by Dianne Drake
Eric glanced over at her, too overcome to speak. What they did together…professionally, it was a perfect fit. But personally…yes, he would definitely get down on his knees to beg Dinah’s patience with him. “I’m glad you were here,” he said, his voice rough. Maybe beg more while he was down there.
“Well, I seem to be getting better at emergency rescue.”
“Not for that,” he said. “For me. I’m glad you were here for me.”
It took fifteen more minutes to stabilize Fallon for transport, fifteen minutes getting the IV in her vein, getting oxygen started. Fifteen minutes trying not to look at the facial fractures, the cuts, the unknown conditions that could only be diagnosed in the hospital. But she was alive, and that’s what Eric kept telling himself as his team stabilized her neck and strapped her to the stretcher.
Rescue was always personal, but never this personal. And he was drained, physically and emotionally.
“She’s going to make it,” Dinah reassured him, slipping her arm around his waist. “I know she’s in rough shape right now, but she’s going to pull through.”
“That was a good call on her breathing,” he said, leaning in, savoring her physical support as much as her touch.
“And that was pretty slick work, getting her airway opened up so quickly.” She leaned her head into his side. “We’re good together, aren’t we?”
“Perfect.” So now that he knew, without a doubt, what he wanted, all he had to do was figure out how to make it happen. What would it take to convince Dinah to bridge the distance she always drew between them? Bridge it permanently. “Look, will you do me a favour? I’m going to stay here and clean up the site. Pick up the trash, make sure we’re not leaving any equipment behind. Do you mind going to Pippa and Paige? They were too close to this, and I don’t want them to be scared. I’ll call them when I get out of here and get cell phone reception, but I’d feel better knowing you’re with them until I can get home. Janice is good, but even the girls recognize that she gets nervous. Right now, as they saw the plane, and I’m sure they’ve heard all about it, I’d like you to—”
“You don’t have to ask, Eric. I’m on my way.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “Too bad you haven’t moved into your new house, because I saw a Jacuzzi there, and that would sure be a nice place for us to relax once the girls are asleep for the night.”
“Damn,” he groaned. “That’s the best offer I’ve had in years, and I have no way of taking you up on it.”
“Not now you don’t. But maybe in a while…”
“Do you mean that, Dinah?”
“I want to mean it, Eric. I really want to mean it. But it’s not easy to admit, not easy to do, and my life is still a mess…”
That distance again… Damn, what was he going to do? Rather than trying to find the impossible answer, he pulled her roughly to his chest, breaking that distance, if only for the moment, and kissed her hard and fast on her lips, then pushed her away. “We’ll continue that later, but I want you going down the mountain with the team now. OK?”
She kissed her fingertips, dirty as they were, and brushed them across his lips. “OK.” Then she trotted down the trail after the rest of the team.
Eric kept the flashlight trained on her until she was out of sight then he began the clean-up. Truth was, he could have come back in the morning. There was no great hurry to get this done. But right now he wanted to be alone. He had a lot of thinking to do. And he needed to do it now.
“I was just checking on Fallon, and she’s in pretty bad shape,” Dinah whispered to Janice. Pippa and Paige were busy in the kitchen, making sandwiches for Eric. Ten sandwiches and counting, made out of every conceivable thing from the kitchen that could be slapped between two pieces of bread. Including the cookie dough. “We lost one, several are critical, most are stable, though.”
“Which is a blessing,” Janice said. “Although, I’m so sorry for the one who didn’t make it.” She glanced at the pendulum clock on the wall. “How long before he’ll be home?”
“Actually, I thought he’d be here by now.” It had been only two hours, and maybe it was merely her eagerness to be in his arms that had protracted those hours into an interminable length. “But who knows? Maybe he’s taking some of the equipment back to the hospital, or even checking on some of the victims who’ll be treated there? He’s probably in the emergency room right now, totally unaware of the time.”
“He needs someone to make him aware,” Janice said. “Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been happy having him here, and I love Pippa and Paige. But they need another life…all of them. And I…well. So do I. I’m not getting any younger, and there’s this really nice man who owns a little café across the street from my shop. We have lunch together a couple times a week, and we’ve even gone out in the evenings. Yet…”
“You haven’t been able to bring him home.”
Eric’s sister shook her head. “My daughter, Debbi, has a life. She’s decided to go to Chicago next month, after she graduates from high school, and one of Gabrielle’s friends there is going to make sure she doesn’t get herself into too much trouble. Which means I’ll be alone for the first time in eighteen years. And I’m looking forward to it. Though I’ll be sad to see her go, sad to see Eric and the twins go, too.”
“Sad, but not sad.”
“Does that sound terrible, Dinah?”
“It sounds normal. And you deserve it.”
“But I worry, because Eric is so caught up in the past. And I want him to move on with his life. This house he’s buying is a good thing, and I have an idea it has something to do with you. So does his taking off his wedding band, and finally putting Patricia’s photo away.”
“Her photo?”
“The one on his desk at work. He called me the other day, had me come and take it.”
Dinah had seen him stare at that photo so often, seen that distant look in his eyes when he did. These changes couldn’t be easy for him, and yet he did them so quietly, and with so much strength. Not like her, making her changes kicking and screaming and being so resistant. Even tonight, when he’d asked her if she meant it…the Jacuzzi with overtones of so much more…she hadn’t said she meant it. She’d said she was trying to mean it. Then said it wasn’t easy. Wasn’t easy… In truth, it was the easiest thing she’d ever done, falling in love with Eric. And the instant he walked through that door, she was going to tell him so.
“Still no word?” Dinah asked one of the rescuers who was still lingering in the hospital, helping to get all the plane crash patients settled in. It had been four hours and she was pacing the emergency department halls now, making a nuisance of herself.
“He’s fine, Dinah. Sometimes Eric likes to unwind after these things. He’s gone off before. Don’t worry.” George Fitzhenry, one of team leaders, squeezed her shoulder. “He’s had a lot on his mind and sometimes you simply need to get away to think.”
“I suppose you’re right.” George knew Eric’s habits, and he wasn’t concerned. So she shouldn’t be concerned either. She was, though. Everything in her screamed she had to be concerned. “But he was anxious to get back to Pippa and Paige.”
“And he knows they’re in bed by now. I think it’s too soon to be so worried. Eric will turn up when he’s ready.”
“But couldn’t we do some kind of preliminary search?”
George shook his head. “It’s too soon. People haven’t even gotten home from the last effort. But if he hasn’t called or come back in another hour or two, we’ll look for him. Right now it’s better to wait.”
“Sure,” she said, starting to turn away. But the voice screaming in her head wouldn’t let her turn away. Trust yourself, Dinah! Trust yourself! That voice wouldn’t let her be talked out of what she felt, what she knew. Trust yourself, Dinah. Eric’s life depended on that! “He’s in trouble, George. You’re wrong about this, and we do need to be worried. Something’s wrong, and I’m going back out there to look for him. I’ll need someo
ne with me so I’m going to go find Neil and tell him to call a rescue. Now.”
After Dinah found Neil, and demanded action, he shut the patient chart he’d been writing in, retracted the point on his pen then tossed both pen and chart on the desk. “I’ll have a team ready in twenty minutes.”
Twenty minutes…too long. But going out there alone was stupid. Eric would be the first one to tell her so. Now it was a matter of fighting her will, because everything inside her wanted to run for the door and not look back. The deeper sense inside her, though, the sense Eric had put there, was holding her back, forcing her to finally do this the right way. Because it was Eric’s life on the line. Eric… “I’ll be waiting.” Waiting the longest wait of her life.
Neil ran the effort without a hitch. A dozen people were at the hospital door in a matter of minutes, still dirty from the night’s earlier rescue, ready to go back out, ready to find Eric. In those few minutes while she waited, Dinah tried his cell phone over and over. Tried to get through to Ella Clark, to see if Eric’s truck, driven there earlier by Jess Weldon, was still there, but Ella wasn’t answering. Neil said she took off her hearing aid at night.
Various people from town called in, all reporting no sign of him. Apparently, there was a foot search going on. People were walking the streets, looking for his truck. Not that Eric was the type who would be so irresponsible as to simply wander off this way. He wouldn’t, and Dinah was biting her nails with worry. “The first thing I’m going to do when we find him is hug him and tell him how much I love him,” she said on the cell phone to Angela. “The second thing I’m going to do is…tell him again how much I love him.”
“He’s going to be fine,” her sister reassured her. “He probably has a flat tire.”
Or he’d fallen off the side of a mountain somewhere. “Look, I’ll call you. Neil’s got everybody ready to go out so I’ve got to run.” And run was what she did. To the truck, to climb into the front seat with Neil. To the site where they’d last seen his truck at the landing strip the instant Neil had stopped his own truck. To the place in the woods where they’d found Fallon, to make sure he’d cleaned the site. Which he had. By the time Neil had caught up with her, she already knew everything there was to know at that particular site. Eric wasn’t there.
“I have people tracking him down the road,” Neil explained. “Driving it, taking the side roads. Walking it, to look for any indication of where he might have gone over.”
“And that’s it? That’s all we can do?”
“Eric’s not given to doing stupid things. He knows how to leave signs if he’s in trouble, and he knows how to take care of himself until we can get to him.”
Words meant to calm her down, but it wasn’t working. “Look, I’m going to get out and walk down the main road like the others are doing. Maybe I’ll see something…” She shrugged. “Maybe I won’t, but at least I’ll be doing something other than sitting.” Something was better than nothing.
So she climbed out of Neil’s truck and began her descent down the road leading away from the middle Sister, thinking about the Ute Indian legend. If ever there was a time when the Three Sisters needed to protect someone in their shadows, this was it. Looking up to the oldest Sister, which towered over this, the middle Sister, she prayed for the three of them to work their magic, and work it fast.
Rescuers in front of her, sweeping the road with their flashlights, walked slowly, looking everywhere. It was a methodical search as they hunted two by two, darting off the road into the underbrush every now and again then returning to the road, dejected. Coming up behind them, having a second look at everything the way she was, was probably a waste of time, but she was trying to think like Eric now. He had been going to clean up and go to the girls. He might have been in a hurry… Had the girls called him? Or had he called the girls, like he’d promised? Flipping open her phone, she wondered. “Hello, Janice,” she said when Eric’s sister answered.
“Did you find him?” Janice choked.
“No, not yet. But we’ve got a dozen people out on the mountain, and at least that many in town. There’s a good chance he’s had trouble with his truck.” No one knew that, no one had even speculated, but Janice needed to hear something reassuring, although Dinah wasn’t sure if she’d said it for Janice’s sake or for her own. “But what I need to know is if he called the twins. I remembered him telling me that he’d call them when he got out of here, so I was wondering…”
“Just a minute,” Janice interrupted, then dropped the phone. Almost immediately, she was back on. “He did call them. Told them he was on his way home, and to get the cookie dough ready.”
“And that’s all?”
“That’s all they said, except they wanted more chocolate chips.”
Wanted more chocolate chips. The words kept coming back to her, nagging, not letting go, for the next several minutes on her trek down the road. More chocolate chips…“Neil,” she said when she called him on his cell phone. “If I were on the middle Sister and wanted to go and find a bag of chocolate chips, where would I go?”
“What the hell are you talking about, Dinah?” he snapped.
“Chocolate chips. Where would be the best place to find them on my way home from the middle Sister?”
“Is there a point to this?”
“I don’t know…maybe.” Would he have gone for chocolate chips?
“You’d go to Bertie’s Convenient Store, open all night. At the fork, halfway down the main road, you’d take the road to the west, go about a mile, and if you knew the short cut, you’d come to the giant boulder—it looks like an old lady with a crooked nose—and take the dirt road around it…more like a wide, dirt path.”
“Would Eric know the short cut?” she asked.
“Would Eric have gone to Bertie’s for chocolate chips?” Neil asked, gunning his engine. Before Dinah could answer his question, he’d pulled up alongside her. “Get in,” he said, barely stopping.
She was in, door not quite shut when he took off, but not before he’d radioed his position to several of the rescue team. “It makes as much sense as anything else does.” Dinah fastened her seat belt. “Everything he does is for the girls, and if they wanted chocolate chips, I think he’d go out in a blizzard to get them.”
“Well, apparently he’s more predictable for you than he is for me, because there’s no way I’d have put chocolate chips together with him going missing.”
“Let’s hope he’s predictable this time.” Gripping the side of the seat as Neil took the turn at the fork, all she could do was stare out the window, hoping to see something…anything. But all she saw was a dark, nearly starless night, where glowing eyes stared out from their bushy hiding places, and bugs darted in and out of the truck’s headlights. Truth was, there was nothing to see. Without light it was hopeless. But waiting until morning was unthinkable. Neil knew that, every rescue worker out on the hunt knew that. Yet they were there, doing what they had to do, breaking Eric’s own rules about this kind of night search, to find Eric. “So, how much farther to this boulder?”
Neil lifted his hand from the steering wheel at the same moment he stepped on the brake and pointed to it. “Right there.”
In the night shadows, it did resemble the profile of an old woman with a hooked nose. “Should we drive, or walk?”
“Eric’s truck is heavier than mine so he might have gone this way. But I can’t drive it because after all the rains and flooding we’ve had recently, my truck will get bogged down.” He stopped the truck directly under the old woman’s nose. “So we’ll walk for a while and see what we can find.”
Words said to no one, as Dinah was already on her way out the door.
Together, they walked about half a mile down a rutted, muddy path, slipping and sliding, most of the time hanging on to each other to keep themselves upright. “The tracks look fresh,” Dinah said, shining her flashlight on the road.
“Kids in town like to come down this way. They use it for a lov
ers’ lane.”
“Well, it’s isolated enough.” Too isolated, she thought, while trying to extricate her boot from a particularly deep rut…one that looked like it could open up and swallow the whole town of White Elk. Stopping, she bent to help her foot slip back into the boot and dropped her flashlight. It plopped, more than rolled, and its beam fixed on a little grassy patch off to the side of the road. She didn’t pay attention until after she’d got her boot back on and was going to get her flashlight. That’s when she saw it. A pink shoelace.
Dinah gasped. “He’s here,” she whispered, then immediately yelled, “Eric, can you hear me? Eric!”
“Eric!” Neil yelled, not sure why or how Dinah had decided this was the place. But he yelled again, and began frantically sweeping his light from one side of the road to the other.
“Eric,” Dinah yelled again. “Where are you?” She grabbed up the shoelace, tucked it into her pocket, and studied the spot for a moment. “I think the tracks are his,” she said, looking on down the road, still seeing nothing. “I think he came this way, something happened, and he tossed a pink shoelace out the window as a sign.”
“A pink shoelace?”
“Long story,” Dinah said, moving on ahead in mud halfway up to her knees now. Neil was flanking her on the right, keeping his distance and keeping his eyes peeled for anything on that side of the road. But Dinah was the one who found it…found the spot about three hundred yards away when the tire marks veered off… “Here,” she choked, running straight into the waist-high prairie grass, following tracks that had flattened the grass. “Eric, can you hear me?”
In response, a honk. Which brought immediate tears of relief as she followed the trail until it came to the overturned vehicle. It was on its side. Lights still on, shining into the trees. “Eric,” she choked, dropping to the ground to look into the cab.
He smiled at her. Cut, bloody. Half-strangled by the seat belt. Beautiful. “I thought you’d never get here,” he choked, his voice hoarse.