“Don’t worry.” Zack was already sliding his body toward it. “Just focus on getting yourself free.”
She lay on her back and bicycled her legs around and around, pulling at the small tear in the packing tape.
“Got it.” Zack’s voice floated up from below her. She looked down. He was holding it between his fingers, his hands still taped behind his back. Zack wedged the jagged piece of metal into a small gap between the cupboards then worked it back and forth between his wrists like a knife.
The camper was definitely slowing. The sound beneath the tires sounded wooden. She kicked her legs free and scooted across the bed until she reached the spot where the metal had broken off. She turned her back to it, and following Zack’s lead, started rubbing the tape around her wrists against the screws that remained.
“Seth said he’d stolen the program for altruistic reasons,” she said. “He’d never heard of Black Talon until they were trying to kill him.”
Zack was struggling with his hands. “Well, I wouldn’t be so quick to trust Seth.”
“When have you ever known me to be quick to trust anybody? I don’t trust him. But you asked me to find out what I could and it sounded like whatever he was trying to tell me was really important to him.”
Her hands ached. Her shoulders ached. The tape was getting looser. But she could still barely move her hands.
“Okay. I’ve just about got my hands free,” Zack said. “Just about. Just let me get my legs and then I’ll get your hands.”
There were voices outside. Footsteps.
Zack yanked his hands free and started furiously working on cutting his ankles. Desperately she worked the tape binding her wrists.
There was the metallic clunk of the camper detaching from the vehicle pulling it.
She gave up on her hands and slid her body across the bed, feet raised together, ready to kick whoever opened the door. She could hear Zack praying desperately under his breath. She joined in, her own prayers moving wordlessly over her lips. The voices outside stopped.
There was silence. Then a bump so hard it tossed her off the bed and onto the floor.
Strong arms grabbed her. Zack’s body cradled around hers.
Then they were tumbling. Rolling. Airborne.
The camper was falling.
TEN
Zack’s arms tightened around Rebecca, and he braced himself around her as he felt his body smash hard into the ceiling of the camper. Then they were flying through the air again. Tossed from ceiling, to walls, to floor as the camper rolled, like Ping-Pong balls in a dryer. Her belongings smacked into him like shrapnel. There was the sound of metal screeching, things breaking. He closed his eyes and bowed his head, feeling her inside his arms.
Lord, we need You now.
There was a shudder and the sound of water crashing around them. The camper stopped rolling. Freezing water roared around them and seeped through the cracks around the windows. The camper turned and twisted beneath them.
He looked up.
The camper had landed on its side in a river. His feet were still bound.
The sky was growing light around them as the sun began to rise. Rebecca slipped from his arms and curled beside him on the floor. “I’m okay. You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Thank God,” she prayed.
“Amen.”
But the camper was sinking. Water seemed to be seeping in from all directions. The camper spun, tossed by the current. The door hung open above them. He sloshed around in the water, feeling for something sharp to free his legs with. Rebecca tried to stand up, but lost her footing and fell back into the water.
“Untie my hands, please.” Even on her knees the water was up to her stomach.
Her hair fell wet and loose around her face. Golden light of the rising sun illuminated her face. Her eyes looked up into his, silently begging him for help. But it wasn’t the same desperate, pleading look he’d seen countless times before from people waiting on him to save them and be their hero.
No, Rebecca wasn’t begging him for rescue. Instead, she fixed his face with a calm, steady gaze that seemed to say, Please, Zack, don’t let me down.
“Hang on.” His fingers grabbed a kitchen knife. Not as sharp as he’d have liked but far better than nothing. He slid it into the hole he’d already cut in the tape surrounding his feet and started hacking. “We don’t have much time and I can’t swim out of here without my feet. But I can carry you and drag you to the surface if I need to.”
Something flashed in her eyes. Disappointment? Frustration? But whatever it was, within a second a flash of determination had wiped it from her face. Then as he watched, she leaned backward, braced her still-bound wrists against the sideways edge of what remained of her counter and pushed herself to her feet.
“We’re not going to have a lot of time to grab things,” she said. “Your bag is over by the bunk. There’s a waterproof emergency kit under the counter with bottled water, a first-aid kit and a few other essentials. I don’t see the laptop anywhere. I just wish we had time to save my computer and video files.”
The fact she wasn’t arguing with him bothered him. He didn’t hear trust in her voice. If anything, he heard resignation. She seemed to be trying to loop the tape binding her wrists around the corner of the counter. He cut faster. The tape around his ankles was so thick, it was taking a lot longer than his hands had. Something inside his chest was practically screaming at him to free her hands and let her swim to safety. But the water was rising. There might only be time to free one of them. He couldn’t swim without his legs, but if he needed to, he could save her. It was that simple. Trusting that she’d somehow save him would only get them both killed. The water was up to his neck now. The camper hit a rock. Rebecca was tossed back down into the water. A scream of frustration filled the camper.
“Just give me a second,” he said. “One second. And then I’ll save you.”
But she was floundering in the water beside him and struggling to get back to her feet. Pale light streamed in from above them. Dark water swirled around her.
Maybe she wouldn’t be able to save him.
But maybe he was willing to risk his life on saving her first.
Lord, I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing here...
“Come here.” He reached for her, wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her onto his lap. With one arm he held her tight. Her chest pressed up against his chest. Her face was barely a breath away from his. He reached his other hand around her, until she was in between his arms. One hand held her bound hands out behind her back. The other hand slid the knife between her wrists. She leaned into him. Her head fell into the curve of his neck. He yanked the knife in one swift, hard cut, pulling it away from her body. The tape ripped. Her hands came free.
“Thank you.” Her lips brushed his face and for the briefest of seconds his lips felt hers.
Then she grabbed ahold of the counter and scrambled to her feet.
“Go.” He went back to hacking at his feet. “Grab what you need and climb onto the top of the camper. If you can make a clean jump, leap off and swim to shore. Look for rocks. Wood. Anything you can grab on to. Don’t wait for me.”
No answer. He looked back. She was yanking things from under the cabinet and stuffing them into his shoulder bag.
“Hurry up.” The water was now up around his neck. He looked around for something to climb up on. If he didn’t stand up he’d drown. If he stood up he wouldn’t be able to free his feet. “I don’t want you in here when the camper goes under.”
Rebecca climbed around in front of him.
Water rose around her chest. The blade of a utility knife flashed in her hand.
“Like I’m going anywhere without you.” She took a breath and dived underwater. Then he felt her
hands on his. Her blade slid beside his, and the two knives worked together side by side to cut his legs free. The water rose over his head. The tape broke. Thank You, God. He shoved the kitchen knife into the bag and grabbed her hand.
They rose from the water together.
“Now, come on,” he said. “I’ll help you up onto the roof first. Then climb up after you.”
“No, wait,” she said. “I still need to find something.”
Even standing the water was up to his chest and almost over her shoulders.
“You don’t have time.”
But she’d already shoved the bag into his hands. She dived back underwater. He slung the bag over his shoulder and looked up through the gap of the door above. They didn’t have time to argue about this. The current was moving too quickly. They had to jump before the camper sank and they went under. Or the camper could roll and they’d drown. He leaped up, grabbed the open doorway with both hands and pulled himself through. The door broke off and spun away into the water. He crouched on the top of the camper. The river was wide. Trees lined the shore on both sides. Rocks filled the water, creating eddies and currents. They’d never make it to shore.
“We’re going to need a raft,” he shouted down through the hole where the door had been. “Anything to help us float.”
“Here!” She yanked the camper’s wooden tabletop out and shoved it through the hole. “It’s not much, but it’ll float. Should hold us both up for a little while.”
He took it from her hands, braced it under his knees and reached down through the doorway. “Now, come on. Grab my arms and I’ll pull you up.”
No answer. He looked down. Rebecca was still rummaging around in the water.
“Come on! Look, I get it. It’s your whole life in there. I know it’s going to hurt to lose it. But we don’t have time to be sentimental!”
The water was now inches from the doorway. But it was like she didn’t even hear him. Rebecca dived underwater again. He glanced ahead. They were nearing a bend in the river. Large rocks loomed ahead. Reluctantly, he shifted the tabletop into his left hand, leaving just his right hand for her to grab.
“Whatever you’re looking for, leave it. We’ll find a way to survive without it!”
“Got it!” She grabbed his outstretched arm.
The water swirled over her head. He yanked her up through the hole. The camper disappeared into the water beneath them. Surging water threatened to pull her from his grasp. Her hand tightened in his. He shoved the tabletop under their arms and they held it like an oversized flutter board.
They spun in the current. A flat rock loomed ahead of them by the shoreline. He steered them toward it. Their legs kicked hard against the pull of the river. Then he felt rock smack hard against his knees and he braced his legs against it. Water beat against his body, threatening to carry them downriver. Rebecca scrambled up the rock, using his arms and shoulders like a ladder. He crawled up after her. They lay there a moment on the slippery outcrop of the water’s edge.
Prayer poured from their lips, mingling together with the sound of rushing water.
Then he pulled himself to his feet.
“Whatever you went back for, I hope it was worth risking your life for.”
Then he looked down. The words froze on his lips as an odd bitterness filled his mouth.
She was clutching her high school martial arts trophy.
* * *
She lay there a moment on the slippery rock face, staring at the deep blue waters that had just swallowed her camper.
Lord, I know I should probably pray right now, but I don’t know what to pray.
Tears filled her eyes. It was the only real home she’d had. The only place she’d ever fallen asleep at night feeling totally at home and totally at peace. Growing up, it had been as if her mother had always been on a knife’s edge waiting for word from the father Rebecca had never even met. Then they’d become “the Miles family” and the house had felt even less like a place where she actually belonged.
“Seth said he came to me for help.” She said the words out loud but didn’t know exactly if she was talking to Zack or herself. Her hand still clenched the cheap, gold-coated trophy so tightly she could feel it digging into her skin, and she didn’t even know why she’d grabbed it.
“He told me he’d been trying to do the right thing,” she said, “trying to help people and right a wrong. But it had all blown up in his face and someone had been shot. So he’d come running to me. Because he thought I was the only one who would listen or understand.”
Why, Lord? She prayed. Why did he think I’d listen? Because he thought I was weak and foolish? Because he thought he could use me?
She looked back at the water, as if staring at it hard enough would suddenly make her camper rise from the depths like a phoenix.
“Come on,” Zack said softly. His hand touched her shoulder. “Let’s get off this rock.”
There was about a four-foot gap between the edge of the rock and the riverbank, but enough smaller rocks filling the gap to make stepping stones. Zack jumped over first and then stretched his arm out to help her. But his eyes were on her feet, not her face. When she grabbed his hand, his fingers didn’t loop through hers, and when she reached the shore, he let go immediately and stepped back a couple of feet.
“Okay,” he said. “So, let’s see what’s in the bag and take stock of what we have. Then we’ll make a plan and plot our course from there. I suggest you take your shoes and socks off. The sooner you get dry, the healthier you’ll be.”
He pulled off his own sweatshirt, shoes and socks and carefully laid them on a rock by the water’s edge, where the rising sun touched the ground. She dropped the trophy on the ground. She didn’t even know why she’d grabbed it. Her whole world had been sinking around her and suddenly she’d remembered Seth yelling to remember her trophy.
“Seth did a lot of talking after you lay down in the bunk,” she said. “I don’t remember all of it. Probably because he’d drugged the soup. The stuff I do remember doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“I wouldn’t bother trying to make sense of it. Seth’s a criminal and a liar. He’s always been rotten to the core.” Zack sat down and started methodically emptying the bag and her emergency kit onto a dry and sheltered patch of ground. He had always known more about surviving in the Canadian wilderness than anyone she’d ever met. Her brain knew there was absolutely no better person for her to be in this with. But still, something felt off between them. Something she couldn’t put a finger on.
“We have a small, palm-size video camera,” he said. “Not that I can see us needing it, but I get why you’d have one in your emergency kit. I hope for your sake it’s waterproof.”
“It is.” She pulled off her shoes and socks and set them beside Zack’s.
Years ago, while everyone else in class had just left their shoes in a heap in the hallway outside martial arts, she and Zack had always brought their shoes in with them and set them side by side at the edge of the mats, after Seth had once filled them with pancake syrup. Zack had the same shoe size now that he’d had then, and his soles were still scuffed and worn the same way, too. Her gaze ran over the solid strength of the man now sitting on the ground under the base of a tree. The strength of his arms shone in the rising sun. Then her gaze lingered on his bare feet, wedged underneath him, crossed in the same way he’d always crossed them back when they used to sit together.
“Some fire-starting papers,” he went on, “four granola bars, a canteen we can fill with water...”
He’d gone from being the kind of boy the other girls had overlooked to being the kind of man who probably turned heads when he walked into a room. New and improved Zack was exactly the person she needed in a crisis. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind about that. But, somehow, right now, old Zack was the person she l
onged for. The guy who would’ve had his arms around her right now, hugging her tightly.
She reached down and picked up the martial arts trophy. Sun caught the gold-plated metal, sending a flash of light across Zack’s eyes. He frowned, then started patting down his pockets. Funny how light the trophy was. That was the first thing she’d noticed when she’d stumbled up to the podium to collect it. After years of seeing trophies and medals collecting dust on Seth’s shelf, she’d expected it to feel more substantial than that.
“As for usable things we have on our persons,” he said, “we’ve got a utility knife, a kitchen knife, two leather belts, four pairs of shoelaces... Do you have anything else I haven’t thought of?”
A high school trophy. That Seth had insisted she remember.
She turned the trophy around. “Can you pass me the knife? I have a thought.”
He raised an eyebrow and handed it over. She stuck it between the base and the small metal cup on top and pried it off. There was nothing there, just a solid piece of wood. Okay then, so Seth hadn’t hidden anything in the base. But the cup felt hollow. She shook it. Nothing. She laid it down on the ground, picked up a rock and smashed the cup in half.
There was nothing there.
She sat back and sighed, and tossed it in the dirt.
“You want to tell me what that was all about?” Zack said.
“The last thing I remember Seth shouting before I blacked out was that I had to remember this trophy, no matter what happened next, that I shouldn’t forget it. He’d been so insistent about it, I wondered if he’d hidden something inside it. But it’s empty.”
Zack snorted. “I can’t believe you let Seth play you like that. He was probably just trying to upset you and drive a wedge between us by dredging up ancient history.”
Tactical Rescue Page 11