He stared at her. “I guess I was hoping for more.”
She gave him the kindest smile she could find. “To Flint and Sarah and . . . me, it is more.”
For a second she saw emotion in his eyes. Fear or maybe gratefulness. It swept out the last fragments of her anger.
She nudged him with her shoulder. “You just don’t want to admit that you’re afraid.”
A slight smile played on his lips. “You’re talking to a Scot, lassie. We don’t get afraid.”
She held the radio in her hands, turning it off, then on. “Yep, FBI, you’re afraid. You think that God is going to drop the ball, so you need to step in. You do think you can save the world.”
He didn’t move. “You must think I’m the most arrogant man on the planet.”
“No. Just one of a few I know who sometimes think that way.” Andee handed him back the radio. “You may not believe this, but I trust you, Mac. And I’d like you to trust me too. I’m not a terrorist. And I don’t think Nina, Flint, or Phillips is either.” She nudged him again with her shoulder. “Ishbane, however . . . I’m not so sure about.”
“I trust you, Mac.” The words resonated in Mac’s head, saturated his sleep, filling him with warmth that edged out the cold. Not only the cold seeping inside the tarp, but the cold that had numbed him for far too long. The cold perimeter he’d constructed around his life. Only Emma had somehow snuck under that perimeter to attack those walls from inside.
No wonder he felt off balance, out of control.
He heard movement beside him and woke to see Flint rising, grimacing, probing his knee.
“How is it?” Mac asked, sitting up. The morning sun barely fractured the gloom inside the tarp. Mac felt achy and chilled. They should get a fire going before starting today’s hike.
If only the radio had worked, they might have hope of rescue. He and Emma had tried for over an hour before giving up.
Ishbane lay in a heap, the emergency blanket pulled up to his chin, and Mac remembered Emma’s words: “I’m not so sure about Ishbane.”
He knew she’d been kidding. Even Mac could hardly believe he’d suspected any of the passengers of sabotage. He needed to quit the FBI and start a new life, like his father had suggested.
His father’s suggestion had also included finding a wife and starting a family. Until today, he’d shrugged that thought away, not giving it time to take hold. Now as Mac climbed out of the tarped shelter, letting the brisk wind blow away the last vestiges of sleep, a smile emerged quickly when he saw Emma working a flame out of a pile of kindling she’d scraped together from the scrub willows along the river. She wore a red fleece pullover under her leather flight jacket, and it only made her that much more striking.
“You’re up early,” he said.
Emma looked up, and despite the lines of fatigue framing her eyes, he saw hope in her pretty face, in those incredible eyes that last night had held trust, even redemption. “The sun is shining, the air is warming, and I caught two graylings.” She held out two fish on a stringer. “I’m going to go clean them. Can you tend this fire?”
Who is this woman? She’d risen early to go fishing. To catch breakfast. She seemed one step ahead of him at every turn. Mac stood in frozen disbelief as Emma picked her way along the rocks. He guessed that she’d clean the fish far enough away from their camp that if a fox or even a bear caught the scent, the animal wouldn’t be a threat.
“Need some help?” Phillips emerged from the shelter. “I smelled the fire.” He knelt beside it, feeding more kindling wood into the flame. Next to the fire, Emma had piled more willow. Exactly how early had she risen? It brought to mind that mythical perfect wife he’d read about in the Bible.
Okay, Mac, shake that thought away. Mac crouched beside Phillips. “How are you feeling today?”
“Ready to get moving.” Phillips stood and stretched. “I have a mission, and I’m anxious to complete it.”
Mac tried not to let that comment ignite his reflexes. “Really? What’s that?”
“I’m a missionary headed to Resurrection for a month to relieve the missionaries working there.”
Mac sized up the man. With his dark looks and his sturdy build, Mac would have placed him as a hunter. Or a lumberjack. Not a servant of the gospel. Except Phillips had been the one to pray, to suggest that God could get them out of this mess.
“We used to have a missionary in our area,” Mac said, “but he had a hard time of it. Our community had a mix of people from so many backgrounds, he fought against denominations, paganism, tradition.”
“Sounds like the same thing the apostle Paul dealt with. He had denominations within Judaism, and the pagan religions of the Greeks, and of course his own traditional upbringing. Yet he found the balance of fitting into the world he ministered to while still preaching the truth.”
“I recall him ending up in jail a lot.” Mac poked the fire.
Phillips laughed. “That too. But I think that was God’s design more than any fault of Paul’s. I think God put him into those painful places so God could prove Himself faithful to Paul. Something Paul needed, especially at the end of his life.”
“Sorta like, what doesn’t break you makes you stronger?”
“Well, more like, everything we do matters to God, and each step prepares us for the next.”
“Even if our steps seem to accomplish nothing?” Mac ran his thoughts over his past, the plans he’d thwarted, the fear that terrorism could never truly be wiped out.
“But do they accomplish nothing? Consider Jericho. For six days the warriors marched around the city, blowing the trumpet of victory. Six days they did nothing, so to speak— nothing but walk in faith. But on the seventh, they gave a great cry, and God imploded the walls. Or think of the Israelites following God’s cloud and pillar of light through the desert for forty years, every day packing and unpacking their tents. Was their journey fruitless? Or did it create a generation of faithful followers ready to enter the Promised Land?”
Phillips crouched, warming his hands before the now blazing fire. “Perhaps the great thing isn’t found in the walls coming down or in the claiming of the Promised Land. Maybe it’s every step taken on the way. In the end, God has to empower both the vision and the steps.”
Mac massaged a muscle in his neck that had been cranked by sleep. He’d spent his life with his eyes fixed on the prize—a safe America, a secure supply of oil, thwarting terrorist attacks. But perhaps just as important were the everyday activities— training, analyzing potential threats, even maintaining the pipeline. It was similar to their hike back to civilization—wasn’t getting there in one piece, healthy and sane, just as important as getting back at all?
“Even Paul’s darkest moments were used by God to build his faith, prepare him for the next step. When Paul and his partner Timothy sat in prison and thought they would die, Paul said, ‘In fact, we expected to die. But as a result, we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God, who raises the dead. And he did rescue us from mortal danger, and he will rescue us again. We have placed our confidence in him, and he will continue to rescue us.’
“Those verses aren’t just talking about deliverance from death, but deliverance from bondage. Like fear and fruitlessness and despair. Paul wrote that they ‘learned to rely only on God, who raises the dead.’ That’s not only people who are dead, but those who feel dead. As if life is over. God raises those walking corpses and gives them new minds and bodies, frees them from deadly thinking. Don’t you think that Paul and Timothy believed they had experienced a sort of resurrection when they were released?” Phillips looked at Mac and smirked. “Probably how I’ll feel when I get a shower and a shave.”
Mac gave him a wry smile. But the words bit at him. He had felt dead and trapped inside the overwhelming crest of responsibility. Emma had been right yesterday. He did doubt God. Doubted that He cared about people like Stirling McRae and the broken places inside him. Doubted that God would answer and sav
e when Mac turned to Him in his darkest moment.
“Victory lies not only in the end goal but in the steps of faith we take every day toward that goal.” Phillips poked the fire and sparks sprayed upward into the cloudless sky, pricks of warmth dissipating into the atmosphere.
Mac shivered, feeling damp. His stomach growled, and he felt grimy to his bones. To the north, he saw Emma, bent over a rock, cleaning the fish she’d caught.
She amazed him. And terrified him.
He wondered what his mother might think of her. Wow, how easily his thoughts fit her into his life.
“Emma!” Nina burst from her shelter, running toward the campfire. “Where’s Emma?”
Mac stood and pointed toward the figure crouched onshore.
“Emma!” Nina yelled, her hands cupped over her mouth. “Sarah needs you!”
Chapter 13
THANK YOU, LORD, for the fish. Andee gripped the grayling by the tail, stripping off the meat as she filleted the fish, then washed it free from scales and dirt in the icy glacier water.
The sky above looked clear—a good day to travel, hopefully without snow. Her body still ached, her bones screaming as she pushed up from the ground this morning. Still, God had provided breakfast and another night of safety. He’d kept Sarah breathing and her pulse steady. And maybe today they’d get a signal on that radio Mac carried.
To whom does the radio belong? That thought had rattled about her head late into the night, pushing free of even the thoughts of sitting beside Mac, his muscled arm touching hers, his dangerous smile filtering into her thoughts. Around him, she felt not so alone, not so overwhelmed.
She couldn’t bear to feel anything more than that. She could forgive him for thinking she might be a terrorist. Even forgive him for making them all hike out—they probably would have had to anyway. She’d forgive him for all of it because he’d have to forgive her for so much more.
Andee sighed, turning the fish over and stripping off the other filet of meat. She hoped that today they’d get close enough for her to leave Sarah and the others and hike to Disaster. She envisioned herself in her father’s cabin, wrapped in a hand-knit afghan in front of his fireplace. Most likely, she’d be in Fairbanks, sitting in the hospital, praying. She dreaded the phone call she’d have to place to Sarah’s boyfriend, Hank. He’d be on a flight to Alaska before she hung up.
What must it feel like to have someone care that much that they’d drop everything and stop at nothing to find the one they loved? Tears bit at the backs of her eyes. She’d never had someone like that in her life. Never.
Even now, if her father suspected her plane had gone down, yes, he’d call the authorities. But worry? He hadn’t worried about her . . . well . . . ever probably. Not enough to turn his plane southward.
No, her father regretted nothing about the way he had raised—or hadn’t raised her. While she regretted almost everything— her resentment, her lack of trust, her nomadic life that left her staring out the window at the northern lights most Saturday nights alone. She even regretted taking off in iffy weather three days ago and not listening to the pain in Mac’s voice when he’d called for help for Brody.
If only she’d known then what she knew now. She would have been able to see that someday she’d be trapped on a mountain with a man who’d been devastated by his brother’s death. A death she might have prevented if she’d taken the time to land. She had to tell him.
Mac looked larger than life this morning, his curly hair hanging rumpled around his whiskered face, framing those incredible blue eyes. When he’d lifted his mouth in a slight smile, her heart nearly leaped from her body.
Yes, she liked Mac. Liked his quiet demeanor and the way he measured his words, his brogue that hinted at passion beneath the calm posture, and the way his eyes twinkled under the northern lights. She liked the way he talked about his family. It made her ache for a family like his, a family who loved each other, who gathered for haggis and oat bread on Sundays, and who quoted poetry to each other. She liked how he respected her and especially that he’d hiked out into the night to protect her. Then again, maybe he’d only been spying on her, but it made her feel less alone all the same. She even liked the way he laughed and how he called her lassie.
Who would have thought she’d be a bonnie lass? Her mouth quirked up for a second, only to morph into a cringe. Yes, she liked him way, way too much for the secret she possessed. Even if they did manage to become friends—or more—when he discovered she had been the pilot who’d rejected his call for help, well, she could probably survive if they never had that conversation. “I thought if I could just get in the face of MacLeod, the pilot who let my brother die, and tell him what he’d done—I might have some closure.”
Andee had wanted to slink away then, to close her eyes and ears to the texture of pain in his voice. She’d wanted to climb into a plane and lift off, away from the earth and its pinnings, until the hum of the motor and the shiver of the cockpit numbed her mind and gave her heart a new rhythm.
Maybe she’d just keep flying.
I don’t want to tell him, Lord. Please.
“Emma!” The panic in the voice made her pivot on the rock. Nina ran up the shoreline. “Sarah needs you!”
Andee stood, knife in one hand, fish in the other. “What?”
“She’s awake!”
Andee dropped the breakfast and sprinted toward the shelter, wiping her hands on her pants. Please, God, let her be okay! She saw Mac enter the small tarp she’d rigged against some rocks and his outline bump against the roof.
She lifted the edge of the tarp, letting in light. Mac was kneeling beside Sarah.
“Is she okay?” Andee let the tarp fall from behind her, blanketing them in semidarkness. She knelt beside Mac, felt for Sarah’s pulse.
“Andee? Andee?”
Andee leaned forward, tears scraping her eyes. “Yes, yes, I’m here, Sarah. Do you know where you are?”
Sarah’s eyes were open and searching for her.
Andee leaned past Mac into Sarah’s view. “You’re okay. You hit your head, so don’t move. But we’re going to get you out of here. Just hang on.”
“What happened?” Sarah’s voice sounded feeble and scratchy.
Andee reached for water, attached a straw, and ran it into Sarah’s mouth. “We crashed. But we’re all alive.” She pressed her lips to Sarah’s forehead. “We lived.” She closed her eyes, feeling those words to her marrow. We lived. So far.
“I’m cold. My head hurts. And I can’t move.”
“Can you feel my hand on your leg?” Andee asked.
Sarah held her gaze. “Yes. Yes, I can.”
Andee felt Sarah’s legs move, and relief filled her eyes. “I’m leaving your neck braced until we get to safety.” She took Sarah’s hand, held it in hers. “We’ll take care of you, I promise.
I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
“Andee, what about Hank? Does he know?”
“No. We haven’t been able to get help. And the plane exploded, so the ELT blew up. But we’re hiking out. We’re about a day away from Disaster. Just hang on, okay?”
Sarah closed her eyes.
Andee turned to Mac. “We need to get going.”
Mac didn’t move. His eyes were dark, holding hers, void of emotion. His fierce expression sent a shiver down her spine. “Andy MacLeod,” he said evenly.
She blinked at him. Then dread filled her body. She sank back onto her ankles and sighed. “Yeah. That’s me.”
Mac stared at her for a sharp and brutal moment when she felt everything sweet and warm between them shatter like the ice on a highland stream.
Then he stood, flung back the tarp cover, and stalked away.
“Mac!”
Mac kept walking, past Phillips tending the fire, past Ishbane huddled on a rock, past Nina standing with a worried expression and rubbing her arms as she watched him.
“Mac!”
He felt like a fool, and he let that
moniker fuel him as he ground his teeth and walked downriver away from them all.
Women were terrorists to the heart. He couldn’t believe he’d lowered his defenses to cautionary instead of high, where they should be permanently affixed. Obviously that crash had knocked loose more than his grip on reality. It also jarred his common sense.
“Mac!”
Andy MacLeod. No . . . Andee MacLeod. Female. He didn’t know why he hadn’t considered that before. It felt deceitful— her calling herself Emma all this time and hiding her identity. Yes, he knew that most pilots went by a call name when they flew. Crowbar Pete or Aces or Buckeye Joe. But Emma? He thought it was her name.
Not only that, but she knew about Brody. Knew that he grieved his brother, knew that he’d wanted to confront the pilot— He’d told her that he’d blamed himself, that Brody’s death was his fault. No wonder she hadn’t come clean. He’d enabled her lie.
He needed therapy. What was it about him that the first woman he let into his life betrayed him? Independent and feisty only translated into deceitful and heartbreaking.
“Mac!” He felt a hand on his arm, gripping, yanking.
He let himself be turned, fury still fueling his steps, his expression.
He stopped short at the look on Andee’s face. Tears streamed down her cheeks, her expression torn. She stared at him, shaking her head.
He saw her struggle for words. He said nothing.
“Mac,” Andee whispered, her voice shaking, “I wanted to tell you.”
He felt his anger simmer right below his skin.
“I felt sick about your brother—then and now. You have no idea how I wanted to land that day to pick him up. And when I found out he died, I . . . I couldn’t go to bed at night without asking God to forgive me. I felt sick.”
He felt sick listening to her relive that day. He heard himself again, pleading for her to land.
“You have to know that I was faced with an impossible choice. I had a woman on board who’d been mauled by a grizzly. She had four little children. She was bleeding out, and I had to get her to Fairbanks. She had already arrested once. There wasn’t time to pick up your brother—she would have died.” She put her hands over her face. He watched her shoulders rise and fall. “I had to choose.”
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