“I need you to get my little girl off this mountain,” I said as I stood, Maisie shifting in my arms to hold onto my neck. “Hold on, Maisie-girl.”
I jogged, balancing her weight, knowing every second counted, but there was no way I was leaving her up there. Ella’s voice filled my head as I thought about every time she’d felt guilty having to leave one to take care of the other.
We rounded the next bend, and the helo came into view, along with a group of parents who stood behind a line of uniforms.
“Bad news. Travels fast.” Mark’s words came stuttered through heavy breathing.
“Beckett!” Ada called from the front of the group.
“Ada’s here,” I told Maisie. “Mark, change of plans, get on the bird.”
Ada ran to the edge of the crowd, Larry not far behind her. They reached an officer who let them through after I nodded.
There was a general cacophony of shouting from the parents, no doubt wanting news, but the whir of the helicopter behind me blurred any words.
“Is everyone okay?” Ada asked. “Oh God, where’s Colt? Why didn’t you bring Colt back, too?” Her voice shot high in panic, and Larry put his hand on her shoulder.
“I need you to take her,” I told Ada, but Maisie clung to my neck. “Maisie-girl, you have to let me go, okay?”
She pulled back, taking my face in her hands. “He’s hurt. I can feel it.” She touched her belly.
“I’m going to find him right now, but I need you to go to Ada, okay?”
“Okay.” She hugged me, and I gave her a squeeze before handing her over.
“Where’s Ella?” I asked as Maisie transferred into Ada’s arms.
“It’s Colt, isn’t it?” Ada asked.
I couldn’t say it. If I said it, the cellophane walls I had up would stop holding me together, and that wasn’t an option.
“Where’s Ella?” I repeated.
“She’s in the ranger station right back there with a couple other parents.” She motioned behind the crowd. “They’re trying to get news from the county. Want us to get her? Someone has to tell her.” Her face crumpled.
Flashing lights came into view. Good, the ambulance was here.
“No, just stay with her. It’s…it’s not good. She’s going to need you.”
Colt didn’t have the time for me to wait for Ella. I looked at Larry, whose face was drawn and tight.
“What do you want me to tell her?” he asked.
“Tell her I’m going to find our son.” Before I could lose it, I ran to the helicopter, Havoc with me. I deadlifted her into the bird and climbed in. Helmet on. Seat belt latched.
“Fly south,” I told the pilot. “There’s a section of the trail that’s fallen away. We need to be dropped right beneath it.”
“Roger.” The pilot took off, and my stomach lurched as we rose into the air.
I leaned forward and clipped the sections of Havoc’s vest I’d need to keep her safe.
“Slight problem, there’s nowhere to land,” the pilot called back.
“Can you rappel?” I asked Mark.
“In theory,” he answered.
“Get us to where we can rappel,” I told the pilot, then I turned to Mark. “Keep up.”
He nodded.
“I need you to be ready, Jenkins.”
“I’m steady.” He assured me from the bench. “Backboard and litter is ready.”
“You have the new report?”
He nodded.
“What time did it happen?”
He scanned through the clipboard and checked his watch. “Report came in forty-five minutes ago, and they called it in about ten minutes after.”
He’d been down almost an hour. I set the timer on my watch.
“Radio back and get as many hands down here as we can get.”
The helo steadied above the only clear ground visible. We looked to be a short distance from where the rocks would have fallen.
“We’re ready,” the pilot said through the comms.
I removed my helmet as Jenkins secured the line. Then I clipped Havoc into the slider and kept her between my legs as we shuffled for the door. Jenkins passed me the line, and I secured the slider that let me control her rate of descent. “I know you hate this,” I told her as I made sure it was tight where it attached to the line a couple feet above her harness. “But our Colt is down there.”
I gripped the line and her slider, gave her the knee signal she was all too used to, and we stepped out into nothing. She went completely still as I worked us down the line with her dangling between my knees.
We’d done this hundreds of times, but I’d never felt as urgent. Urgent caused mistakes, so I calmed my breathing and lowered us slowly, hand over hand, until we reached the ground.
Then I unhooked the slider and stuck it in Havoc’s pack. Mark started down immediately.
I slipped Havoc a treat from her pack. “Good job. I know that sucks.”
“How do you do that with a dog?” Mark asked after he reached the ground a minute later.
“A lot of experience.” I leaned down to Havoc. “Seek Colt.”
She started sniffing, and we walked in the direction of the slide. “How long will that take her?” Mark asked.
“Not sure. He didn’t walk this way, so she doesn’t have a path to go on. We’ll have to get close enough for her to catch his scent in the air, or anywhere he’s touched.”
We hiked uphill, through patches of knee-high grass and then under tall pine trees. I concentrated on my breathing and my footwork as Havoc walked ahead of us, searching. The less I thought about what we would find, the better.
“Colt!” I called out on the prayer he could hear us…that he was capable of hearing us.
“Colt!” Mark joined in. “Should we have brought Jenkins?”
“No. He needs to stay with the helo. When the other teams show up, he needs to be available, and if he’s with us, and someone else finds Colt…”
“I get the picture.”
“I’m a combat medic, which means I’m qualified to do just about anything besides surgery. Everyone in our…everyone is where I used to work.” It was part of the training before you were selected as a tier-one operator. “Colt!” I tried again.
And again.
And again.
The beep on my watch signaled that it had been an hour and a half, and still no Colt. I looked up the mountain. We were out of the tree line, right beneath the slide zone, and there were plenty of rocks around us that all looked the same. I couldn’t tell what was new and what had always been here.
We’d seen the helo drop a couple teams, and Mark had handled radio coordination, making sure we chose different grids. My grid was wherever Havoc decided to go, and they could all deal with it.
Havoc was sniffing like crazy toward the south, so we followed along the tree line.
“Colt!” I saw the bright patch of blue just as Havoc took off at a dead run.
I covered the ground quickly, jumping rocks, ducking pine tree branches as I ran. Havoc sat next to him, whining.
“Colt,” I called, but he didn’t respond. His upper half was clear, but his lower half was obscured by fallen foliage.
“Good girl,” I told Havoc, handing her a treat from my pocket out of sheer habit before dropping to my knees next to him.
“Colt, come on, bud.” His skin was pale, blood trickling from small cuts on his face. I put my fingers to his neck and waited.
Please, God. I’ll do anything. Please.
He had a pulse, but it was rapid and thready. His skin was cold.
“He’s bleeding somewhere,” I told Mark as he dropped to Colt’s other side. “We need to get these branches off him, but only the lighter ones. If it’s heavy, wait for me.”
Mark nodded and started pulling the smaller branches off Colt. “Rescue 9, this is Gutierrez and Gentry. We’ve found the male. Pulse is present but thready. Please send in medics ASAP.”
Static came through Mark’s radio as I unzipped Colt’s fleece.
“Shit. Gentry.”
I looked back to Colt’s lower half, and bile rose in my throat, but I looked up at the sky and forced it back down. Colt’s right thigh was pinned under a large, jagged rock roughly half the size of a car engine.
“Cut his pants around it. I need to see the skin.” Not good.
“Gutierrez, this is Rescue 9. Please note we are midrefuel. On our way immediately.”
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“Colt, you in there, bud?” I asked, stroking his face. “Can you wake up for me?”