9
THE CABIN WASN’T WHERE NED HAD LEFT IT, and now they were going to die.
All because he’d been shot in the backside. What a hero. Ned gritted his teeth against the burn that leached out his breath with each brutal step.
As least he was done throwing up, although that probably had more to do with whatever was going on inside his gut. Because he’d seen blood in his bile.
Thankfully, over the past two hours, the pain in his backside had lessened its grip, or maybe he’d simply gotten accustomed to gritting his teeth and bracing himself. He hardly noticed the ache in his knee anymore, although if he gave it any mind, it might shut him down.
But he could hardly lie in a ball and give up now. Not with Shae so soundless and unmoving on his back.
“Let me carry her,” Jess said.
“We’ll find a spot to rest,” Ned said. Admittedly, he needed a break.
He just wanted to carry Shae as far as he could. The sight of Jess nearly tripping, fading, exhausted after carrying Shae on her back for the first part of their journey had dug a fist through him.
He hadn’t liked her plan from the first—let her carry Shae like she might be a backpack. But Jess had found a sturdy four-inch-thick branch and had wound the arms of his coat around the stick and secured it around her waist, with the brace across her back. Then, with Ned’s help, she’d positioned Shae on the floor, secured her toes, then in one smooth move, pulled her up and around her back, holding her arms in front of her.
Ned had lifted Shae’s legs onto the stick, resting at least half her body weight on Jess’s hips. Shae barely grunted, although her eyes opened and her mouth tightened. “I’m sorry I’m so heavy.”
Hardly. The woman probably weighed 120 soaking wet. Still, he remembered carrying her through the woods. Suddenly, 120 became 300, especially for someone who hadn’t eaten for thirty-six hours.
“Come on, Jess. Let me do this.” He hadn’t been blind to the fact that she was staggering under Shae’s weight. “I’m not that hurt—”
“You are hurt, so stop trying to be a hero!” Jess had rounded on him with a little more oomph than necessary.
She cut her voice down. Took a breath. “Sorry. I’m freaking out here. What if . . . what if we don’t find the cabin? We’re in real danger of our body temperature dropping in this rain.”
“But if we don’t find real shelter and get help, Shae could die.”
“Then we’d better get moving.” She’d stood at the edge of the cave, her expression wan and hollow before he squeezed her arm and headed out into the storm.
The wind had died down and the rain eased for the first hour of their hike. He’d followed the now-filling stream, helping to steady Shae as Jess studied each step, until they finally made it to the river, now dark and frothy.
By his calculation, the ridge that led to the lookout tower was just up ahead. But he’d seen the light in the forest in the valley near the river.
That was when he found a shaggy pine tree with thick branches some eight feet off the ground. He ripped off the lower limbs to create a pocket of protection for them. Then, he helped Jess ease Shae off her perch. Jess checked her pulse, and Shae roused long enough to flash her “we’ll be okay” grin at him, as if she could see the knot of worry in his chest.
Wow, he liked her spirit.
Shae’s eyes closed, her breathing shallow. Jess took off the coat and sat beside her, leaning against the tree, her eyes closed.
He tried to get his bearings. How he’d found his way back in the dark—although, admittedly, sheer panic had propelled him up the river to where he’d found the creek bed. Why he didn’t head straight for the cabin—well, again, his first impulse told him to get back to Shae, to Jess.
Just like the impulse to drive to Montana to see Shae. To show up at the wedding reception and . . . impress her.
“Stop trying to be a hero.”
The words stuck inside him like a burr. However, Jess couldn’t last another mile. And according to his math, he was all they had.
He tied the coat to his waist.
Then he walked over to Shae and knelt before her.
When she opened her eyes, he kissed her forehead, then, using Jess’s technique, pulled her onto his back.
Jess roused, and in a second found her feet. “What are you doing?”
“Calm down. I’m not trying to be a hero, I’m just giving you a break.”
He’d used her own words against her, and now her mouth pinched tight. “I just don’t want you getting any more hurt.”
“My choice. My body. And you’re hurting too.” He gestured to her wrist, which she still held a little gingerly.
“It’s not broken,” she said. “Maybe sprained, but I’m fine.”
“Good. Get Shae’s legs up, then lead the way. The cabin is a couple more miles down this river.”
Except, it wasn’t. Because two hours later, and no, maybe they hadn’t gone four miles, but it felt like he’d walked a marathon, sweat streaming down his back, despite the rain that soaked through his dress shirt and raised gooseflesh. They’d long ago passed the ridge from where he’d been shot and fallen into the stream.
Jess stood next to him, her grip on his arm. “You need to rest. Your wound is bleeding again.”
He gave her a look. “I know. But we need to keep going.”
Jess looked like she might cry. The rain had stripped all the color from her face, and her hair was plastered to her head. Her white blouse had turned nearly translucent under her grimy and snagged dress. And she was shaking from the cold.
Shae, however, lay like the dead on his back.
“How much farther?” Jess said.
“I don’t know. I expected to find it by now. To see something . . . but . . .”
“You don’t know where we are?”
“No. I don’t know, okay? I haven’t exactly been here before. I didn’t write a map on my hand.”
“Well, maybe you should have!”
He stared at her, and inside a voice said that Jess was simply unraveling, a by-product of fear and maybe even regret for following his stupid idea to try to find a cabin he’d only glimpsed in the waning light.
What had he been thinking? “Yeah, maybe I should have,” he snapped, not unaware that he might be coming unglued too. “But I didn’t think of that. All I could think was that whoever forced us off the road, tied us up, and followed us into the forest might have found us. And I was crazy with worry that I’d come back and find you two shot in the head. So yeah, I sort of just reacted. Made it up as I went along. It was just another stupid decision, okay?”
She was staring at him. He hadn’t quite meant for all that to spool out.
“Let’s keep moving, okay?”
He took a step, but of course, he was angry and hurting and tired and his foot didn’t quite land squarely on the slippery river rock. His knee twisted and he pitched forward, stumbling hard as his hand went out to brace himself.
Instead it glanced off a boulder and he landed on his jaw, scraping it raw before collapsing next to the boulder on his knees.
Somehow, by the grace of God, he still held onto Shae, but she’d roused and started to thrash.
“Shae, shh,” Jess said, her arms around her, behind him.
He clutched the rock, fighting to summon what he had left to get up.
His legs wouldn’t work.
They collapsed on him, and thankfully Jess was behind him to grab Shae before she spilled on the rocks. Jess peeled her off him as he crumpled into the rocky shore, breathing hard.
Trying not to cry.
Because oh, he longed to simply put his head down into his hands and wail. With pain, yes, but also with the dark frustration knotting inside him that turned him inside out.
Yes, they were going to die.
He closed his eyes. “Stop trying to be a hero.”
He didn’t know why those words rose inside, took root, but when Jess crawled over to him, put her hand on his back, and said, “Stay here. I’m going to walk upstream and see if I can spot anything,” he didn’t respond.
Just let her walk away like the coward he’d become.
“Ned?”
Shae’s voice nudged him, and when he turned to her, he saw that she was crawling over to him. And despite the urge to hide, he took her in his arms and held her against him, mostly to stop her shivering. “How are you doing?”
“No,” she said softly, her hand on his chest. “How are you doing?”
He looked away from her, into the gunmetal sky. The worst of the storm had blown over and now just the cold wind and an irritating drizzle remained, and he pressed his lips to her head, the best answer he could give her.
“What did you mean by another stupid decision?”
Oh, she’d heard that? He shook his head.
“You meant me, didn’t you? Coming out here to see me—if you hadn’t come to Montana, you wouldn’t be sitting here, shivering, shot in the—”
“No.” He pushed her away far enough to find her eyes. “No, Shae. That’s not what I meant. Trust me, coming to see you was not a stupid decision.” He put everything he had into his gaze, more than he was ready to say aloud. “I came out here because I did something and I wanted . . . I wanted to impress you.”
“Impress me? How—okay, yes, showing up to take me dancing, I get it—”
“No. That’s not it.” But now his news didn’t sound so impressive. “I joined the navy. I’m going to try to be a SEAL.”
She just stared at him. No smile, no “That’s amazing, Ned.”
Nothing.
If anything, she blinked, drew in a breath.
“Shae, are you okay?”
She nodded. “Yeah. I’m just . . . wow. I didn’t realize . . .” The smile she gave him looked like something she’d dug deep to produce, almost a grimace. “That’s great. If anyone can do it, you can.”
It suddenly didn’t feel great.
“Nothing. So . . . a SEAL. Why?”
Why. He didn’t really have a why. Just followed an impulse.
No, that wasn’t exactly true.
“I wasn’t completely honest this summer about . . . well, the truth is, I wasn’t just injured. I got kicked off my smokejumper team.”
There, he’d said it aloud, and it hadn’t dismantled him, hadn’t caused him to look into the sky and howl. Just closed a fist around his heart, cut off his breathing for the briefest of seconds, and still filled his throat with a burn he couldn’t quite swallow away.
“What?” Shae said.
“I got kicked off the smokejumper team.”
“For getting hurt? That’s crazy.” She leaned up, a little spark in her eye that reminded him of this summer, her determination not to let him give up on the search for his brother when all else seemed lost.
“Not for getting hurt,” he said, finally meeting her eyes. “For . . . endangering the team.”
“How did you—”
“I got hurt.”
She cocked her head.
“And I didn’t tell anyone.” He leaned his head back on the boulder. “I knew I’d wrenched my knee pretty badly, but I didn’t want to tell Jed, our jump boss. He was in the middle of selection, and I didn’t want any other person to take my place, so I just . . . I just took a bunch of painkillers and taped up my knee and kept going. But I only made it worse. And there we were, out in the bush, needing to hike back with all our gear during a training fire and I . . . I couldn’t do it.” He closed his eyes, the rain slicking his face. “Reuben and Jed had to practically carry me back to camp.”
“I was the weak link.” His jaw tightened as he looked at her. “Jed chewed me up and spit me back out, and he was right. If we’d actually been deployed, and I’d gone out hurt, I could have gotten someone else hurt. They would have had to babysit me instead of doing their jobs . . .”
He looked away. “He sent me home to recover. That’s why I was home when the storm hit. After we found Creed, I called Jed and asked him if I could come back. He told me to get my head on straight and he’d think about it . . . in a year.”
“My guess is you didn’t take that well.”
Huh. He thought he had taken it very well. Had gotten in his car and driven to the nearest navy recruitment station. “The navy has this SEAL recruitment program that allows people to join the navy, and before you report for boot camp—which is usually about six months after you sign the papers to join up—you can try to qualify for the Special Ops program. They give you about six months to qualify, but if you do, you can go right to BUD/S after basic. I still haven’t qualified, but I will . . .” He looked away. “I hope.”
“You will, I know you will.”
There they were, the words that he’d come to hear. “I don’t know. I’m not getting any faster. To qualify, we have to swim, run, and do push-ups in a limited amount of time, and I’m a strong swimmer, and I can easily do the push-ups, but my run time is . . . it’s bad.”
“Your knee.”
He nodded. Sighed. Looked at her. “I don’t have my final recruitment physical until I actually show up at what is called MEPS—the military entrance processing station. But I need to be operational before that to qualify for the SEAL program.”
He froze. Her eyes had filled. “What’s the matter?”
She closed them as if in pain, and looked away.
“I’ve always known you were a hero, Ned.”
Huh. Because despite her words, he suddenly didn’t feel like one.
“I know it was an impulsive decision, but it feels like the right one, you know?”
She nodded, gave him a tight smile, hued with sadness, as if somehow he’d broken her heart.
What . . . ?
“Ned!”
Jess half jogged, half tripped up the shoreline, shouting, “I found it!” She came closer, breathing hard as she slowed. “I found a trail from the river and it leads to a hunting cabin. I spotted it through the trees. You were right.” She leaned over, grabbing her knees.
Huh.
“We’re going to make it.”
Maybe. But, as he wrestled himself to a stand, as he leaned down to pull Shae up, fighting to find his footing, he had a feeling that maybe the happy ending he’d come to Montana to find had just perished.
They just needed a little mercy. A smidgen of heavenly intervention. Because although Pete wasn’t going to admit it, not aloud, and not even to the tiny screaming voice inside, finding Jess and Shae and Ned in the near-freezing mist that saturated the wilderness would take a miracle.
Pete stood in the riverbed, his feet soaked through as the rain coated his rainsuit, examining the crushed brush and tree limbs caused by the fall from the trail some twenty feet above.
Whoever had been shot—and the sixteen-year-old kid who described his target, in between assertions that it looked like a deer in the dimming light—had been wearing a brown jacket. Pete had found a soggy ripped piece of soft leather. And, judging by the destruction wrought on his tumble down the slope, the victim had enough weight and girth on him to crush brush, to break poplar branches and skid pine needles from the boughs of low-hanging evergreens.
The rain had destroyed everything else. Blood, footprints. All of it, washed away in the increasingly frothy river.
He glanced up to where Felipe, Ian, and Ty waited on horseback.
“Anything?” Ty yelled. They’d interviewed the hunters who’d brought them to the trail, on a ridge overlooking the river. A father and two teenaged sons on horseback. They’d chased their prey without results last night, but this morning had found enough blood and boot prints to put the cold hand of horror on them. The father had followed the destruction down to the riverbed, found evidence of more blood on the rocks, but that was where the trail ended.
They’d trekked along the ridgeline, down the river, but when the rain started, they turned back to their camp and drove out, calling in as soon as they hit cell range.
There weren’t cell phone bars on the ridge where they thought they shot the victim, either, which only meant that this wasn’t where Ned had called his brother.
Pete grabbed the brush and trees to anchor himself as he climbed back up the slope to where Ty sat astride a chestnut stock horse, holding the reins to Pete’s sturdy, sweet—Ty’s description—mare named Lulu.
Pete could jump from a peak with nothing but a backpack strapped to his shoulders, dangle over a cliff with one hand, but getting on the back of an animal . . .
So he’d had a few nightmares. It wasn’t fun to be eight years old and in a full leg cast.
Pete took Lulu’s reins and stood looking out over the horizon. A fog hung low, a ghost through the trees and along the valley that held the river. “How far to the crow’s nest from here?” He lifted his glasses and sighted it, just barely, through the haze.
“Maybe six miles? More?” Ty said. “The river runs at least that far. He could have followed it until he found a deer path, or even a horse trail.”
Pete turned, scanning the area. From here, the wilderness dropped off into a mass of shaggy pine, gray poplar, and black-and-white birch. Thick and tangled and menaced with bobcats, mountain lions, wolves, and grizzlies.
Not to mention, if they kept following the river, a fifty-foot waterfall and a spectacular hike for anyone who wasn’t hypothermic, hungry, and needing help.
“Are we guessing that he came from the opposite direction? Walking toward the crow’s nest? Because if he’d seen it from any point beyond this, wouldn’t he have gone straight for it instead of walking this way?”
Felipe sat in his saddle as if he’d been born there. He backed up his filly, turned it. “If I were looking for help, I’d want to get high, find a place that might pick up my cell phone signal.”
Ian was nodding. “Except now that he’s located the crow’s nest, he’ll have headed there.”
“And what about Jess and Shae?” Ty said.
“You’re assuming they weren’t together,” Felipe said. “Maybe he climbed up here, looking for a signal, got shot, and they helped him down the river.”
“He said they were hurt,” Pete said. “I would have gone for help.”
Thunder rolled, and a tremor went through Lulu. Pete put a hand on her withers. Just what he wanted, to be in a rainstorm on a cliffside with a skittish horse.
“So, what are we going to do, Pete?” Ty asked.
Of course they’d look to him. Pete pressed the binoculars to his eyes. “I don’t know.”
“We should split up,” Felipe said. “Two of us head to the crow’s nest. The other two follow this ridge, see where it takes us.”
Pete glanced at Ty, who was still watching him. “It’s not a terrible idea. Check your coms.”
They ran a check and Pete mounted Lulu. She skittered back, and he refused to grab the saddle horn. She wasn’t going to buck him off, or worse, pitch him over the side of the cliff and land on top of him, crushing him.
He still preferred motorized vehicles, thanks.
Or himself. His own two feet.
Ian turned his horse, also easy in the saddle. Well, that was what happened when you actually wanted to be a cowboy. “I’m headed to the crow’s nest. Pete, Ty?”
“I’m behind you, Ian,” Ty said and rounded his mount to follow Ian.
Which left, oh joy, Felipe with Pete.
Thanks a lot, Ty.
Especially since Ty knew Felipe. Had roomed with him in college. But it wasn’t like they were picking teams.
They had a job to do.
Felipe eased his horse forward. Pete managed to follow, not quite as gracefully.
They chased the ridge down a half mile until it met with the river. There, the land flattened out and Felipe fell back.
“This is what she did? Selene? On your rescue team?”
Pete looked over at Felipe. He’d changed clothes before leaving, also taking advantage of Gage’s extra stash of clothing. He also wore a navy-blue PEAK team rainsuit, the emblem on the breast, reflective lettering on the back. And cowboy boots, courtesy of Ben. With his hood up and a woolen cap under it, Felipe looked like he actually belonged on the team.
“Who?” Pete asked.
“Selene—Jess. You know who I mean.”
Yeah, okay, he did. It was just that every time Felipe said Selene, it reminded Pete that he might have been the second choice, the rebound guy, the fling on the other side of the tracks, or country, as it were.
Pete was a temporary fix for Jess.
Felipe knew her as the woman she’d been, and had become again.
“Yeah, Jess did this,” Pete said. “Not on horseback that I can remember, but she was on plenty of callouts for missing campers, hunters, and hikers. She helped in the search for a bunch of kids about two years ago, around this time. Their van went off the road in the mountains of Glacier National Park, and she wouldn’t give up until she found them.” Of course, she’d had help. Ty and Gage and even Pete.
In fact, that had been the first time he’d realized that Jess Tagg had gotten under his skin. First time he’d realized that he might be falling for her, hard.
“She’s an amazing EMT. Always knows what to do. Steady under pressure. Once she sets her mind to something, it happens. Like her house—she bought this wreck of a house for a dollar and fixed it up, room by room. Redid the plumbing, the electrical, fixed the foundation, sheetrocked the walls, painted—she even installed new cabinets.”
“You helped her, didn’t you?” Felipe’s voice eased out light, as if just making conversation, but Pete heard the jealousy in it. So, it went both ways, huh?
“Yeah. But she did plenty by herself.”
“Is that how you met?”
“Chet hired her on the team before I joined up. We met while I was working as a smokejumper out in western Montana. She rescued a girl who’d been mauled by a bear. Saved her life.”
Felipe nodded. “She always wanted to be a doctor. She had just finished her second year at Columbia when the scandal began.”
That was what Felipe called the complete derailing of her life? A scandal?
“I knew that,” Pete said.
“I’m very proud of her. She’s applied to start her internship at CUMC, but of course, she wants to wait until . . .” He trailed off, his gaze on the surroundings. “You should know, it wasn’t easy for her to stay in New York. She missed her life here very much.”
Pete frowned at him. “So then why . . . No, I guess I don’t want to hear this. She made her choice.”
“Yes, she did, Peter. But it wasn’t without heartache. And you didn’t make it any easier.”
“What are you talking about?” Stay calm. “It was my idea for her to return to New York City—”
“Then you chased her down, and even followed her to Paris. The desperate cowboy who couldn’t let her go.”
Pete wanted to dismantle the man on the spot. Instead, he cut his voice low. “I proposed. And she said yes. Yes. I wasn’t desperate. I was her fiancé.”
Felipe’s mouth tightened around the edges.
“Did you know that I proposed? Did she tell you?”
“Yes, she told me,” he said quietly.
Pete just blinked at him, the hot coil tightening. “And then what? Did you get angry? Did you . . . scare her? Threaten her?”
Felipe rounded in the saddle. “Don’t be rude. I love her. Let us not forget that I asked her to marry me first.”
“And then you left her.”
“I never left her. She left me.” Felipe took a breath, as if he too were fighting a rise of heat. “It might occur to you that she did the same thing to me as she did you. Ran. Never looked back.”
His words flushed Pete of a response. No, he hadn’t thought of that.
“Of course, it was a fragile time for her. She was afraid that I would reject her, so I understand why she ran. She didn’t believe that I would have helped her. Stayed with her. I am still staying with her.” Felipe drew in a breath. His voice returned to the calm, cool tone. “Selene and I care very much for each other.”
Pete’s chest tightened.
“Let’s be honest here. You’re exactly . . . well, you’re not the kind of man Selene should be with. You are a . . . well, she needed you, I suppose. But you’re not the kind of man she should marry, have children with. Spend her life with. I know you cared for her. But it’s time to be honest.”
Pete didn’t even know where to begin to dissect Felipe’s calm, scalpel-precise words.
Except for: “I care. Present tense.” He wasn’t going to declare his undying love for Jess to Felipe, but the truth rose up to strangle him.
Yeah, he cared. More than cared. Because just the thought of Felipe knowing her, comforting her, laughing with her, kissing her . . . spending the rest of his life with her.
Now Pete couldn’t breathe.
Because like it or not, he was still desperately in love with Jess. And had wanted exactly all those things.
The very last thing he wanted to do was get over her.
Worse, if he was being brutally honest, he would do just about anything to get her back.
Pete urged his horse forward.
“If you care for her, then you’ll do what’s best for her.”
“And that’s you?” You little French jerk.
“At best, you’re just confusing her. If you keep chasing her, she’ll never accept the life she should have.” He glanced at Pete. “Can’t you just admit that you’re not right for her? That you’ve already done enough damage? Leave her alone.”
Damage?
Pete turned in the saddle, stared at Felipe. “What are you talking about? She’s the one who did the damage. She destroyed me after Paris. I called her repeatedly, and it went right to voice mail. Not one return call. I lost my freakin’ mind.”
“Until New Year’s Eve.”
That shut Pete down. He sat there, his heartbeat thumping. “What?”
“New Year’s Eve.” Felipe’s dark eyes landed on him, no mercy. “Selene called you.”
Pete’s mouth tightened.
“I found her weeping. She wanted to explain—”
“Explain what, exactly?” Pete knew he was shouting, but it was better than launching from his saddle and choking the man.
No, no it wasn’t, but Pete stayed put. “Explain how she cut me out of her life—?”
“Explain that she’d been in France taking care of her dying mother!” Felipe was shouting too.
“Her dying mother?” Pete said, Felipe’s words finally taking root. “What are you talking about?”
Felipe managed to rein himself in, his jaw tight. “The night she was out with you in Paris, Caroline Taggert had an episode.”
“What is that . . . an episode?”
“A seizure. She collapsed and we had to rush her to Paris. She was hospitalized for two weeks and spent another month recovering before she was allowed to return home. For pity’s sake, man, get email or Facebook or something. Selene’s phone didn’t have an international plan, so I let her use my phone to call you, and you didn’t pick up.”
A roaring had started, a low hum in the back of Pete’s head. “I don’t take calls from people I don’t know.” But yeah, he’d probably declined a couple calls he thought might be telemarketers. “But she could have figured out a way to contact me.”
“While sitting by her mother’s bedside? Give her a break, Peter. We were in and out of the hospital until Christmas. She was exhausted. We got to New York shortly before the New Year, and she called almost immediately. She wanted to talk to you about . . .” Felipe gave him a sidelong look, then a shake of his head. “Well, you should have answered her call, Peter.”
“Talk about what,” Pete said softly, the roaring getting louder.
“About why we needed to get engaged.”
“Needed?” His chest tightened. Needed? “Was Jess pregnant?”
Felipe mouth tightened. “Of course not.”
Pete probably should be ashamed of his question, but he just felt a crazy, momentary relief.
“There were other reasons,” Felipe said. “Which you would have discovered if you’d bothered to answer the phone.”
Pete couldn’t breathe, the roaring too loud, the darkness closing in.
“I was busy.”
“Mmmhmm. That’s what Selene thought too.” Felipe eased his horse forward, picking up the pace.
Why didn’t he answer? The thought burned through him.
Because she’d hurt him for two long, agonizing months and . . . and now he wanted to punch something, anything, until the roaring stopped. Until he destroyed the memory of his phone buzzing in his back pocket, annoying him as he leaned into . . . well, he couldn’t exactly remember her name, but she was blonde, wore a sweet smile, and lit a fire through him as she ran her finger down his chest.
Of course, he hadn’t exactly been operating on all cylinders.
He had been coherent enough to pull the phone from his pocket. To see Jess’s number.
And didn’t that shut down any New Year’s romance? A call from his ex.
He’d thumbed away her call. Shoved the phone back into his pocket. Turned back to the blonde. But his heart wasn’t in it. In fact, he could pinpoint that night as the start of his current run of brokenhearted failure to revive the old Pete.
Still, it wasn’t what Jess—or Felipe—thought. Not entirely. “Wait one doggone minute.” Pete caught up to him. “It was New Year’s Eve. I hadn’t talked to Jess for nearly two months and—” His chest tightened. “It’s none of your business what I was doing.”
“Agreed. We’re all adults here. And Selene knew what kind of man you were—are, apparently. But that’s why you need to let her go.”
Their fight outside the reception rushed at him, the wash of tears in her eyes. “I’m here. Right now. I’m here. And you’re kissing someone else.”
No wonder she’d turned and run.
He wanted to weep for the timing, the injustice.
The truth.
The rest of their fight played out in brutal clarity. His angry words. “And you show up tonight, hoping that I’ll just sweep you into my arms, like nothing has happened?”
And her response. Broken. Quiet. The power in her words could shatter him. “You promised you would.”
He had. Maybe he had plenty of reason to be angry, to walk away, to find someone else. But he hadn’t. “It wasn’t what you think.”
Felipe ignored him.
“I’m not letting her go,” Pete said.
“It doesn’t matter, Peter,” Felipe finally said. “She’s already gone.”
Jess wouldn’t exactly classify the cabin as paradise, but right now, it felt pretty close. Made of timbers, it sat nestled more than a hundred yards back from the river, in a clearing surrounded on all sides by forest. A light blazed from the front door stoop like a beacon calling them hither as Jess helped Ned carry Shae between them up the path.
A covered porch, Adirondack chairs, and a metal fire pit suggested hunters or at least vacationers who knew how to enjoy the wilderness.
Please, let the door be open.
Shae eased herself into one of the Adirondack chairs, and Jess tried the door. Found it locked.
Ned appeared with a poker that was probably used to stir the fire. He put it into the frame of the door and used it as a fulcrum to wedge it open. The door broke free of the frame and swung in. “I’ll fix it later,” Ned said as he returned for Shae, picked her up, and brought her inside.
He’d scared Jess when he’d fallen to his knees and stayed there, moaning on the shoreline. In a way, Ned reminded her of Pete. A darker but still broad-shouldered, teeth-gritted version of the man she hoped might be searching for them.
Yeah, they were cut from the same cloth. The way Ned looked at Shae . . . Pete had looked at her that way, once upon a time.
If Pete Brooks was out there, he wouldn’t stop looking. That gave her pause, and for a moment she stood on the deck, looking out into the forest, half expecting him to emerge out of the woods wearing his navy-blue PEAK rainsuit, a baseball cap, and a pair of hiking boots, his blue eyes zeroed in on her as if she wore a homing beacon.
It was just wishful thinking because . . . well, yes, he might be looking for her. But only because it was his job.
She headed inside and found the place small but homey. Shae lay on a sofa made from rough-hewn timber, the fashionable log-cabin style popular in rental cabins. Unstained birch cabinets and a Formica countertop formed a U-shaped kitchen in the corner. In the center of the room, firewood was stacked near a wood-burning stove.
A door to another room revealed a double bed. She walked into the room—a simple bed, a table, a gas light. Off the bedroom, a tiny bathroom with toilet and sink. She opened the cabinet, hoping for a first aid kit, but found nothing.
All the same, most definitely paradise.
“Ned, can you get a fire going?” Jess said as she came back out to the kitchen.
He’d been standing near Shae—probably not eager to sit down, Jess guessed—and now moved into action, opening the stove and filling it with kindling and other lighter material conveniently stashed in a nearby tin bucket.
She did a quick search of the kitchen supplies. The fridge contained a six-pack of beer, some bacon, and a tin of coffee. In the cupboard she found three cans of pork and beans, garlic powder, salt, but still no first aid kit.
Shoot.
A drawer of plastic ware, a few plastic bags, and some plastic wrap. Matches. She dug those out and handed them to Ned. “I’m going to see what I can do about Shae’s wound.”
She sat down on the coffee table in front of Shae. “Okay, let’s take a look at what we’ve got here.”
Shae’s hands caught Jess’s wrists the moment she made a move to remove the belt.
Jess paused. “Be brave.”
Shae’s eyes widened, but she nodded. Removed her hands.
Be brave. Her own hands shook a little as she reached again for Shae’s wound.
Take a breath. Think. Airway, breathing, circulation.
She unbuckled the belt, and Shae let out a gasp as the pressure eased.
In a second, Ned was kneeling beside her. “It’ll be okay.”
Maybe. Or not. Because the congealed blood had glued the cloth to the wound. Jess needed saline to loosen the dressing if she didn’t want to tear any skin away.
Worse, if there were exposed intestines, or even a tear in the omentum, it could be excruciating to remove the bandage.
But at the very least it needed to be cleaned.
“Get that fire going,” Jess said to Ned and headed into the kitchen. The pots were under the stove and she filled one with tap water—probably well water, but she wasn’t taking any chances.
She put water on to boil, added a tablespoon of salt, then went over to help Ned with the fire.
He already had a tiny blaze crackling.
“You’re next, tough guy. I need to see that backside. If you want, we can go into the bedroom for you to drop your drawers.”
He just looked at her. Raised an eyebrow.
“That was supposed to be an offer for privacy.”
He added a grin. “I know. I was just giving you a hard time. Yeah, privacy would be nice. But I’m not leaving Shae, so, let’s just do this.” He toed off his cowboy boots and unbuttoned his jeans. “No laughing.”
“Dude, you had a bullet go through your backside. Two more inches and you wouldn’t be walking. I’m not laughing, I’m relieved. And—”
Oh boy. He’d turned and shucked his jeans down one side, to reveal the wound that tore through the outer left side of his buttock. It separated his skin in a thumb-wide gash that looked about an inch deep and ran across his backside and up to his hip. Blood still oozed from it, from all his exertion.
She was right. Two inches closer to the right and he wouldn’t be walking. Or jumping out of airplanes. Or dancing at his and Shae’s wedding.
Because the way Ned kept glancing at Shae, Jess was sure that the man had serious, never-let-go feelings for Shae Johnson, aka Esme Shaw.
Otherwise, why would he travel a thousand miles to attend a wedding?
Yep, just like Pete. Following his emotions across the globe. Please, Shae, don’t break his heart.
“I need to irrigate this and then figure out a way to close it.”
The water on the stove was boiling, so she returned to it and shut it off.
“You’re just going to leave me here, in the wind?” Ned said.
She laughed. “No. I need to get some pine resin. You button up and stay with Shae while the water cools. Then I’ll get you both fixed up.”
Somehow, just saying that seemed to sink heat, courage, even hope into her bones. “Stay put.” She grabbed a kitchen knife, something with a sharp point, and found a bowl in the cupboard.
She could just about hug the person who stocked this little place.
Ned already had his britches back on and was kneeling next to Shae as Jess left the house.
The sun refused to emerge from the soggy sky, and wind whipped into the trees. The air smelled of loam and carried a nip. Next on the agenda, food, because her stomach clenched as she trekked into the rim of forest.
She needed a pine tree, preferably wounded, where resin would form as a scab. It didn’t take long to find a towering white pine, ages old, the bark gritty and thickened. A divot rankled the trunk about five feet up, and she used the knife’s point to chip off beads of hard orange resin into the bowl.
“Resin is the tree’s effort to heal itself. It makes a great glue if you melt it down. Or, add it to a fire to keep it going.”
Thanks, Pete.
One of his many survival tips, offered in casual conversation some nondescript time they trained in the wilderness, as if it might be something she already knew.
He never made her feel like a city girl—although, for his part, he hadn’t exactly known she was from New York City. But the last time they went climbing, he’d taught her how to rappel without a safety line. Just in case she ever needed to.
Scared her to her core.
But he’d kept her on belay, secured to himself and feeding out her safety line with those amazing arms, shouting encouragement to her. Jess! You got this.
She could almost hear his voice in her ear. Jess!
She stilled, her breath caught, listening to the echo against the trees, perhaps lifted from the river.
She walked to the middle of the yard and yelled, “Pete!”
No response, and she suddenly wanted to cry with the absurdity, the crazy hope of it all.
Wow, she missed him. It wasn’t just that she hoped with every breath that he might be looking for her, but that . . . she missed the woman she was with Pete cheering her on.
Felipe was safe. Predictable. Downright perfect.
And Pete was a storm. Bold. Impulsive. Dauntless. But with Pete she wasn’t a second choice. Wasn’t a good decision. Wasn’t a family expectation.
With Pete she wasn’t afraid. Or if she was, she did it with his arms around her. Hang on to me, babe.
Pete made her believe that the crazy was possible.
So, she stood in the yard, and with everything inside her yelled again. “Pete!”
Her voice echoed against the soggy ceiling, then fell back to earth. She closed her eyes, but the only answer she heard was her heartbeat against her ribs.
“Jess? You okay?” Ned stood at the door, and she turned, slightly chagrined.
“I just thought, since I was out here . . .” She lifted a shoulder and headed inside.
The stove had shaved an edge off the cold in the house.
Jess found a cast-iron pan and a cutting board. After cleaning off the bark from the resin, she dropped the pieces into the pan and turned up the heat.
“What are you doing?” Ned said.
“Making glue. The resin will melt, and after I irrigate your wound, we’ll close it.”
His eyes widened. “Uh . . .”
She turned a hip to the counter. “Pine sap is antibacterial and an antibiotic.”
“Who are you, Survivor Man?”
“You can thank Pete Brooks.” Of course.
The resin had started to soften, and she took a spoon and separated the bark from the pitch as it melted and turned into a jelly. She took it off the heat.
She emptied the heated water from the pan into a bowl and pulled out a baggie from the drawer. “Okay, Ned, let’s close that wound.” She poured water into the baggie, then cut a tiny hole in one end.
He made a face.
“Don’t be a baby.”
“You’re going to glue my skin together with hot pine sap and you’re calling me a baby? I’m a wildland firefighter, Jess. Pine sap is like Greek fire, it holds heat like napalm.”
“I promise not to burn you.”
He pursed his lips and walked over to the table.
“Lie down.”
“I feel like I’m being operated on.”
“You are. Drop your drawers.”
“Not even.” But he hiked down his jeans just enough for her to have access to the wound.
She used a towel to catch the liquid as she irrigated it, the water warm but not too hot. He closed his eyes, his breath even and thick.
“Sorry if that hurts.”
“Just do this.”
The resin had turned pliable, and she touched it, testing it.
“I’m going to draw the edges together and use this as a bonding agent.”
“I don’t care if you sear it shut with a glowing ember, the sooner you get this done, the sooner I’m hiking out of here and getting help.”
Maybe her words had galvanized him too, because as he positioned his head on his hands, he met her eyes. The guy who’d fallen on the creek bed was long gone. His gaze flashed over to Shae.
Jess didn’t argue with him.
It wouldn’t be pretty. But the pitch worked like she’d hoped as she used one hand to close the wound, the other to dab the resin onto his skin. Still warm, the resin bonded quickly, creating a glue that hardened into a firm bandage. When it dried, she found a cloth and secured it over the wound.
He said nothing as he slid off the table and put himself back together.
“Now let me see your back.”
He gave her a look.
She raised an eyebrow.
“Fine.” He turned and lifted the back of his shirt. A bruise the size of her hand darkened his back on the lower right-hand side. She pressed on it and he stiffened. “Have you vomited any blood?”
He said nothing, and when she looked up, he nodded his head.
“You could have a cracked rib or even a bruised kidney, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Just go easy, okay?”
He lowered his shirt. “Talk to me after we’re safe.” He nodded toward Shae. “Now her.”
Jess retrieved her baggie and refilled it with water. Ned took Shae’s hand, and Jess wet the cloth and used the saline to loosen the cloth from the wound.
Tears ran from Shae’s eyes, but other than a whimper that raked through her body, she didn’t move. The heat in the room seemed to add more color to her skin, however, and a sweat broke out across her forehead.
The cloth eased away from the wound, and finally Jess got a good look.
A puncture wound, but the damage had been more extensive than Jess first thought, with spongy, yellowish tissue emerging from the wound, along with pus and dried, blackened blood. A new trickle of blood formed, bright red around the edges from the removal of the cloth.
Her best guess was a lacerated small intestine, with damage to the mesentery, which would account for the flood of blood from a penetrating wound. And the infection Shae seemed to be fighting.
Jess rolled up Shae’s dress—glad that she also had leggings—and found bruising through her lower body. “No more moving her,” Jess said, glancing up at Ned. “Shae might have a broken rib or two, along with this wound.”
What she wouldn’t do for the PEAK chopper right now.
“All I can do is try to keep it bacteria free.”
“With more pine sap?” Ned said.
“Not on this.” Jess got up and retrieved the plastic wrap, ripped off a piece, and brought it back to Shae. Wetting the surface with the saltwater solution, she covered the wound with the plastic wrap. “Ned, get me a towel from the bathroom.”
He returned moments later with a thin brown towel. She folded it and placed it over Shae’s abdomen. Then she retrieved two dish towels from the kitchen, folded them diagonally, and worked them around Shae’s body, tying them above and below the wound to secure the towel. She folded the dress back over the wound. “Don’t move.”
“I’m thirsty.”
“You can have something to moisten your lips, but no swallowing, Shae. I don’t know what is perforated.”
Shae nodded, but another tear dripped down her cheek. Sweet Ned used his thumb to brush it away.
Jess went to the sink, moistened a towel, and handed it to Ned.
He touched it to Shae’s lips, so gently it might have been a kiss.
Jess turned away, walking to the window to stare out. Shae needed immediate medical attention. But with the wind stirring the trees and the drop in the temperature, snow could be on the tail end of this storm, just waiting to gather.
Either she sent Ned out to freeze, possibly to get lost in the woods and perish, or they stayed here and watched Shae fade away.
Jess ran her hands up her arms, needing more fortification than the beans in the cupboard.
Because once again, no matter what she chose, someone was going to get hurt.
She closed her eyes. And maybe it was silly, but she was raw and desperate and frankly too tired to do anything but unleash the cry of her heart.
Find me, Pete. Please, find me.