepped back to her side and cupped her hand. “A true hero. Senator Teigen’s latest campaign slogan was Words are Powerful. That’s what Jeff was trying to lead us to. Thanks to him, we now know it was Teigen who made deals with the Russians. Jeff wasn’t writing a book after all. It was code to where all his research was planted. You should see all the pictures he had on Teigen, going back forty years. Those pictures are worth thousands of words and will put him away for life.”
“Jeffrey died a hero,” Lacey said with a slow smile. Somehow the words came easier knowing this. “And your mom was innocent. You must be so relieved.”
“Not as relieved as I am to see you awake.”
Michael Ackerman, aka Wade’s grandfather, went on to explain the rest of the story, from the car crash to when Lacey found the capsule that no one had been able to locate. And how even that had been part of Teigen’s plan to cover his involvement in the spying. He’d had photos of Clay taken and was supposed to pick the capsule up to use the film as blackmail. But Wade had found it first and alerted his mother to what was happening at her track. Unfortunately, it had been too late.
Lacey lifted her chin to Ackerman when he’d finished. “But what about Wade and Roni? How could you leave them when they needed their family?”
“Trust me, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it was for their safety that I broke off all connections to them. I’d already lost my wife and daughter. I took peace knowing that Wade and Veronica lived on, even if I had to watch them from afar. My death put an end to anyone trying to hurt me by hurting them.”
Love Inspired Suspense December 2015, Box Set 2 of 2 Page 52