“So, what do you do when you’re not bossing people around and saving the world from catastrophe?” Emma asked, obviously trying to push past the painful moments that surrounded them—from the injuries, to their dire straits, to his brother’s death.
Okay, he’d take that. “I do some carving, fishing—outdoor stuff, you know. In keeping with my macho persona.”
She nodded, fighting a sweet smile.
“I also love to cook. And . . .” He couldn’t believe he’d actually started to say it.
“What?”
He looked away.
“You’re blushing! It must be something horrible. Let me guess.” She rubbed her hands together in mock anticipation. “You knit?”
He shook his head.
“You’re an opera singer?”
He let out a bellow of laughter, then a long, low tenor that echoed across the tundra, against the far hills.
Ishbane turned, making a face. Phillips chuckled.
“Nice,” Emma added. “Okay, how about finger paint?”
“What?”
“Oh, sorry, it’s from a movie I love, The Cutting Edge. It’s about a hockey player who takes a job figure skating with this really cantankerous girl who can’t keep a partner. He’s from a mining town in Minnesota, a real blue-collar haven, and when he returns to tell his bar-owner brother what he’s been doing . . . well, he’s so embarrassed, he mumbles ‘figure skating.’ The brother can’t hear him well and asks, so that the entire bar can hear him, ‘finger painting?’” Emma shrugged, but he could nearly see the moment behind her twinkling eyes. “It’s hilarious. So, you do much finger painting?”
Mac shook his head. “I do skate, though. Played right wing, pond hockey.”
“Figured that. But that’s not what made you blush. I’ll bet you . . . dance.”
He opened his mouth, disbelief filling in where words might have been.
She laughed. “I knew it! Swing dance?”
He felt tiny explosions of warmth inside him at her smile. “Nope. Highland fling.”
“That I’d like to see.”
Hmm. Maybe someday. He let that thought linger as she rose and hustled the group out of repose. She’d fit right in with his sisters, with their feisty, headstrong spirits, their laughter.
Whoa. He’d gotten way, way too far ahead of himself. All the same, perhaps he could enjoy Emma’s company just a little.
“How did you guess?” He took the front of Sarah’s stretcher, hoisted it to his shoulder.
Emma picked up the other end of Sarah’s stretcher and kept pace with him as they slogged downhill through the tundra. “Because you always have to lead.”
Oh.
Well, that wasn’t such a horrible thing, was it?
The day barely lingered to illuminate their steps as they picked their way toward the Granite River. Flint, draped over Phillips’s and Nina’s shoulders, moaned, despite his obvious efforts to rake in his pain. Ishbane stumbled in their wake, fatigue weighing his shoulders, his demeanor.
The tundra, although it looked like a plush carpet of grass, turned out to be a boggy mass of freezing mud that sucked at their feet, saturating their boots. Mac’s legs burned, and his shoulder muscles bunched in little fists of pain.
Emma slowed. “Shh. If you listen, you can hear the river.” Perspiration dotted her face, despite the cool breeze and the sun’s descent into the horizon.
Mac glanced over his shoulder, silenced his thoughts, and heard only the rush of wind.
Emma’s expression was lit up as if the sound of running water might be booming in stereo across the hills. “I think it’s right over this rise.” She motioned toward the shadowed hump that rose on their left. Covered in white artic cotton, it looked like snow against the reddish blaze of tundra grass.
With the night encroaching, she didn’t wait for recommendations. She led them in a muddy hike across the swampy tundra, through icy water, and up the hill.
When they topped the hill, the smell of fresh flowing water caught Mac. He couldn’t see it for the darkness, but he knew Emma had led them correctly.
Earning his trust.
He let that thought saturate him as they descended. Emma turned on her light, surveying the path as Nina and Phillips picked their way down the hill, euphoria evident in their steps.
Ishbane practically ran across the soft ground to the river, twenty feet farther. As Emma shined her light to guide him, Ishbane made his way onto shore, cupped his hands, and drew water into his mouth.
“I can’t believe you found it.” Mac let the words spill out of his mouth before he had a chance to reel them in.
“Thanks for that vote of confidence,” Emma said, but surprisingly, she didn’t look angry. She must be very, very tired.
“I’m just grateful we made it today.”
Mac watched as she directed Phillips and Nina to erect the shelters, her soft tones gentle yet precise. She even helped Nina heat water; then the women washed and cleaned up the best they could.
Mac took the hint, located a bar of Ivory, his toothbrush, and toothpaste and did what he could to make himself presentable to the human race. He’d laughed at Emma when she suggested they bring the toiletries. Now it only added to his belief that he’d been a jerk.
When he returned from the river, feeling chilled but clean, he noticed that Emma had fired up the stove and begun cooking dinner. The light shone on the tight spirals of her dark hair. She made the last of the soup, passing it out and taking little for herself. She sat on a rock overlooking the river as she finished dinner, cradling a Sierra cup in her hands. The flow of the water, despite the sheen of ice caught in still pockets, backdropped the sound of the wind. The northern lights curled in a show of orange and red, a swath of fire across the sky.
“Sarah’s still really groggy. She’s moving some and groaning more but no coherent speech,” Emma said, apparently noticing that Mac had edged closer to her. “She’s getting dehydrated, and I don’t have anything to start an IV. If we don’t get help soon, she’ll die.”
She said nothing more, letting the wind and smells of the night fill in the moment. Then he saw a breath shudder out of her, a breath that look painfully like . . . crying.
The image he had of her—resilient, stubborn, solid— lurched inside him, nearly rocked right off its foundations.
She covered her face with one hand, and her shoulders shook. Emma was crying. She swallowed, as if fighting the tears, and the sound of it echoed across the tundra and into the places he kept barricaded.
“Don’t . . . cry.” The words felt so shallow in the face of her pain. Watching her try and hide her grief behind her hand made everything inside him hurt.
He glanced around to see if Nina might be around, but he couldn’t see into the darkness. He was the only one within arm’s distance.
He couldn’t just sit there while her world crumbled around her. Besides, it rattled him more than he wanted to admit. He reached out, touching her shoulder. She didn’t flinch, and he felt her body shake beneath his touch. “Emma?”
She breathed hard, ragged agonized breaths of pain that told him she bore so much more guilt and pain than he’d even guessed. Okay, he should inch out of his private world and really help her shoulder her load.
He scooted beside her on the boulder, wrapped one arm around her, and when she didn’t resist, he used the other to pull her to his chest.
She curled into him. He rested his cheek against the top of her head, and for the first time in months—or maybe years— he let himself care about someone else.
Chapter 11
ANDEE DECIDED SHE must be having an out-of-body experience or something. She saw herself wrapped in Mac’s embrace, and everything inside her wanted to surrender and let herself cling to the feeling of his strong arms around her. Only, she couldn’t fall apart. Deep inside she knew if she gave in now— especially with Mac gently rocking, soothing, comforting— she might never be able to pull herself back togethe
r again.
She wanted to cry for Sarah, for the unknown, and because exhaustion filled her every pore. Most of all, she wanted to weep for Brody, Mac’s brother, the one who’d died while she flew overhead. She wished she had the courage to explain. But Mac’s grief felt so raw, so fresh, and she couldn’t tell him. Not yet.
Especially with lives depending on her now. She needed to keep Mac focused, keep herself focused. He had so much anger inside—she heard it in his voice every time he mentioned his brother. Who knew what would happen if she told him the truth?
“I’m sorry. I’m okay . . . really,” she mumbled, disentangling herself from his embrace.
He let her go but looked at her, concern in his eyes. “It’s okay to cry, you know. You don’t have to be invincible, Emma.”
She shook her head, reining in the last of her escaping emotions. “I’m all right. I’m just . . . tired.”
He reached up and ran a strand of her unruly hair through his fingers. “You’re an amazing lady, Emma, but you are allowed to cry.”
Her mouth opened slightly, and then she was fighting tears again. “I’m just worried about Sarah. She’s like a sister to me. The only one I’ve ever had.”
“You’re an only child?”
She nodded.
He smirked. “Sometimes I wished I was an only child. My brother would get into trouble and blame it on me. Drove me crazy. When I was twelve, he accidentally set the barn on fire. We were making a fort out of old mattresses my mother had stored in there, and he was cold. We had an old stove my father used when he worked on snow machines, and Brody lit it. Only, the mattresses were too close to the stove, and about four hours later, they went up in flames. By the time we caught it, the entire building had turned into an inferno. My father blamed me.” Mac shook his head, and she saw his eyes sparkle against the stars. “I couldn’t sit for a week.”
Andee smiled, grateful for the story that distracted her from her own turmoil. “Ouch.”
“Yeah, well, Brody and I had it out. The thing is, after we’d smacked each other around, we always forgave each other. That’s the thing about siblings. You can’t choose them, but they become your closest friends.”
She had another urge to apologize for Brody’s death. Instead she looked away. “I always wished I had a brother or sister. That’s how Sarah feels to me. Once when we were in college, I came home really late after a volleyball match. I’d gone out with friends and was a little . . . pickled. She locked me out of the dorm room until I promised to straighten up. Sarah was the one who got me going to church and in the end pointed me toward Christ. She knows me better than anyone.”
“Then she knows you’re doing everything you can to help her,” Mac said.
Andee shrugged, but his words felt like a balm on her ragged nerves. “She’s got a boyfriend. Hank will be beside himself when he finds out we’ve gone down.”
“And your boyfriend—how will he feel?” Mac’s voice sounded strained. It occurred to Andee that he might be having the same panicked feeling as she. He scooted away from her.
She cleared her throat. “How do you know I’m not married?”
She thought she saw him cringe. “I’m not married, Mac. If I was, I wouldn’t have let you . . . ah, well, thanks for being there when I . . .”
“Cried?”
She made a face, aware that she probably looked a mess, with puffy cheeks and swollen eyes. Hopefully the darkness masked her. “Don’t tell anyone.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.” He crossed his chest in a childlike gesture.
“It’s just stress. I’m sure we’ll be fine. I’ve been on dozens of search-and-rescue operations that were far worse, with internal bleeding or people trapped on Denali, and we made it out.”
“You’re pretty adventurous. And you never answered my question about the boyfriend.”
She met his eyes, saw in them something dark and curious. “No. No boyfriend. I can’t see a man giving up his dreams for mine.”
“What if your dreams and his are the same?”
Andee laughed. “I highly doubt some man is going to be happy with me flying all over Alaska in the summer and living in the Lower 48 in the winter. It’s not conducive to settling down and raising a family.”
He caught a strand of hair blowing into her face. “And you want to do that? raise a family?”
How did this conversation turn so invasive? She looked away at the river, watching the water gurgle over the rocks, listening to it carve its way south. “Maybe. Yes. I guess. I don’t know. With my history I’m not sure that it would be the best thing.”
“Because your parents were divorced?” He said it so quietly that she thought maybe it had been only in her thoughts. But, no, as evidenced by the way he took her chin, drew her face to his.
“They’re separated. For fourteen years now, but they won’t get divorced.”
“Why not?” He took his hand away.
She sighed. “I don’t know. I think in some ways they still love each other. They just . . . can’t live together. I don’t know why. When I was sixteen, my parents had a huge fight. I know it had to do with my dad’s job and my mother’s dreams for me.”
As she gazed into the sky at the unfolding of boreal lights, time reversed. She was back in her parents’ cabin, eating her chocolate birthday cake out of a bowl, her spoon halfway to her mouth as her mother walked out of the bedroom, her suitcase in her hand. Gerard’s spoon clanked into his bowl, and in that moment Andee saw everything she’d hoped and prayed for dissolve in the expression of anguish on his face.
“I need you to fly Andee and me back to Fairbanks,” Mary had said, her voice tight, as if holding back a wave of pain.
Once reality sank in, Andee had begged, cried, pleaded to stay with her father. When she and her mother and father had finally stood on the tarmac beside the Cessna 185, the summer wind turning cold on her ears, disbelief had turned to fury.
“I told her I wouldn’t go,” Andee told Mac, “that I wanted us to be a family. That she couldn’t leave, not when she loved him.”
Mac had folded his hands between his knees, leaning into her story.
“She told me that sometimes love wasn’t enough. That we had to live with the decisions we’d made, and I had to think about my future. Then she looked at my father, tears spilling down her face, and told me to choose.”
“She asked you to choose? Between your father and her?”
Andee nodded, aware that her throat had tightened, that maybe she might not be able to speak. Especially when Mac reached out and threaded a finger through her closed grip.
“You chose your mother.”
She shook her head. “I just stood there. Frozen. I couldn’t choose. So my father chose for me. He got in his plane and flew away.”
Mac said nothing, just swallowed, staring at her.
Andee pursed her lips. “I didn’t see him again until my sophomore year in college. Sarah came with me, sorta to cushion the blow. We spent the summer here, flying. He was still ferrying hunters and working undercover.”
Mac frowned.
“Oh, didn’t I tell you? Yeah, my dad—he was FBI.”
“Is that some sort of crime?” Mac asked. The fact that Emma said it with such disgust made sense, but it also felt like a knife right in the center of his chest.
Her expression clouded. “Oh, well, no. Not really. I mean, of course not. Except my father worked undercover. My mother and I thought he was a mail pilot or was flying hunters, because he was gone so much. My mother hated it, worrying all the time, accusing him of putting his job before his family. Then one day she found out that he was really FBI. It was right before I nearly crashed a plane, and I think my adventurous spirit, along with his job, caused her to snap. She came home, packed my bags, and we left, just like that.”
“Your dad didn’t try to stop her?”
“Nope,” she said. “He never wrote or called, didn’t come and see me. I could only guess why, and t
he answers weren’t pretty.”
Sitting beside this incredible woman, watching the wind blow the hair on her hatless head, tears glistening in her beautiful eyes, he wondered how anyone could leave her and fly out of her life.
“I was sixteen,” she continued softly. “My mother and I moved to Iowa, and she finished medical school. Looking back, I think it was a mutual decision—that my dad had a part in sending us away. My parents still write to each other, and they’ve never gotten divorced in all these years. For a long time, I’ve thought they would reconcile, but something holds them back. I think I need to face the truth that I’ve just been kidding myself.”
“I’m really sorry, Emma. I can see why your mother felt betrayed. That had to hurt, not knowing who he really was.”
Her eyes widened. Then she nodded and looked away.
“He probably wanted to tell you and your mom. He must have fought with his feelings of secrecy, maybe even hated himself for it.”
She stayed silent searching Mac’s face, as if for the truth.
He shrugged. “Just a theory, but as an agent, that’s how I’d feel.” How he did feel, suddenly knowing he’d hidden his reasons for forcing them to hike out. Still, the truth burned the inside of his mouth, and he swallowed it back.
“It’s funny how the closest people to you can turn out to be the ones you know the least.” Emma focused on her hands clasped between her knees. “Like my friend Micah, who thought the woman he loved killed her husband and for years blamed her for John’s death. Only last year did he figure out who the real killer was. But he let the lie eat away at him for years until he was nearly numb.”
Mac avoided her eyes. “Yeah.”
“And another friend met this guy, who she first thought was a reporter. He turned out to be an undercover Homeland Security agent.”
“I guess you can never know a person,” Mac said.
“No, I think you can. If that person wants to be known and if you slow down, really care to see them. But we spend a lot of our time loving people as we want them to be. It took me years to forgive my father for flying away. For not coming after me. I finally realized that I can’t make him be a dad. I can only be the daughter I hope to be. So I’ve spent every summer here since my sophomore year in college, flying and trying to repair those years of heartache. Looking past the obvious to what I know is underneath.”
Expect the Sunrise Page 15