And just as the pain had fueled her ambitions in high school, she now used the raw pain in her hands and fingers to push herself another foot up the mountain.
Fighting and clawing for every bit of headway left her exhausted, but kept her warm, except for her fingers. Sara’s muscles hurt in a dozen places, but ever so slowly, she fought the elements. Her lungs burning from lack of air, pulse racing as if she’d just run a mile, she was forced to stop and rest, and suddenly she realized something was very wrong. The sunlight seemed to mock her. The trees swayed.
Abby was no longer crying.
“IT’S IMPORTANT YOU REMEMBER that you aren’t alone,” Logan told Kirk during a break between phone calls. Headsets with microphones made conversation understandable despite the rotor noise from the chopper. “We’ll supply backup, a base camp and everything from Pepper’s favorite dog food to the latest intel, including entry into CIA, FBI and military databases.”
“Who hired you?” Kirk asked.
“Black Hawk.” Logan grinned. “It’s the code name for a secret government fund. Checks are cut out of Switzerland and totally deniable by Congress.”
Kirk still didn’t understand why anyone was going to such expense to rescue Sara. He was grateful, but he needed to know why. “Mind telling me why Black Hawk is paying your team to find Sara, a private citizen?”
“She’s working on face-recognition software programs vital to the security of the United States.”
And Kirk knew somehow that Sara’s programs would be far superior to the clumsy version available now. “Let me guess. Sara was carrying the software with her when the plane went down, and our government is concerned that the software might fall into the wrong hands.”
Logan nodded. “How familiar are you with Sara’s work?”
“Last I heard, the face-recognition software was in the theoretical stage. She wanted her program to accurately map facial features in order to identify people in public places. Her theory is that facial bone structures are like fingerprints and can be used in many security applications.”
“She succeeded. While we are already using face-recognition software to prevent airline terrorism, the process is too slow and not accurate enough to be reliable. Sara’s system is fast enough and precise enough to prove very useful to our country. Every division of law enforcement would like to implement her program.”
“So it would be extremely valuable,” Kirk theorized, realizing that Sara was probably on the verge of becoming a very wealthy woman. “Is that where the protection part might become necessary?”
“Important people want to test her program—like every government in the free world. And terrorists. Plus her competition—tech companies that are at least three years behind her.”
Who would have thought Sara and her computer could cause so much trouble? Or that her work would put her in mortal danger.
“Did your wife—”
“Ex-wife.”
“Did she consult with other people?”
“Our divorce became final six months ago. I haven’t spoken to her in almost a year and a half. I don’t know what she’s been doing recently or who she’s been talking to.” Kirk sighed. “But Sara’s not a people person. She often worked alone for weeks at a time without talking to another soul.”
“She sounds like an unusual woman.”
Unusual? More like eccentric. And he’d once loved every eccentric inch of her. He thrust the memory aside. “I can tell you that she was always careful. When she worked on the Internet, she set up firewalls to protect her work and she never connected her primary computer to outside sources.”
Logan increased airspeed, then gave Kirk a sideways glance. “You know where she stored her backups?”
Even if Kirk had known, he would not have admitted it. Fearing the government might consider recovering her work more important than rescuing the woman, Kirk wouldn’t risk a mission recall.
Logan stared at him hard and, as if reading Kirk’s mind, tried to reassure him. “The funds for the search and rescue of Sara are already in the bank. I insist that payment be made up front on every mission. Even if we recover Sara’s work, we won’t leave her on that mountain. We don’t leave good people behind. Not ever.”
Logan sounded sincere. And Kirk wanted to believe him. But he wouldn’t risk Sara’s life on a stranger’s word. Besides, Sara had always been careful. Kirk was sure she’d hidden her backup work someplace safe.
When it came to computers and her work, Sara always thought ahead. Always had a contingency plan.
Relating to other people was her problem. By the age of sixteen, Sara had learned how to defend herself against ridicule. Kids could be mean, but Sara’s tongue was as sharp as her brilliant mind. After feeling the sting of one of her lashing comments, kids learned not to pick on her. She defended herself well.
With a grin of remembrance, Kirk rubbed the only visible scar she’d ever given him. After acing his computer course, he’d asked her to tutor him weekly for his other courses.
Sara knew how to pick out core ideas and had a knack for guessing what information the teachers would ask on their tests. By spring, her braces had finally come off and she’d been less self-conscious about smiling. And she’d finally saved enough money for a good haircut and more stylish clothes.
Sara’s grandmother lived on social security, and taking in her grandchild had been a financial hardship. To make ends meet, they both worked odd jobs. Before school, Sara delivered newspapers. After school, she tutored students, then worked as a cashier at a local television repair shop. Sometimes, she took odd baby-sitting jobs.
She didn’t have a boyfriend. Hell, she didn’t even have a girlfriend—which should have told seventeen-year-old Logan to go slowly. At the time, he’d seen nothing dangerous about asking a girl on a date.
“If you have to work Friday, how about we hook up Saturday night?” he’d asked her at the end of his tutoring session in the school library.
She frowned at him. “You having trouble with biology?”
“I thought we could explore a little human biology. Together.”
She sighed, ignoring his blatant innuendo. “Are you reading ahead? Mr. Scanlon won’t get to those chapters until—”
“I’m trying to ask you out.”
“Very funny.” Sara gathered up papers and books and shoved them into her backpack.
“I’m serious.”
“Yeah, right.” She refused to look at him. “I thought that…”
“You thought that what?” Sara was never at a loss for words and that should have warned him.
“That you of all people would have enough respect for me not to play with my feelings.”
What he wanted to do was play with her body. He already knew she had the most beautiful mind in the entire high school. He’d like to get to know more about what she hid beneath those baggy overalls. The girl had curves—in spades. But he couldn’t exactly admit to her that for the past few months he’d fallen asleep hoping to dream about kissing her. She’d laugh in his face. A guy had to keep his pride.
That’s when he decided that showing her his interest would be better than trying to tell her about it. She was standing close enough for him to take in the scent of her clean blond hair, which he longed to brush off her face. When he reached out and removed her glasses, her cute lips puckered in surprise.
Squinting at him, she grabbed for the glasses. “Give them back.”
He jerked them out of her reach. “I want—”
“People are looking at us,” she hissed.
“Let them.”
And then the quarterback of the football team, the middle-distance track star and the state record holder of the five-hundred freestyle leaned forward and kissed The Brain. He never considered that she might reject him. Girls giggled when he walked by. His phone rang constantly with offers, but he wanted Sara. He figured she’d want him back—just like every other girl did.
He figured wrong.
<
br /> His lips found hers. He draped an arm around her waist to draw her closer.
She stomped on his instep. Hard.
Pain shot through his foot and he muttered a curse. Leaning down, he clenched his aching foot, hopping on the good one. At the same time, she hefted her backpack onto her shoulder and swung around to make her exit. The backpack caught him over the eye, opening up a one-inch cut, and flattening him.
From his back, he raised his palm to the wound above his eye. Blood rained down his cheek, making the injury appear much worse than it was. A freshman girl stepped around the bookcase and almost tripped over him before she screamed.
A teacher came running. Kids stared, pointing their fingers in blame. At Sara.
“She started it.”
“She hit him.”
“The Brain’s going to get suspended.”
She hadn’t been suspended, of course, and the people in authority had sorted out the mess, which had gone down officially as an accident. Kirk’s face had eventually healed. But every time he looked in the mirror, he remembered Sara, and the stark look of terrible confusion in her eyes as she’d fled the library.
Even back then, as an immature kid, he had realized that she’d misconstrued his intentions. She’d believed he was just like Bobby Martinson and that he’d kissed her to humiliate her. With a maturity beyond his years that came from genuine caring, he’d understood that The Brain couldn’t imagine that he was for real, that his kiss was for real. With the blood dripping down his check, he’d suspected that of the pain suffered by the two of them, hers was worse.
And somehow he had to make her believe in him.
It had taken some time and a lot of effort, but eventually, he had made Sara believe in him—at least, for a while. Then he’d lost her to the divorce. As Kirk flew toward Sara in the chopper he tried not to think about whether he’d lost her for all eternity.
SARA STOOD on a plateau. Giant boulders towered on her left. A forest of pine trees grew in front of her and the surrounding peaks of other mountains loomed in every direction.
There was no sign of Abby. No sign of the plane. Yet her daughter had to be close. She’d heard her. But she’d also heard Kirk, and he definitely wasn’t there. Had she been hallucinating Abby’s cries, hearing what she wanted to hear?
Sara blew warm air on her hands. Upright, the wind plucked at her clothes, raced down her back, seeking openings in her clothing. She had to keep moving. Had to stay warm. Grateful for the thick jacket that she’d wrapped around her during the chilly plane ride, and for her warm snow boots, she was also thankful that she’d bundled Abby warmly. Sara shoved her cold hands into her jacket pockets, wishing she had gloves, and her hand struck smooth plastic.
Her cell phone!
With growing hope, she flipped open the lid. The fully charged battery lit up the LCD screen, making it easy for her to read the message. “No service.”
Damn! The higher mountains surrounding her must be blocking the signal. Sara turned off the power to conserve the batteries, slipped the cell phone into her pocket and trudged through knee-deep snow. A whiff of fuel sent her hurrying toward thick underbrush, where she spied the car seat.
And Abby! Her baby appeared to be sleeping peacefully.
Sara lunged forward through the snow to her side. Tiny puffs of cold air came out of Abby’s nose. Her pink cheeks were blotchy from crying, but she didn’t have a scratch on her. It was as if fate had reached out a hand and set her daughter’s car seat safely faceup, next to a large tree that kept her out of the chilling wind.
Now it was up to Sara to keep her alive.
Sara checked her first instinct, which was to scoop up her daughter and hold her against her chest. As much as she wanted to plant tiny kisses on Abby’s neck, to tease her into a smile, to run her hands over her limbs to make sure nothing was broken, she couldn’t give medical care to her daughter. She hadn’t the knowledge or any supplies.
Damn the pilot who’d bailed with her stolen computer case. She hoped he’d broken his ankle on landing and was now sitting in a wet snowbank, shivering the way she was.
Sara forced herself to think, to set aside her own need to hold and breast-feed the baby. She had to focus on what she could do for them both.
Assess your situation. She recalled the words she’d thought Kirk had spoken. With only the bag full of diapers that attached to the car seat, an extra baby blanket and Sara’s laptop, their most immediate concern was shelter. Building a fire.
Sara removed the blanket and several spare diapers. She packed the sides of the car seat with the diapers for extra insulation against the cold, then floated the blanket over the baby and tucked it around her with care. Sara needed warmth and protection from the elements more than her mother’s kisses.
Darkness fell as early as four o’clock in the mountains. She had to construct a shelter and build a fire while it was still light.
Chapter Three
The nearest Sara had come to camping was watching the Travel Channel on cable television. With her limited gear and no food, walking out of the Rocky Mountains with the baby in her arms seemed impossible. The snow-covered, steep terrain made traversing even a few hundred yards treacherous, but she couldn’t just sit next to Abby and wait for a rescue.
Her plane should have been landing in California about now and, while someone might notice their failure to arrive, it might be hours before the Federal Aviation Administration narrowed the crash area possibilities. Finding them in such a remote area would be difficult, as the plane was probably hidden by snow and trees. And she didn’t believe she could count on a satellite pinpointing their location through her plane’s black box—only commercial aircraft had that kind of gear.
Ignoring her rumbling stomach, she trudged toward the trees, dreaming of English muffins slathered with butter and jelly, following the faint scent of smoke, searching for the crashed airplane. Maybe she’d luck out, find a radio or an emergency locator beacon that she could activate.
Or extra blankets. Or food. Maybe she and Abby could use the plane for shelter.
And maybe she’d win the lottery.
A light snow had begun to fall, but her tracks were so deep she didn’t fear forgetting her way back to her daughter. Clouds had closed in over the mountain, blocking the surrounding peaks from view and casting a dull gray light over the tiny flakes of falling snow. Gusts of wind caught the snow in eddies and whirls, and as if she didn’t have enough trouble, she wondered if this light snow might be a precursor to a full-blown storm.
She trudged through the woods, reluctant to go too far from Abby, and saw no sign of the plane. About to give up and turn back, she took another few steps and almost tumbled over a precipice. Flinging her body sideways into a snowbank to avoid falling off the mountain, she scrambled away with just inches to spare.
Cold, bruised and growing more worried with each falling snowflake, she raised her hand to her forehead and blinked the snow off her eyelashes. There. Just below a rock outcropping and impossibly out of reach, she spied the plane’s tail.
But where were the cockpit and the fuselage?
Careful not to crawl too close to the edge, Sara peered below. The tail section had sheered off and had fallen into a gulch. Already, a light frosting of snow covered the metal, camouflaging the silhouette’s shape. It would not be spotted by anyone searching from the air.
As the wind picked up, Sara realized that no plane would be searching for them until this storm broke. And by then it might be too late.
Don’t go there.
Primitive peoples had survived winters in the mountains. She and Abby should be able to last one night. If she couldn’t get to the airplane, she would have to make do with the resources she had.
Think, Sara. What did the Inuit do?
They built igloos!
Well, she had plenty of snow, but no gloves. She retraced her steps toward Abby, realizing that with her back to the wind, she was warmer. Okay, build the shelter i
n a spot out of the wind.
The lowest branches of some trees almost touched the ground, forming a natural tent around the base of the trunk. If she could use those branches to help mold her igloo, she’d have a head start on the walls of her shelter and part of a roof already done.
Two hours later, exhausted and extremely hungry, Sara shoved Abby and her car seat into the makeshift edifice. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t warm, but it was the best she could do with the materials on hand. And it had been damn hard work. Sara fought to keep her eyes open, but her baby was hungry and just one gurgle from Abby set Sara’s breasts leaking.
She rested her back again the tree trunk, sat on a stump she’d found, held Abby under her coat and bared her breast. Abby latched onto her nipple and sucked strongly. At least she could feed her baby until her milk ran out.
Eating snow chilled Sara. If only they had a fire—but she had no matches. No magnifying glass or lens to start a spark from focused sunlight—not that there was enough left with the clouds that were closing in.
Sara switched Abby to her other breast, and at the dropping temperature, she shivered. If Kirk were here, they’d no doubt have a cheery fire going. But he wasn’t here, and she’d made up her mind she and Abby could get on with their lives without him. That’s what she’d been telling herself ever since their divorce. And it was true—she could manage just fine in the civilized world without Kirk Hardaker. Which didn’t mean that she didn’t miss him, or turn to reach for him in the middle of the night before she remembered that he was no longer hers.
Even when they’d been married, he hadn’t been hers. That had been the problem. Kirk’s other family—the Marine Corps—took precedence. She’d loved him enough to put up with his long, unexplained absences. What she couldn’t live with was the fear of knowing how he spent his days and nights—searching for bombs to keep overseas embassies, offices or training centers safe. All too often, he and his dogs found what they were looking for, and he had the scars on his body to prove it.
Daddy to the Rescue Page 3