Tala woke with a shiver after falling into another fitful doze and immediately regretted waking, gritting her teeth against the pain in her right leg. Thin, dark gray light seeped through the hole at the top of the door they’d built.
Morning was finally approaching, after an endless and completely miserable night.
Braxton shifted on the bedroll they were lying on and wordlessly pulled her tighter into his body. The Mylar blanket had come loose around them. He tucked it back around her shoulders and lifted his top leg to let her sandwich her thigh between his.
Another time it might have been arousing as hell to wake up next to him like this. Right now, it was all about survival and sharing body heat.
She burrowed into him and pressed her face into the base of his neck, trying to ignore the pain coming from her stump. Her nose and lips were numb from the cold. The chemical pouches were no longer keeping her hands warm, and her left foot felt like a block of ice. Her back and shoulder muscles ached from overdoing it yesterday. But the pain in her leg eclipsed every other discomfort.
She shifted, trying to escape it, or at least find a position that made it more bearable. Nothing helped.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she focused on the feel of Braxton, hoping to distract herself from the pain as she’d done during those first few weeks after being wounded.
When she shifted restlessly again, Braxton eased away slightly to look down into her face. The tiny amount of light coming in through their air hole above them allowed her to see the shape of his eyes. “What’s wrong?” he whispered.
“Hurts,” she muttered.
“What does?”
“My stump.”
His arms came all the way around her, then he was sitting up and pulling her with him. “Is something wrong?”
Yes. “It sometimes g-gets like this.” She’d overdone it yesterday. And she hadn’t taken off the liner to let the skin breathe and check or clean it because it had been too damn cold. “The cold’s m-making it worse.”
He hugged her to his chest, tucking her across his lap so that her stump wasn’t pressed against anything. “Can I do something to make it better?”
She shook her head, willing the pain to go away. A combination of sharp, lightning nerve pain shooting up what remained of her leg, and a deep, horrible ache that signaled bone pain.
“Should we check it?”
“No,” she said, too sharply. Not only did she not want him seeing it, she didn’t want anything to touch it. Any additional stimulation right now would make the pain unbearable.
“Are you going to be able to ski on it?”
She’d have to if she wanted off this mountain, but she was dreading putting her prosthetic back on right now. “Yes. What time is it?”
He reached up to unzip his jacket and pull out his phone where he’d kept it against his chest to stay warm. She’d tucked hers into the front of her sports bra to try and conserve whatever battery life remained. “Almost oh-six-hundred-hours. Still no service.”
He put it away, zipped back up and immediately drew her close, holding her to him while he rubbed his gloved hands rapidly up and down her back. Trying to warm and comfort her. “Wind’s died down some. I just cleared the air hole again before you woke up. It’s still snowing out there, but not as bad as it was last night.”
She drew a deep breath, mentally gearing up for the trek ahead. “We going to get moving?”
“I want to wait for it to die down just a little more. Then if you’re up to it, yes.”
“I’m up to it.” She was sore and would pay for it all the way down the mountain, but she had no choice but to put her prosthetic back on and ski out of here. “Think the shooter’s still out there?” That and the cold had kept her from sleeping in anything more than little snatches all night, even with Braxton right here.
“Doubtful. If he’s not a total idiot he would have gone back to that shed for the night. And if he doesn’t want to get arrested, he’ll be out of there long before this storm is over.”
She pressed her face to the front of his jacket and forced herself to take slow, deep breaths. Her pain tolerance was generally high, but nerve and bone pain were the worst. She had prescription meds for the infrequent times it got this bad. Unfortunately, she didn’t have them with her.
“I wish I could make it stop,” he murmured, holding her tight to his powerful body. “I wish I could make all of this go away.”
Her, too. “J-just think of the stories we can t-tell after this. We can be all, ‘Remember that time when we got s-stuck on the mountain in the middle of a blizzard and a wanted murderer tried to k-kill us, so we holed up in a cave and nearly froze to death?’.”
His low chuckle gusted against her ear. “Maybe we should write a book about it together.”
“They’ll make it into a m-movie.”
“They would if they’re smart.” He nuzzled the side of her neck, his whiskers scraping pleasantly, sending a different kind of shiver through her.
They lapsed into quiet after that. She closed her eyes, trying to disassociate from her physical discomfort, but exhausted as she was, the pain wouldn’t allow her to doze off again.
She kept breathing through it and toughed it out, thinking about Rylee and her brother. “Tate and Rylee are going to be freaking out right now.”
“He was probably already doing that by about nineteen-hundred-hours last night when we didn’t show up and he couldn’t reach us.”
Maybe she’d be able to get a cell signal a little farther down the mountain, so she could at least text him to say they were alive. “He and Mase will come looking for us as soon as the storm eases enough for them to get up here.”
“Yeah. We’ll probably run into them on the way down.”
“I hope Rylee’s not too upset.” The thought of her daughter in distress tore at her. But she was so glad Rylee had declined the invitation to come up here with them yesterday. Tala would never want her going through something like this.
“We’ll get you back to her as soon as possible.” He rubbed her back again, more slowly now. A soothing motion meant to comfort and lull. “Can you go back to sleep if I lie us down again?”
“No. But you go ahead and get some more sleep. I’ll keep watch.”
“I’m okay. Just worried about you.”
She liked that he cared so much. “I’m tougher than I look.”
“Don’t I know it.”
She didn’t know what the cryptic comment meant, but there was a note of respect in his tone so she didn’t ask him what he meant by it. Instead, she closed her eyes and focused on him to try and push the sharpest edge of the pain away.
She concentrated on his warmth. The strength of his arms around her. Sheltering and protecting her with his body.
More than anything, she tried not to think of him walking away when this was over. Back to war. Maybe never to return.
Her eyes popped open when he shifted under her sometime later. It seemed a bit brighter inside the enclosure now.
“Sorry, just had to clear the air hole again,” he said, setting the ski pole down in front of them.
She couldn’t believe she’d dozed off. “It’s okay.” Her eyelids felt heavy and swollen, and the pain in her leg increased with her alertness.
“It’s starting to get light out now. Snow’s slowed a bit more.” He ran a hand up and down her spine. “Can you ski on your right leg right now?”
“Yes.” It would hurt, but tough shit for her. She wanted out of here and to get back to her daughter.
“Eat something first.” He reached into his ruck to get another bag of trail mix. “Can you manage—”
“Yes.” She took the bag from him, clumsily opened it with her gloves, then popped a handful in her mouth. After scooping up another big handful, she gave it back to him.
He left the blanket around her while he rolled up the bedroll and packed up what little they’d used overnight. She checked the two socks she’d pulled over the liner on her stump to make sure there were no wrinkles in them, then reached for her prosthetic, bracing for the coming pain.
She pressed her lips together as she pulled it on, then set her hands on the bedroll to push upright. Braxton was right there to help scoop her up and set her on her feet. She gripped his arm while she sank her weight down on her right leg, locking the pin into the prosthetic socket.
Pain shot from the stump and up her leg, making her inhale sharply. Shit.
Braxton steadied her with an arm across the middle of her back. “Tal.”
She clenched her jaw, didn’t look at him. “No, I’m okay.” She could do this. She’d been through a lot worse. All she had to do was tough it out until they got to the truck. Then she could take everything off, and once back at Tate’s place, she could take some meds.
“If it’s too much we can wait here until the storm breaks. Maybe then we can reach Tate and they’ll bring snowmobiles up to get us.”
She shook her head, adamant. “No, I want to get going now.” Waiting here in the cold would only make it worse. At least once they were moving, she would get a bit warmer, and maybe the pain would decrease after a while too. It depended.
His dark brown eyes held hers, his eyebrows pulled together in a concerned frown. “If it gets too bad, I’ll carry you.”
She gave a terse nod, not wanting to talk anymore, and reached for her right ski. The binding wobbled when she set the foot of her prosthetic into it. Her leg howled in protest with the movement, pain forking through it, and when she reached down for her poles, all the muscles in her arms and across her back knotted and ached.
Hell. This was gonna suck so bad on the way down.
She reached for her goggles next, tugging them in place. Gearing up to face the elements once more. You can do this, Tal. You’re going home to Rylee.
When she straightened, Braxton was standing at the entrance, watching her through his own goggles. “Ready?”
As she’d ever be. “Yeah.”
He pulled aside some of the branches, opening a doorway of sorts. The bitter wind raced through the opening, momentarily stealing her breath, but he was right, it had died down some, and the snow had slowed enough to allow her to partially see their surroundings in the pre-dawn light. But the landscape they emerged into from the enclosure was completely unrecognizable from the night before.
Snowdrifts taller than her obscured her view along the side of the mountain. “We heading left?” That was the direction they’d come here from last night.
He nodded and struggled his way through the deep snow toward where the trail had been. “Stay in my tracks. And if you need to stop, tell me right away.”
“Okay.”
It was the toughest skiing she’d ever done. Every single stride sent a combination of pain through her stump, and the fresh, deep snow made it extra difficult to maneuver her skis.
She blocked it all out. Blocked out everything but her determination to keep going, telling herself that each painful stride forward meant being one step closer to finishing and getting back to Rylee.
Braxton kept a steady, methodical pace, looking back frequently to check on her. But as they wound their way around a curve in the trail, Tala’s nape began to tingle.
She looked around instinctively, her pulse thudding in her ears. There was no sound but the wind and her labored breaths. Nothing moved around them except the drifting snowflakes and the evergreen boughs waving in the wind.
But she knew without a doubt that they weren’t alone out here.
****
“What is it? Did you hear something?” Nina mumbled sleepily beside him, pushing up on one elbow in their bed.
It was too dark to see her face, but the sky was already beginning to lighten outside their master bedroom window. Eight inches of new snow clung to the bottom of the sill. “No. But it’s almost dawn and the storm’s finally easing. I have to go.”
Tate stood and grabbed the cold weather gear he’d put on the dresser last night. He’d barely slept, kept waking up soon after he dozed off and checking his phone, hoping he’d find a message from either Tala or Brax. But he’d heard nothing all night, and according to the GPS spotter, they were still out there, in the same place it had last pinged them ten hours ago.
His gut told him there was more to this than the storm. That something else had caused them to take shelter up there. He and Mason needed to get out there and find them A-fucking-SAP.
He dressed and hurried into the kitchen, already on the phone. Three different calls put everyone involved in the search effort into motion, and everything was ready to begin. He’d coordinated everything with the department last night, with cops and local search and rescue volunteers.
Several on-duty officers would be helping, along with a half-dozen more who were technically on holiday but were coming out today as volunteers. Tate and Mason were going up now, and everyone else was meeting at the building site at eight. They would start at the area where Tala and Brax’s GPS spotter last pinged their location, and work outward from there.
Tate wolfed down half a turkey sandwich on his way through the kitchen, his gaze straying out to the back deck. They had well over eighteen inches of snow out there and it was still coming down, though not as bad as before. The backyard was littered with broken boughs and branches brought down by the near hurricane-force winds.
The storm had been intense. When Tal and Brax hadn’t been able to make it down the mountain, they would have taken shelter somewhere through the night.
Unless something happened to them.
He was at the counter pouring thermoses full of hot coffee to take with him when Nina came in, her fluffy yellow robe with pink roses on it belted around her waist. “Don’t worry about that,” she said. “Rylee and I will bring up food and drinks for everyone. We’ve got it covered.” She wound her arms around him from behind, her right hand rubbing his chest in a soothing circle.
He set a hand on hers, squeezed. “You don’t need to do that.”
“We want to. Avery’s already going to be handling all the search party coordination at the building site. Rylee and I are going to help her. I just wish I could do more.”
He turned around and took her face in his hands. She had the biggest heart of anyone he knew, and knowing she cared so much made him love her even more. “Love you, sunshine.”
She smiled up at him, her brown eyes worried. “Love you back. And you need to promise me you’ll be careful.”
He stroked his thumb across her petal-soft cheek, impatient to get going. By the time he and Mason reached the building site, it would be sunrise. “I promise.” He kissed her gently. “Let Rylee sleep as long as you can.” He didn’t want his niece worrying a second longer than she had to. And maybe, if he was lucky, by the time she awoke, he would have Tala back here to greet her.
“I will.” Nina lifted up on her toes to brush a kiss across his mouth, her hands squeezing his shoulders. “You go find them, Tate, and bring them home.”
That’s exactly what he was going to do.