Although the majority of her was covered with the dry suit, the frigid water on the exposed skin of her face made her gasp. She sank quickly—too quickly—and fumbled to inflate her BCD. Although her thick gloves made her clumsy, she finally managed to add air, and her descent slowed. The light attached to her BCD cast an eerie glow, illuminating a short distance directly in front of her. When she turned her head without also rotating her body, the darkness was absolute.
Her breathing was too quick, too shallow. If she kept panting like that, she knew she would use up her air much too quickly. She counted to four on her inhale and then exhaled for four counts, tipping her light up so she could watch her bubbles ascend. The sight calmed her a little, that evidence of her ability to still breathe, despite her nightmarish surroundings.
Her ears ached, and she pinched the rubber over her nose and blew, equalizing the pressure. That familiar action settled her nerves even more, reminding her of all those sunlit sea dives she’d gone on before Brent became a fourth on their family vacations to the Caribbean.
Lou checked her depth gauge, which showed her at eighteen feet. She turned in a circle, careful not to get tangled in her safety line. Her light penetrated less than eight feet through the murky water and revealed absolutely nothing. Forcing her breathing to slow once again, she tugged her dive knife from the sheath attached to her dry suit.
Reaching back, she tapped it against her tank, creating a pinging noise. Sound traveled through water four times faster than through air, and the sharp ding of metal against metal cut through the reservoir better than her light. Lou paused, waiting for a response. Once again, she had to force herself not to hold her breath. There was nothing, though, and she quickly cut off panicked thoughts about what was keeping Callum from answering her signal.
Lou attempted to ease the knife back in the sheath, but the tool refused to cooperate. After several unsuccessful tries, she gave a frustrated grunt and kept the knife in her hand, telling herself sternly not to cut anything vital, like a safety line, regulator hose, or an artery.
As she’d messed with her knife, she’d descended another ten feet until her light glanced off the weedy bottom just beneath her. The reservoir averaged eighty feet in depth, so she was relieved this was a relatively shallow area. After equalizing the pressure in her ears again, she turned onto her front and began searching in larger and larger circles.
The bottom was littered with junk—from beer cans to umbrellas to fishing reels—everything that fell or was thrown into the reservoir during the summer months when the water warmed to a balmy forty-two degrees Fahrenheit. Her light created odd shadows around the waterlogged objects, turning everyday items into ominous shapes.
The image of HDG’s body kept flashing in her mind, no matter how many times she forced the visual from her brain. The possibility that she’d stumble upon another body in this eerie darkness made her breathing quicken, forcing her to consciously slow it down, again counting her inhales and exhales. There were two victims in the water, she reminded herself, plus Callum—although she refused to think of him as a victim. It would be a good thing to find them. Despite that, she shivered beneath the thermal layer under her dry suit.
Systematically scanning for a glimpse of Callum or the victims, she turned her light and gaze from left to right and then forward again. Every so often, she would rotate to look upward, shining the light into the murky, endless water, which brought a stifling rush of claustrophobia each time. It was hard to believe the surface existed less than thirty feet above her.
She checked the pressure gauge and saw that her tank was half-full. Giving a near-hysterical huff of laughter into her regulator, she commended herself on her optimism. It wouldn’t be good to start thinking about her tank being half-empty.
Lou refocused on her search, sweeping her light to the left. She moved it past the figure before it registered. With a jerk of delayed reaction, she aimed the light back at the dim form as she turned, kicking her fins as hard as she could to propel her toward the human-shaped shadow.
As she grew closer, the shape became more defined, and her muscles tightened with excitement as she recognized the back of a figure in a dry suit—Callum! Her light reflected off his oxygen tank, and she renewed her forward plunge. Kicking closer, however, Lou had a moment of confusion when she saw a second dry-suited figure in front of Cal.
It appeared that they were grappling, which didn’t make any sense. Lou stared, confused, as the second diver shoved Cal, making him stumble back. His fins kicked up clouds of sediment that fogged the water, adding to the surreal image.
It had been just a couple of seconds, but time felt stretched to Lou, like she’d been watching the horrifying tableau for hours. The second diver’s dry suit was green and black—definitely not one of the dive team’s.
And he was attacking Callum.
At that realization, she kicked forward toward the pair, plowing into his shoulder and knocking him away from Cal.
As she glanced back to check on Callum, she saw he was swimming toward them, shouting something into his regulator. Distracted, she didn’t see the stranger’s swing until her head was jarred to the side, knocking her face mask askew.
The shockingly cold water hit her eyes as her mask filled, paralyzing her for a frozen second. Lou couldn’t see, blinded by the twisted mask and the rush of water. Squinting, she barely caught a blurry black-and-green arm swinging toward her, and she threw her left arm up to block the anticipated blow. His bellow of pain reverberated through the water, amplifying the sound, and she realized she still held her dive knife in her hand.
Callum’s blurry form darted between her and the other diver. Fumbling, her heart pounding in her ears, Lou managed to straighten her mask and partially clear it by pressing on the top with her non-knife-holding hand and exhaling through her nose. Air filled the top two-thirds of her mask, allowing her to see the other two divers were locked together, struggling. The water and sediment churned around the fighting pair, turning them into hazy shapes. Frantically, Lou swam around them, knife clutched in her fist. Her heartbeat thundered in her water-blocked ears as she tried to figure out how to help Cal. She jerked back as a fin almost connected with her face.
Diluted blood turned the water light red, and Lou felt a sob creep into her throat. As the two divers flipped and turned, a green-and-black target would open to her before disappearing again. She darted toward them but pulled away as the fighters rolled. Her fingers gripped the knife so tightly they cramped, but she didn’t strike, not wanting to hit Callum by mistake.
The other diver’s fist slammed into the side of Cal’s face, snapping his head back. As the aggressor pulled his arm away, it caught his regulator hose, ripping Cal’s mouthpiece from him. The regulator bobbed, bubbles floating uselessly toward the surface. As Cal swept his arm through the water, trying to retrieve his air supply, the second diver wrapped gloved hands around his neck and forced his back against the reservoir bottom. Callum’s struggles were losing power.
No! Lou lunged toward the person trying to kill Cal—her Callum. Releasing his hold, the diver turned and kicked, his fin hitting her in the stomach. She folded, breath knocked from her lungs, caught by the physical memory of another kick to the stomach, into fire rather than ice water that time. Fear turned her body to useless rubber for a second, but she forced herself to push back the terror. Callum didn’t have any air. She needed to save him. Scrambling upright, she saw the other diver barreling directly toward her.
Screaming into her regulator, her hands extended defensively, Lou fell backward in slow motion. The other diver followed her down, and she pulled her knees to her chest before kicking her fins toward his belly.
Let’s see how you like it, she thought viciously. The ends curled under, muffling some of the impact of the kick, but it got him off her. She scrambled upright and pushed off the bottom with both feet, tackling him. The water robbed her of much of her power, but the knife sank into his side. As she pulled it free, her light illuminated a cloud of red as his blood mixed with the already-murky water. Lou felt a bloodthirsty thrill of satisfaction.
He reached for her again, but pulled back when she slashed at him, this time aiming for his regulator hose. His eyes widened as he saw her intent, those crazily familiar brown eyes she’d looked into so many times in the past. A sense of unreality washed through her. This was Brent, ex-boyfriend Brent, who was trying to kill her and Cal in the freezing depths of Mission Reservoir. At the thought of Callum’s weakening form, she shook off her distraction and fought with renewed ferocity, aiming her knife at the hose supplying Brent’s life-preserving air.
The blade sliced through the hose, and he immediately dropped his regulator and reached for his alternate air supply. Her brain flashed to Callum, inhaling water behind them, each second increasing his chances of brain damage and death. The fight felt like it had gone on forever, and desperation tightened her throat.
As his arm lifted to fumble for the second air supply, it exposed the right side of his chest. She plunged in the dive knife, feeling it scrape against something hard and then slide in deep. Brent stared at her, eyes wide behind the mask, his hand frozen, before he folded like a lifeless rag doll.
Yanking the knife free, she turned toward Callum, panicking in the few seconds it took to locate his limp form. Relief flushed through her as she finally spotted him, and she half ran, half swam the short distance to his side. Cursing her gloves, she fumbled for his regulator, which was still burbling oxygen. She pressed it to his mouth, clearing it of water and inserting it between his slack lips, but it fell free the instant she released it.
She cut the fabric of his weight belt and then dropped her knife, not wanting to accidentally stab Callum as she worked over him. Unhooking the carabiner attached to the safety line from her own harness, she hooked it to his. After she inflated his BCD, he began to float upward, and she scrambled to stay with him.
She noticed they were passing her exhaled bubbles, and every dive-safety lecture she’d ever heard about ascending slowly—no more than thirty feet per minute—ran through her head. What if she thought she was saving his life, when actually she killed him from the nitrogen building up in his system? But Lou didn’t slow their ascent. Oxygen was the priority. They didn’t have time for a three- to five-minute safety stop on their way to the surface.
When the slab of ice appeared above them, she almost sobbed with relief. A rush of panic quickly followed, since the hole where they’d entered was nowhere in sight. Although nightmare visions of being trapped under the ice as Callum died and she slowly ran out of air flashed through her mind, she shoved the images into a dark closet in her brain and slammed the door. She could have bad dreams about it later. Right now, she needed to think.
Grabbing her safety line just past where it connected to her harness, she started pulling in the slack. It was a hundred-foot line, and she had no idea how far from the hole she’d drifted in her search for Callum. She pulled in the rope, hand over hand. When she hit tension, it took several tugs for her to realize she’d removed all the slack. Once she did, it took another moment for her to feel someone on the other end of the rope was tugging back.
This time, she did give a sob of relief into her regulator. She gave two answering pulls and wrapped her arms around Callum. Whatever guardian angels were on the other end of the rope hauled them both through the water until the dark shape of the opening came into view. Lou actually laughed in relief. She never thought she’d be so glad to see a hole in the ice. With a squeeze around Cal’s middle, she allowed herself to hope he’d make it.
It was just in time, since Lou could feel the increased tightness of each breath that indicated her tank was getting low on oxygen. She kicked her fins, helping to move them through the water toward the opening. Hold on, Cal, she thought. Almost there.
Something closed around her left calf and yanked. Her heartbeat stopped as she plunged back into the deep. Startled, Lou opened her mouth, releasing the regulator and sucking in a mouthful of reservoir water. Her arms flailed, releasing Callum to churn at the water. Looking down, she saw Brent, his fingers wrapped around her lower leg as he towed her deeper.
She kicked and fought, terror ripping through her as she struggled, but she was pulled deeper and deeper. With a desperate upward glance, she saw Callum’s body floating away from her, his limbs outstretched like a starfish, until he disappeared into the murky darkness above her.
Another jerk on her leg made her renew her fight, kicking out at Brent uselessly. His hold on her dragged her farther down even as the fin on her free leg just bumped against him harmlessly. Her lungs started to burn with the need to expel the water she’d inhaled, and she swung an arm out to the side, hooking the regulator hose and sweeping it back in front of her.
Jamming the regulator into her mouth, she pushed the button to clear it as she coughed into the mouthpiece.
The image of Cal’s limp form getting farther and farther from her burned in her mind, igniting a rage like she’d never felt before. Twisting her body, she reached for Brent. She grabbed for him, but her gloved fingers slid uselessly against the slick material of his hood. Knocking away her grasping hands, Brent yanked her down so they were mask to mask.
Desperately wishing that she hadn’t dropped her knife, Lou thrust her hands toward his chest, attempting to shove him back. His fingers gripped her arms, pulling her closer to him, and she swung her fists, trying to strike him where she’d buried the blade beneath the skin. The resistance of the water robbed her blows of any power, however, and his hold on her didn’t lighten.
Their sides bumped something, and Lou realized they’d hit bottom. She wanted to wail and cry at the unfairness of it. She’d been so close to the surface, and now Brent had ruined her chance at survival. She inhaled, feeling the squeezing pinch of an almost-empty tank. She had nothing—no weapon, no air, no way of freeing herself from Brent’s hold.
Their faces were so close that she could see his expression. He looked smug. Brent thought he’d won, that she’d accepted the inevitability of her death, just as she’d come so close to resigning herself to marrying him. He was going to have her, even if that meant they both drowned.
Oh, hell no. He wasn’t going to win. Lou had a new life now, a good life, and she was going to keep it. Remembering the shock of cold after he’d hit her the first time, she grabbed his mask and pulled. He reared back as the water made contact with his face, stretching the band that had held the mask in place. Lou twisted in his grip, fighting to get free with everything inside her. The image of Callum filled her mind until there was no room for panic. She hammered at Brent’s chest, trying to break his hold, but he was already recovering from the cold-water shock—and he was furious.
He shoved her against the bottom, his hands wrapping around her throat in the same way he’d choked Cal. Still she fought, trying to hold on to her fury. Each of her breaths was getting tighter, harder to suck into her lungs. Her arms flailed to the side, hitting against the rocks scattered over the bottom with bruising force. That new pain brought her out of her frantic haze for a second, just long enough to close her fingers around a fist-sized stone. With the last of her strength, she brought her arm up in an arc. When the rock connected with his temple, she saw his moment of startled shock. His hands didn’t loosen, so she struck again, and then a third time. Finally, finally, his grip eased as his eyes rolled back, and she managed to shove free. Choking and coughing into her regulator, she scrambled away from him, knowing at any second he could lunge for her again. His body was completely still, though. As she stared, his regulator floated free of his mouth. No bubbles emerged from his mouth or nose, but she still watched him carefully as she pushed off the bottom and swam upward. She couldn’t resist turning her light toward Brent one last time, but the clouded water showed only the bare outline of his lifeless form.
She turned away. Kicking her fins, she moved toward the surface—and Callum.
Her gloved fingers worked at the weight belt, but her coordination was off. Odd sparkles appeared at the edges of her vision, and she increased her upward pace. There was nothing left in her tank, forcing her to spit out her regulator and break the cardinal rule of diving—she held her breath.
Finally the buckle gave on the weight belt, and it fell, leaving her more buoyant. Her upward velocity increased as she kicked harder, her lungs burning with the need to breathe. She almost hit the ice before she realized she was at the surface, and she flattened her hands against the hard crust to keep her skull from bouncing off it.
Her feet floated toward the surface, reminding her of her first dry-suit experience. It had been only a few weeks ago, but it felt so much longer. The light on her BCD reflected off the layer of ice above her, and she pushed herself back to get a wider view.
It didn’t matter. The ice stretched, unbroken, in all directions.
Her heart pounded in her aching lungs, reminding her that she had to get out. Without an opening, though, she was trapped, imprisoned by the thick slab above her. Her hands thumped against it in a futile attempt at what, she didn’t know—breaking it? Attracting someone’s attention?
Lou tried to think of a plan, but her brain could process only how much it needed air. She moved to the left, knowing it was futile. The hole was nowhere in sight. Despite all her attempts, she was going to die with Brent. He’d won after all.
The first glimmer she dismissed as a trick of her oxygen-starved mind, but then the glow brightened and steadied. She turned toward the muted light, that one break in the vast darkness that surrounded her. Forcing her legs to move the fins—up and down, up and down—she focused on the illumination that got brighter with each stroke of her feet. Her vision narrowed until she felt like she was swimming through a tunnel, focusing only on the beam of hope in front of her.
She was almost underneath it before she saw the hole. At first, she didn’t believe it was really there. It was a mirage, a taunting tease for a desperate, drowning woman. It didn’t fade, though. It didn’t move or shift or disappear, and a kernel of hope grew in her tight chest.
A diving light attached to a safety line dangled a few feet in the water, and she kicked her way toward it, giving a final surge of effort. Her head popped up into the frigid air, and she dragged in painful yet amazingly wonderful breaths—breaths that smelled like Smelly Jim.
Someone behind her grabbed her under the shoulder straps of her BCD and hauled her out of the water. She landed on her back on the ice and was dragged away from the hole. After the initial shocked moment, she started to struggle, twisting like a banked fish in the unknown person’s grip.
“Settle down, missy.” Smelly Jim leaned over her so she could see his face. “Just getting you out of that water.”
Lou was so happy to see his familiar—albeit dirty—face that she almost kissed him. It took only a fraction of a second for her relief to change to frantic worry.
“Callum,” she croaked, yanking off her mask and attempting to turn. Her oxygen tank kept her on her back like a turtle shell, and she fought to undo the fastenings on her BCD. When she finally managed to work herself free from the vest, Lou rolled over and pushed herself to her hands and knees. Her head spun, forcing her to pause before standing. Her fins got in the way, and she impatiently pulled them off. Once she was on her feet, she swayed. “We need to get him out!”
“Already did.” Jim nodded at a blanket-draped form several feet from them. “Barely. He’s a heavy bastard.”
A cry caught in the back of her throat as she ran to Cal on wobbly legs. He was on his side, his eyes closed. When Lou started to turn him to his back, Jim spoke again.
“Wouldn’t do that. He puked up a couple gallons of that reservoir water already. Not sure if he’s done with that.”
“Is he breathing? What if we need to do CPR?”
“Already did that, too.”
Cursing the gloves attached to her dry suit that made it impossible to take his pulse, Lou shoved the malodorous blanket aside and leaned down to put her ear against Callum’s chest. When it moved beneath her cheek, she started to cry.
“No time for that.” Smelly Jim pulled off the blanket and stretched it on the ice next to Cal. “He’s breathing, but he’s not walking yet.”
His words reminded her that they weren’t in the clear. Distant emergency lights pierced the gloom in the direction Lou assumed was the shore. With shaking hands—an entire shaking body, actually—Lou helped Jim roll Callum onto the blanket. Grabbing one corner, she waited for Jim to take the other, but it remained limp on the ice. When she looked at him in surprise, he’d already started backing away.
“I tried to stop him. Been following him, watching so he didn’t hurt you. He got away from me in the woods, though.” He gave her an apologetic grimace. “Sorry.”
“You’ve been watching him?” She didn’t think anything could surprise her anymore, but she was completely shocked by Jim’s admission.
He twitched his shoulder in an affirmative half shrug.
Lou wasn’t sure what to say. “Thank you.”
Without responding to that, he took another backward step. “Wish I could help you more, Lou,” he said, giving the faint red-and-blue flashes a hunted look. “They’re waiting for me over there.”
“Just the good guys, Jim,” she pleaded. “He’s too heavy for me to drag on my own. Please?”
“Sorry.” Ducking his head, he backed away a couple of steps until she could barely make him out in the gloom. “And they’re not all good. They’ve infiltrated, so they can watch me.”
“Jim!” she called, but he was gone. Looking at Callum’s unconscious form, she firmed her shaky legs and her bottom lip. “Guess it’s just you and me, Cal.”
Gathering one side of the blanket, she gave a heave. Cal’s body didn’t move, and despair struck hard. Bracing her feet, she hauled on the fabric again. This time, she felt a shift that she desperately hoped was Cal moving and not just the blanket pulling out from underneath him, like a magician’s tablecloth.
The next pull slid the blanket across the ice with an immobile Cal still on board. The earlier wind had scoured the snow from the ice, so the surface was slick and mostly smooth. Once she started moving, it got easier, and Lou sped up to a shuffling backward jog. Every so often, she’d turn her head to find the flashing lights and readjust her direction. Each time she looked, they were a little bit closer to shore.
“We’re coming!” she yelled when the lights had gotten close enough that she figured she could be heard. Answering shouts made her want to dissolve into tears again, but she bit her cheek hard to stop them. She wasn’t there yet. The ice roughened as she approached the edge, making it harder to pull Cal. They were so close. Lou tightened her fists around the handfuls of blanket and yanked. The blanket caught on an uneven patch of ice, rumpling under Cal.
Swearing under her breath, she looped her arms under Callum’s and pulled. He moved with surprising ease, throwing her off balance with the unexpected lurch. Although she stumbled backward, she didn’t fall. She shuffled back, pulling his limp form with her.
Before she could make it to the shore, it felt like a hundred people surrounded them. Relief took all the remaining strength from her body, and she toppled backward, pulling Callum on top of her. Shouting voices and flashing lights overwhelmed Lou’s senses, and she clung to Callum as hands tried to separate them.
“Let go, Lou.” Ian’s face came into focus in front of her.
“Not until he’s about to be lifted into the ambulance,” she said between chattering teeth. “Or Callum will yell at me like he did when I let go of Phil in training.”
“That’s now. Let go.”
She allowed herself to be pulled away from Cal, and then he was gone.
“Anyone else down there?” Ian asked, helping her to a sitting position.
An image of Brent’s lifeless form flashed through her mind, and her shaking increased. “A body will need to be recovered.”
“Phil’s on his way,” Ian said, shooting a grim look at the reservoir. “It’ll take at least an hour before he gets here, though. We put a call in to the Mercer County Dive Team, but they’ll be even longer. Right now, they’re stuck in the snow in their fire station parking lot.”
“He’s dead.”
Ian gave a single shake of his head, still staring out over the ice as if he could pull the guy out of the water with pure strength of will. “There’s a possibility he could still be revived if we could get him out. There just aren’t any other trained divers here.”
“No, Ian.” She grabbed the sleeve of his coat, waiting until he looked at her. “He’s dead. I stabbed him. Then I watched him stop breathing.”
Although his eyes sharpened, he just stared at her for a long moment before giving her a short nod. “I’ll let Phil and Mercer County know to stand down.”
Her muscles relaxed at his easy acceptance. She didn’t think she could handle horrified accusations or demands for explanations, at least not until she’d had a chance to mentally process what had happened. “Thanks, Ian.”
He just nodded and helped her to her feet. “Med needs to check you out.”
“I’m okay,” she protested, but Ian shook his head. He urged her into the back of an ambulance, ignoring her protests. The young, dark-haired EMT, whom Lou was pretty sure had introduced herself as Amy, ignored Lou’s insistence that she was fine, as well.
“Really,” Lou said for the tenth time. “I’m okay. Go help with Callum.”
“He’s already on his way to Denver. He got the luxury ride,” Amy said with a smile, helping her free her arms from the dry suit. She’d first moved toward Lou with scissors, as if to cut the suit off of her, but Lou had put her foot down. She was conscious and fully able to remove the dry suit—there was no reason to ruin an expensive piece of equipment. “Flight picked him up.”
“Flight for Life? Of course.” Her brain seemed a little sluggish. She remembered the limpness of his body and swallowed. “Was he conscious when he left? Still breathing okay?”
Amy ducked her head, focusing too hard on the dry-suit sleeve she still held. “They grabbed him and went. I don’t know what his vitals were, but they’ll work on him in the helicopter.”
“Oh.” Desolation washed all the warmth from her body, and shivers overtook her, despite the thermal underlayer she still wore. “He was without air for so long. I should’ve been faster.”
“Don’t give up on him yet,” Ian said, sticking his head into the back of the ambulance. “Remember, there’s no such thing as a cold, dead person. There’s only a warm, dead person.”
“She doesn’t need to hear that!” Amy snapped.
He just rolled his eyes. “Save all that PC shit for the tourists. Lou gets it—she’s one of us. Cold water is the best water to drown in. They’ve revived people up to an hour later—much longer than Callum was in the water. Besides, he’d come back from the dead rather than let someone else manage his dive team.”
With a watery laugh, Lou said, “True.”
“Need a ride home?”
“I need to check her out first,” Amy protested.
“Well, go for it. I’ll be back in five.”
As he pulled his head back and started to close the door, Lou called, “Ian?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you grab my clothes from the dive van?”
“Of course.” He shut the door quietly behind him.
As Amy wrapped the blood pressure cuff around Lou’s upper arm, she rattled off the standard questions. Lou hoped she was giving the right answers, the ones that wouldn’t get her stuck overnight in a hospital—a different hospital than where Callum was headed. Amy seemed satisfied, though, so Lou must’ve passed. She was rushing to dress when a knock sounded on the ambulance’s rear door.
“Busy place,” Lou muttered, zipping her coat as Rob opened the door, apparently not waiting for an invitation.
“Hi,” he said with that rare smile that always made her smile back. “How’re you doing?”
“Depends. Have you heard anything about Callum?”
“Yep.” His grin widened a few notches. “By the time they landed at Presbyterian St. Luke’s, he was conscious and alert. Nice save, Lou.”
“Seriously?” She blinked as the information settled, and then launched herself at him, wrapping him in a hard hug. “That’s awesome! Thanks, Rob.” She shifted to slide past him.
“Wait.” He grabbed her arm. “Where are you headed?”
“Denver,” she answered, although a “duh” was implied in her tone. “To Callum.”
“Now? Is that a good idea, for you to be driving?” He looked around, as if searching for someone to support his attempt to keep her from leaving.
“Very. Amy cleared me medically.”
“I need to get your statement.”
Now that she knew Callum’s status, everything else that happened crashed through her brain. “You’re right, but I need to go. Can I call you and give you my statement over the phone while I drive?”
Shaking his head, he said, “I don’t want you driving at all, much less while talking on your cell.”
She resisted the urge to stamp her foot in frustration. “I can—”
Ian opened the other rear door of the ambulance, interrupting her. “I’ll drive her.”
“To Denver?” When he nodded, she grinned. “Thank you!”
“Okay.” Rob released her arm. “Call me with your statement, then, as soon as you’re in an area with enough cell reception not to be dropping the call every few seconds. This isn’t the usual way we do things, but you’ve earned an exception tonight.”
“I will,” she promised. “Thank you.” When she grabbed Ian by the sleeve of his coat, the stiff material reminded her that he was still in his bunker gear. “Did you want to change first?”
“Sure. I’ll just take a minute. Meet you at the dive van? Thought we could run by Station One to drop it off and pick up Callum’s truck.”
She nodded, circling around the ambulance on her way to the dive van. Firemen and deputies still milled around the scene. As she wound her way through the rescue workers, each one gave her a shoulder squeeze or a quiet “good job.” She accepted each accolade with a smile of thanks, even though she wasn’t sure her inept fumbling under the ice merited the praise.
“Callum is alive,” she muttered under her breath. “And that’s worth something. That’s worth a lot.”
Firefighter Steve caught her by the arm as she passed. “You did a good thing. I would’ve missed the surly bastard.”
She grinned at him, knowing her relief and thankfulness were shining from her. “Me too.”
* * *
Ian didn’t say much on the almost three-hour drive to Denver, but Lou was grateful for his strong and steady presence—as well as his excellent driving skills. If they’d had better road conditions, the trip would’ve taken closer to two hours, but the ground blizzard had glazed the highways with ice where the wind had blown snow across the road.
As soon as they reached a flat stretch of high plains where she knew she’d get cell reception for a good twenty minutes or so, she called Rob to give him her statement. He put her on speaker so Chris could listen to her as well.
Lou didn’t know if it was sheer exhaustion or if she was still in shock, but she told her story in a dull, unemotional voice. Neither Rob nor Chris interrupted her. After she finished, there were several seconds of silence.
“Brent Lloyd was the one who called it in, then?” the sheriff finally said. It sounded as if he was working it out in his head, rather than actually asking Lou the question. “He was the only one at the reservoir?”
Lou rubbed her forehead. Her brain was lethargic, and her thoughts were slow to form. “I guess. So he lured us there to, what? Kill me? Or Callum? That makes no sense, though. He didn’t even know Callum.”
“He was watching you, though,” Chris said. “He saw that you were spending a lot of time together—living together, even. Since he was fixated on you, your relationship with Callum probably enraged him.”
Rob interrupted Chris’s theorizing. “Could you identify Lloyd’s voice if you heard a recording of the 9-1-1 call?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Lou squeezed her eyes together and then opened them. They felt gritty, as if sand had worked its way under her lids. “My stepdad would be a better one to ask, though. He worked with him every day for years. You still have his number, right?”
“Yes, I’ll contact him.”
“Okay.” She noticed they were on the curve approaching the south side of the pass. To her relief, there were no flashing lights indicating that the pass was still closed. “If you have any more questions, you’ll need to ask them quickly. I’m going to lose cell reception in about one minute.”
“We’ll call you back in a couple of hours. You can give us an update on Callum at that time, too.”
“Okay. Talk to you then.”
The two men said their good-byes and disconnected the call. Lou let the phone drop into her lap, her fingers suddenly too weak to hold it.
“Holy shit,” Ian said, his first words since she’d called the sheriff. “Fucking bastard set up an ambush.”
“Yeah.” Her head fell back against the seat. “Mind if I sleep now?”
“Go for it.” Although he sounded truly pissed, she knew it wasn’t directed at her. It was all meant for a dead man. Shutting down any thoughts of Brent, she allowed her eyes to close. There would be plenty of time later to process the events of the night. Right now, she just needed to sleep.