by Lara Archer
Ranger Donnell had unzipped the pack the other rangers brought and was pulling a fluorescent-yellow poncho over his head.
Amber tugged at one edge of it. “What can we do? I’m responsible for Ruby and Jake being here. Can we go after them?”
“Take shelter in your cabins,” said the ranger calmly. “We’re professionals. We’ll find them.”
“Wait,” said Onyx, putting a palm against his chest. “You told me yourself you’re short-staffed.”
Donnell balked at that. He tugged on the chin strap of his uniform hat and gave Onyx a sideways look. “A little.”
“A lot,” said Onyx. “You said the tent-camping areas are closed while we’re filming, so half your staff is stationed in the lower meadow.” Onyx poked him with a forefinger this time. “Are you telling me you normally send out just three guys to look for five people?”
“Well, no,” he admitted. Ranger Donnell had always struck Nick as extremely confident and efficient, but in the face of Onyx’s kohl-eyed glare, the man seemed to falter noticeably. “But they’ve only been gone for five minutes. And we know all the trails.”
“Ruby and Jake are from Hollywood,” said Onyx. “They won’t stay on the trails. Man, I told you you don’t watch enough movies.” She untied the black and red baseball jacket she had around her waist and slid her arms into the sleeves. “I’m coming with you, or you’ll never find Ruby before she freezes.”
The ranger looked like he’d swallowed a thumbtack. “Onyx—”
“Seriously,” she said, pointing towards the woods with a jet-black fingernail. “We need to hurry. She’s probably less well-prepared to survive in the wild than I am.”
That seemed to alarm Donnell more than anything.
Onyx blinked her lashes at him coolly. “You protect me from the—the cobras and things out there, and I’ll lead you to her. You’ll see. I’m like one of those psychic ladies that help the police catch murderers.”
“No, you’re not,” the ranger said tightly. Steam was probably going to start spouting from under his uniform hat any second. “And you’re not coming.”
“Yes, I am. Unless you have the strength to wrestle me down and tie me up before you leave.”
This time, Donnell looked like he’d swallowed a whole box of thumbtacks.
“Enough!” said Nick. “We are all going to look for her. Whether you want us there or not.”
“Absolutely,” said Amber, coming up and—to his surprise—linking her arm through his. “I don’t think you can stop all three of us, Officer. Not when you have five other people to locate.”
Ranger Donnell pulled himself up to his very intimidating full height. “I can put you under arrest!”
“No, he can’t,” said Onyx, rolling her eyes. “He’s not one of the Law Enforcement Rangers. He’s one of the Science Rangers. A plant biologist. He told me so himself.”
Donnell’s eyes shot daggers at her. “Thanks a lot.”
Nick stifled a grin. He wanted the ranger on his side, and thought it best to maintain a serious tone. “So, do we go up there with equipment, or without? Because we are going. All of us.”
Donnell sighed, and he was, at least, gracious in defeat. He slipped the poncho back over his head and handed it to Nick, along with the backpack. “Fine. I never gave this to you. I just dropped it here by accident. It’s got all the basics—second poncho, flashlight, tarp, thermal blankets, water-filtering straw. The tarp’s to protect your head if it hails. Use boulders as windbreaks, but stay clear of trees as much as you can while there’s lightning.” He pulled a walkie talkie from a side pocket. “This is fully charged. Ever use one before?”
“Yes, plenty, on shoots,” said Nick. “No problem.”
“Check in every fifteen minutes with me on Channel 4, or with Morrissey on Channel 8 if I don’t answer.” Donnell opened another side pocket, pulling out a laminated square. “And here’s a trail map. See the red area marked here? That’s the search quadrant for this pack’s team. Don’t go outside it. Use the red numbers to report where you are. If you get lost or hurt, stay put, call in, let us come find you.”
“Got it.”
“For the record, this is completely against my better judgment, and you’re going out there without permission.”
“We’re lawless vigilantes,” said Nick, snapping off a jaunty salute. “Got it.”
“And nobody goes solo,” said the ranger. “You pick your partner. Whoever’s left comes with me to the Ranger’s Station while I get another pack.”
Nick didn’t think, he just turned automatically to look at Amber, who had already turned to look at him, her eyes eager and bright.
It didn’t make sense not to work together on this.
They’d always made an excellent team, after all.
Chapter Nine
Rain drummed against their ponchos as Amber followed Nick up the trail marked out on their map. The path streamed with rivulets of muddy water. Aspen leaves and pine needles and pinecones and beetles and things washed and whirled around their boots, making the trail slippery and treacherous. It was strange and beautiful in a way, and she wished she’d been able to bring a camera along to film it.
Every few minutes, they called out for Jake and Ruby, but it seemed impossible anyone more than ten feet away could hear them over the hiss and roar of the storm.
Amber glanced over at Nick draped in DayGlo yellow rubber. “We look ridiculous in these things, you know. Like giant banana slugs.”
“Very heroic banana slugs,” he said, pushing aside a tree branch that tried to whip her in the face. “And reasonably dry banana slugs, which is a definite plus. Besides, if Ruby decides she wants to be rescued, she’ll see us from a mile away.”
Amber smiled. An unspoken advantage was the fact that the ponchos were the least sexy garments imaginable—she could barely see the tip of Nick’s nose, much less the rest of him. Her mind was quite full enough of images from the footage she’d shot last night, of Nick naked in her bed,
She’d stayed up late, trying to edit all the different camera angles into something coherent, and then continued working on it all morning once Ranger Donnell told them about the storm.
She still needed a few more hours to get it ready. And then—well, she didn’t want to think about what would happen then. She’d face that when it was time.
Better just to focus on right now. Right now while the world smelled fresh and clean and alive, with the scent of wet pine and ozone and fertile soil. While they were looking for Ruby, at least, things between her and Nick felt closer to normal than they had in days.
Nick was scrambling over a fallen tree trunk and reaching back to help boost her over it when another flash of lightning turned the dark day to brilliant white. She jumped, but resisted the urge to grab Nick tight. No need to get panicky. They hadn’t been electrocuted yet, after all.
“I think we got the steepest terrain to search,” she said, sliding her butt over the top of the trunk and doing her best not to cling to Nick’s arm.
“We shouldn’t have taken Ranger Donnell’s pack,” Nick said. “This must be his standard search route—and he’s part mountain goat or something.”
“This is his revenge for us not listening to him.” She scrambled up a few more slippery feet of the trail, then grabbed a sticky pine branch to keep from backsliding while she looked for some reliable rock to brace her feet on. “Better us than Onyx, anyhow. I wonder how she’s doing, trying to keep up with him.”
Nick chuckled. “I’m surprised she volunteered. Onyx out in nature, of her own free will? Supernatural forces must be at work.”
“I suspect tall, dark and handsome Ranger Donnell is the only magic required. Did you see her literally batting her eyelashes at him?”
“Seriously,” said Nick. “Where’s her usual evil-tempered hatred of strangers?”
“It’s like...young Morticia Addams flirting with Captain America.”
They both burst out laughing, an
d for a moment, things between them really did feel the way they used to, like they were co-conspirators again, looking out at the world together from the same quirky perspective.
Nick gestured upwards with the laminated map. “We’re almost at a high point. There’s an old fire lookout on the rocks, just over that rise.”
“A high point. Great.” Amber glanced uphill with a sick feeling rising in her stomach. “Don’t want to make the lightning work too hard to get us.”
As if it heard her, a jagged white bolt sliced across the black sky above them, followed shortly after by a barrel roll of thunder.
Amber tugged at Nick’s elbow. “I don’t think Ruby would go anywhere near this high, cowboy. Not in this weather.”
“It’s okay,” said Nick, taking hold of her hand. His skin felt warm in contrast to the icy rain, and the strength and solidity of his grip was reassuring in a way no words could be. “I counted four seconds between the flash and the thunder. We’re farther from it than you think. And if we get up to the top, we might be able to see a lot more than we can see down here in the trees.” He gave her a smile, the sort he’d often given her when they were filming in a bad neighborhood, or out in the desert at night, or driving to a location in an ice storm.
And she did what she always did in difficult situations—she trusted him. He always made her braver than she knew how to be on her own.
It probably would have been wisest to take her hand from his, but the comfort of it felt too good. Besides, she promised herself, this was very definitely friend and trusted colleague hand-holding, not if we were anywhere near a bed I’d jump your bones hand-holding.
Not that the thought of Nick’s whole body, warm and dry and pressed to hers, didn’t have a definite appeal. Especially right now. Well, pretty much always at this point. She didn’t think that was likely to change, not after the things they’d done with each other’s bodies over the course of the last few days.
And damn, what was she going to do if the video she was making didn’t have the effect she was hoping for?
She tried to put that thought out of her mind, focus on Ruby, focus on making it up this mountain and back down again in one not-fried-to-a-blackened-crisp piece.
Hands clasped tight, they worked their way upward, where the rich soil they’d been walking on for most of the trail thinned out, giving way to bare gray rock, now slippery with rain. With fewer surrounding hills to block it, the wind’s buffeting grew fierce here, as if determined to push them back downhill. It was hard going, and Amber’s lungs burned.
“Almost there,” said Nick, giving her fingers a squeeze. “We should be able to see for a good long distance once we’re past the trees.” They scrambled up another hundred feet through the last scraggly stand of pines and one last steep granite slope before emerging at a flat rocky promontory. The crumbling walls of a small stone hut stood out in the middle of the open space, a remnant of the pre-satellite days when rangers sat up here and watched for fires the old-fashioned way.
They stood for a moment, breathing hard, clinging to each other, looking out at the great, stormy world. The clouds were black above them, with a few thinner gray tendrils below, swirling down into a valley full of mist and swaying, tossing pines. It was beautiful, stark, frightening, mystical, and again Amber felt the tug of desire to have a camera in her hands.
Damn, though—if Ruby was out here in just a tank top and shorts, she must be freezing.
Despite the gray moisture shrouding everything, they could see quite a way down, into the hollows and crevasses formed by stream beds, and into bare spots where chunks of granite won out over plant life, and down across the web of hiking trails that wound through the undulating masses of evergreens.
Aside from the trees and the frothing water churning down the swollen streams, though, nothing seemed to be moving. Even the birds had taken shelter.
“I don’t see anyone,” said Amber, squeezing Nick’s palm tight against hers. “Let’s get down from here. We’re lightning magnets if we don’t.”
Nick shook his head. “I’m going to go out to the edge and try calling from there. If Ruby’s anywhere below us, she might have a chance of hearing me. She needs to know somebody’s looking for her,” he said, letting go of her hand and motioning her backwards. “You lay down flat and wait for me. Lightning won’t mess with you that way.”
Before the words were quite out of his mouth, another blinding bolt sizzled across the sky, making the dark clouds blaze and churn white and yellow as though an artillery battle had suddenly begun above the horizon. Instinctively, Amber dove for the ground, and this time she was fairly sure only two seconds passed before thunder shook the air around them. She was lucky she didn’t lose control of her bladder.
Nick, though, was still on his feet.
“Get down!” she shouted, grabbing at the leg of his jeans, her heart banging against her sternum in full-blown panic. “I don’t want you getting struck either!”
“Just give me a minute,” he said, shaking her off and striding forward as if offering himself as tribute to the lightning gods. “Keep yourself low, kiddo.”
She wanted to scream, but she knew him too well to think anything she said would make him turn back now. So she focused all her energy on willing the skies to hold back the worst of their wrath for a few minutes, until Nick found the good sense God gave a woodchuck and got himself back under cover again.
He went right to the edge of the chasm, silhouetted against a weird greenish glow, which boiled through the thunderhead like something radioactive. “Ruby!” he shouted into the battering rain. “Jake! Can you hear us? Where are you?” As far as Amber could tell, the storm swallowed up his voice. But maybe his call was carrying down into the hollows and valleys beneath.
Nick yelled for Ruby and Jake over and over, cupping his hands around his mouth and turning in a slow circle, sending out his cry in all directions. His determination was palpable.
Amber strained with every nerve to try to hear an answering shout, but not even an echo came back. The world felt bleak and wet—and empty of any life beside the two of them. For all they could hear beyond the rain, they might as well have been packed in damp cotton wool.
“Enough, Nick,” Amber finally called out. “Ruby wouldn’t have come this high. Let’s go down, look for...I don’t know, a cave or something.”
Nick held firm for a moment, taking another look around, giving one last mighty bellow into the wind, before he finally nodded grudgingly, and to her relief came back to where she was. She was up like a shot, grabbed his hand, and practically pulled him down the trail as fast as they could go, sliding on the wet rock, until they were down under the cover of trees again.
Once they were on reasonably level ground, Nick motioned her beneath the overhang of a boulder, where they hunkered down side by side at least partially out of the rain, and he flicked on the walkie talkie. “Ranger Donnell?” he said into the mouthpiece. “You there? Anybody find anybody yet?”
The unit crackled, and then Onyx’s voice came over the line. “Nobody,” she said, sounding remarkably cheerful for somebody who must be getting beaten up by the storm as badly as they were. “We saw a deer, though.”
“Good for you,” said Nick wryly. But he didn’t get to say anything more.
The wind gave a sudden shriek, shifting direction wildly.
And the hail Ranger Donnell had been predicting burst loose from the sky.
Even with the boulder at their backs, Nick and Amber got hammered, the hail hitting like a thousand tiny fists, fierce little ice-rocks pummeling their arms and legs and faces hard enough to leave bruises.
It had a furious, malevolent feel to it.
It hurt.
Nick rolled sideways on his knees, shielding Amber as best he could, hoisting the backpack up on his shoulders Atlas-style to protect their heads. “Are you all right?” he yelled over the clattering and hissing of the falling ice. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m
fine.” She knew Nick couldn’t be, though, with his back taking the brunt of the impact. She remembered Ranger Donnell saying something about a tarp in the backpack, to be used in case of hail. Stretching up, she unzipped the pack and pulled out the big blue sheet of plastic. “Hang in there, cowboy.”
“I’m okay.” Nick grimaced, and curled in tighter. “Glad I wore jeans.”
She shook the tarp out over the pack so it draped down Nick’s back, and gripped the near edge tight in her fists. With her heels, she managed to catch the flapping far corners that hung over Nick’s legs and dragged the corners down against the ground.
Keeping the corners pinned, she slid her feet out as far as her legs could extend, her hands pulling the other direction, drawing the tarp over the curve of the pack. Stretched taut, the tarp made a crude sort of tent above them, with a few inches of air space above Nick’s back. Hail struck it as if it were a drum skin, making quick little dents in the surface, but the worst of it bounced off without touching Nick.
“Thanks,” he said, gasping. “For a minute there I felt like I was getting mugged by a gang of really sharp-knuckled fourth graders.”
“No problem,” she said, though her arm and back and stomach muscles burned trying to hold her spread-eagled position, and several key pieces of her spinal column seemed on the verge of popping loose. “On the plus side, I think we’ve created a new couples-yoga pose.”
“Don’t make me laugh,” he said, smiling. “I’m about to lose my balance as it is.”
His green eyes looked down at her brightly, their corners crinkling in an utterly adorable way. Even beneath the razor stubble on his cheeks, she could see the slight indent of his dimple, and she felt a pang inside—half tenderness, half a wild desire to throw her arms around his neck and kiss him.