Tempting Fate: A Colorado High Country Novel

by Pamela Clare

  She moaned but didn’t wake up.

  Shota whined, inched closer to the victim, licked her cheek.

  Chaska tried again. “Are you okay, ma’am?”

  Her brow furrowed, but her eyes didn’t open.

  He grabbed his hand mic again, switched his radio to FTAC 2, the county’s tactical and rescue channel. “Lupine Command.”

  “Lupine Command, go ahead.”

  “I’ve tried to rouse the victim without success. Her clothes are damp. I suspect she’s hypothermic. There’s also blood loss from unknown injuries.”

  “Lupine Command, copy. Six-twenty-two.”

  He set the radio aside and reached into his pack for hand warmers. “We need to get her core temp up.”

  Hypothermia killed people every summer in Colorado’s mountains.

  He bent the metal discs at the bottom of the gel packs to start the exothermic reaction and handed them to Win. “Massage those to distribute the crystals evenly, and then tuck them inside her jacket. Don’t put them against her bare skin.”

  While Winona did that, he reached into his pack again and drew out an emergency blanket.

  “Look.” Win held up a leather cord that hung around the woman’s throat, a small beaded medicine wheel dangling from it like a pendant. She tucked it back inside the woman’s jacket. “Do you think she’s Lakota?”

  Win might have time to wonder about such things, but Chaska didn’t.

  “I think she needs to get to the hospital.” He knelt over her, about to tuck the emergency blanket around her, when he noticed something in her clenched fist. He pried her fingers open and took a small, needle-sharp something from her hand.

  “Is that a knife?”

  He handed it to Win. “It looks like a file.”

  “Maybe she was trying to defend herself.”

  “Maybe.” Chaska studied his sister for a moment. “Are you okay?”

  Two years ago, she’d been assaulted by an injured fugitive who’d forced her to give him medical aid at her clinic. The bastard had paid her back by drugging her with an overdose of animal tranquilizer that might have killed her had help not arrived. Chaska wouldn’t be surprised if seeing a woman in this state dredged up those memories.

  “I’m fine.”

  Chaska covered the woman with the blanket, tucked it around her. It would help hold in her body heat and the heat from the hand warmers. “Ma’am, can you hear me?”

  This time, the woman’s body went stiff, and she cried out. “No!”

  Chaska found himself staring into a pair of terrified blue eyes.

  Chapter 2

  Awareness crashed over Naomi in a wave of pain and fear, nothing around her making sense. “Stop!”

  She tried to strike out, tried to get away from the man who seemed to be on top of her, but pain lanced through her arm and leg, bringing her up short.

  “Easy, ma’am. It’s okay. No one’s trying to hurt you. We’re here to help.”

  “They have a gun. I have to go!”

  “Who has a gun?”

  “Arlie and Clem.” She struggled against the fog in her head to explain, memories returning piece by piece, along with an awareness of every part of her body that hurt—her head, her left shoulder, her right ankle. “Escaped cons. They came to my campsite. They shot me. What if they find us?”

  Fear slithered up her spine, made her pulse spike.

  The man took her right hand in his, brown eyes looking intently into hers, the strength in his gaze settling the rapid thrum of her heart. “You’re safe now. We’re not going to let anyone hurt you. What’s your name?”

  Relief washed through her as his words hit home. “Naomi Archer.”

  “How old are you, Naomi?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “Can you tell me where they shot you?”

  “My shoulder.” She tried to raise her left arm, but it hurt too much. Besides, it was all but pinned to her side by a space blanket.

  “Lupine Command.” He had a hand-held radio.

  There was a burst of static, and a woman’s voice answered him. “Lupine Command, go ahead.”

  “All incoming units be advised the victim says she was attacked by two armed assailants who might still be in the area, break.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “The victim is conscious and oriented. She says two men named Arlie and Clem came to her campsite with a firearm. She says they’re escaped convicts. She has a gunshot wound to her left upper arm.”

  Naomi’s eyes drifted shut, the man’s voice sliding over her.

  From beside her came a dog’s whimper, and a cold nose nudged her cheek.

  She opened her eyes and turned her head to the left to see a big gray dog sitting beside her, paws tucked under its chin. “Hey.”

  “Shota found you.” A woman Naomi hadn’t noticed until now ruffled the dog’s fur. “I’m Winona. That’s my brother, Chaska.”

  Naomi wanted to pet the dog, but she was just too tired.

  “Naomi, do you know what day it is?” The man—Chaska—had put his radio down for now.

  She tried to think. It was now morning. Yesterday had been Monday. “Tuesday?”

  “Do you remember where you are?”

  “Colorado.” She’d come here for a vacation. She’d come to keep a promise to herself. She’d come to relax, to photograph wildlife. And now…

  “Is there anyone I can call for you—your family, a significant other, an employer?”

  “No.” The last thing she wanted was for someone to call Ruth and Peter. She’d done everything she could to get away from them. She wouldn’t turn to them to save her own life. “No one.”

  “Can you tell me what happened, Naomi?”

  She did her best to remember, to tell him everything, but it wasn’t easy. Her head ached, and she was so sleepy. “I didn’t know they’d shot me at first. I ran, but it was dark. I fell and hurt my ankle. I couldn’t stand or walk. When it started to rain, I crawled in here. I tried to stay awake but …”

  She was trembling now, memories of the long, dark night chilling her to the bone. “I was afraid they’d find me. I was afraid they’d kill me.”

  “They can’t touch you now.” There was sympathy in the man’s eyes, but steel in his voice. “If they were nearby, Shota would warn us. I doubt even escaped convicts would want to tangle with him.”

  He spoke into the radio again, relayed what she’d told him to others.

  Naomi looked up at Winona. “Is he a police officer?”

  Winona smiled. “Chaska? He’s an engineering geek, but he’s also part of the Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue Team and an EMT. We were just out walking when Shota took off running. We followed him and found him sitting next to you.”

  “Shota?” The dog licked Naomi’s face.

  “It means ‘smoke’ in Lakota,” Winona told her. “We came to Colorado from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.”

  Lakota. Pine Ridge.

  Naomi was about to say she came from South Dakota, too, but the thought was lost when Shota licked her face again. “Thank you, Shota. He’s a beautiful dog.”

  “He’s not a dog. He’s a wolf.”

  A wolf. Right.

  And Naomi wondered if she was still unconscious and dreaming.

  Chaska looked up at Winona. “Be careful.”

  He didn’t like sending his sister off by herself, but the wolf couldn’t stay. Shota, though more socialized to accept humans than most captive wolves, wouldn’t take well to the sudden arrival of law enforcement and Team members, and there was no reason to risk a confrontation. If Shota believed that any one of them were a threat to his pack, especially Winona, he might attack.

  She clipped the leash Chaska had made of climbing rope onto the wolf’s collar. “Shota will watch over me. You worry about Naomi.”

  Chaska gave his sister a nod, watching as she scrambled up the steep slope to the top of the ravine and then disappeared, Shota beside her.


  Naomi had slipped into unconsciousness again, and Chaska was pretty sure she had a concussion. She’d let him take a look at her arm, and he’d been relieved to find only a deep graze. It had bled a fair amount and probably hurt like hell, but the bone wasn’t broken, and there was no bullet for surgeons to remove.

  Her ankle was another story. It was badly swollen, and there were streaks of blood beneath her skin. He’d bet she had a fracture.

  Radio traffic told him that he had at least fifteen minutes before anyone reached them. He got to his feet and looked up and down the ravine for a good evacuation point. He saw a spot about twenty yards to the south. There weren’t any big obstacles—no fallen trees, no boulders, no large shrubs—and there were two sturdy ponderosa pines at the top to use as anchors.

  He walked back to Naomi and knelt down beside her, not wanting her to come to and think she was alone. He ran through the evac in his mind. This was the part of rescues that he loved—besides saving lives, of course. A rescue was a high-risk engineering challenge in motion.

  He worked on the anchor problem, doing the math in his head. Six rescuers with gear and the litter with Naomi meant the anchor would have to hold at least fifteen hundred pounds. He rounded up for safety’s sake. They would run ropes from the two ponderosa pines. Once they had her out of the ravine, it would be a simple trail evac back to the parking lot.

  He checked Naomi’s breathing and her pulse, his gaze shifting to her face, concern for her stirring in his chest. Even bruised and smeared with dirt and blood, she was beautiful—big eyes, high cheekbones, a little nose, full lips. She couldn’t be much taller than five-four or weigh more than one-twenty. The two bastards who’d walked into her camp had probably watched her for a while and thought she would make easy prey. It was just their bad luck that their intended victim was courageous—and smart. How many women in her situation would have thought to use live embers as a weapon?

  Chaska wanted the bastards to pay.

  As if Naomi could feel him watching her, her eyes fluttered open, pain making her brow furrow. “When will they get here?”

  He glanced at his watch. “It won’t be long now.”

  If he’d been a paramedic and had a full medical kit, he could have given her morphine, but that wasn’t an option.

  She turned her head to the left. “Where is Shota?”

  “Winona took him home.”

  Fear filled Naomi’s eyes. “How will we know if they’re here?”

  He didn’t have to ask who “they” were. “I doubt they’re still in the area. If they were smart, they would have gotten the hell out of here the moment you escaped.”

  “They didn’t strike me as smart.”

  “In that case…” He rose to his knees and lifted his T-shirt so that she could see the Sig Sauer P250 compact pistol concealed in a holster inside the waistband of his jeans. He always carried when he went hiking. It wasn’t the four-leggeds that worried him, but those that walked on two legs. “I won’t let them hurt you, Naomi.”

  She seemed to relax—a little. “What’s your name? I’m sorry … I forgot.”

  “Chaska.” He spelled it for her. “It’s Lakota. It means first-born son. Not very original, since I am the first-born son.”

  A burst of static from his radio cut him off. “Lupine Command, this is fourteen-oh-eight.”

  Fourteen-oh-eight was Deputy Marcs.

  He picked up the radio and answered. “Lupine Command, go ahead.”

  “I’m nearing your position. Can you give me some indication how far off the trail you are?”

  Chaska guided her through it, telling her to leave the trail and head east fifty or so yards until she came to the ravine. “Just follow it north.”

  “Fourteen-oh-eight, copy.”

  A few minutes later, Deputy Marcs came into view, another deputy a few steps behind her, both of them heavily armed.

  “I told you they’d be here, soon.” He glanced down to find that Naomi had lapsed into unconsciousness again.

  Pain and the sound of voices crashed in on Naomi again. Someone was saying her name. Someone was talking to her.

  “Naomi, can you hear me?”

  “Chaska?” She opened her eyes.

  It wasn’t Chaska who knelt beside her now, but a man in some kind of uniform. “I’m Austin. I’m a park ranger, and I’m also a paramedic. I’m going to give you an injection for pain, okay?”

  Thank God.

  “Okay.”

  She tried to turn her head to glance around at what was happening, but they’d put something around her neck to keep her still. “What…?”

  “We’ve got you in a cervical collar to immobilize your spine until we can rule out a head or spinal injury. Does your head hurt?”

  “Yes. My arm, too, and my ankle.” Not to mention a half dozen other places where she was bruised and scratched up.

  “Belcourt said you faced down a couple of serious bad guys.”

  “I didn’t do a very good job of it, did I?”

  “I don’t know about that. You got away from them, and you’re alive. Seems to me you handled it just right.”

  He was just being nice to her.

  “Do you have any drug allergies, Naomi?”

  Did she? “No.”

  “Morphine is going to decrease your pain, but it will also make you sleepy. It can depress your blood pressure, too, so I’m going start an IV and then put you on oxygen when we get you to the ambulance. You’re going to feel a sharp prick in your thigh.”

  “Okay.”

  It was more like a jab, but a moment later she was floating, her pain melting.

  “I’m going to start that IV now.”

  A strange sense of euphoria made her smile.

  “You’re feeling better, aren’t you?” Austin asked.

  Hell, yes, she was.

  She heard a snipping sound and saw that he was cutting through her jacket and shirt with sharp scissors, and some distant part of her mind remembered how much she’d spent on this jacket. But then she was drifting.

  She knew when they put a splint on her leg because it hurt, even with the morphine. She knew when they strapped her to a body board and lifted her into the litter. Then she felt herself falling.

  Her eyes flew open on a jolt of adrenaline. “Chaska!”

  “It’s okay, Naomi. We’re just headed up a steep slope.” A man looked down at her—not Chaska, but someone else. “I’m Jesse Moretti. We won’t let you fall. We’ve got you strapped in tight. Chaska is up at the top on belay.”

  Naomi had no idea what “on belay” meant, but she figured it had something to do with getting her out of here.

  Six people—three men and three women—were carrying her litter, all of them wearing bright yellow T-shirts that had the words “Rocky Mountain Search & Rescue Team” printed on the back.

  Because she was immobilized, she couldn’t see what was going on, but step by step, they moved up the steep slope.

  She must have drifted off because the litter abruptly leveled off, bringing her eyes open again.

  “See?” Jesse grinned down at her. “We didn’t let you fall.”

  “I guess Belcourt didn’t tell you that we’re pros,” said one of the women. “I’ll have to dock his pay.”

  Laughter from the others told Naomi that the woman was joking.

  And then Chaska was there. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  They attached ATV wheels to the litter—she couldn’t see this, but they told her that’s what they were doing—and then they rolled the litter down the trail, the rocking, bouncing motion quickly lulling her to unconsciousness again.

  The next time she opened her eyes, she was being lifted into an ambulance, voices surrounding her, one of them Austin’s.

  “She’s A and O times four. She’s had ten mgs of morphine IM. In addition to the bullet graze on her left arm, I think she’s got a concussion and a broken tibia.”

  “She’s probably dehydrated
and hypothermic, too.” That was Chaska.

  He was still there, still nearby.

  A man’s face swam into view. “Can you tell me your name?”

  “Naomi … Archer.”

  “I’m Eric Hawke, and I’ll be your paramedic today.”

  “Hey, I was her paramedic first,” Austin said.

  Erik got a look of feigned annoyance on his face that told her the two men were friends. “Okay, so I’ll be your other paramedic. Let’s get you to the hospital.”

  Chaska stayed at the scene, answering Deputy Marcs’ questions.

  “Did she give you a description of the men?”

  Chaska shook his head. “She was in and out of consciousness and in a fair amount of pain. I was more focused on first aid than asking questions.”

  Marcs nodded, then pressed a finger to her earpiece, listening to something coming over her radio. She had taken over as IC—Incident Command—after she’d arrived, and all traffic was going through her. After a moment, she spoke into her hand mic. “Lupine Command, copy.”

  Chaska had put his radio away. “News?”

  “They found her campsite. There were several spent casings—forty-five ACP. Her vehicle was there, but its windows were broken, and the tires had been slashed. The steering column was messed up, too. It looks like they tried to hotwire it but didn’t know what they were doing. They rifled through her tent, too, and slashed her sleeping bag.”

  They’d been angry at her and had taken their rage out on her belongings. There was no doubt in Chaska’s mind that they would have done the same to her if they’d caught her. “They couldn’t have gotten too far on foot.”

  “No, but these mountains are full of mine shafts and abandoned cabins. There are lots of places for them to hide. Don’t look now, but the feds are here.”

  A shiny black Ford Expedition with government plates pulled up and parked, and three men in suits stepped out, all wearing aviator sunglasses. Chaska recognized one of the men as the chief deputy US marshal who had helped catch the bastard who’d drugged his sister. McBride was his name.