Light.
Healing.
A future.
The battery light on his visor began to blink, and he turned the drone around, directing it back before it dropped and he had to hike to find it.
Conner skimmed the aircraft over the wilderness, scattering birds, then he cleared the forest and soared into the meadow.
He spotted himself and Pete in the heads-up display, a surreal look at the world below, the two men trying to locate a needle in the haystack of the Montana forests. Then he shifted the drone to autopilot, and it landed. He taxied it over to himself then pulled off the goggles, bent, and felt the body of the drone.
Still not hot. Which meant that his lithium batteries weren’t going to explode and ignite the tinder-dry forest.
He turned the drone over, opened the compartment, and pulled out the battery. He changed it out with the first one, fresh off his portable charger, and screwed the compartment shut.
“I’ve got something.” Pete stood up from where he was examining the pictures. Sweat dribbled down his temples. He’d pulled a space blanket over himself to view the screen in darkness, and now held out the tablet, pointed to a square of topography.
The plane could take photos from half a mile up, but Conner had kept his view smaller, under five hundred feet. The images could capture trees, shadows, boulders, bushes, and hopefully a frightened fifteen-year-old girl.
“There. The red dot to the left of the screen. By the river.”
Conner peered at it. He couldn’t make out a face or body, just the red blotch. Still, it could be something. “Radio the coordinates to CJ.”
“It looks to be about a quarter of a mile from their last position,” he said. “They’re pretty close.”
“I’ll get the drone back up, see if we can confirm.” Conner’s pulse thundered as he pulled on the goggles.
The drone lifted off, and he flew it straight for the river. He’d run the length of it until he came to the search point.
Behind him, he heard Pete on the radio and CJ’s answering affirmation.
“Anything?” Pete asked, the blanket rustling behind him.
“Not yet…” Except—“Yes!” Conner had slowed the drone as it followed the river, a little afraid of a stall. But as he flew it overhead, he thought he’d spotted a body lying in a pocket of rock along the shore.
“I’m not sure she’s moving,” he said quietly. He turned the drone for another pass. Please, God.
And then, as he soared the drone overhead, the person lifted her head, stared right into his camera.
“I got her! She’s alive!” Bedraggled, lying in the fetal position, as if cold, terrified, and clearly hurt, the girl had even lifted her hand to wave.
Smile for the camera, honey.
He turned the drone north, back toward the forest. “Where did you say the team was?”
“About a quarter mile northeast.”
Conner just wanted a glimpse, to make sure... He soared the drone over the trees, peering down for the trio, painfully aware that probably he was just wasting batteries, even time.
And then, just where he thought she might be, he found Liza walking—no, running behind CJ.
On fire to find Esther.
Atta, girl.
He turned the plane toward home and noticed the battery light blinking.
It must not have charged to full capacity. C’mon.
The battery light shifted to red, the display warning of low capacity.
Still a mile out, but with the wind speed—
The battery went black and with it, his heads-up display.
He tore off the goggles, let them hang around his neck, and searched for the gliding drone.
Nothing. He let out a sound of frustration that had Pete yanking off his blanket.
“What’s wrong?”
“The drone crashed. I think. I had it on auto-pilot, but still, with the trees...”
“I probably got a shot of its last position,” Pete said. He pulled up the screen, scrolled to the last photo. “Yeah, I think we can probably find it, if we can map it.”
“We have to get to Esther.”
“Yeah. But CJ and the girls are on their way. And CJ has medical training. We’ll call in the PEAK Rescue chopper and pick up the drone on the way.”
“I don’t know—”
“You need the drone to prove it’s not flammable. Like your girlfriend said, she doesn’t want to visit you in San Quentin.”
Girlfriend. Yeah, that seemed like the right word.
He looked at Pete. “Okay, but let’s make it snappy.”
Chapter 14
Please let her be alive.
Liza ran over roots, pushing away the slap of tree branches, holding them for Skye so she didn’t get smacked. The forest seemed to take on their urgency, birds scattering, squirrels scampering up trees. CJ, for all the cowboy in him, seemed nimble-footed in the forest. And Skye might have been raised by wolves for her ease in the woods.
Liza, however, had barely dodged spearing herself into a tree. And wouldn’t Conner love that?
Come back to me. The kiss had felt almost like a promise.
But first, please, Esther. She wouldn’t think beyond that.
“She seems to be moving,” Pete had said to CJ after giving them coordinates. “She’s by the river, due west.”
CJ had pulled out his compass, turned them the right direction, and headed toward his compass point.
Now he pulled up near a towering oak, stopped, and realigned his compass. Looked out ahead. “That tall black spruce,” he said designating it as an anchor point and took off again.
Liza didn’t know much about using a compass, but he seemed to be hopping from one destination to the next all the way to the river.
She made a comment to that effect to Skye behind her, as she jogged to keep up.
“Orienteering 101. You can’t see your destination, but you find a point along the way that lines up with the direction you want to go. That way you stay on course, despite your limited vision.”
Her words rattled around in Liza’s head as they caught up to CJ, now sighting his next point.
“I think the river can’t be that much farther.” He pointed to a large boulder, and Liza was still holding her knees, breathing hard, when he took off.
She stood up, taking off after him, careful of her steps as boulders rose to dissect their path.
The question is—will you trust God today because of who He is, or do you need a promise of a happy ending?
She didn’t need to know the destination as long as she stayed on course. Walking as far as God’s path illuminated, then trusting Him for the next destination.
Wasn’t that what faith was anyway?
CJ was climbing up a giant boulder that rose from the earth, jagged edges lined with slick, green moss, tangled bushes growing from the crevices. Liza grabbed his hand and let him drag her to a foothold, then scrambled up beside him.
They stood on an outcropping of rock overlooking the river, ten feet below. A wash of rapids frothed thirty feet upstream where the river cascaded over a sloping run of ledges and boulders.
Below her, it flattened out, eddying around a fallen tree, a lip of ledge rock so close to the surface she could make out the moss and striations of age embedded in the layers. The high sun turned the water to a crystalline blue, deceptively cool and beckoning.
“Do you see her?” Skye asked, coming up beside her. She had braided her blonde hair back into one tight rope held in place with a headband, had her jacket tied about her waist. She was tanned and young, and for a second Liza wished she had Skye’s striking confidence.
Maybe then she would have had the courage to stick around, to not run from Conner, to brave him breaking her heart for the chance that he wouldn’t.
“Esther!” CJ’s voice echoed over the river.
Liza heard only the thunder of her heartbeat.
Then, “Here!”
The voice rose
from a place farther downstream, hidden somewhere in the flow of rocks and boulders.
“We’re coming to you!” Liza shouted, climbing over the rocky ledge, down along the bouldered shoreline, then up the next outcropping of rock. She stood, scanning the horizon, waiting for Skye to catch up, hearing CJ on the SAT phone calling in their position to Pete.
Then a flash of red—there—waving just ten yards downstream in a depression of rock. Esther’s jacket. Not the camp-issued blue, but a red Ember High windbreaker.
Liza scrambled across the ledge. “Esther!”
The girl lay in a pocket of rock just outside the reach of the river. She stared up at Liza like she didn’t recognize her. Blood smeared her cheekbone where it had been seared against a rock, skin peeled back, and her lip swelled. She held her body as if protecting bruised ribs, one leg pulled up, the other wedged down into the rock.
She shook as Liza climbed down beside her.
“Honey, we’re here. You’re safe.”
Esther’s whitened expression trembled, her breath quivering, and then, suddenly, her eyes filled with tears. “I...”
Esther reached out a shaky hand, and Liza caught it, held it, and reached out with her other hand to touch Esther’s shoulder, her hair. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”
Esther shook her head, her breath hiccupping. “I...I should have gone back. . .” She pressed a hand to her mouth. “Is he dead?”
He...Shep.
Skye had climbed down beside Liza, was pulling water from her pack. CJ stood looking over the edge, still talking into his radio.
“Shep’s okay. We found him and life-flighted him out,” Liza said quietly, suppressing the urge to pull the girl into her arms, not sure what might be broken or how she might react.
“I tried to get out.” More stumbling breaths. Esther seemed on the edge of breaking. “But I hurt my foot, and then...I should have gone back—”
“Shh,” Liza said and then she leaned in, held Esther’s head against her shoulder. “Shh. It’s okay. You’re both alive. That’s what’s important.”
“Let’s take a look at that foot,” Skye said, moving around Liza.
“Don’t touch it!” Esther pushed Liza away, slapped at Skye. “Don’t touch...”
Only then did Liza see what Esther protected. Her foot lay as if detached from the bone, floppy and perpendicular to her leg, the ankle clearly smashed.
No wonder the girl looked about to faint.
“I won’t touch it,” Skye said. She glanced at Liza.
Liza gave her a just stay calm look.
Skye stood up. “CJ, we need—” Her breath caught.
Her stuttered breathing made Liza look up at her.
Skye stood without moving, her eyes wide.
“What—?”
Then Liza heard it. The snuffing, the low growl.
No!
She gripped Skye’s hand, standing up to confirm.
CJ stood at the edge of the ledge, his walkie in hand, frozen, staring at the grizzly some forty feet away, peering at them.
“What do we do?” Skye asked.
“What’s the matter?” Esther’s voice shrilled.
“Shh—just...”
“Play dead,” CJ whispered.
“Are you kidding me?” Skye said. “Run!”
“We can’t run,” Liza said. “We can’t move Esther.”
CJ jumped down to the ledge as the bear came out from behind the tree.
The animal let out a bellow, shaking his head from side to side.
“Yes we can!” CJ said. He reached down, shoved his arms under Esther’s legs and behind her back.
Esther let out a scream, rending the air with her pain, and for a second the bear startled.
“That’s it! CJ, get her out of here!” Liza grabbed Skye’s hand. “Get big! Get loud!”
Then she scrambled up on the rock, whipped off her backpack, swung it, and started to scream.
Beside her, Skye jumped up, waving her arms, yelling, wild.
No more running.
Liza advanced on the bear, jumping up and down, still swinging her backpack, putting everything she had into her voice, her movements.
She was even scaring herself a little.
But no more running.
“Go! Get away!”
Skye had dug out a whistle and blew it, shrill and high.
The bear halted. Snuffed the air. His head swung again from side to side, as if assessing.
“Go!” Liza shouted to CJ.
The bear’s pug ears flattened.
“It’s not working!” Skye said.
Behind them, Esther was screaming, and Liza guessed that CJ was carrying her away.
“Keep shouting!” Liza screamed. But even she realized their peril as the animal rose on hind legs, swiped the air.
“Okay—run!”
The animal charged. Skye screamed. Liza dove out of the way, swinging her backpack at the grizzly’s snout.
She landed on her side, rolled, and saw Skye disappear over the ledge into the river.
Then Liza picked up her pack, found her feet, and fled.
#
“It’s got to be around here somewhere,” Pete said, behind Conner. They’d been tromping through the forest for far too long, trying to locate the drone.
When, in fact, they should be racing to the riverbank.
Conner estimated they were still half a mile away from Esther, and if he didn’t find the drone soon, he’d just have to come back.
He still couldn’t believe it had actually worked. He’d used the drone to pinpoint a girl lost in a forest so dense they never would have found her. CJ confirmed it when he’d called in.
“Esther was wedged in the rocks next to the river,” Pete said. “But Liza and Skye are taking care of her. CJ thought she had a broken ankle. I’ll update PEAK Rescue on their position.”
Pete had dropped behind Conner as they hiked along, Conner holding his tablet, searching for the last-known location of the drone. Certainly after he retrieved it—even if were in pieces—Conner could use it to prove the batteries weren’t flammable. And with footage from the tablet, maybe the government would even fund the production of a fleet of drones.
Which meant lives saved.
Lives like CJ and Pete and Jed and Reuben and the rest of the current Jude County Smokejumpers.
Almost a year ago it might have meant that Jock Burns and the six other victims of the Eureka Canyon flare-up would have seen the inevitable entrapment, turned the right direction. Lived.
Conner still sometimes awakened, sweating and shaking, his heart slamming against his chest, hearing their screams.
Yeah, he’d had enough of losing people he loved.
Which meant that if Liza needed promises from him, then he would give them. Not only that, but probably she deserved a promise from him. Not because of her fear but because that’s what people did—committed their way to each other.
Promised to keep showing up, every day.
And frankly, he wouldn’t mind a promise in his direction, either. Something that might remind her not to run when he blew it, when he said something stupid and made her believe, somehow, that she was too clingy.
Right, as if.
But, please, God, help him not to do that.
But maybe, with her around, he wouldn’t always assume the worst, could start believing in that happy ending, even for himself. Because with Liza, he could see beyond his circle of darkness into a crazy light that had her smack dab in the center of it, in something that looked dangerously, amazingly, like happiness.
A bright, family-filled, amazing future that included her waking up in his arms to watch the sunrise. And falling asleep to every beautiful sunset.
They came upon a patch of forest thinned by glacial ledge rock that jutted from the ground in angles, rising from the boreal depths like icebergs. Shrubs and bushes fitted into the nooks and crannies; white pine and balsam grew up in the spongy
earthen beds between the slabs. Conner checked the topo map and found a towering black spruce. He turned to locate it from the ground.
“I don’t know, Pete. It’s probably in pieces—”
Screaming ripped through the air and stopped Conner cold.
Pete toggled the SAT phone. “CJ—you guys okay?”
Static, then, CJ’s voice, stiff and sharp. “Bear!”
Conner plowed through the forest, casting a look at the horizon, his instincts heading him westward toward the river. He could hear only the screaming.
Liza’s screaming.
And that’s when he realized he’d long ago made her promises. He’d just never voiced them. Promises in the way he’d reached out for her, needed her, longed for her. Promises in his broken heart that couldn’t scrape her out of his thoughts. Promises that had nothing to do with words and everything to do with the fact that he loved her.
Wow, he loved her. His feet slammed over earth, launched over trees, scrabbled up rocks. Pete kept up, only feet behind him.
Conner stopped for a moment on top of a jutting ledge rock, searching. Saw the break in the trees. “There’s the river.”
How far upstream from them, he hadn’t a clue, but—
“CJ?” Pete said, toggling the walkie. “Come in—!”
Static. Conner took off again, sliding down the backside of the rock.
And although it went against everything he knew about wildlife, about survival, he couldn’t help it. No playing dead today.
Run, Liza! Run!
#
Skye had launched herself into the river. CJ scrambled with Esther in his arms over the rocky shoreline. And Liza had tripped, hit her hands and knees, and now scrabbled away from the bear hot on her escape.
Liza had rounded on the animal, caught up a rock, and slammed it in a wild throw at the bear’s face. It grunted and fell back just long enough for her to clamber back to her feet. She didn’t look back as she ran.
She knew running was futile. Especially over the bouldered shoreline where a bear could hop huge crevasses. Still, Liza fled with abandon, screaming, turning to throw rocks, fighting the animal as it reached out to swipe her.
Playing With Fire: inspirational romantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 2) Page 18