“I’ve got to get out there.” Liam’s honest face contorted as he ran a hand through his tightly cropped hair and paced in circles.
“You’re not flying in this weather.” Patrick placed a restraining hand on the pilot’s shoulder.
“You don’t even know where they are. They haven’t been able to check in. He might have done something…”
Patrick grabbed both Liam’s shoulders and turned him to stare eye to eye. “Done what? If Whittenhall is right and Kinton wants to get his hands on Besand, his best bet is going to be sticking with an experienced crew. He doesn’t know squat about getting around out there. He needs those guys to survive.”
“What about Brynn? Maybe he sees her as expendable?”
Patrick mentally rolled his eyes.
“Kinton’s not stupid.” Patrick thought back to their first meeting. He hadn’t met an unbalanced man. He’d met a determined one. A man with his wits about him. He was having a hard time reconciling the unstable image Whittenhall painted of Kinton with the resolute soldier he’d met that morning. Something in Patrick’s gut didn’t like Whittenhall. The marshal was shifty, pompous, and condescending. Maybe that was optimistically skewing Patrick’s view of Kinton.
But his gut was usually right. Usually.
“They need air support. They’re not going to stumble across a wreck in that forest. It’s the old needle in a haystack comparison,” Liam said.
“There might be a good window of weather tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Liam kicked at a rock, sending a splatter of mud over Patrick’s boots. Patrick bit his lip and ignored it because Liam was a good pilot who’d frequently helped Madison County with SAR, and he belonged to Brynn. But that didn’t mean Patrick had to hold Liam’s hand because he was rattled about his girlfriend’s safety.
“You need to stop stressing over Brynn and give her a little more credit. She’s tough and smart.”
Liam scowled, looking away.
“When she broke her collarbone in that rockslide last year she toughed it out. Finished the search even though she couldn’t move her arm. She’s pretty good at taking care of herself.”
Patrick decided not to mention the obnoxious fit of temper Liam had thrown when he’d found her in the hospital with her arm in a sling. Judging by Liam’s tight lips, he remembered clearly.
“No one’s going to let your unit fly today. You know that. Don’t try to make me out to be the bad guy. Your own CO won’t let you up today. Besides, it’s almost dark.”
Liam was silent, his head pointed in the direction of the trailhead as if he expected to see the team come traipsing back out. He muttered under his breath.
“What was that?” Patrick leaned toward Liam, his neck stiffening at the rebellious look on the pilot’s face.
“I won’t be taking an Air Force bird out today.”
“That’s right.” He watched the young man closely. “Don’t get any ideas.”
“I gotta go.” Liam abruptly turned and jogged in the direction of his truck before Patrick could say another word.
Fuck. What was Liam going to do? Patrick silently repeated Liam’s words, No Air Force bird. Surely Liam didn’t know of a civilian crazy enough to try to fly in this weather. It’d be a death mission. Patrick mentally rattled through a list of local pilots with their own copters and caught his breath.
“Oh, shit.” He did know of one pilot crazy enough to try a stunt like that. Liam’s older brother, Tyrone, had his own helicopter.
He turned to shout after Liam, but his truck was already gone.
Patrick glanced at the dark sky, reassured that Liam wouldn’t be going anywhere tonight. He’d worry about the pilot tomorrow. Patrick’s watch beeped softly, and he cursed as he saw the time. The evening press conference was in ten minutes. He put Brynn’s boyfriend out of his mind and concentrated on what useless facts he could toss to the vultures with the microphones.
He winced at the analogy. Vultures circled the dying.
Alex’s first twenty-degree night in a tent was over.
Thank God.
He lowered his head and trudged on. They’d gotten a good six inches of snow overnight, and eventually he’d slept like a log. Around midnight, he’d raided Ryan’s backpack and swallowed a hefty dose of Benadryl to get to sleep. Maybe a little too much. Thomas had had to roughly shake Alex awake that morning.
He’d had to resort to the sneaky Benadryl measure after realizing his two tent mates snored like trains. Ryan especially. This morning Ryan had been coughing heavily and had a pallor that caused Brynn to question his health. He’d brushed her off, saying he believed he was catching a cold but felt good enough to push on. Alex thought he looked like shit, but he kept his mouth shut.
He followed Thomas’s footsteps automatically, but kept a careful watch for any more slides, stepping carefully with the homemade snowshoes Thomas had rigged for him with branches, rope, wire, and tiny bungee cords. Everyone else had lightweight aluminum snowshoes in their packs. Thomas had whipped together the makeshift snowshoes in under a half hour while Alex had watched every move with fascination.
“Don’t know why Collins didn’t have snowshoes in there.” Jim had shaken his head, watching Thomas’s hands wrap cording around the pliable tree branches.
“When’s the last time the sheriff actually went out on search? He’s always stuck coordinating,” Brynn had said as she ran a brush over Kiana’s thick fur while they waited. Alex could have sworn he saw the dog smile.
Thomas had hooked the bungee cords around Alex’s boots and secured the rough frames to his feet. Intrigued, Alex had immediately tried them out. He’d stepped one shoe on the heel of the other and then fallen. Thomas had grinned. Smiling ruefully, Alex had tried again; he was too absorbed in the results of Thomas’s talent to get embarrassed. He’d shuffled in circles until he’d caught a rhythm.
The snowfall stopped after the first break and gave them several hours without precipitation. The noon sky was dark and dismal and thick clouds hung low, but the wind seemed to have let up slightly. Contact with base camp had been impossible since early yesterday.
“I don’t think this is the window of good weather they were talking about,” Jim said. “I don’t think they’d risk any flights just yet. Besides, it’s not snowing here right now but might be back at camp. We’ll try calling again once we get a little higher, but I knew coming in there was a chance we wouldn’t be able to talk to base camp at all this mission.”
They settled into the protection of a small rocky ridge, out of the wind, and stopped for lunch. Ryan immediately plopped down in the snow after slinging his pack off. He looked miserable. His breathing was labored and sweat dripped from his forehead. Brynn tried to get him to eat, but he shook his head.
“My stomach doesn’t feel so hot.”
He drank some water, but Alex noticed it wasn’t very much.
Jim gestured at the sky behind them. “Looks like I was right about weather back at camp.” The sky to the west was black. From their small clearing, they had an unobstructed view of sloping dark forests with snowy frosting.
“I didn’t realize we’d climbed so high.” Alex squinted down the side of the mountain. The trek had so many ups and downs he’d honestly felt like they were at the same altitude as where they’d started. Only the depth of the snow told him differently.
Thomas nodded. “We’re probably around four thousand feet.”
Jim immediately disagreed, and Alex tuned out their argument. He kept half an eye on Brynn, waiting for her to jump in and mediate, but she was focused on Ryan. The younger man was shaking his head at her inaudible questions. She put a hand to his forehead, but he pushed it away. Her eyes narrowed at him, and Alex couldn’t hear her retort. It must have been a sharp one, because Ryan’s shoulders slumped and his head dropped.
Suddenly Ryan jumped to his feet and turned. He took four lunging steps away from the group and then started to heave and vomit. Brynn was holding his head and murmuring to him before Alex could even stand.
The concern on her face touched him. He remembered his mother holding his head like that when he was ill as a child. The nasty crap spewing into the snow didn’t gross out Brynn; her focus was on the condition of the man. Ryan leaned away from her, gesturing for her to move back.
Alex caught her arm as she stepped back to the group, hurt and disappointment on her face. Seeing her upset, and with worry in her eyes, drove him to speak. “Ignore him. No man wants a woman to witness his weakness.”
“I know that. But he’s…” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, frowning.
“Give him some privacy,” Alex suggested. Thomas and Jim were still eating, apparently giving Ryan his space, but Alex spotted Jim’s concerned questioning glance at Brynn. She shrugged at him, walked a few yards off, and called for her dog.
Kiana gave an answering bark and came tearing out of the trees. Snow flew up from her feet, leaving a white cloud in her wake. Tongue lolling, ears perked, and tail happy. Just seeing the dog made Alex feel better. He’d never had a dog but had always wanted one. Monica hadn’t liked them, and his job took him away from home so much he figured a pet wouldn’t get enough attention.
Brynn broke off a branch, stripped it of needles, and threw it hard in the opposite direction. Kiana cranked up her speed and raced after it. A gray-and-white blur.
Brynn’s jaw was set. She’d probably prefer to use the stick to beat a little sense into Ryan.
“Hey,” the sick man croaked. They all looked in his direction. He’d moved farther away from the group to the top of the rocks. He was pointing down the slope, south from their view. “Plane.”
They scrambled up to Ryan’s view. White-faced and weak, Ryan braced his hands on his thighs as he stared down the slope. Sure enough. Alex squinted and saw white metal with some orange striping at the edge of a small clearing. Several hundred yards down in almost the same direction they’d come from. They’d probably passed within a hundred feet of it, but hadn’t seen it for the density of the forest between their path and the clearing. If Ryan hadn’t puked, they would have continued southeast, away from the wreckage.
Jim slapped the sick man on the back. “Nice work. Let’s get down there.”
Thomas and Jim turned to go grab their packs, but Brynn didn’t move. Alex followed her gaze to the puddle of vomit between Ryan’s feet.
It was red with fresh blood.
How sick is Ryan? Brynn’s heart had nearly stopped when she’d spotted blood in his vomit. Ryan was actively bleeding somewhere in his digestive tract. The possibility of an ulcer popped into her mind first, but Ryan had never mentioned an ulcer before. From what she’d seen, he ate whatever the hell he wanted and how much he wanted. He didn’t have the eating habits of someone babying an ulcer. And he was the picture of health; he easily burned off every calorie with his good exercise regimen. He didn’t smoke or drink. She didn’t think he had a daily ibuprofen or similar habit that could mess with the lining of his stomach.
She’d have to ask him about an ulcer. Another differential diagnosis for the blood was something he’d eaten. Maybe something poisonous or incredibly sharp. Where would he get something poisonous? And surely he would have noticed swallowing something sharp enough to cause that much damage.
Ryan had been fighting a cough, and his forehead had been unbearably hot as she’d held his head when he’d vomited. His health problem was probably systemic, like the flu or some sort of gastrointestinal virus or bacteria.
But those shouldn’t cause the bleeding.
Some ulcers were caused by bacteria. Weren’t they?
She snorted. Some nurse she was. It’d been too many years since nursing school. Most of those years she’d dealt with dead people, not living people and their various ailments. Her continuing education requirements were fulfilled in the classroom or online. A nurse learned a lot more when she worked with ill people day in and day out. An experienced ER nurse could probably look at Ryan, ask three questions, and have him accurately diagnosed before the doctor entered the room.
But could that nurse take the liver temperature on a corpse?
Before they’d taken a single step down the steep slope to the plane, Jim had looked up the mountain behind them and waved a hand at the wide expanse of snow. “Heavy snow. A lot of wet snow has fallen up here. I want everyone to follow the edge of the woods. Stick to the trees and out of the clearing as much as possible. This place is ripe for an avalanche.”
Brynn took one look at the tall slope behind them, dotted with rocky outcroppings where the slope was nearly vertical, and agreed. She’d come across avalanches after the fact. She’d never been around one when it occurred, and she wanted to keep it that way. She knew Jim had lost a good friend to a Canadian avalanche.
Ryan waved them on. “I’ll come down once I feel a little better. Leave your cell phones. Maybe someone’s will work up here. I’ll try to get a hold of base camp since we’ve got some clear views.”
“Take a look at all the GPS units too.” Jim handed over his unit, frowning. “One of them has got to be right. We need to let Collins know where we are. At least the radios seem to work among the five of us. I’ll let you know what we find down there.”
They’d left Ryan resting with a couple of thousand dollars of technology in the snow beside him and a low-tech compass in his hand.
Brynn glanced over her shoulder. They’d descended a good distance. Ryan was becoming a red spot against the snow. At least he could keep the group in sight all the way down to the plane. She’d examine him more closely after they checked the plane, and she wouldn’t take any more flak from him. He’d insisted he was fine and brushed her off earlier. She hadn’t pushed the issue.
Her objective was to get to the plane and see if medical help was needed. Ryan could wait.
The slope was steep, and they moved slowly. It took a good forty minutes to get within fifty feet of the plane. Kiana had bounded down, leaping from side to side like a skier working his way down a steep slope of powder, and was already nosing about the wreckage.
“Hellooo!” Jim’s subdued shout was met with silence. Brynn cast back a nervous glance at the mountain of snow. It was doubtful Jim’s level of volume would dislodge the snow. But she couldn’t stop herself from checking.
Dread was quickly replacing the energizing thrill from spotting the plane.
Could someone survive that?