Blind Trust

by Jody Klaire

  Instead, Renee stood smiling at me like I’d just told her the best piece of news she’d heard all day. I shrugged, not knowing how else to respond. I stared down at my feet, shuffling them. She reached out for my arm.

  “Aeron, I—”

  “Help!”

  My head filled with a blasting voice which rattled through my skull. I gripped my head.

  “Help me . . . God, please help me!”

  “Aeron what’s—?”

  “Someone’s down there!” My voice sounded shrill to my own ears. It rose above the clanging din of the pleading voice. I looked down. I had the harness on and was sliding my way down the slope, Renee next to me.

  “Where. I need a direction.” Renee’s eyes tracked over the shards of glass, debris, and spear-like tree remains littering our way.

  “Oh Lord . . . Help!”

  I scanned the route, listening for something to tell me where the survivor was. The smell of gasoline registered and I searched for any kind of vehicle, crushed or otherwise.

  “Gas,” I told Renee. “Anything, anywhere you can see it?”

  Her grey eyes almost sparkled as the low setting sun washed everything in pinks and oranges like it was painting the deep blue. Those rich eyes travelled every inch of the ground as I watched her, the desperation thudded through my veins. She would know. She was the hero.

  Her gaze halted and her eyes narrowed. “There’s two trees bent over. Glass debris . . . it rolled.” She looked at me. “It’s our best bet.”

  “Anything?” one of the rescue team yelled down to us.

  I nodded at Renee. “Lead the way.”

  “West of us,” Renee called up, her focus solely on the task, Commander Black roaring to the surface. I felt tingles just watching her.

  “Heading down there. Be ready,” she called up to the team.

  “You got it!” Mark yelled back.

  She looked at me and shrugged. “It’s quicker.”

  Her feet glided over the surface like she had been born to hang on the end of a rope. Her instructions to me, although quiet, were filled with confidence. This was her element, right here, the precipice between life and death where all heroes thrive.

  Me, on the other hand, heck, I must have looked like a demolition ball as I fumbled after her. She was cat like, I was more like a buffalo attempting to ice skate.

  “You getting anything?” she asked as she cleared a mean-looking shard of metal out of the way. “Any closer to them?”

  The voice was quiet, my own heart had replaced the alarmed begging. “I can’t hear anything.” I could hear myself panting.

  We had to find them. Please let us find them.

  “Focus,” Renee said. “Close your eyes. You did it with Charlie.”

  That was true. I had. “But I don’t know their name,” I said, opening my eyes. “I called out his name.”

  A hand touched my own and Renee’s steely determination blasted from her like a howling gale. “You can do this. I believe in you.”

  Gripping her hand, I closed my eyes. I had never been taught how to use my burdens and I’d spent my whole life trying to block everything out. I knew about jewelry guiding me and now names, but how did I find this person.

  “Concentrate on what you heard,” Renee said. “You smelled gas. Did you hear anything?”

  I tried to recall the voice. “Some kinda bird. Like a shak, shak, shak sound.”

  Renee squeezed my arm, and I opened my eyes. “Steller’s jay.” She headed to the place she’d picked out. “Thank God for Welcome Wagons.”

  “Welcome—”

  “Little picnic robbing thieves,” she said with a grin. “Where there’s food . . .”

  I scrambled after her to keep up. The snow and ice made its way into my boots. I promised myself that the next chattering bird I saw, I’d give it a bag of the nicest seeds I could find.

  “Please . . . please . . .”

  “They’re fading fast. Can you see anything?” The panic shot through me like a bullet. I gripped hold of her. Yanked her backward. A blast of wind. Something heavy swished past us. Renee panted hard as she gripped onto me.

  “Thanks,” she managed as she looked upward.

  I said nothing. I was too busy watching the massive chunk of tree take out everything it hit below us.

  “Safe?” she asked.

  “Think so.” In truth, I didn’t know what to think. I was close to just clinging to the mountain and staying there until everything thawed out. “I ain’t liking snow all that much.”

  We moved over to the mound of trees and Renee held out her arm to stop me. “The trees are acting like a safety net.”

  A loud cracking sound echoed around us. I jumped and gripped her arm, making her yelp.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled. “I guess we gotta move quick?”

  Renee sighed. I didn’t like the sound of it, not one bit. “I think we have to weigh the odds here.”

  She silenced me with her hand on my mouth as I mumbled an argument.

  “Aeron, I know you don’t want to hear this but that is all about to go crashing down.” She looked into my eyes, hers open and imploring. “You remember what you said about Nan making sure you survived?”

  I nodded.

  “There’s a reason. You have a lot to do. I can’t risk that by letting you go near those trees.”

  I knew she was talking sense, but it didn’t matter. “I’m not just going to stand—”

  “So you will wait here,” she said. “I’m going in.”

  “What? No.” I put my hand out to stop her but she shot me a smile as she darted out of reach.

  “Some of us have less to lose,” she said.

  “There’s not much hope for me anyway.”

  Renee had started to navigate her way into the trees by the time I realized the last words had not come from her lips.

  What did she mean not much hope?

  The jay continued to sound his alarm as I watched Renee. The rescuers up top waved and yelled at me. Their frantic warnings jarred my senses. Renee had disappeared from sight, the cracking and groaning grew louder.

  Had my mother seen something and told her? Why did Renee think there was no hope?

  I knew that I should be paying attention. I knew that in those branches was somebody who needed my help. I knew that the rescuers were trying to alert me to the fact that a wreck of a car above was going to come sliding down our way pretty soon.

  None of it came close to shaking me free of my daze, why did Renee think she had no hope?

  A rumbling pile of rocks tumbled past my shoulder as the sun was starting to dip her head behind the mountains opposite us. The smell of gasoline filled my nostrils. The cold, wet slosh of snow in my boots. I shivered, tired and confused.

  Renee was the kind of woman who always pulled through. She was a hero, heroes didn’t get squashed or lose hope.

  Crack.

  My body pulsed into life before I realized I was moving. The trees were bent past their breaking point as I clambered into them. I felt a sharp pain on my right arm and prickled burning. I didn’t care. She was all that mattered.

  “Renee?” I called out. “Renee?”

  “Aeron!” Her voice was part terror, part angry, part relief. “I told you—”

  “Quit whining,” I muttered. “Where are they?”

  Renee was perched precariously on top of a car which was being held in place by the tree branches jutting through the rear window. She was attempting to haul a man upward through the passenger side.

  “If I’m good for one thing,” I told her as I hauled myself upward until I was straddling two tree branches like a ski jumper. “It’s heavy lifting.”

  “There’s a woman inside too,” Renee told me. “I think her leg is trapped.”

  Renee had already made the smashed glass as safe as she could. All I had to do was yank him out. I could do that.

  “Stand over there,” I told her, pointing to a sturdier patch of trees.


  “Aeron, I can’t let you—”

  I gripped hold of the guy’s arms. “If I’m so damn important, then I’ll be just fine. Now get.”

  Renee did as she was told. I focused on the guy. “One lift and I’ll have you out, okay?”

  He nodded.

  With a nice clean motion, I pulled him out and laid him on the strongest branches I could find. “Thank God for Franken-Frei and her punishments,” I mumbled to myself.

  “My wife,” he managed to slur. “Pregnant.”

  “Renee take him out of the trees,” I said. “Get a rope around him.”

  With him no longer a dead weight, Renee got the rope around him and managed to haul him out through the trees. Another loud crack rippled through the darkening air. My heart was so loud that I was pretty sure it was gonna burst from me at any second.

  “Can you hear me?” I asked the limp form of the woman. “Can you move?”

  I was pretty sure she was gone until a quiet groan fell from her lips. I heard a rustling to my left and saw Renee staggering back, clambering over the sharp branches and trunks.

  “She’s alive,” I said. “Just.”

  Renee didn’t say a word but got up on the car in front of me and climbed down into the vehicle.

  “Her legs aren’t trapped,” she called up after a few seconds.

  Crack.

  “Renee, we gotta move.” I looked all around us. The whole thing was about to plummet.

  “Cutting the seat belt.”

  Crack.

  Crack.

  The tree to my left snapped completely and took a large chunk of debris bouncing into the darkness.

  “Renee,” I squeaked. “Hurry.”

  “I’m going as fast as I can.”

  The creaking under my right foot made me wobble.

  Crack.

  The woman appeared as Renee pushed her upward.

  “Brought a rope,” I heard a male voice say. Evan appeared right in front of me.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He grabbed one of the lady’s hands and helped me haul her up. “Husband was frantic, said she was pregnant.” He grunted as he attached the harness around her upper body. “Called for a different rope.”

  Brave and completely insane, that’s what this kid was.

  “Get her going,” I told him. “Go.”

  He disappeared back into the trees as his weight sent the branch he’d only just stepped off, hurtling down into the ever darkening abyss below.

  “Renee,” I called. “You getting your butt out here?”

  Crack.

  “Coming,” she muttered, looking up at me. “Had to free my foot.”

  Her hand came up through the gap and I gripped hold of it. “You free now?”

  She nodded.

  Crack.

  The branch underneath my foot gave way. I lurched to the side. I had to use the car itself to stop from swinging into the air.

  Bad move.

  The groaning grew louder. I yanked Renee up into the air. She wrapped herself around me.

  The car gave way.

  I pushed off the breaking wood beneath my left foot, praying I could swing us out of the way before the whole copse of trees came crashing down onto us.

  Hanging in midair, reaching, grasping.

  Got it.

  I caught hold of a tree branch jutting out and hoped it was staying put. It did. The momentum sent us out onto the snow on the other side. We hit the rock face with a breath-stealing thud.

  Renee’s rope flopped into my face. We both stared at the torn end, panting.

  “Aeron, you’re too heavy with the both of us,” she said.

  I gripped hold of her like my life depended on it. “Don’t even think about it.”

  “Aeron—”

  “Aeron nothin’.” I gripped hold of the tiny ledge of rock under my fingers and dug my boot into the snow. “Get this into your head, Black. I ain’t leaving you, I ain’t letting nothin’ hurt you, and I ain’t gonna let you give up hope.”

  I adjusted myself so I was pretty much giving her a piggy back as I started to climb up the sheer face.

  “I don’t give a crap if it’s been written in stone that you ain’t gonna make it,” I told her. “You are gonna be a crazy old woman living by the river with an even crazier buddy for company.”

  She squeezed me tighter. “You’re too—”

  “Nobody,” I grunted, pulling us up an overhang, “is more important than anybody else.”

  Renee clung to me. Her warmth, the effort, making sweat drip off the end of my nose.

  “But . . . you have to help people.”

  My hand slipped as a rock crumbled under my grip. My shoulder slammed into the hard surface.

  Ouch.

  My side was already screaming at me from the first impact and I tried to suck in my breaths. It was getting colder, the air heavier and I knew somewhere overhead was that hanging guillotine of debris.

  “Helping people won’t mean nothin’ if I ain’t proud of my actions today.”

  I managed to pull us up over another ledge. There was enough room to stand and rest.

  “Besides,” I said. “If I ain’t got my trusty protector. It’s not so much fun.”

  “Goofball,” Renee whispered in my ear. Her voice wobbled as she cried, her tears were warm against my good shoulder.

  I didn’t say nothing. I was too busy trying to suck in my breaths. The pain in my side was getting worse and I could barely breathe. If I told her, she wouldn’t let me carry her the rest of the way and I was carrying her out of there.

  “Aeron?” came a call from somewhere up top. It was Evan’s voice. “Aeron, are you two okay?”

  “Down here!” Renee called up. “Stuck on a ledge.”

  I heard him relay the information to the guys above him.

  “The rope snapped,” he called down to us. “We thought we’d lost you.”

  You will if you don’t move your butt and help, I thought.

  The air was like breathing in liquid. I coughed, trying to clear my lungs. A rope swung down before Evan’s face appeared above us.

  “Whole thing is gonna come down now,” he said. “Boys are going to winch you both in.”

  Renee took the rope and clambered off my back. Her absence made me shiver with the cold, then bite back the sharp dagger in my ribs.

  “All clear,” he shouted up and the rope hauled me upward, Renee keeping a beady eye on me.

  “Ribs?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “How bad?”

  “Like someone impaled me on a sword.”

  The snow glowed an eerie blue in the moonlight as we inched up the side. I didn’t realize just how far we’d gone down and I sent up a silent thank you that I hadn’t had to climb the whole way up.

  At the top, several hands appeared and hoisted both me and Renee up the last of the incline. I collapsed into a heap, gulping in the night air, and gripped my side. Renee’s hands made quick work of untangling me from the rope and undoing my jacket.

  “Hold still,” she said.

  I howled as she touched a sore spot. “Definitely broken at least two, maybe three ribs.”

  “Take a deep breath,” she instructed.

  I tried and coughed, then winced, then yelped.

  “Lungs sound clear,” she mumbled to herself and started pressing her hands on my stomach. “Nothing seems too badly hit.” She looked up at Evan who was standing beside us. “Anyone got a flashlight?”

  Before I knew it, she had one and was flashing it in my eyes. She grabbed the medical kit without bothering to pretend she didn’t know exactly what she was doing.

  “No sign of concussion.”

  “Then get me to a shower, Doc.” My eyes met hers as I tried to remind her she was not meant to be a commander in public. “I’ll be fine after some warmth and a change of clothes.”

  At this, I was hoisted to my feet by the rescue team and stuck in the trailer on th
e back of the ATV. Renee got in beside me. It was only then that I realized the guys were all cheering and laughing.

  Renee shrugged at me. “Not quite sure how you managed that, Lorelei.”

  “How is the couple?” I asked Mark who was grinning at me from up front.

  “Pretty banged up,” he called back. “Wife looks like she could be in labor, took her up to the field hospital.”

  “Your doctor good with stuff like that?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Mark answered. “Pretty much delivered most of the kids in St. Jude’s.”

  I looked at Renee who smiled and I knew she had me blushing all over again.

  “Thank goodness for that, huh?” I said, trying to wave off my dumb reaction.

  “What?” I asked.

  She sat there with a big grin on her face and an aura pinker than the sunset had been.

  “What?” I frowned. I felt like my cheeks were on fire.

  “I was just thinking,” she said, her eyes scanning every inch of my face. “You just rescued two people and me in snowy conditions.”

  Her pride filled her eyes. “Not bad, Lorelei . . .” she murmured, her voice dropping to an almost inaudible level. “I’ll make a protection officer out of you yet.”

  Chapter 14

  IT SEEMED LIKE the whole town was on the main street waiting for us as we got helped out of the trailer. I tried not to cuss or yelp as our intrepid helpers touched a sore spot. I was still having real trouble breathing properly and was looking forward to a warm shower. The folks around us had other plans.

  “The Ice Cooler!” they shouted as Renee and I got jostled along to the only dedicated bar in town. “Drinks for the heroes!”

  I looked at Renee. I never drank. I’d tried it only once and learned pretty fast that empaths, well at least me, and liquor don’t mix. The last thing these poor folk needed was for me to lose my inhibitions and loosen up my tongue.

  “Nothing but water or soda for Aeron,” Renee objected. “She’s got some strong pain medication in her.”

  A pitiful “ah,” came back from the gathered group and it made me laugh. It got me thinking it was a good thing they didn’t know what kinda mayhem I would cause.