“Keep digging,” was Jim’s advice.
The group was silent as they dug. Everyone’s ears stretched to the limit. A minute later Thomas jerked. “Was that it?”
“I didn’t hear anything!” Brynn cried. How could she miss
it?
“Yeah.” Ryan was nodding. “It did come from below us.” He attacked the hole with the strength of a healthy man. Thomas did the same, an excited light in his eyes.
“What’d it sound like?” Brynn asked between hard breaths, digging faster. The others’ excitement was contagious. Please. Please. Please.
“Just like he said. A soft chime.” Thomas plunged the shovel in hard and halted. “There’s something here. Ryan! Dig right here!” He loosened the snow, and Brynn helped get the excess out of the way. They’d dug nearly four feet down.
She saw blue.
Please don’t be a backpack.
“It’s him! I know it’s him.” Ryan’s words were strangled as he fought back tears. Both he and Jim were in the hole, digging frantically. More blue was exposed, then the black of Alex’s pants. Thomas moved to dig at the other end of the blue parka.
“Oh, thank God. Thank God.” Brynn’s face was wet again. Please be all right. “Hang on, Alex, we’re almost there.”
Thomas uncovered Alex’s face. His white face. His eyes were shut, and he was so still.
“Is he breathing?” Brynn whispered. She felt nauseous; her arms and legs shook with exhaustion. Thomas shook his head as he brushed the snow away from Alex’s nose and mouth.
“Get him out, now!” Jim shoveled the last of the snow off Alex’s boots and gestured for Thomas and Ryan to grab his shoulders. Brynn grabbed a leg while Jim grabbed his belt. “On three. One, two, three. Out!” They all heaved at the same time. Alex’s left shoulder got hung up on the hole’s wall halfway up, and Brynn moved from his leg to free the shoulder. It was tight maneuvering in the hole. They hadn’t prepared a big enough space for several working bodies, but Thomas and Ryan yanked Alex out with sheer brute force.
“He’s not breathing. Jim, get the mask from my pack. Left top pocket.” Brynn ripped off a glove and put two fingers below Alex’s jaw. Her arms shook, and her fingers were nearly numb. She couldn’t feel a thing except the pounding of her own heart.
“Can you feel it?”
“Shhh!” She hushed them and slowed her breaths to concentrate on feeling the ends of her fingertips. Alex’s chest wasn’t moving. “Get his airway going.” She closed her eyes to concentrate as Jim pulled Alex’s jaw upward and slapped the safety mask for resuscitative breathing over Alex’s nose and mouth.
There.
She felt a single beat at her fingertips. Then another. Very slow, but strong. His heart hadn’t stopped; he hadn’t been without air for too long.
“He’s got a pulse. Get him breathing.” Thomas and Ryan exhaled at her words.
Jim was already working at it.
“Come on, Alex.” Brynn watched Alex’s chest move with Jim’s powerful breaths. The beat under her fingertips increased slightly in speed and she nearly cried in relief.
He’s going to make it.
Behind her Ryan sat hard into the snow, and she studied his exhausted face. He’d overdone it. He’d been ill to start with, and now he’d pushed too hard.
But not too hard if it saved Alex’s life.
At that moment she heard a rasping breath from Alex. Jim pulled the mask off, and the two of them rolled Alex to his side as he coughed and took rough breaths. She met Jim’s eyes.
We did it. He mouthed the words at her as his eyes filled.
Brynn brushed at her own wet eyes.
Ryan let out a whoop and pounded Alex on a shoulder. “Goddamn it, Kinton, you scared the crap out of us!” Ryan threw an arm around Brynn and laid his head on her shoulder, rubbing his eyes on her coat. She felt him sway with fatigue.
“Holy shit,” Alex said as he hacked and coughed and looked at the team with blurry eyes. He had snow frozen to his hair and eyebrows. Next to his icy, pale skin his lips now looked unusually red and flushed.
“Thanks.” He spit the word out with a gasping breath. Brynn brushed some of the snow out of his face and laid her cold hands on his cheeks to warm him. Compared to him, her skin was on fire. He blinked unsteadily at her, and she couldn’t breathe. The way Alex stared was setting off sparks in her brain.
“Hey.” She swallowed hard, unable to pull her gaze away. “I thought…We thought…” Her thoughts evaporated in the heat generated by the pounding heart in her chest.
Those steel-gray eyes of his turned sharp as razors. “I know. Me too. God, you look gorgeous.” Shivering lips pulled into a lopsided grin. “My lips are numb. So’s everything else.”
“We’ll get you warmed up.” She turned to the men and rattled off directions.
Alex sat wrapped in a space blanket in the cargo area of the plane and huddled over the tiniest portable stove he’d ever seen. He’d tucked everyone’s hand warmers into his armpits and into his pants, but he still shivered. He wanted to pick up the stove, wrap his coat around it, and hold it against his chest. Damn chills wouldn’t stop. His hand shook as he took a sip of the hot broth that Brynn had heated for him. It blissfully burned its way down his esophagus. He sipped again and sighed.
“Good stuff?” Ryan poked his head in through the open end of the airplane. When the avalanche had spun the body of the plane like a toy, it’d left the open end half-buried in a snowbank. A person could just squeeze through. They’d already decided to pack snow into the space to close it and use the hatch toward the rear of the plane for exiting and entering. After they looked for the packs.
Ryan’s shaggy hair poked out around his hood and his eyes looked like he’d pulled an all-nighter studying for college finals.
“Like single malt whiskey.”
Ryan’s gaze went to the little stove, and Alex wondered if he wanted to tuck it under his coat too.
“Got your pack from the top of the hill?”
Ryan nodded. “Two packs for the five of us. That’s not good numbers.”
“Someone will come in after us.”
Ryan shook his head. “I think we’ve had our window of good weather. The weather on my GPS is showing nothing but storms for the next two days.”
“We won’t starve in three days.” Alex watched Ryan pale and swallow hard. “Stomach still a wreck?”
“Let’s not talk about food.” His smile was feeble.
“GPS working?”
Ryan nodded. “They’re all showing the same readings now. I don’t know what the fuck was wrong with them earlier.”
Alex took a sip of salty broth as Ryan stepped all the way into the plane and held his hands out to the little stove. He studied Alex from head to toe. Alex raised a brow. “Surprised to see me breathing?”
“Yes.”
“Me too.” Alex stared at the stove and its glowing flame.
“What do you remember?”
Alex was silent for a moment. His stomach knotted as he pulled up the memory. “I remember seeing you and Brynn waving at me. I remember looking up the hill and seeing a wall of white rushing at me.” He took another sip. “I remember thinking I was a dead man and tried to run.” He rubbed at his leg. Brynn had shoved three Advil in his hand along with the broth, but his knee still felt like he’d been hit by a truck. Or an avalanche.
“You didn’t get very far,” Ryan spoke softly.
“It was loud; I remember that. And then my ears were plugged with snow, but I could still hear the roar. Maybe the sound was in my head.”
Ryan shook his head. “No. It sounded like a train or tornado coming. That sucker was loud.”
“It reminded me of being tossed in the ocean while bodysurfing. You know, when you can’t tell up from down? That absolute panic that makes you pump your arms and legs and hope you’re headed toward the surface. That was my only thought. For some reason I knew I needed to move like I was swimming. I don’t know how I got lucky enough to end up on my back. I could have ended up head down. That would have been a hard target for you diggers to hit.”
Alex clamped his jaw as a full-body shudder rocked him. God, I was lucky. So damned lucky.
“Nah, your feet probably would’ve been sticking out of the snow. Might’ve been easier to find.” Ryan forced a smile.
Alex let an answering smile spread across his face. His smile wasn’t forced. He was aboveground, and that was all that mattered. He could smile forever.
“I was awake for a while under there.”
“Fuck. I can’t imagine…” Ryan’s eyes widened.
“Looking back, I’m surprised how calm I was. At first I wanted to scream and dig out and fight. But then after the first panic I just accepted it. I knew there was nothing I could do. And I was OK with that. Peaceful almost.”
He met Ryan’s curious gaze and kept quiet about his dream of Brynn. He’d thought about her a lot since he’d been dug out of the ground. When he’d first seen her above him, she’d looked so damned scared, and then relief had shot through her eyes.
At the same moment, something had shot through him, bonding him with her. Some sort of freaky cosmic thing. He’d heard that rescuers would forever carry a piece of the soul of the people they’d saved. He didn’t know he’d physically feel it when it happened to him.
“Thomas knew where you were. He saw you get tossed in the avalanche.”
Alex bit his lip. What if the big guy hadn’t seen him?
“Jim thought he knew where you were. We started digging in two different spots, but Jim’s spot turned up Brynn’s pack.” Ryan cleared his throat. “I thought Brynn was going to lose it when she realized it wasn’t you under all that snow. We were all about to give up after that.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
“Maybe it was my ears. I don’t know what I heard, but when we were digging at the hole where we finally found you, I swear a sound was coming up from under the snow.”
“What kind of sound?” Screams? Moans?
“A chime. Just a single quiet chime.” He studied Alex.
Alex blinked. A chime? Like his…he reached in his coat pocket and pulled out his cell phone. The screen showed two missed calls and a voice mail. The chime would sound occasionally until he checked his voice mail. He dialed.
“It’s from Jim.” He stared at a grinning Ryan. “He’s cursing at me to answer my phone.”
Both men burst out laughing.
“You tried to call me? Did you think I could tell you where I was?” Alex gasped between laughs. “I can’t believe the call went through.”
Ryan snorted. “We were trying to hear the ring. I’d gotten through to Collins earlier. It was worth a shot.”
“Fuck. I keep it on vibrate.”
“I knew it!” Ryan exclaimed and clutched at his stomach as if he could stop the pain from laughing too hard.
“The only sound it ever makes is that damned chime every five minutes when I’ve got a voice mail. Do you know how many times I’ve tried to get that annoying noise turned off? You can’t do it on this phone.” Alex’s voice choked as he fought to control another laugh.
Ryan’s shoulders shook. “That damned chime might’ve saved your life. We might’ve given up if I hadn’t heard it. Everyone thought I was hearing things.”
Alex’s nose began to run from laughing. He wiped at it. Another sign he was thawing out. He closed his eyes and smiled. Damn, it felt good to laugh and shoot the shit with someone. He hadn’t done this since…he couldn’t think of the last time. A subtle pounding in his head reminded him why. He’d cut himself off from everyone.
He had to start living again. Doing something with his life. Not hiding.
He’d been given a second chance. If it hadn’t been for the determination of this team… He shivered as a chill rocketed through his nerves and Brynn’s smiling image crossed his mind. She was the type of person who touched lives and made them brighter, lighter. She and all the guys had potential to make big differences in the world.
Alex stared at the tiny stove, chest tightening.
He still had to figure out what to do if he found Darrin Besand. If Darrin was in these woods, Alex might get a chance he never would have had out in the real world. He could meet the man face-to-face, no guards, no bars.
What would he do? His goal suddenly wasn’t as clear as it had been. Could he truly kill a man in cold blood?
Doubt wrapped around him like a cold coat.
Is that Alex laughing?
Brynn stopped and cocked her head. She recognized Ryan’s laughter, and the lower-pitched laugh had to be Alex. Turning, she spotted Thomas and Jim digging in various places, still searching for the missing packs. They’d already partly dug out the cockpit. It had ended up a couple of hundred feet down the mountain, the pilots still strapped in their seats. The marshal had been tossed out, but they found him nearby and moved him back in with the pilots. They’d thought the cockpit was twenty feet under until Thomas had spotted some white metal sticking up out of the snow. Why couldn’t their packs have a strap or two poking up out of the snow to see?
She paced a grid pattern, studying the snow for any signs of their packs. She’d sent Ryan in to rest and to keep an eye on Alex. Hopefully they’d keep an eye on each other. Ryan was a walking ghost. He’d insisted on climbing to the ridge to retrieve his own pack, and it’d taken him three times as long as it should have. The vomiting seemed to have stopped, but she’d seen him frequently touch his abdomen like something still burned. He refused to eat. Could he hike out tomorrow? If they went slowly?
She kicked a fir branch out of her path.
Their walk out of the forest was going to be twice as long if they went down to the railroad river crossing. Maybe they should go back and check on the river footbridge. Maybe the river level had dropped enough. But would the footbridge be stable? It had been slammed with the force of a runaway semi. A shallow wave of dizziness swept through her brain, bringing back the image of the raging water. She breathed deeply and focused on the snow, putting one foot in front of the other. Water didn’t have to be raging to do damage. She knew that all too well.
She dropped to her knees and dug at a shadow under the snow.
A stick.
She continued her rhythmic steps, mentally inventorying their supplies and needs. Her pack held enough food for her. Ryan’s pack held three times as much, but he ate three times as much. Usually. Their food situation was pretty good. The human body could go for weeks without food. Not very efficiently, but well enough for their purposes. Water was abundant. Everyone was dressed for freezing temperatures. And the plane made an excellent shelter for the night. Too bad they couldn’t drag it with them for the next few nights. Now everyone just needed to stay healthy.
Alex looked like he was going to be fine. He’d said he had awoke underground and found breathable room around his face. He’d said he didn’t know how long he was conscious while below the snow. He’d looked away as he said the words, and she had a hunch he knew all too well.
A shudder rippled through Brynn’s chest.