He didn’t know?
Well, how could he? How soon after Audrey was born had he hightailed it to Nashville to pursue his dreams? A week and a half?
Ten seconds?
“Wow,” Ben said, and that one little word, the accompanying tone of respect, saved his sorry hide.
“She flies Black Hawks,” Chet elaborated. “Which is why I asked her to sign on to the PEAK team for the summer.”
“I’m home on leave for a few months,” she added. She didn’t follow up with a question about where Ben had been, because, well, the pitiful fact was she already knew.
She had this little issue with downloading his songs, listening to them until they turned her to ash, then, like a crazy person, deleting them.
Rinse, repeat for the past thirteen years.
He, on the other hand, had left her so far behind his father had to inform him of her military service.
For the first time, she wanted to thank her parents for moving them an hour north, to Whitefish.
Speaking of, probably she should cut this reunion short, considering she had five hours of backtracking to do.
“I’m ready to get started anytime, Chet, but first—”
“Good, because we have a situation,” Chet said. “A bunch of campers—kids with a church youth group—are caught in the park. We think they’re up on the Highline, near the pass. It’s possible, with the rain, it’s too treacherous to descend.”
Highline. She refrained from glancing at Ben, but certainly he experienced the same flashback. The dusty trail etched into the side of a granite mountain that dropped three hundred feet to Bullhead Lake. The moraine blue sky, the taste of ruby-red thimbleberries on their tongues, culled from their hike up, and the clean smell of wind over lingering snow.
She could almost hear his voice, feel the warmth of his hand on her shoulder as he directed her to turn around to catch the magnificence of Swiftwater Glacier caught in a bowl of a faraway mountain.
For a long second, the sense of being very alone amidst all that magnificence, with only Ben to hold on to, swept through her.
Such a long, long time ago.
“At some points, that trail is only three feet wide where it cuts into the mountain. And it drops hundreds of feet,” Ben was saying, clearly, yes, remembering.
He looked at her then, as if to catch her gaze, but she looked away.
Chet saved her. “Ben, go get the truck—I want to head over to PEAK headquarters.”
Ben reached for the grips to his father’s chair and moved toward the entryway, but Chet swatted Ben’s hands away, fighting for control of the chair.
Ben surrendered, then shook his head, grabbing his boots and heading outside.
She walked out, holding the door open as Chet pushed himself through. Ben sat on the stoop, pulling on grimy socks, his muddy boots. Without looking back, he strode off to the earth-caked truck parked nearby.
Chet looked up at her. “He’s had a rough go of it.”
Ben had a rough go of it? Excuse her if she didn’t cry him a river. A retort formed on her lips, something about abandoning his fiancée on the night she gave birth, leaving his daughter to be raised without a father, but Chet followed up with, “Give him a chance to get used to the idea of you being home,” and the words just left her flattened.
Give him a chance.
Hardly. Um, never.
And then, a dark feeling crested over her, and she reached out, touched his chair. “Chet . . . wait. Are you telling me that I’m going to have to work with Ben? Is he”—oh, no, no, and her voice went a little weak—“part of the PEAK team?”
Chet glanced up at her, even as Ben pulled up the truck. “Of course.”
Of. Course. The words lodged like a fist in her chest as Ben came around the truck, strode up the steps. He leaned down, put his arm around his father’s waist.
“On the count of three,” he said and then eased his father to a standing position.
“I can do it,” Chet barked, but Ben ignored him, practically carrying him down the stairs to the truck.
Kacey looked away.
Ben settled him in the cab, then came back for the wheelchair and folded it up. He kept his voice low. “He won’t let me build a ramp. Says he’s going to be running by the end of the summer.” He made a face, like “what do you do?” Then carried the chair to the truck.
She shook her head as she walked over to her Escape, climbed in. You do what’s right. You deal in reality and not take off to chase a dream, leave everyone behind.
Her hands tightened around her steering wheel as she followed him through the muddy drive, out past the ranch land, and onto the dirt road that traversed the property. Rain drizzled against her windshield, and she turned on the wipers.
She hoped Chet was patched into the nearby airport for weather updates.
She bumped over a drainage ditch, then cut through a grove of willows and finally emerged to a driveway that led up to the former owner’s house and barn.
The words PEAK Rescue, painted red, emblazoned the front of the white barn. Beside it, the modest two-story house had been updated and painted a crisp white, with a new green tin roof. A porch wrapped around the outside.
She parked next to Ben, who was unloading his father’s chair. She held it as Ben retrieved Chet, again half-carried him up the steps, and settled him into it.
Chet looked away, his jaw tight, adjusting himself in the chair when Ben returned to the truck.
She couldn’t help but notice that Ben had lifted his father without even a grunt of strain.
Apparently being a country music star required a regular workout. She noticed Ben had filled out, his shoulders wider, his body thicker, his forearms stronger.
And with that arrived another rush of memory that only confirmed that no way would she spend the rest of the summer in close proximity with Ben King.
Besides, she’d also noticed he hadn’t once asked about Audrey.
Out of sight, way out of mind, apparently.
She followed them into the house/headquarters and found the old Gilmore place had been turned into a firehouse of sorts. A long center island doubled as a worktable in the updated kitchen, complete with stainless counters, a sub-zero fridge, and a chef’s stove.
Apparently Ian didn’t settle for anything but the top of the line.
On the other side of the room, on a grouping of desks, two computers hummed, one of them hooked up with the weather service, now flashing updates on one of the flat screens affixed to the wall. The other flat screen played an update of the news from the area. A massive, intricately detailed topographical map, probably ten feet wide and half as tall, covered the opposite wall.
“I’ve got the latest weather report,” said a woman emerging from a room in the back. “The weather seems to be clearing up over the park, for now. Ceiling is at 2400, wind out of the east, 10 mph, 35 percent chance of rain. Hey, I’m Jess.” She came over to Kacey and extended her hand.
Dressed in a pair of green Gore-Tex pants and a white shirt with PEAK Rescue monogrammed on the pocket, she had a confidence to her gait and wore her long blonde hair down, a smile in her blue eyes.
Kacey recognized her from the night before, at the Pony.
“I’m the team EMT,” Jess said. “Chet has told us a lot about you.”
She saw Ben shift, his jaw tighten. He shook his head as if in disbelief.
Kacey ignored him. “Great to be here. I hear we have a bunch of trapped kids up by Swiftcurrent Pass?”
“Maybe. Or they could be down by Bullhead Lake. That’s what their hiking plan suggested, and the river may have flooded behind them, cutting off their route back.” Jess walked over to the oversized map and traced her finger across the map, starting at the West Glacier entrance, past Lake McDonald, over Logan Pass to the Continental Divide, then over the Garden Wall, and down to Redrock Falls. “According to the wife of the pastor—”
“Pastor?” Kacey said.
“Oh
, it’s a church group.” Jess glanced at Chet. “They hired a couple park guides, so they probably made it to higher ground, but with the rain and cloud cover, we haven’t been able to contact them.”
“Mercy Falls Community Church,” Chet said. “I know the youth leader—a solid guy named Jared North.” He turned to Ben. “He played football against you and Sam, remember? For Hungry Horse?”
Ben’s mouth tightened, and he gave a nod. “Running back. A bit of a showboat, if I remember correctly.”
Jess’s mouth tweaked up as she turned back to her map. Kacey liked her.
“Well, he’s up there, with a couple guides and about twelve hungry lost kids, so let’s hope that he’s left the showboating behind and has them hunkered down somewhere. With the glaciers melting and the runoff from the mountains, who knows but they could find themselves in a flash flood trapped on the side of a cliff.”
And that put a fine point on their mission. “Right. With the ceiling being so low, we can’t fly Visual Flight Rules over Logan Pass. But you said this was a Bell 429, right, Chet?”
Chet nodded. “Brand-new, 150-knot top speed, with single pilot Instrument Flight Rules and WAAS precision approach capabilities. Holds three people during a medevac, but seven if we remove the basket. And it has a dual engine, so we’ve also got a winch.”
Kacey glanced at Chet, and he grinned up at her, a spark in his eyes, not unlike when he used to talk about Ben making a catch on the goal line or even sometimes when Ben played guitar for youth group.
So much pride, and Ben had never really seen it.
It didn’t matter anymore, however. She couldn’t fix Ben, didn’t even want to.
Kacey walked over to the map, checking altitudes, mapping a route to Swiftcurrent Basin. “Okay, the weather report predicts the ceiling will hang around 2400 during our window, which still means we’ll need an MIFR flight plan. Jess, you get the chopper loaded with supplies, I’ll get us mapped, filed, and cleared.”
Silence.
She turned. “What?”
“Kacey, I think Ben should go with you,” Chet said.
Every fiber of her body thrummed, steel hard.
“Ben could stay and man the radio.” She thought it a good concession, considering she’d have to listen to his voice in her ear.
“No. I’ll man the radio. You’ll need Jess in case anyone is hurt. And Ben knows the Swiftcurrent area.”
“So do I.” She shot a look at Ben. “I don’t need him.”
“Clearly,” Ben said, his tone dark. “You never have.”
She rounded on him, the words scurrying to the surface. “And whose fault is that?”
Ben’s mouth tightened.
“What’s going on here?” Jess asked.
Ben glanced at Kacey, but she turned away. “Nothing. Sorry.”
But she could feel Ben’s eyes burning her neck.
Then, finally, “She’s right, it’s nothing.”
She closed her eyes, the word a punch to her heart. Nothing.
His daughter, now thirteen, nothing. The girl he’d loved through high school, asked to marry, nothing.
Yep, that felt about right.
She took a breath. Twelve years in the military schooling her emotions and she was right back to holding her heart in her hands while Ben walked away.
Not anymore. This was just a job, nothing more, and she didn’t have to let him unravel her. She turned, found the voice that had saved her and her soldiers, kept her sane. “Let’s get this done. We have kids to rescue.”
He wanted to strangle his father. “This is why you came home, Benny.”
Uh, no, no it wasn’t.
Ben had not come home for Kacey, and even if he’d ever harbored the dream, the faintest hope that they might find their way back to each other, it had died from the hypothermia radiating his direction.
She’d spent the last forty minutes neatly ignoring him, and frankly his head still spun just a little from the fury in her tone.
“And whose fault is that?”
Uh, well, hers, actually.
He still sometimes replayed his happiest moment, when he’d gotten down on one knee, handed her a ring purchased with every cent of the tip money he’d earned from playing at the Gray Pony for four years, and pledged to marry her, provide for her and their baby, and most importantly, love her for eternity.
And, to his recollection, she’d said yes.
So, according to his math, she owed him answers. But he harbored a queasy tightening in his gut that she didn’t quite see it that way.
So, yeah, what she said—the faster they got in the air and located the campers, the sooner he could get back and figure out how to talk his father into going to Nashville with him before the man came up with more bright ideas.
“She looks like she knows what she’s doing,” Jess said as she carried a pack full of emergency blankets. They had hiked out to the barn, where the sleek white Bell 429 chopper sat on a retractable pad that moved it from the hangar to the helipad. Outside, a blue and red paint job on the back added color, the words PEAK Rescue outlined in white.
Kacey had already walked around the chopper, inspecting it inside and out.
He’d watched her out of the corner of his eye, a little undone by the transformation in the girl he’d once known, who could barely find a pencil in her locker. Now, she’d designed an IFR flight plan through the park, as best she could given their SAR parameters, moved the chopper onto the pad, and reconfigured the seats inside to make way for a litter, should they need it.
Meanwhile, Ben weighed and loaded the chopper with first aid supplies, blankets, rain slickers, water, and food. He added a haul line, a spider rescue strap rig, and just in case, a rescue litter as well as helmets, gloves, and a heli-tack harness should he or Jess need to rappel.
He hadn’t always been a country star. Once upon a time, he’d even harbored his own SAR aspirations. Loading up the chopper stirred the old preclimb adrenaline.
Jess came up, carrying another pack of blankets. “I know this sounds a little crazy, given our mission, but . . . I have all your albums. You’re one of my favorite singers.”
He glanced at Jess and she made a face. “Is that weird?”
“Naw. Thanks.” He hadn’t experienced many fan moments since his return—mostly, he’d hung around the ranch and lately spent his hours covered in mud and grime, grateful the paparazzi hadn’t found him yet.
“I didn’t realize you were from around here. I mean, yeah, I guess I knew that from your interviews, but I didn’t know you were actually, well, that your dad was Chet King.” She caught her lower lip, her eyes wide. “I’m babbling, aren’t I?”
He lifted a shoulder.
“Your dad said you worked the Esme Shaw search. Ian’s missing niece?”
“Yeah.” Then, glad to talk about anything but his careening music career, “Those were dark days. Shaw nearly lost his mind when the EMS teams stopped looking for her. And then the SAR volunteers went home and it was nothing but Shaw and his money. That’s when he started PEAK Rescue. Apparently, we were the first to have a chopper that could haul people out of the Bob, or off a cliff in the park, or even track them down in some raging Cabinet Mountain river. I only worked the one summer before heading back to Nashville, but it was busy.”
“That was about the time the first Montgomery-King album launched. I know—I flew down for the concert in Denver.”
He found a real smile then. “That was a great tour.” Back when he was Hollie’s mentor, when she thought he could fly. Before she’d turned on him.
Apparently, he possessed the stellar ability to make the women in his life betray him.
“I loved how you brought local bands on stage. So cool,” Jess was saying.
Actually, that was Hollie’s idea, but one he easily agreed to. He clearly remembered what it felt like to sleep in his car or in a ratty motel, traveling from one gig to the next, hoping to be discovered.
Holding o
n to hope, one neon-lit bar gig at a time.
“Hey, baby, when I see you smile . . .” Jess was humming out the first stanza of one of Montgomery-King’s many chart-topping singles.
Aw, what the heck . . . “I know you’re mine, for a little while . . .”
“To have and to hold, and life is right . . .”
He gave a chuckle, but the song died and he gave a rueful smile. “At least it’s catchy.”
“I still have it on my playlist. I can’t believe you’re actually here for the summer.”
Is that what his dad had told her? He blew out a breath. Right, well. “We’ll see. I need to get Dad into rehab.”
“He looks better,” she said, adding MREs to another duffel bag.
He did? “He’s getting around more. Misses flying.”
“I’ll bet. He and Ian are pretty close. Ian probably needs a friend—poor guy. I can’t imagine losing someone you love like that.”
“There were some who thought she might have run off with her boyfriend. But we gave it our best effort. Spent the entire summer searching nooks and crannies of the forest.” Ben loaded in the blankets. “I couldn’t help but wonder if she had run away.”
If he’d known Kacey would be part of the homecoming package, he might have run away too.
“So, you’ve done a lot of hiking in the park? Your dad said you knew the Swiftcurrent area,” Jess asked as she pulled her blonde hair back into a quick braid.
Thanks, Dad, for bringing that up. He nodded.
But his conscience nudged him.
“Actually, Kacey and I hiked the Swiftcurrent Pass when we were kids.”
Jess raised her eyes to him.
“We were on a camping trip—not unlike these kids. And Kacey and I sort of got separated from the group.” That was the most delicate way to say it, he guessed.
Mostly, he’d wanted to see the view from the Swiftcurrent Fire Lookout tower. A view that included Kacey in his arms.
“We’d hiked up ahead of the group—they were on their way to Granite Park Chalet—and I figured we’d see the lookout, then meet them back at the chalet. We stayed too long, and I got mixed up, and we nearly found ourselves stuck on the mountain with night falling and the temperatures dropping. We made it back to the group, but everyone was pretty shook up. Dad and a couple of the other leaders got worried and started searching for us.”
Wild Montana Skies Page 4