by Dianne Drake
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
But he did. And the further into this thing they got—and he didn’t mean just this rescue—the more he did. “Shout if you have to drop back or drop out. Always let your team members know what you’re doing. And stay close to where you drop out, if that’s what you must do, so when we come back for you, we’ll know where to look. Like I said, first rule of the rescue...stay in touch.” He was praying that wouldn’t be the case, but this next stretch worried him. As much as he’d been up and down it, it wasn’t friendly. But it cut hours off the trip, and that was what he needed. So he took a drink of water, stuck the bottle in the backpack, then handed it to Carrie, and took his place at Priscilla’s feet, since he’d already carried the heaviest part of the load for the past hour.
And he kept thinking to himself that when they got down to the bottom, there were things he was going to change. A lot of things. “Ready?” he called, then braced himself as Palloton picked up his end of the stretcher and waited for Jack to do the same.
The first little bit wasn’t so bad, but all too soon they came to the first hurdle, a steep descent of about twenty feet. While it wasn’t a sheer drop-off, it was a challenge, especially at the top of it where the path was jagged with rocks and tree roots extended out over the trail, rather than burying themselves into the dirt below.
“You got it?” he called to Palloton, who was beginning to turn around since he’d have to elevate Priscilla’s head to get her down this part, meaning he was going to have to go backward now.
“Yep,” he called back, getting into position and starting to lift the stretcher.
“Can I wiggle in there somewhere to shine more light?” Carrie called out. “There’s that rock just ahead, and if I can get behind it, maybe I can get up top and shine the flashlight down on the trail ahead of you.”
“That takes a vertical climb in ice and snow, and you’re not ready for that,” Jack called back. “So just stay behind and do the best you can with the light.”
“But I’m looking at the rock right now, Jack, and it doesn’t seem like it would be a bad climb.”
“For someone with experience, maybe not. But you don’t have experience, so just follow us. OK? Don’t get sidetracked by something you can’t do, because if you get injured, there’s not a thing I can do to help you.”
“I’m capable,” she muttered. “And I won’t get hurt.”
Jack swallowed hard. This was where he’d known he might have a problem with Carrie. Her need to do it on her own. Maybe later, when she was trained and experienced, that stubborn streak wouldn’t be a bad thing. Her unwillingness to give up would save lives, he was sure of that. But getting her to that point... “But I’m not willing to risk that, Carrie, because we can’t get two of you out of here, and if your injury is serious, you might die of exposure, waiting for me to get back to rescue you. So, no. Direct order. Don’t do it. Do you understand me? I don’t want you attempting anything other than what I tell you to do.”
“Fine,” she said, huffing out an impatient breath.
He heard it, and smiled. She was a handful for sure. In a personal way, he liked that. Liked the challenge. Liked it that she always kept him on his toes. But professionally...
* * *
It was so frustrating not being able to contribute to this rescue in any substantial way. She could have gotten up that rock. She looked at it. It might have plenty of places to grab hold of, and she was certainly strong enough to pull herself up if she could find the right spot. After all, she’d become pretty good at the dead hang and horizontal climbing. And this would be a combination of both, only going up, not sideways. The light she could have given them from up there might cut ten or fifteen minutes off this part of the descent. It was a tricky one, she knew. But if they could only see the next step in front of them...
But no. She was bringing up the rear. Carrying medical supplies. Watching. Doing nothing. Actually, right now she was sitting on a rock, waiting, while they were trying to figure out how to get Priscilla down the next drop-off.
Carrie shone her light over on the rock she wanted to scale. There were so many advantages to this rescue if she could get up there... Standing, she walked across the narrow path, her light still shining on it. To explore it. Nothing else. And the front side didn’t seem to have everything she might have liked to climb it, but maybe around back...
She took a step off the path, then another and another...looking for the perfect spot. Not that she intended to climb. But still...
Shining her light right then left, she surveyed that rock like an art connoisseur might survey a masterwork, until... “Yes,” she said under her breath, taking several more steps to the rear, holding her flashlight in one hand and sliding her hand along the rock face with her other. It was damp. More like slick from a thin film of ice. Something she was positive Jack or Palloton could tackle.
She looked up at the top of the rock. It wasn’t so far. Maybe twenty or twenty-five feet. She’d scaled walls that high in her cop training. But this rock...yes, Jack could do it. Easily.
She closed her eyes for a moment and pictured him. His strength. His determination. He would climb this rock if it aided the rescue, she thought. He absolutely would. And if he got angry with her for discovering that, well...she could deal with it. She had from her superiors before. And Jack...he simply didn’t know what she could do. She hoped her little jaunt off the path would all blow over once she told him what she’d discovered. Besides, with Priscilla’s life hinging on getting her to the hospital as quickly as possible...
No more thinking. She was going back to the trail to have another go at him. To try to convince him that he could have the light he needed for the next leg of this. Now that she’d seen what she’d have to do, and understood it, she had no doubt. So it was about convincing Jack to do it, or let her...that was the biggest hurdle, not the rock.
Carrie started her trip back to the path, maybe too eagerly, because she wasn’t even halfway there when she took a misstep and twisted her ankle. Dropping to her knees, she slipped sideways in the snow and ice, right down a little embankment. She kept rolling, even though she fought to reach out and grab hold of something...anything. But there was nothing to help her. Nothing at all, until she hit the bottom with a thud so hard it knocked the breath out of her, and her voice. No way to get to Jack now. Not even to call out to him as she grappled to breathe again.
So, there she was. Alone, in trouble. Snow coming down on her. Her ankle throbbing. Her back aching. Not even sure if she’d broken any bones or not. Right where Jack had expected her to end up.
Discouraged, and still breathing hard, Carrie shut her eyes. In a minute she’d have to brace herself to stay there. Right now, all she wanted to do was cry. And she did. Quietly. Not even aware that her tears were freezing on her eyelashes.
* * *
“Sorry, Jack. There’s no sign of her.”
Palloton had been out looking for ten minutes while he’d stayed behind with his grandmother. “No tracks?”
“If there were, I couldn’t see them.”
“The medical bag?”
Palloton help it up. “Sitting on a rock about twenty feet back.”
Slowly, Jack stood up, looked around, even though he couldn’t see much of anything. He hated this. Hated the decision he was going to make. Hated that even though he’d told her not to go up on that rock, he was sure she had. God only knew what had happened to her in the process.
“What did she think she was doing?” he asked. “Why didn’t she tell us where she was going, or call out when she got herself in trouble?”
“Maybe she couldn’t, Jack. Accidents happen out here.”
“And stubbornness.” Something he didn’t want to think about but couldn’t dismiss. Sighing heavily, he finally said, “We’ve got to go on.
We’ve stayed here too long, and Carrie...” His voice cracked. “She knew the consequences if she went off on her own.”
Palloton stepped up behind him and patted him on the shoulder. “We’ll come back up at first light. Carrie knows how to take care of herself, so she’ll be fine until then.”
He hoped so. And that was all he had to hang on to as they made their way down the mountain, and the only sounds he could hear were the crunching of snow under their boots and the interminable counting. What he wanted to hear was Carrie. But he didn’t. And he knew that after he squared his grandmother away at the hospital, the worst was yet to come.
Tonight, he hated this. Hated every bit of it. He’d failed Evangeline and she’d died. And he’d failed Carrie. He should have insisted that she stay back. Tried hard than he did. Watched her better. And now she...
He swallowed hard, refusing to think the last. He had a rescue to complete and nothing else mattered. Even though his heart was pounding so frantically it felt like it was about to explode.
* * *
Carrie found a tree that would shelter her from some of the snow and dragged herself up under it. She pulled down a couple of low-hanging branches to cover herself with, then sat upright to keep as much of herself off the icy ground as she could, and to help fight off sleep, then she pulled herself tight into a ball. This was her night, and this was the only way she knew how to survive it. She’d read it in Jack’s notes. She’d skipped ahead of the class and read all the way through everything he’d written, and now, she was relying on it to keep her alive.
Still, why had she put herself in this spot? Why did she always put herself in some kind of bad spot? She didn’t mean to be insubordinate. She only ever wanted to help. Tonight, she’d wanted to prove to Jack that she could be valuable to him. Which had landed her here. And probably without a position in his program, as well. Because he wouldn’t back down from what he’d said about not allowing people in who couldn’t follow orders. He was right. He couldn’t. So why had she done this? Why did she always mess up?
“Because I don’t trust myself to hang on to what I get after I get it.” Because she’d always wanted what she didn’t have, and when she finally did get it, she put up walls to keep it in, to guard it jealously. Like her ambition. And her successes. She got arrogant about them. Or was she merely insecure? Because if she ever gave in to admitting she had so much to learn, she’d realize how much she still didn’t know. In a life where not knowing resulted in bad things happening, she couldn’t let that happen.
So she fought everyone who threatened to show her how much she didn’t know, which was only fighting herself. But she wasn’t in that life now. It was her past, and she had to keep it there or she’d forever be looking for something she wouldn’t find. Her stability. Her happiness. Her true belief in herself. The kind of belief Jack had had in her until now. Until now...
Thinking about that made her sad. And angry at herself. And very, very scared because this time there was no one to blame but herself. Before, it had been her mother, her foster parents, her supervisor, her lifestyle. Everything but her had caused her misery. Tonight she was the only one who’d caused it. This time, though, the hurt wasn’t going to go away or be put aside when she took on something else. This time she’d hurt herself in a way that wouldn’t heal.
Carrie swallowed hard. No arguments now. She’d accept what she had to. And move on. But wiser, she hoped. It hurt so much all she wanted to do was curl up in a ball and hope he didn’t find her, hope she wouldn’t have to face him. Hope she could get out on her own, grab Bella, then slip out of town so Jack wouldn’t be forced into making a decision she knew he wouldn’t want to make.
The thought of putting him in that position made her feel so sick to her stomach that she vomited. Then she wiped her mouth on her sleeve, dropped her head onto her knees and cried for all the things she hadn’t done, and for all the things she had. She also cried for her failure because, for the first time, she was admitting she had failed. Failed miserably. And she didn’t know how, or if, she could turn back from that.
Most of all, she cried for the loss of her dream—a future with Jack. It was gone. Completely, totally gone.
Chapter Ten
“SHE’S EXACTLY THE reason why I want to set up several teams to cover the whole area,” Jack said, looking up the path he and Palloton had descended the night before. “For people who think they know what they’re doing when they don’t.”
Like Carrie, unfortunately.
And while he was trying to hold back his judgment since he didn’t know what had happened back up on the mountain, he didn’t have a good feeling about anything. Not about why she’d gone missing. Or why she’d deliberately gone against his orders. Or if she was hurt. Or worse. Nothing made him feel good or optimistic. But he was ready to face it, to do what had to be done.
“Well, it’s going to take us a while to get up there, since it’s a whole lot worse now than it was last night.” Palloton slung a hank of rope over his shoulder and waited until Jack had laced up his hiking boots before he picked up his end of the empty litter. “Litter’s packed?” he asked.
“With everything we’ll need to get her back down.”
“Maybe she can hike,” Palloton said.
“She’s injured,” Jack replied. “Or else she would have already made it down on her own, one way or another. She’s stubborn like that. Which is why I believe she’s...” No, he wasn’t going to think it. Wasn’t going to think anything except how to pull this rescue off. “I’m glad you’re the one going back up there with me, buddy. I don’t think I could do this with anybody else.”
“Well, I’ve got a wager for it,” Palloton said, adjusting his backpack and following Jack to the path that would take them back up.
“Of course you would. So what is it? And what do I have to ante up?”
“Your heart and soul.”
“And you?”
“The knowledge that you’re doing the right thing.”
But was he? Or could that even happen because he couldn’t keep her in the program. Not now. That was one hard and fast rule he couldn’t break, part of the hospital’s rule, and he couldn’t go against that. Not for Carrie. Not even if he loved her. “First things first. Let’s hope she stayed put, like I told her to do if we got separated.” Yeah, right. Carrie following orders? No way in hell that would happen.
“So, what are you going to do about her, Wiwa, once we find her? Because, admit it or not, you’re in love with her.”
“Mind your own damn business,” Jack said, with absolutely no fight or animosity in his voice. The truth was, he was scared. He didn’t know how he was going to face this if... “Ready?” he asked, leaving the flats to begin the climb.
“Look, Jack. My business, right now, is watching your back. And that’s going to be hard to do if you’re distracted by your feelings for her. So get your head in the right place. Admit your feelings instead of fighting them, because if you don’t, you’re going to be brooding about this the whole way up. And a brooding rescuer isn’t a good rescuer.”
Palloton was right, of course. Maybe if he said the words out loud, they would stop rattling around in his head, disturbing him, confusing him. “I might have some feelings,” he said. “Not that it’s going to matter once I do what I have to do with her.”
“You always make things too complicated,” Palloton said, as he nudged the litter forward. “Remember that time when we...”
* * *
Carrie examined her ankle and decided it wasn’t broken. It hadn’t swollen up any more than it had last night, the pain hadn’t changed, and she could grit her teeth and range it in small circles. That was good. What wasn’t good was the snow. She’d kept it off her most of the night.
She was so light-headed, though. And cold...so cold. Drowsy, too. Sleep had overtaken her a couple times against h
er will, and she was fighting it off right now. Plus, it was getting more and more difficult to concentrate and to breathe. All signs of hypothermia. Bad signs. Sighing, she repeated the words she’d repeated over and over for the past couple hours, to assess her speech pattern, hoping she wouldn’t start slurring. “Your hypothalamus is your brain’s temperature-control center. Its purpose is to raise body temperature by triggering the things that heat and cool the body. Then there’s also vatho...vatho...”
Damn. She swallowed hard, and concentrated on that one single word.
“Vatho...” Vaso...vaso... Not vatho.
It was closing in on her. She could hear it. The slurring was now starting. After that, what? She tried to pull the answer from her memory, but couldn’t quite grasp it. Was confusion or memory loss part of the process? She couldn’t remember.
Shifting positions against the tree that had protected her all night, she laid her head back against it and shut her eyes. She wanted to sleep so badly. Just a minute or two, she promised herself. “Your hypothalamus is your brain’s...what?” She couldn’t remember. In fact, the only thing she could remember was Jack, and it was his face she could see so clearly when she finally gave herself over to sleep.
* * *
Jack wasn’t in the mood to talk on their ascent, and Palloton respected that by keeping quiet himself. Occasionally, one or the other called out Carrie’s name, hoping to hear a response from her but not expecting it. They’d climb for several minutes, then stop at every point that could have been a falling-off place for her. Because, yes, Jack did expect she’d gone off the trail somewhere. So he scouted left when they stopped, while Palloton scouted right. Then they switched, eventually meeting back up on the trail and moving forward a little farther. Stop, repeat, then move on.
It was a damn slow process, but right now it seemed slower than it ever had before. “I’m betting she’s up at the rock she wanted to climb,” Jack said, discouraged by the idea that it was still a good hour ahead of them at a normal pace. And in the snow, and they had to stop every few yards to look around.