Up Close and Dangerous

  Which was a good thing, because that was exactly what she got. Cam set a grueling pace, so grueling she was terrified for him. He was in the lead, so if he stepped on a seemingly solid place and it turned out to be a snowbank that caved in beneath him, he’d be gone before she could begin to react, pulling the heavy sled down on top of him.

  That scenario suddenly was so real that she yelled “Stop!” and when he did she hurried to get in front. “I’ll lead,” she said brusquely, setting out at the same pace he’d set.

  “What the fu—? Hey!” he yelled after her, scowling as he tried to catch up.

  “You’re pulling the sled. I’ll test the footing.”

  He didn’t like that at all, but until he could catch her, there wasn’t a hell of a lot he could do about it—and he couldn’t catch up with her as long as he was pulling the sled. She settled the makeshift straps of the roll-aboard backpack more comfortably on her shoulders, and plowed ahead.

  She did pick up a long, sturdy branch to use to poke into the ground ahead of her, just to make certain the ground was really there, but she didn’t let it slow her down much. The possibility of being rescued either this afternoon or tomorrow pulled her along. God, she wanted off this mountain! She developed a rhythm, the poke of the stick through the snow followed by the slide of her snowshoes over the crusty top layer. The sounds were monotonous, lulling, which was in itself a danger. Poke, slide, slide, poke, slide, slide. She had to force herself to pay attention.

  They slithered down slopes that the day before they would have detoured around. Most of them she couldn’t have negotiated without the sturdy stick, and at every one they had to remove their snowshoes so they could get better traction. She would go down first, and Cam would lower the sled to her, carefully playing out the rope he’d made by tying pieces of clothing together. Then she would hold the sled while he made his way down, at which point he would take over the sled again.

  He didn’t mention taking point, but the current system, with her testing the way, was working out so well he’d have been a fool to insist that he lead. If there was one thing Cam wasn’t, she thought, it was a fool. He had an ego, but he also had a brain, and in him the brain trumped everything else. She liked that; no, she loved it. She repeated the word to herself several times. Love, love, love. It took some getting used to, but she didn’t feel quite as panicked now as she had at first.

  Just before noon, one of the straps on her right snowshoe broke. It came off in midstep and she stumbled forward, one shoe on and one off; only the fact that she dug the thick stick into the ground kept her from falling on her face. As it was she merely went down on one knee and quickly levered herself back to her feet. She tugged her face mask down and dragged in a deep breath. “I’m okay,” she said as Cam pulled even with her, critically examining her for damage before he bent to pick up the snowshoe.

  “I can fix it,” he said after briefly looking at the torn strap. “We need a break, anyway.”

  They sat down on the sled and took a breather while they passed the water bottle back and forth. He removed the torn strap, replacing it with another strip of fabric cut from yet another garment. At this pace, she thought humorously, if they didn’t get rescued soon, she wouldn’t have any clothes left to use as a covering at night.

  “We’ve made good time,” he said, looking around him. “We’re probably five hundred feet lower than we were this morning.”

  “Five hundred feet,” she muttered. “I know we’ve traveled five miles, at least.”

  His teeth flashed in a grin. “Not quite, but that five hundred feet is significant. Can’t you tell the difference in the wind?”

  She lifted her head. Now that he mentioned it, she could. The trees weren’t whipping about quite so much, and though the wind was cold, it lacked the icy sharpness they’d been enduring since the crash. Plus, because they hadn’t been able to go straight down, but had been forced to traverse the mountain, they now seemed to be heading in a more easterly direction, away from the windward side. The temperature probably was only a degree or two warmer, but the difference in the wind velocity made things feel almost pleasant in comparison.

  Her spirits had been good, but now they soared. She looked at him and grinned. “You might get to light that signal fire this afternoon after all, Tonto.”

  He snorted and gave her leg a light pinch, then finished threading the new strap through the snowshoe. “Good as new,” he pronounced, hunkering down beside her to tie it onto her booted foot. “Ready to go?”

  “Ready.” She was hungry and tired, but no more hungry and tired than he was, maybe less so, because with his larger muscle mass he would burn more calories even sitting still than she would. This was their fifth day, and she reckoned she’d lost about ten pounds because of the cold and lack of food, but he’d probably lost at least fifteen. With their food completely gone now, they would begin losing strength, so they were racing against time to get to a more temperate zone. By pushing themselves so hard they were burning more calories, yes, but if the end result was getting rescued this afternoon or first thing tomorrow morning, then it was worth the effort.

  When they stood, Cam flexed his shoulders and arms, working out some of the kinks before he got back into the harness. Bailey could only imagine the effort he was putting out, pulling that heavy sled over the rugged terrain. She could see the strain on his face, etched in lines of fatigue. How much longer would he be able to go on?

  They set off again, using the same method as before. Even with the short break, even with all the exercise she normally did, her leg muscles were burning. But if Cam could continue, so could she.

  Once Cam shouted, and she looked back to see him straining against the pull of the sled; one of the runners had slipped over the edge of a rock and the whole thing was trying to slide over. The drop wasn’t that much, maybe six feet, but it was high enough that the sled would probably be damaged beyond repair. Clumsily she hurried back with the shuffling gait imposed on her by the snowshoes, squeezed past him, and got to the rear of the sled. The way the sled was made there was no place to get a good grip, so finally she just grabbed the edge of the runner that had slid off and pulled up and back with all her strength. She heard an ominous crack but didn’t dare let go, bracing her legs and pulling up while Cam threw all of his power and weight into pulling forward. With the sled’s center of gravity shifted to where it should be, the sled moved forward once again, and she hastily released the runner before her fingers were caught.

  Her feet slid forward, and with a cry she slipped right over the edge of the rock.

  She landed with a thump, hard enough to jar every bone in her body, then toppled forward on her hands and knees. “Damn it!”

  “Bailey!”

  Alarm was plain in Cam’s deep voice and she called out, “I’m okay, nothing broken.” But she’d definitely added to her already fine collection of bruises. She got to her feet and dusted the snow off her hands and knees, then looked around for the best way to get back up where he was. Unfortunately, she had to trudge back in the opposite direction for about thirty yards, then clamber up a sharp, rough grade littered with loose rocks that were hidden under the snow and made climbing treacherous. She was panting from the effort by the time she reached him.

  Neither of them said anything, because there was no point in wasting their precious breath. He was okay, she was okay, the sled was okay. They pressed on.

  Just before five o’clock, she skidded to a halt, staring in dismay at the half-circle shape of the cliff that yawned at her feet. The walls were vertical slabs of rock, dotted here and there with dabs of white where falling snow had found a precarious resting place. They had approached from the side of the cliff, and for quite a while the way had been becoming steeper and steeper, so much so that in some stretches she’d had to walk beside the sled and push against it to keep it moving forward. Now they couldn’t go forward at all, unless they wanted the last thousand feet of their trip to be made at the spee
d of a free-falling body. To the right, the ground dropped away so sharply there was no way they could make it with the sled. To go around the cliff they would have to go up, a steep climb she knew she couldn’t make, not now. The only other option was to go back.

  “I guess this is where we make the fire,” Cam said, bracing the sled against a big rock so it wouldn’t go careering down the mountain. Wearily he removed the harness, then wiped the sweat from his face.

  “Here?” This was bad. If they weren’t rescued, there was no good place here to construct even the roughest shelter. Even the trees were relatively sparse in this area, which would make gathering firewood more arduous. She sighed; it wasn’t as if they were overloaded with choices. This was the end of the trail. “Here.”

  He stretched his back muscles, rolled his head back and forth. Then he laughed and said, “Look.”

  She looked where he pointed and saw, not all that far below them, where the snow ended. There wasn’t a sharp line of demarkation, but a gradual lessening of the snow and thickening of trees. Unfortunately, they couldn’t get there now.

  Bailey lifted her face into the wind, and realized that it wasn’t much more than a breeze. Smoke from the fire might stay together enough to be noticed, if not now, maybe tomorrow. They’d build this fire big and smoky and keep it going until someone noticed and came to investigate, damn it.

  Cam was already doing the prep work, scraping away snow, digging a shallow pit. Bailey let the backpack drop off her shoulders and went in search of firewood. She couldn’t gather much at one time, because she had to have one hand free for balance and climbing; on a trip back, she noticed that he’d dug three fire pits. “Why are there three of them?”

  “Three is a universal distress signal: three blasts of a whistle, three fires, three stacks of rocks—whatever you use, there should be three of them.”

  “The things I’ve learned on this vacation,” she said drily, returning to her task. On a practical basis, three fires meant she had to gather three times as much wood. Yippee.

  With wood laid in all three pits and paper and bark scrapings as tinder, Cam sparked one more fire from the battery. Carefully they built the blaze, feeding it until the wood began blazing, then using a burning stick to take flame to the other pits. Soon all three were blazing high, but there didn’t seem to be a lot of smoke. She wanted hugh billows of smoke, a column of it reaching a mile high.

  Cam was evidently thinking the same thing, because he added some green wood to all three fires. The smoke that was soon puffing out was more gratifying.

  “Now we wait,” he said, putting his arm around her and pulling her in for a slow, deep kiss. She leaned against him, too exhausted to do much more than simply loop her arms around his waist.

  He dragged the trash bags of clothes off the sled and positioned them side by side. With the contents punched into just the right position, the trash bags functioned somewhat like bean bags, and they both gratefully sank onto their makeshift seats. For several minutes they didn’t speak at all, but gathered what strength they had left. When he did speak, she was surprised by the track of his thoughts.

  “When we get back,” he said, “don’t you dare try to pull away from me.”

  She couldn’t say the thought hadn’t occurred to her several times since she’d first realized how important he was becoming to her. When she had truly panicked, however, was when she knew that it was too late to pull away. “I won’t,” she said simply, turning her head to smile at him. She held out her hand. He took it, folding her fingers in his, and raised her hand to hold against his cheek.

  Just before sunset they were still sitting on their trash bag chairs, looking out over the mountains like two tourists, when they heard the distinctive beat of the helicopter’s blades. Cam rose to his feet, waving his arms as the helicopter surged into view, swooping toward them like a moth toward three flames.

  33

  THE HELICOPTER HOVERED OVER THEM, SO CLOSE THAT wind from the blades whipped around them and Bailey could see the sunglasses the pilot was wearing. Beside him was another man; they both seemed to be wearing some sort of uniform, so she assumed they were with the Forestry Service. There was no place for the chopper to land, but what mattered was that now someone knew where they were, and help would arrive—soon, she hoped. They hadn’t built a shelter, but if need be they would sit by the fires all night to stay warm.

  She was so bone-tired she didn’t think she could have helped build a shelter, anyway. She didn’t even stand up to wave at the helicopter, despite the excitement of imminent rescue—or fairly imminent rescue, depending on how long it took a team to reach them.

  Cam was making some hand signals to the pilot. “Tell him to go get some sleeping bags and drop them down to us,” she told him. “And a couple thermoses of coffee. And a dozen doughnuts. Oh, and a two-way radio would be nice.” Fatigue was making her giddy, but she didn’t care.

  The helicopter banked away from the mountain, returning from whence it came. She heaved a sigh as she watched it leave. Somehow this was rather anticlimactic.

  Cam was laughing as he sat down beside her. “Hand signals don’t run to that kind of detail.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That there are two of us, and we’re both ambulatory, meaning a rescue team shouldn’t risk their lives trying to get to us. And that we’ve been here five days.”

  She stretched out her legs and crossed them at the ankle. This was almost like sitting on a porch somewhere, admiring the view—which was spectacular—but instead of a porch she was lounging on a steep mountainside, with a vertical cliff not far to her left. “We should probably get ready for nightfall. Gather more firewood, make a shelter, that kind of stuff.”

  He turned to face her, leaning forward to prop his elbows on his knees as he studied her face, reading the utter exhaustion there. Reaching out, he took her hand. “I’ll gather more wood, but I’m not up to building a shelter. It’s warmer here, without the wind. We’ll cuddle by the fire tonight.”

  “Okay. I can handle cuddling.” She looked wistful. “I don’t guess there was any way to tell them our names, so they can notify our families?”

  Cam shook his head. “I haven’t let myself think about my family,” he said after a minute. “I know they’re going through hell, but concentrating on staying alive seemed more important. They’re probably at the search headquarters, wherever the hell that is, because there weren’t any searches anywhere near us.” He paused, then said roughly, “I need to see them.”

  She had thought about Logan and Peaches, she realized, about how they must be feeling, how worried they must be, but she honestly hadn’t thought for even a moment that any of the others, even her parents, would bestir themselves out of concern for her. Her mother might shed a tear or two, use her tale of woe to drum up sympathy, but wait at the search headquarters for her daughter’s body to be found? Not going to happen. Her father wouldn’t even waste a tear. He’d made it plain years ago that his first three children were pretty much off his radar. Cam was lucky in his family, in knowing without hesitation that they would be there waiting for him.

  “For your mother’s sake,” she told him, “I hope you have a chance to clean up before she sees you. You also need some clothes. And a bandage over that cut, because, trust me, she needs to know for certain you’re all right before she sees it.” She examined him in the brightly flickering light from the fires. His five-day beard was scruffy, and the deep bruises under his eyes were fading to an ugly purplish-yellow. All the various scrapes were scabbed over and healing. That god-awful cut across his forehead; she couldn’t decide if her clumsy stitches were an improvement over how he would have looked without them, or not. She began to snicker. “You look awful.”

  He grinned in quick response. “You look pretty bad yourself,” he said with a teasing note in his deep voice. “Like you were in a plane crash and have been living in the wild for five days. The black eye is the crowning touch, tho
ugh. At least you know for certain I didn’t fall in love with you because of how you look.”

  Bailey nearly jumped out of her skin. How could he throw things like that at her, without giving her advance warning so she could prepare herself—though how she could have prepared herself for that, she didn’t know. Before she could react, he cradled her hand against his cheek once more. “If I ask you to marry me, will you run screaming down the mountain?”

  Shock on top of shock. She hadn’t been able to react to one before he hit her with another. The end result was that she sat there, immobilized by the impossibility of choosing which sentence to address first. Finally she managed to squeak, “I might,” and left it to him to figure out which one she meant.

  He kissed her palm, and she felt his lips twitch as he fought a smile. “Then I won’t ask,” he said gravely. “Not yet, anyway. I know you need time to get used to the idea. We should let our lives settle down, see each other under normal circumstances. There’s also the problem of Seth trying to kill you, and that has to be handled before anything else. I’m thinking nine months to a year before we get married. How does that sound to you?”

  For someone who wasn’t asking her to marry him, he was laying a lot of groundwork, she thought. Her heart was skipping beats, but when she looked at him she wondered how she could go the rest of her life without seeing that grin, or hearing the dryness of his tone when he was making some pithy comment, or sleeping in his arms. She didn’t know if she could sleep at all without him.

  She cleared her throat. “Actually…I’m okay with the marriage part.”

  “It’s just the love part that scares the hell out of you, huh?”

  “I’m…doing better than I’d have thought with that, too.”

  “You’re not panicking at the idea that I love you?”

  “That part’s okay, too,” she said seriously. “It’s the loving you in return that scares me so much.”

  She saw the gleam of triumph in his eyes. He didn’t look down to hide it, either; he let her see everything he was feeling. “Are you saying you’re afraid to love me, or you’re afraid because you love me?”