She was thirty years old, and she’d never been in love. No, that’s not true, she remembered. She’d loved a boy once, a boy who didn’t know she existed, and the memory of her high school days pining after popular-guy hockey star Sean Kelly held the sting of rejection and regret. Back then she’d never said a word to Sean about how much she even liked him, let alone that she was in love with him.
He wouldn’t have gone for me anyway.
Annabelle no longer had glasses, and although she struggled with her hair, it wasn’t the frizzy mess it had been when she was seventeen. She was still every bit as nerdy, though, and every bit as shy about her emotions.
I’m not going to be a wallflower anymore, she thought. If I get out of here, I’m going to start living a little, no matter how much it scares me.
It was fitting that a glacier had swallowed her up. She realized with a weird, probably half-in-shock clarity, that she’d always retreated into academic pursuits to avoid real life and deep emotions. If she weren’t careful, she would disappear into her career and never have anything else.
Annabelle didn’t want to live with regret anymore. Being in mortal danger was the slap in the face she needed. Sean Kelly from high school was long gone from her life, but she could still start making room for real love.
I’m not settling for Derrick McDonald, she vowed. I deserve better, and the instant I get back up, it’s over between us.
4
Sean met up with the rest of the volunteers as they assembled in the conference room at the airport Sheriff’s Department substation. The roar of a 737 taking off rattled the windows.
He took a seat next to Cody.
“What’s up, man?” he asked his friend.
“This hiker picked a bad day to go up on the mountain,” Cody grumbled.
Sean laughed. “Is Cody grumpy? Does Cody not want to be here?”
Cody fake-glowered. “Cassie and I were making cookies.”
“Is that what you’re calling it these days?”
Sean waved at Josh Barnes and Tom Steele as they arrived. Both were on the A-shift Ladder One crew, which was the other fire company housed at Sean’s station. Each of the Golden Falls Fire and Rescue Department’s three shifts, A, B, and C, worked for forty-eight hours at a time, followed by four days off in a row to make up sleep from the sometimes grueling call volume. For the most part, the eight guys at Station One got along well and often socialized together on their days off.
A sheriff’s deputy stood at the front of the room and called for their attention.
“Okay, people. We have a time-sensitive rescue effort here. A scientific team from Alaska State has gotten stuck on the Kahiltna Glacier up on Denali. They were on their way down when a crevasse opened up. One of the scientists fell in but is still alive. The rest of the team is trapped above the crevasse and needs rescue, too, as the ice collapse made it impassable.”
That did not sound good.
Sean raised his hand. “Condition of the patient?”
“Alive and talking, possible broken foot or ankle,” the deputy said. “She landed on a ledge approximately twenty feet down. So we’re looking at a single-man rope rescue.”
Damn lucky woman, Sean thought. Their last Denali search and rescue had ended up being a recovery mission for the bodies of four tourists from Asia who’d fallen more than one hundred feet into a crevasse. That ledge was the current victim’s saving grace.
He leaned toward Cody. “I wish Maddog was here.”
“Stuck in the damn desert,” Cody said. “I’m sure he’d prefer an ice rescue.”
“And getting a beer afterward with us.”
Rick “Maddog” Madsen was a firefighter who was also in a National Guard special forces unit, and he was an expert at helicopter rope work. At present, he was deployed in Afghanistan and not due back for a few more months.
“Amen to that,” Cody said. “But next to Maddog, there’s no one better than you.” He jerked a thumb at the windows. “What the hell were they doing on the glacier today? It seems like they were asking for trouble.”
Sean raised his hand again. “How long have they been out there?”
“Before any of you start cursing them—” the deputy looked pointedly at Cody, which made everyone chuckle—“they planned their trip carefully and completed their climb late this morning before there was any weather. The storm wasn’t predicted to hit until tomorrow. Luck of the mountain, as we all know and love.”
It was true that conditions on Denali could change fast and hard. Even the most experienced mountaineers could be caught out by sudden storms.
“There are four people in the party, including the injured climber,” the deputy continued. “We’ll be deploying two helicopters. Weather conditions are about to get very bad, with temperatures set to drop to minus forty-five over the next few hours. If these folks are stuck there all night, it might be unsurvivable, so we need to make every effort to get them out now.”
“So what are we waiting for?” Josh Barnes called out, and everyone laughed.
The teams geared up and loaded onto the two rescue helicopters. Sean was on the medical evacuation chopper with Tom Steele, and the remainder of the space was taken up by the rescue basket for the injured scientist. They strapped in, and within seconds the helicopter lifted off and swung west toward the great mountain. It was not a smooth ride; wind buffeted the hull and made Sean’s teeth rattle.
Snow blanketed the landscape. The winding Nanook River was a smooth glittering white snake of ice, and a matching black ribbon that was the de-iced state highway stretched into the distance.
Over his headset, the pilot provided an update.
“They’re about three miles above Base Camp, toward the Kahiltna Pass,” he said. “Elevation’s almost ten thousand feet.”
“And I thought I was having a bad day,” Tom said.
“This rescue might be an ugly one,” Sean said.
The pilot was an expert, but the strong winds caused the helicopter to fly nearly sideways at times. After about an hour, the south face of Denali loomed before them. They swept up the glacier past vicious-looking peaks that dwarfed the helicopter. Below them, Sean saw a scattering of bright tents that marked Denali Base Camp. A striped windsock next to the glacier’s landing strip was steadily horizontal.
“Winds are at thirty knots and unstable,” the pilot said. “If it exceeds fifty or if this storm looks like it’ll catch up, I’m gonna have to drop back down.”
Sean looked out the window again. The storm clouds were an ugly, roiling gray, spreading across the foothills behind them. Already there were snowflakes in the air.
“What’s our ETA to their location?” Sean asked.
“Four minutes,” the pilot said. “And once we’re on site, you’ll have fifteen minutes before we’ve got to go.”
Fifteen minutes.
Everything about wilderness rescue was limited: by weather, by the helicopter’s fuel, by time. Sean felt tense and alert, charged by the weight of his mission. Today he might save someone’s life, which was something he would never have done if he’d played professional hockey, a fact that made him feel pretty damn good about the twists and turns his life had taken.
“There they are.” Tom pointed out the window as the helicopter banked.
Sean saw three figures on the ice, two in bright red parkas and one in blue, waving at the helicopters. The second rescue helicopter came up the glacier behind them, carrying the other half of the rescue team. Their job would be to pick up the three uninjured scientists and get them back to safety.
“There it is,” the pilot said, and Sean could see one of the parka-clad figures waving at a spot above the crevasse, a bruise-colored gash in the ice. “We’ll drop you in there and see what we’ve got.”
Sean triple-checked his harness, ropes, and carabiners and made sure his ice crampons were secure around his boots. Tom did the same, and then they checked each other’s equipment. Tom would be on belay, whi
le Sean dropped into the crevasse.
Bracing himself for the cold shock of air, Sean pushed open the helicopter’s door and peered down into the crevasse.
“How does it look?” Tom asked.
“Tricky,” Sean said.
He could see the barest outline of a person wearing a purple parka, her shape almost swallowed in darkness, in a seemingly-impossible position on the sidewall. He realized she’d landed on a narrow shelf of ice, just wide enough to support a human body, and a petite one at that.
“I hope she’s alert enough to strap onto my harness,” Sean said. “Getting the basket down in there might be hairy.”
“Is this position good?” the pilot asked.
“Affirm, I have a visual on the patient,” Sean said. “We’re directly above her.”
Tom, operating the hoist, clapped Sean on the back. “Good luck.”
“Here we go,” Sean said. For the pilot’s benefit, he added, “Descending now.”
He stepped out of the helicopter and into the air.
Icy winds buffeted Sean’s body as Tom lowered him into the crevasse. He saw the other scientists boarding the second helicopter which had landed fifty yards further up the glacier. He also saw the pile of angry, dark gray clouds pushing their way up the mountain and knew he needed to grab her and go.
Every minute spent on the rescue increased the jeopardy of the situation for them all. Being caught on the mountain in a storm was bad enough, but going down in a helicopter over the mountain in a storm was game over.
Feeling the instant chill when he passed the lip of the crevasse, Sean switched on his headlamp. It cut through the gloom, illuminating the shock-blue of fresh ice.
“Bring me forward just a few feet,” he radioed, referring to the position of the helicopter. “And Tom, lower me down five more feet.”
The woman was on her stomach, with her right arm and foot dangling off the edge. She’d secured ice axes above her in case the shelf gave way, and Sean admired her wherewithal.
“Ma’am?” he called to her. “How are you doing down there?”
“Better now that you’re here,” she said, with measurable relief in her voice. “I don’t know how stable this ledge is.”
As if to illustrate her point, a loud crack snapped through the air.
“Do you think you’re able to clip on to my harness? It’ll be a lot faster than sending down the basket.”
“Yes, I think I can clip on,” the woman said.
“Okay,” Sean said. “I’m going to get as close as I can. Are you wearing any climbing gear?”
“I have a couple of carabiners on my belt.”
“Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re going to clip you in first, and then you climb into the harness on my front. Sound good?”
“Sounds very good.”
“How’s your ankle feeling?”
“It hurts, but otherwise I think I’m okay.”
Sean was glad to hear it. A badly-injured or unconscious patient would have made a rescue near-impossible under the current conditions.
To Tom, he radioed, “Two more feet and then hold . . . right there.” Sean hovered less than a foot away from the woman, and for the first time, his light shone across her face.
She was gorgeous.
Thick brown lashes fringed her blue eyes, and her bare skin—windblown but still perfect—was dusted with light freckles, like cinnamon on cream. A few wild flame-red curls escaped around the sides of her hood. And her lips were made for kissing, full and sensuous.
Sean was struck dumb for a moment, which was very unlike him. At the same time, he felt a swooping in his stomach, as if he were falling from a great height and not at all secured by a rope weight-tested for three thousand pounds.
In all his years as a first responder, he’d never had such a thought before while on the job. Never had such a desire. Like most, he easily compartmentalized while on duty because that’s what professionals did.
Crack.
The sound of the ice galvanized him. He caught the shine of a carabiner at her waist, reached for it, and with one quick motion clipped it onto his harness.
“I’ve got you,” he said. “Just put your arms around me, and I’ll help you into the harness.”
Now it was the woman who seemed to have been struck dumb. She stared at him, unmoving, her pretty lips open in something like wonder or surprise, and he wondered if she was afraid.
Of course she was. Above them was safety, but below them was a bottomless icy pit. If they fell, they’d die, and it might not be quick.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “You can trust me to get you out of here.”
His words made her blink—and was that a blush?
“I know I can,” she said.
She rolled onto her side and put her arms through the loops of Sean’s front harness, clasping them around his neck. He scooped her forward and pulled her against him, making sure the harness was secured. Her body was tight against his, and he couldn’t help but feel her curves even through the thick layers of parkas and ropes.
“I’ve got her,” he radioed up. “The patient is secured. Pull us up.”
As they ascended, the roar of the wind and the rotors made it impossible to talk, but Sean was all too aware of their face-to-face position. She was close enough to kiss, and damn if he didn’t want to.
5
He doesn’t recognize me.
Annabelle was part relieved, part annoyed, and one hundred percent frazzled.
For a moment she even wondered if she was, in fact, dead. Or maybe hallucinating. She’d just thought of Sean Kelly and now here he was, pulling her to safety, his blazing green eyes holding her gaze in warm concern. If it weren’t for the throbbing and all-too-real pain in her ankle, the entire scenario—dangling above an endless crevasse in the arms of her high school crush—would be surreal.
It was the kind of worst-case scenario that was always in the back of her mind when she went out with her fellow glacier scientists. They trained for such things and imagined—at least she had—what it would be like to fall, and fall, and fall, into the vast nothingness below the surface of the snow. It had never once occurred to Annabelle that she’d survive such a fall; in her imagination, instant death was always the result.
Yet she had survived.
And she was being pulled to safety by none other than her long-ago but never-forgotten teenage crush.
Sean Kelly, golden boy. Hockey player extraordinaire. The most popular guy on campus. The subject of all her teenage fantasies. A cute boy who’d grown into a handsome man.
It registered that she was above the ice now, dangling over the endless crevasse, buffeted by the fierce icy winds of an oncoming storm. But suddenly none of that was half as important as the fact that she was pressed up against him, Sean Kelly, their faces mere inches apart. Her body was experiencing all kinds of reactions to him. Her breath came fast; her heart rate was out of control; and all she could do was latch onto him, both physically and with her eyes—latch on and not let go. Her focus on Sean was so intense it was as if the pain in her ankle was null and void.
Back in high school, too, it had been all Sean, all the time. Throughout four years of science classes, they’d sat alphabetically and therefore next to each other, her last name Keith to his last name Kelly. And she’d swooned over him the entire time.
Sean was perfect, while she was probably the biggest geek in school with her unruly red hair and unfashionable thick eyeglasses. Friendly to all, Sean greeted her each day with a cheerful hello, and her only response had ever been a furious blush. Then he’d move on to the next person and say hello, and Annabelle would experience much the same physical reaction she was feeling right then, more than a decade later. Her heart would engage, her breath would come fast, she’d adjust her glasses—a nervous gesture—and sink low in her chair. Sean Kelly spoke to me, she’d think, as if it had never happened before and might never happen again, although it did day after day. His polit
e attention had been unwavering—as was her love for him.
Yes, it had been love.
Not that he ever knew it. Shy wallflower that she was, the number of actual words Annabelle had spoken to him could probably be counted on the fingers of one hand. The mere sight of him had reduced her to a quivering mess, which was decidedly not the best way to attract a teenage boy’s attention.
Even though she hadn’t seen Sean since their high school graduation twelve years ago, his handsome face made the memories come crashing back, including the last time she’d seen him.
Graduation had been a sunny, mild, perfect Anchorage day. Annabelle had made up her mind that after four years of being helplessly, hopelessly, painfully in love with Sean, she was going to tell him how she felt, for once and for all, and the chips could fall where they may. Since she hadn’t been invited to any of the graduation parties where he and his friends would be, she had to tell him at the ceremony or not at all.
Because of their last names, they were seated next to each other one last time. For an agonizing hour, Annabelle had sat next to him in the school auditorium, twisting her hands in her lap, trying not to fidget from nerves, and working up the courage to say, Sean, do you have a second after the ceremony? I need to talk to you about something. Or, Sean, any chance you’re free for coffee after this?
Or, Sean, I’m madly in love with you and will be for the rest of my life.
When her name was called, she’d stood up and walked across the stage, her legs so rubbery she was sure she would trip, and then it was Sean’s turn, and then more waiting. Her tongue had been heavy as lead in her mouth, and she couldn’t bring herself to say anything to him.
Then everyone was throwing their hats in the air and Sean’s longtime cheerleader girlfriend bounced up and threw her arms around him, and that was it. The moment—and Annabelle’s chance—had passed.
She spent the summer doing the bookkeeping for her dad’s fishing season and then was off to the University of Washington in Seattle a few months later.
Forget Me Not (Golden Falls Fire Book 4) Page 3
