A Soldier's Pledge

by Nadia Nichols

  By the time Walt reached the lake, it was late afternoon. He started flying down the river, as low and slow as he could go. The Wolf was a twisty river and flying it was like tracing a snake. If he ran into trouble, it would be tough putting the plane down anywhere along this stretch. The river valley was fairly broad, which made flying easier, but the boreal forest grew right down to the river’s edge, and that made searching for Cameron difficult. There were very few places to pitch a tent in the open. He figured she’d be pretty close to the Mackenzie by now, so when he navigated a corner and saw movement up ahead, a blue tent pitched in a tiny clearing beside the river and a small figure standing by it, he was surprised. Could that be Cameron? Day five and barely halfway to the Mackenzie?

  “There! Look. Look! Right down there! There they are!” Lori shouted over the engine noise, pounding his arm and pointing with great excitement out her side window.

  Walt slowed the plane to just above stalling speed. He tipped the plane up on one wing to see better out his own window. His jaw dropped. “Wow,” he said as he got a brief eyeful of a very well-stacked woodland goddess dressed in nothing but skimpy black lace lingerie. Suddenly he understood why Cameron was behind schedule. She was indulging in romantic dallying with the Lone Ranger, and in broad daylight! All that fancy food and wine combined with Cameron’s natural knockout beauty had worked a little too well. At this rate it would be another five days before they made the Mackenzie. Hell, another ten days.

  “I guess she didn’t need handcuffs or duct tape after all,” Walt said to himself, and uttered a growling laugh. He looked over at Lori Tedlow and gave her a thumbs-up.

  She was beaming. Everyone loved a happy ending.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  WHEN JACK WAS a boy his mother used to task him with watching his baby sister when she went to work. He was ten years old, and Lori was six. His mother waitressed at a diner in town. She worked the night shift, so it fell to Jack to feed his sister supper and then put her to bed. Being afraid of the dark, Lori never wanted him to leave the room. She thought all bad things existed in darkness and would beg him to stay until she went to sleep. He obliged her because it was the only way to get her to go to bed, but he thought she was a sissy girl, that all girls were sissies and all boys were brave.

  That was before he discovered his own fears.

  “Don’t leave me alone, Jack. Just lie here with me and I promise I’ll go to sleep.” She’d pillow her head on his chest and cling to him as if he had the power to slay her fire-breathing dragons, which made him feel brave and guilty at the same time.

  Her arms tightened around him, but then all at once everything changed, and it wasn’t his sister and he wasn’t a boy anymore. He was in a dark place, fighting for his life in the Hindu Kush, hand-to-hand combat with an enemy who had surprised him in his sleep. He surged up, threw the struggling form over and away from him with one strong, convulsive movement. A woman screamed his name in the darkness as he straddled the struggling body.

  “Jack!” the strangled scream came again, and he awakened in a cold sweat, still grappling with the enemy. When he came fully awake, the tent was half collapsed around him.

  “Jack, wake up! Jack! It’s me, it’s Cameron!”

  In a matter of seconds he’d traveled from his boyhood home to Afghanistan to this tent in the Canadian wilderness. It all came back to him—the past five days, and the spruce tree and the canoe and Cameron’s hat, and the cold river sucking him under over and over again, and now somehow she was pinned beneath him in his tent and he’d been seconds away from killing her.

  Cameron was gasping for breath, and when he rolled aside and sat up, she did, too, scrabbling backward, away from him. In the darkness of the collapsed tent he could hear her rapid breathing.

  “Cameron,” he said, sickened by what he’d just done. “What are you doing here? You were supposed to wait at the cabin.”

  “I did!” she finally managed in a voice that shook. “I waited and waited and waited, and then when you didn’t come, I came after you because I knew you were in trouble. Jesus, Jack! A few hours ago I was worried you weren’t going to make it, and now you’re strong enough to throw me through the tent wall. I guess you’re going to be okay.”

  “I’m sorry.” He sank back beneath the billowing fabric of the tent. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were here, and when I woke up I just thought... I have nightmares sometimes.” He struggled to make her understand. “Flashbacks. Sometimes I—” He stopped abruptly and shook his head. How could he explain something he couldn’t deal with himself? “You weren’t supposed to be here. You were supposed to wait for me back at the cabin.”

  “It’s a good thing I didn’t. You were in the tent when I got here, soaking wet. It must’ve been four or five o’clock, and you were pretty far gone. Unresponsive. Hypothermic. You’ve been out of it for hours. You would have died if I hadn’t come.”

  He didn’t remember anything. Not one thing of her arrival. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. He didn’t know what else to say.

  She’d been fumbling in her pack while he spoke, and her headlamp came on, illuminating the interior of the half-collapsed tent. She stared at him, a little wild-eyed. He stared back at her. She was wearing some of the sexiest black underwear he’d ever seen. He was wearing next to nothing, as well. And it was cold. Really cold. He had no idea why they were both undressed.

  “I’m going to start the campfire,” she said. “I need to dry your wet clothes.”

  “Forget my clothes,” he said. “I have a dry set of long johns in my pack. Jesus, I’m sorry, Cameron. I really am. I might have killed you.”

  “I doubt it. I’m pretty tough, and I’m a good fighter.” She was gathering up her pants, pulling on her T-shirt, dressing quickly in the glow of her headlamp. “I promise I’ll be right back. I have to fix the tent. It wasn’t built for circus stunts.”

  “I’d never hurt you. You have to believe that.”

  “I do. Really. It’s okay, Jack. You woke up, and you didn’t know who or what was in the tent with you. You didn’t hurt me. You just scared the daylights out of me. I’ll be right back after I fix the tent.”

  * * *

  CAMERON’S THOUGHTS WHIRLED as she crawled out of the tent. She was shaking all over and needed to give herself time to calm down. Jack hadn’t meant to hurt her, she knew that, but he was right. He could’ve killed her. And if it happened once, it could happen again. Every time he closed his eyes, he could go back to Afghanistan, back to a war zone where the enemy was out to kill him. Now she knew. Now she’d be more careful. No more sleeping all tangled up with Jack Parker.

  The night air was cold, but not as cold as last night. After fixing the tent, she paced the perimeter of the camp, walked along the shore, walked back again, over and over until the shaking caused by her fear became the shivering of being cold. Jack wasn’t dead and neither was she, Walt knew where they were and he’d be sending help, and she’d found Jack’s lost dog. Everything was going to be all right. The stress of the past few days would soon be forgotten. Deep breaths.

  After washing up she crouched by the river, letting the sound of the water soothe her. She’d had so much adrenaline running through her veins she felt sick from it. She imagined Jack felt the same, but maybe not. He was a career soldier—they probably lived on adrenaline. It was probably one of their major food groups. She went back to the tent, crawled inside and fumbled for her pack in the darkness. Jack had pulled on his dry long johns and was sitting in the murky darkness, almost exactly where he’d been kneeling when she left.

  “I brought along some hot tea and a sandwich for you,” she said. “You must be as hungry as I am.” They looked at each other in the light of the headlamp, and she tried to smile but failed. “It’s okay, Jack. Really. You didn’t hurt me.” He made no response. He just shook his head and lowered hi
s eyes.

  She poured him a cup of tea. Steam curled up from it. It was a good stainless-steel insulated thermos that kept things hot for nearly twenty-four hours. She handed him a sandwich and took one for herself, and they ate in silence. Jack made it through two sandwiches and all four slices of the cooked bacon. They shared the thermos of tea between them. When they’d finished the meal, Cameron screwed the cup back onto the top of the thermos and sat for a moment with it cradled in her lap.

  “Jack,” she said, “you remember that wolf you heard when we camped here the other night? Well, I heard a long howl right near the cabin in broad daylight so I cooked supper outside, right by the river, hamburgers so the smell would be tempting. I left half a burger near the fire pit last night and saw tracks, tracks too small to be wolf. They were in the snow this morning coming right up to that spot. The burger was gone. While I was reading the tracks I caught sight of it, our eyes met for a split second and it bolted back into the woods. I don’t think it was a wolf, Jack. I think it was your dog.”

  He didn’t speak for a moment, just stared at her as if she hadn’t spoken, his face expressionless. Finally he said, “What did it look like?”

  “It looked more like a wolf than a dog,” she admitted. “But it wasn’t a wolf, it was too small. I’ve never spotted a wolf so close to camp. It was real skinny.”

  He looked away from her and stared out the tent door into the darkness. She heard him draw a long deep breath and expel it slowly. “We need to get back there as soon as possible.”

  “But Jack, your leg...”

  “My leg’s fine.”

  “No, it’s not, it’s missing. It’s not in here, and it’s not outside, either. I looked.”

  “I brought a spare.”

  “You have a spare leg?”

  “In my pack. I lost the other one in the river. My foot got caught in some rocks. I had to release the leg to get free.”

  She stared at him, confounded. “Well, your real leg’s a mess. It was bleeding. You can’t possibly walk on it. Besides, you have no boot. It’s still on your other leg. If you can show me tomorrow where you got hung up, I can try to retrieve it. The river’s gone way down. I could practically walk across it now.”

  “Okay, if you can rescue it that’s great, then we’ll try to get the canoe out from under the spruce tree first thing. The snub line is up on the tree trunk. I just have to tie my rope to it and rig a z-drag. We can haul it out from under the tree and use it to get back to the camp.”

  “Assuming it isn’t completely squashed,” Cameron said. “But even if it is, we won’t have long to wait for help to come. Walt flew over late this afternoon. He made three flybys and answered my wave. He definitely saw me. He’ll make sure someone comes to get us out of here. Your leg’s not fine, it’s a mess. You can’t walk, and we need help.”

  If Cameron thought news of their impending rescue would be welcome, she was mistaken.

  “If that’s Ky back at the trapper’s cabin, the worst thing of all would be a whole swarm of strangers showing up to rescue us,” Jack said. “If you want to be rescued, that’s up to you, but one way or the other, I’m getting back to the cabin. Eight days is when I told your boss I’d probably want to be picked up. I have a few more days to reach the Mackenzie.”

  “Well, the thing is, Walt probably came looking for us because I told him I’d have you out to the river in four days.”

  “What made you think you could do that?”

  “I had lots of good food in the canoe and some great bottles of wine, and I was pretty sure after a few good meals you’d want to stick with the canoe,” Cameron told him. “It’s rough going, bushwhacking along the river afoot.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” Jack said after a brief pause. “You’re a great cook, an accomplished individual and a beautiful girl, but the reason I came up here was to find my lost dog. That said, I do appreciate your sexy black lingerie.”

  “Sexy black lingerie,” Cameron echoed.

  “Very sexy,” he said. “I may be a one-legged soldier, but I’m still a man, and I know sexy lingerie when I see it.”

  “I’m sure you do,” she said, but she was thinking about her Victoria’s Secret lingerie and how, when she crawled out of the tent to wave at Walt, that was all she’d been wearing. She began to wonder what Walt must have thought. How it must have looked to him, her jumping around almost naked in broad daylight. “When I heard the plane, there was no time to get dressed.”

  “That’s perfect,” Jack said. “He probably thought you were signaling that you’d tamed the beast, caught your quarry, that the five-thousand-dollar bounty money was yours, in the bank, and a red Jeep and happiness were in your very near future. He probably thought you were really excited about how I’d changed your life for the better.”

  “If you’re right, we could be in a world of trouble. What makes you think that canoe is salvageable?”

  “Even if we can’t retrieve the canoe, I’ve walked this far and I can make it to the cabin. One way or the other, we’ll manage. If you really need to be rescued, I have my GPS unit. But it would have to be life or death before I pushed that button. Turn out that headlamp and get some sleep.”

  Cameron switched off the headlamp and tucked the thermos back inside her dry bag. She sat in the darkness, reluctant to lie back down in the same tent with him. She was amazed that he could suggest such a thing after what had just happened.

  “You don’t need to worry about a repeat performance,” he said, as if reading her mind. “I know you’re here now, and I won’t go back to sleep. Get some rest. I’ll take the wool blanket, you take the sleeping bag. It’s another hour or so before dawn.”

  “No. You take the sleeping bag. You’re the one who was hypothermic. I’m fine with the wool blanket.”

  They arranged their bedding in the darkness of the tent. After he lay down, Cameron made sure she was arranged in the opposite configuration, with her head near the tent door. At least he couldn’t reach out and grab her if he had another nightmare, and she could escape out the door. She was tired but couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t relax.

  “Warm enough?” she asked.

  “Yes. You?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I’m really sorry about what happened.”

  “I know.”

  “War changes a person.”

  “I know.”

  “I didn’t ask you to come along on this journey.”

  “I know.”

  “But I’m glad you did.”

  That surprised her. “You are?”

  “Everything happens for a reason.”

  “Do you really believe that? You think your dog got lost for some cosmic reason?”

  “She was chasing a bear out of camp. She didn’t get lost, she got hurt.”

  “So it wasn’t some deep universal plan. It’s just action and reaction?”

  “I don’t know. The older I get, the less I know,” he said. “I don’t know why some people live to grow old and some die young. I don’t know why I’m still alive and some of my men aren’t.”

  “I don’t know why either one of us is alive, but I’m glad we are.” Cameron spoke softly into the darkness. After lying in silence for a while, she said, “What happened yesterday?”

  “I cut the tree, but that didn’t free the canoe. The water levels had dropped too much. Then I saw the floating snub line. Maybe it was there the whole time, but I only noticed it after I cut the tree and a raven flew over. Maybe the light was just right. I started down the tree trunk and retrieved it, then saw that hat of yours and had this bright idea that I could hook it with the same pole I used to get the snub line. I had to get pretty close to the end of the tree, but I unhooked your hat from the branch. When I was turning around, I lost my balance and fell into the
river, fortunately on the downstream side. I got your hat, though.”

  “That hat nearly drowned the both of us. It’s brought nothing but bad luck.” She wondered why he’d done something so foolish. It was just a hat, not even his, and not worth dying for. The conversation had helped. She was losing her wariness of him, relaxing, drifting closer to sleep. Jack was a victim of war. She couldn’t hold his nightmares against him. She just had to be aware that he had them, and after tonight she’d never forget. She’d certainly never sleep next to him again, and she’d never be so foolish as to wake him up by leaning over and shaking his shoulder. She’d poke him with a stick from a safe distance. She rubbed her sore shoulder where she’d hit the ground when he’d flung her off him. PTSD was nothing to mess around with.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  WHEN CAMERON WOKE, she was alone in the tent and the sun was well up. The rush of the river and the swell of northern birdsong filled the morning. It was cool, but she was warm wrapped up in the wool blanket. She could smell wood smoke and coffee boiling. She stretched and yawned and felt, suddenly, quite good. In spite of what had happened last night, and in the days before that, all her aches and pains, and there were many, were getting better. She felt good. She sat up, ruing once again that her kit was in the sunken canoe. She had no hairbrush, no decent mirror, just the toothbrush in her cargo pants pocket. She pushed her hair back out of her face, finger combed it as best she could and had just finished braiding it when Jack appeared at the door of the tent.

  “Coffee’s ready,” he said. He unzipped the door and offered the insulated cup to her. “Listen, about what happened last night...”

  She held out her hand for the coffee and when their eyes met, she felt the heat come into her face. She, who never blushed, was blushing. He was so close, so virile, and so very necessary to the morning and to this moment. In the light of day, her reaction to his behavior last night seemed foolish. Last night she’d behaved like a shrinking violet, and now she felt ashamed.