Josh had died when Abby was just a baby, but Laura imagined that he might have looked like that holding his daughter. She felt the familiar pain that came when she thought about her husband, but it wasn’t crippling anymore. She still had no clue how Josh was involved with Mahoney, but her husband had been a very good man. He would have been an excellent father. But he wasn’t here. Laura liked to think that he was in Heaven, watching her. And she knew that he would not want his wife and daughter to spend the rest of their lives mourning him. He would want them to find happiness again.
Laura had thought happiness meant safety up on the mountain. Now she wondered about her plan. About the full life she might be denying Abigail. Mountain life had been the best her father could do, but Laura knew the man had settled for as much peace as he could find. He’d encouraged her to leave, to go to school. To start her family out in the world. Malcolm Grant had wanted a full life for her.
Laura’s foot caught on a rock and she jolted back to reality. She had no idea where all these thoughts were coming from, but this was not the time. She could not afford to make a mistake because she was lost in her own head. Laura pushed those thoughts inside a box. She would take them out later.
She smiled. So far she had scheduled a nervous breakdown and an examination of how she felt about her dead husband for later. For when they were out of this situation. When she and Abby got to safety, Laura was going to be very, very busy. She was almost looking forward to it.
* * *
Abby thought the river was pretty. And loud. And pretty loud. Seth knew this because the little girl had told him. Several times. While pointing. Seth was grateful that the river was loud enough to cover her voice because the last thing Seth wanted to do was hush her, especially after she had been so good during the whole thing.
He’d seen Laura stumble a bit, but she regained her stride without any help from him. He’d been watching the expression on her face and her furrowed brow and had wondered what she was thinking about right before the rock caught her toe. Whatever it was, she had either stopped thinking about it or she was doing a better job of hiding her emotions.
Seth looked at the wall of smoke in the distance, then at the river that was almost startling in its strength. Violence. And then Seth saw a couple of blooming wildflowers against some large boulders. This would have been an amazing and beautiful picture. The kind of thing that made viewers wonder if it was Photoshopped or made up. In reality, though, standing between two of nature’s deadly and powerful forces, knowing there were several armed men out there trying to kill them, it lost some of its appeal.
Laura started leading again, moving at a pace that impressed Seth. They’d been walking for hours, yet she was willing to carry on at the necessary pace. All without complaint. She managed to do it gracefully and without disturbing the ground she covered. He kept up easily, but he could feel his blood pumping from the activity. It seemed Laura had decided that speed was just as important as stealth, and looking at the black wall in the sky in the distance Seth agreed wholeheartedly.
She brought them back under the cover of some trees, and Seth relaxed a fraction. He could still see the river, and Seth wondered how long the cover lasted if they stuck to the strategy to stay in sight of Plan B. He wasn’t going to ask, though. He didn’t want to distract Laura. He didn’t want to make any extra noise. And, truly, part of Seth did not want to know the answer to that question because he was guessing they would not have near as much cover as they needed.
It was a beautiful day, and they seemed to be making good time. The snow went from a splotch here and a splotch there to bigger patches. Seth could see large covered areas in the distance. The air was cooling down, but he didn’t feel cold. Abby was dressed in layers and she did not seem to be cold, either.
The silence was peaceful and they walked in such a way that his feet were almost making rhythmic motions. All of it was soothing. The atmosphere felt almost like a prayer, that mood of contemplative quiet. Seth had not felt that atmosphere in a long time. Too long.
He was almost unnerved by it. Yes, he was keeping watch. He was vigilant and well aware that danger quite literally surrounded them. But he was also full of emotion right now. Feeling. It was like he was climbing up to God, and the higher he got, the more he shed the distractions of this world, and the better God was able to communicate with him.
That was a silly notion. God could communicate with him anywhere. Under any circumstances. Yes, the Lord was always present and speaking to him. The problem was, Seth did not always listen. He was able to fill his life with noise and distractions and tasks. He was able to avoid that still quiet voice in his soul. That nudging of his conscience. The gentle prodding of the One who knew all.
But it was almost impossible to ignore up here. Seth felt it flooding over him as strongly as the waters in that river would if they were forced to try to cross it. He smiled when he realized how fanciful his thoughts were. Ridiculous. Maybe they were farther up this mountain than he thought and the high altitude was getting to his brain. He was daydreaming like a child. Seeing what he wanted to see.
“Are you okay?” Laura’s voice was hesitant. Almost with a hint of fear. That softened Seth’s natural instinct to deny anything was wrong. Or resent her noticing that something was off. He wanted to be real with her. He did not, however, want to analyze that desire too much. This wasn’t the time or place for thinking soft thoughts about this woman. They had a job to do.
“Yeah. Sorry. I was just thinking.”
They were still moving at a decent pace, still under the light cover of trees. He shifted closer to her so that they could talk without raising their voices, though the roar of the river carried this far and helped to mask much of the sound.
“You looked like you were in pain.”
Seth smiled. That was certainly one way to describe it. Thinking about how God had to get him on a mountain between a forest fire, a raging river and armed men with homicidal tendencies before Seth would listen to Him was kind of a painful realization. “I was just ruminating.”
“It’s kind of hard not to up here, isn’t it?”
“That’s probably understating it. My brain was just racing.”
“Want to share?” The words left Laura’s mouth and then she quickly turned and gave him a wide-eyed look. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to pry.” Her words were coming so quickly together that Seth felt like he was hearing her about two seconds after they left her mouth. “I just mean, you know so much of my messed-up life. You listened while I told you everything. I just thought, I mean, maybe, I don’t know. If you want to talk, I’m here. If you want. I mean, you don’t have to.”
She sounded so sincere and afraid of upsetting him. It was such a sweet and beautiful thing. She should be focused solely on getting herself and her daughter to safety. But instead, she was finding the time to care about him. To worry about him.
Well, why not? Wasn’t his desire to do everything himself what had gotten him in this mess to begin with? Not the mess of running from armed bad guys, but the mess of being away from his family. Being alone, even though he was in a world full of people.
“I was just contemplating how hard it is to avoid thinking up here. It’s so open and quiet that a lot of the thoughts I had shoved away were coming back.”
“About your time in the military?”
Seth stopped to look at her. “How did you know that?”
Laura’s smile was almost rueful. “I recognized the look. You know a lot about my dad, but did you know that he was a Vietnam vet?”
“No. I had never heard that.”
“Yeah. He had a hard time over there, from what I know of it. He came back and that’s when he became, well, isolated. The hermit thing didn’t start until he came back. I can remember my biological dad explaining it to me once. They were brothers. I remember asking why Uncle Malcolm was so weird and scary a
nd my dad telling me it was the only way he found to keep living in this world after the war.”
“And I remind you of him in that way?” Seth wasn’t exactly insulted. There was a lot of truth in the comparison. For someone who used to make fun of the man, Seth was realizing much of Old Man Grant could be found in his own mirror.
“Just a bit. You come off like someone who served in the military. Who knows war.”
“I did. I do. I did three tours in Afghanistan. Got hurt. Came back.”
That was the very abbreviated version, but Laura just nodded and started walking again. Her manner was easy. All encompassing. She was good at accepting what a person could give. And Seth found that he wanted to give more. To her, at least. He suspected that she knew a lot about regrets. About being judged. About acting without knowing how or why.
“My family tried to help me. Nursed me back to health. Took care of me.” His voice was rough and his chest was so tight that he thought it might split in two. How could talking about that time hurt worse than war? Laura kept walking at a steady pace. And that made it better. Not seeing her face. Not seeing her eyes. That helped.
And he was all the more a coward for it, but he accepted it gratefully.
“I hated it. I hated that I was a grown man who needed his mommy to take care of him. I hated the way all my friends and family looked at me with pity in their eyes. Like I was some kind of sympathy case. It was my ego. I know that. Now. It was all pride and ego and anger from feeling helpless.”
“That seems like a very rational response to what you went through. Very human. Normal even.” Laura’s voice was soft, and she was still walking without looking at him.
“Yeah. Maybe.”
They walked for another couple of minutes in silence. The words just kept building up inside Seth. He wanted to keep them in, but they wanted out. And really, maybe saying them out loud to someone would help. He’d certainly said them to himself enough times.
“I ran away. I couldn’t take it anymore and I ran away. I was a grown man, but I left a note and got in my car and fled.”
Silence. What was she thinking? Was she shocked? Disgusted?
“I understand that.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. Things were hard after Josh died. A lot of pitying glances my way, too. So I came home. I phrased it like that. Coming home. But it was running away and hiding in the most isolated spot I could think of.”
Seth thought there was a difference between her coming home and his hurting his family by running from them, but he didn’t want to argue the point.
“They know I’m okay. I write them about once a month, to let them know. I don’t include a return address, which is cowardly, but I just can’t. I’ve asked them to give me this time, and so far they have. Still, I know I hurt them.” He was still hurting them. There was no way his mother was not hurt every single day that went by without him calling. But, as more time passed, it just seemed like his mistake grew and grew and now it was so big that Seth didn’t know if it was fixable.
Laura stopped, turned around to face him. Seth braced for whatever he might see on her face. He didn’t know which would be worse, blame or sympathy. Instead, she looked alarmed.
“Seth. Look behind us.”
He whirled around so quickly that Abby startled in his arms.
Black. Everywhere he looked was a wall of thick, black smoke.
ELEVEN
It had reached them too quickly. There had not been any sense of fire and now there was a blaze so intense it made the sky look like the dirtiest of nights behind them? No. That wasn’t how forest fires worked. At least not naturally spreading ones. Not in these conditions.
“That’s not the original blaze, is it?”
Seth’s face was as dark as the air around them. “No. Not with these winds. It wouldn’t have come up on us like that.”
Yeah. She knew that, but she had really, really hoped he would say something different.
Seth did a slow full circle where he was standing, taking in all their options. Or lack thereof. Laura had thought she felt trapped since this whole thing began, but, looking at the current situation, she knew that had been a false perception. Now. Now she felt trapped.
“Seth?”
“They set that fire to chase us out. We have smoke on two sides and the river on a third.”
“They’re forcing us to go one direction.”
“Yeah. And I bet they’re up there waiting for us to walk right into their little trap.”
Little trap? Right now it felt very large and very, very dangerous.
“What do we do?”
They both looked at the river. It was still raging. In fact, it seemed as upset as Laura felt. “We stick close to the river. But I’m not liking our odds any more now than I did a while ago.”
Laura nodded. “Agreed. I really, really don’t want to take Abby through there.”
“Okay, let’s keep moving forward. We just need to be as alert as possible. It’s no longer a matter of if we run into the men, but when.”
They walked. Slower. Quietly. Every hair on Laura’s body stood on alert and her mind was buzzing. After several minutes, she almost wished they would just see the men already. The anticipation was almost too much to take.
“Laura.”
They were walking close to one another now, almost as a single unit, and Seth’s low voice carried to her perfectly.
“Yeah?”
“I have two favors to ask of you. I’m sorry, but I have to ask.”
“What?” Favors? What exactly could she do for him? Especially now?
“If we run into the men, I’m going to fight them as best as I can. I need you to take Abby and run, okay? Through the river or wherever you think is the safest. But let me do that. Let me fight and distract and buy you some time. Please?”
That was a favor for him? It seemed like a favor for her. But Laura knew why he was asking. The thought of leaving Seth to a near-certain death hit her harder than she would ever have imagined. He was a park ranger. Rangers harassing her dad were the prominent theme of her childhood. They were not her friends.
But she did not want him to die.
Laura looked at Abby. Forced her throat to swallow. “Okay. I’ll try, Seth.” She hoped that was good enough.
Seth just looked at her, his face almost still. Probing. “The second favor is a bigger one. And it is very dependent on you doing the first. When you get out of this, I want you to get a message to my family. Their contact information is on file with the ranger service. Will you please tell them that I’m sorry and that I love them?”
Laura couldn’t breathe. She had to stop walking, and Seth stopped right beside her. She felt his hand on her back, but the world around her was a blur. This man planned on dying. He fully expected to run into those men and to not walk away from the encounter.
That was not exactly shocking considering the odds they were facing. They were on a burning mountain and up against more men than Laura could count. All heavily armed.
Foreseeable or not, though, it still burned Laura’s lungs.
And he expected her to survive? He thought, he really, really thought that she and Abby would get off this mountain alive and could get a message to his family? How? How could she pull that off? Laura intended to fight for her daughter until she had nothing left to give, but, deep inside, in the part of her that she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge, Laura had fully expected to fail.
That was what turned the hot coals into a blaze in her lungs. She and her daughter were going to die. She hadn’t even known that was inside her. That horrible ending that seemed almost unavoidable.
Except Seth really thought she could avoid it. He was earnest in his request. They were not empty words. He thought she could fix things with his family.
He trusted her to ma
ke things right. To help repair the relationships he valued the most.
Okay, then. Her voice was thick, but she put every ounce of determination she could muster into it. “Yes, Seth. Yes. If you can’t tell your family, then I will. I’ll tell them everything, including what an amazing man they created and sent out into the world.”
Seth nodded, squeezed her shoulder and started walking. Laura moved, too.
She didn’t know what else to say, but that was okay. Because sometimes you didn’t have to say anything. Sometimes, you just understood. Her dad had taught her that.
The river curved up ahead, and they both slowed down. They did not want to round a corner and walk into the ambush that had to be waiting for them. Laura tapped Seth on the arm and started moving away from the river. She wanted to stay close to good old Plan B, but they also needed some kind of cover.
They entered the trees, which made them less visible. What if the men were waiting in the trees? That was the obvious place for people trying to hide to be.
No. Laura needed to stop this. She said a quick prayer. There. Laura truly believed that worrying about something you prayed over was pointless. She wanted to pray, give it to God and let Him deal with it.
But, oh, it was so hard. And she often failed at the giving it to God and letting go part.
Yeah, she failed at that a lot.
But she always kept trying. That was the only thing she could do. Try and try and try.
Blowing out a deep breath, Laura looked at Seth. He was watching her with an almost tender expression on his face. Her face grew hot and she shrugged her shoulders at him. He smiled back and nodded.
He got it.
And that was nice. Josh had always accepted her quirks with an easy understanding. That had been a precious thing in her life. Laura had assumed she would never have that again.
Maybe she was wrong.
They moved around the curve. Laura was holding her breath, fighting the urge to just run and see. If you thought there was a monster in the closet, waiting in bed and imagining it wasn’t the answer.
Rocky Mountain Showdown Page 11