Playing With Fire: inspirational romantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 2)

by Susan May Warren

  Conner guessed him about five foot ten, maybe a hundred and eighty pounds, an athletic kid with a lean, toned body. No wonder he thought he could outrun a bear. At sixteen, Conner had thought the same thing, that he was king of his world with no idea how it could drop out beneath him.

  At nearly thirty-eight, he was smarter. Knew exactly how fast he could fall.

  The ledge was only four feet wide, and they would have been standing on top of each other if Liza hadn’t moved toward Shep’s head when Conner reached the ledge.

  Liza tested for a pulse at the base of Shep’s jaw while Conner knelt next to him and lifted his shirt, looking for bruising. He found a dark splotch down by his lower rib, just above his abdomen.

  “His pulse is weak, and rapid. His breathing is really shallow,” Liza said.

  “After a fall like that, he probably has internal bleeding.” Conner worked off his pack and reached inside, pulling out a Mylar rescue blanket. He draped it over Shep. “I don’t want to move him, but we need to try and slow the bleeding. How’s his head?”

  Liza felt around his skull, her hands gentle. The boy’s eyes didn’t open. “He’s got a wound just above his ear, but it doesn’t feel deep. And his skull isn’t soft, so I don’t think it’s broken.” She, too, had taken off her pack and now dug around, pulling out a first aid kit. She pulled out a handful of thick gauze pads and worked them under his head.

  “We need to get a look at that leg wound,” Conner said. He pulled out his knife, sheathed in his belt, and began to tear at the fabric of the boy’s jeans, working his way past the fracture to the knee.

  There a bone spur stuck out the back of Shep’s leg, tearing the calf.

  A tap on his shoulder, and Liza handed him a roll of gauze, a handful of pads. “Cover the wound, and we’ll figure out if we can splint it.”

  He could hardly believe this was the same person who’d called him just six hours ago, frantic.

  Reflex? Panic? He was hoping for Good Excuse to Call Conner because if she didn’t need him, she certainly wouldn’t invite him back into her life after they got Shep—and Esther—back up the mountain.

  Conner pressed the pad on the wound, and Liza helped him wrap Shep’s leg.

  Then he watched as she put her hands on Shep’s head and closed her eyes.

  Was she—praying?

  Yep. And seeing it, his entire body ached.

  I kept praying for you...

  Did she still think of him, still pray?

  He got up and pulled out his walkie.

  “Young, Brooks. Pete, come in.”

  He waited, then the voice kicked in, crackly, but clearer than he would have expected.

  “Brooks, Young. What’s your position?”

  “We found the boy. He’s on a ledge overlooking a waterfall on the north fork of Bull River.”

  Silence, then, “Roger that, Conner. And, uh, what’s his...status?”

  Conner could picture Pete walking away from the rangers and especially Dr. Billings as he phrased his question.

  “Alive. He took a fall, broke his leg, probably has internal injuries, maybe a broken shoulder. He hit his head, too. I think he’s in shock.”

  A beat, then, “Roger that. We’re on our way. Can you give us your best position?”

  Conner pulled out his map, gave the coordinates.

  “We’re a good five clicks from you,” Pete came back. “Ranger Eric suggests we call in the chopper out of Mercy Falls. PEAK Rescue has a hoist and an EMT team.”

  “Roger that. Can you get hold of dispatch?”

  “Will do. Dr. Billings wants to talk to you.”

  He shot a look at Liza, but she was still praying.

  “How badly injured is he?” Billings’s asked.

  “We’re working on getting the bleeding stopped and we’re keeping him warm.”

  “Don’t give him any liquids, he might vomit them up.”

  “Roger that. We’ll keep you informed.”

  Conner clipped the walkie on his belt and crouched down next to the boy, touching his face. Cool, almost clammy. Please, let him not be going into shock.

  That’s when he saw Liza’s hand trembling, her body shaking. Her breath shuddered out.

  Oh, no, was she— “Liza, are you crying?”

  Whoops, he hadn’t meant it quite like that. She looked up at him and, sure enough, tears hung in her beautiful brown eyes, streaked down her face. She wiped her cheeks quickly with the back of her hand.

  “No.”

  “Liza—”

  “I’m fine.”

  He jerked back, more stung than she probably intended, but he couldn’t help but feel as if she’d put a hand to his chest and shoved.

  Still, as she looked away, her jaw tight as if trying not to cry, he couldn’t help it. “He’s going to be okay—”

  “Are you kidding me?” She rounded on him, her eyes sharp in his. “He’s probably going into shock. His pressure is dropping. His leg is busted and he has a head injury—he’s hardly going to be okay—”

  Beneath her hand, the boy stirred, and something akin to horror filled her expression.

  Conner put his hand on hers. “He didn’t hear you.”

  She cut her voice low as she shook her head, pulled her hand away. “You don’t know that, either.” She wiped her face again, this time sloppily with both hands. “This is all my fault.”

  He frowned at her words. “Liza, there was a bear—”

  But she looked at him, her eyes red, her face streaked with sweat and dirt, and her grief swiped away his words. “She came to me, crying. Said that Shep had told her to get lost, that he didn’t want her hanging around him, and she was crushed. So, yeah, I told her that she didn’t need him, or any guy, and then I had this oh-so-brilliant idea for her to watch the sunrise, as if that might be a magic elixir for solving a girl’s man problems.”

  “Except she didn’t have man problems—”

  “That’s just it.” She looked at him. “Who knows what happened last night that ended with her up here with Shep? And now she’s missing and he’s dying. She should have listened to me and told Shep to stay out of her life before he crushed her fragile little heart.”

  “But what if he really likes her? What if he was just, I don’t know, confused when he told her to get lost?”

  She emitted a sound that bordered on disgust. “Yeah, right.” She looked at him, and her expression made him feel a little stupid.

  “Upright, healthy, and not broken, Shep is a sixteen-year-old poster child for the hottest boy in class. Tall, strong, blue eyes, a smile that can charm the common sense right out of a girl. Apparently he plays football, is class president, and prom king. Esther is a...well, let’s just say that she and I would have hung out together in the art studio.”

  He sort of liked her art studio.

  “Guys like Shep like cheerleaders and dance-line girls, the pretty ones who know how to flirt, not girls like Esther, who wear thrift-store jeans, don’t know how to use mascara, and would rather spend Saturday afternoon holed up with a good novel. And if he was chasing her, it wasn’t because he was into her—at least not in the way she wanted. It was because he had one thing on his mind. And the minute he got it, he would exit her life so fast she’d get windburn.”

  Her voice had sharpened, and now her mouth tightened into a bud of frustration. “And I should have told her that raw truth instead telling her that she didn’t need a guy to be happy. Or telling her that painting a sunrise might make things okay.”

  Conner was trying hard to keep up, to read between the words, but he only managed to come up with something lame. “I love sunrises.”

  She looked away. “I know.”

  The boy groaned, shifting, and in a second, Liza’s hand pressed his cheek. “Shep, don’t move. It’s going to be okay.”

  What he’d said, hello.

  Shep’s eyes fluttered open.

  Disoriented, he looked at Conner, then Liza. “Where am I?”
/>
  “Shh.” Liza said in that tone of voice that always made Conner’s heartbeat slow, made him feel like everything would be okay. “You fell off a cliff. Help is coming.”

  Shep winced as he tried to orient himself. “Esther—!” He made to push himself up, then fell back with a cry, whimpering.

  “Dude! You’re pretty busted up here.” Conner put a hand on Shep’s chest, testing his breathing, his heart rate, hoping to calm him. “Just breathe.”

  “She’s in...the water.” Shep’s breathing came erratically, hiccupping out the words. “We were holding hands when we jumped, and then I landed and she—I couldn’t hold her. Oh...” His voice cut in and out with broken sobs. “Oh no, oh... Please, I heard her. She was calling my name...”

  “When, Shep?” Liza leaned over him, her hand over his forehead. “Was it after she fell?”

  “She was...” Shep seemed to sift through his fractured memories. “Yeah. After she fell. She landed in the water, I think. But she yelled that she was going to find a way back.”

  Liza looked up at Conner, so much hope in her eyes, Conner wanted to reach out and hug her.

  But he had the strangest feeling that her outburst about Shep the Prom King might have been less about Esther and more about the girl in art class, the one with long brown hair and luminous, beautiful brown eyes. And he couldn’t quite let go of the rest of her words. Tall, strong, blue eyes, a smile that can charm the common sense right out of a girl.

  Conner had felt a little sick at her words.

  “She’s alive,” Liza said then, cutting through the dark chatter in his head. “She landed in the river and decided to float downstream until she could climb out.”

  That was one scenario, sure. Conner managed a smile, not wanting to voice the other options. “Maybe.”

  “Which means that she could be on her way here or at least hiking back up.” Liza looked down at Shep, and this woman Conner recognized. Tender. Kind, despite her doubts about him. “Can you tell us what happened?”

  Tears cut down his cheeks. “She was upset—I didn’t know why, so I said I’d meet her at the bell tower.” He closed his eyes, winced. “She wanted to talk about what happened between her and my mom—they got into a fight.” His face darkened. “Mom said something stupid, like I didn’t want to hang around her. But it wasn’t true. It’s not true and—” His breath stuttered.

  “Shh. We’ll find her,” Liza said. “Did you see a bear?”

  “Yeah. It came up the trail at us. Esther saw it first—I don’t think it smelled us or anything, it was just walking up the trail, but we didn’t know what to do. She wanted to play dead like they taught us at camp, but I—I pushed her up the trail. The bear started charging, and I freaked out and threw my coat at him and then...I don’t know. We were off the trail and running, and I think it followed us. I heard branches breaking, but we just kept running—” He was breathing hard now, and again Conner put a hand on his chest.

  “Slow down. Just breathe.”

  Tears ran down into Shep’s ears. “We didn’t even see the cliff until we’d launched off it. I tried to hold on—she was screaming...”

  His entire body shook, and he raised his hand to cover his eyes.

  Conner looked away, his throat tight.

  “Please...find her.”

  Shep grabbed Conner’s hand, and Conner met his eyes. It was the tremble in the boy’s voice, the pleading that made Conner turn his hand into Shep’s in a buddy grasp. “I’ll find her.”

  But Shep wasn’t done. He tightened his grip. “Promise me.”

  Aw, shoot…Conner couldn’t stop himself. He nodded, fast, sharp. “I promise.”

  He couldn’t look at Liza. But she put her hand over his and held it there.

  Chapter Nine

  I promise.

  Conner’s words hung in Liza’s mind as she stood on the ledge watching the EMT from PEAK Rescue load Shep into the rescue litter. With little room on the outcropping, only the female EMT and Pete remained to worked the litter, both of them attached to the chopper above by the hoist cable.

  Liza and Conner had climbed back up to the cliff edge as soon as the chopper arrived. Apparently, Pete knew the folks from PEAK Rescue. He’d introduced the woman as Jess. Liza hadn’t gotten a good look at the woman, other than her blonde hair pulled into a tight nub just below her helmet, but she seemed strong and no-nonsense like, taking control from Conner almost immediately.

  Conner’s smokejumper pal CJ had joined them, along with Skye, and frankly, Liza couldn’t figure out why they were all still standing here. Conner had his map open a few feet away, crouched on the rock, holding it down with his knees. Skye held down the other side as he studied the route of the Bull River.

  Apparently intent on keeping his promise.

  Probably only Liza knew the effort it had taken for Conner to say that.

  The chopper hovered some fifty yards above, the rotors whisking the needles from the trees, the wash so loud they couldn’t hear the commands the EMTs shouted to each other. Pete used hand signals to respond to Jess’s directions.

  Just a few feet away, Dr. Billings and the two rangers—a thirty-something woman with short brown hair and her counterpart, a thicker man in his mid-fifties—were engineering a return ride to camp once they hiked back to the ridge.

  None of the searchers had seen a trace of the grizzly.

  It didn’t mean the animal wasn’t lurking nearby, however.

  Dr. Billings had added nearly nothing to Shep’s emergency care—especially when they discovered his specialty was dermatology. But he’d paced, barked orders, and generally behaved like a distraught father, and that had Liza’s heart softening.

  No one escaped suffering when seeing their child hurt.

  She didn’t hear Conner step up beside her, what with the spectacle of the chopper hoisting the litter up, Jess affixed to the rig. The EMT climbed into the chopper and pulled the litter in.

  “They’ll take him to Kalispell Regional Medical Center. Calling the chopper in was the right call,” Conner said.

  The chopper moved off, ascending as it followed the river east, toward Kalispell.

  Pete climbed up the cliff, belayed by CJ.

  Dr. Billings stopped as he turned to climb the hill back to the trail above. He ignored Liza but stuck out his hand to Conner. “Thank you.”

  Conner met his grip, glanced at Liza. “She helped him just as much as I did.”

  Clearly his words fell on deaf ears, because Billings barely cast a glance at Liza as he moved away.

  “He’s just upset,” Conner said, apparently feeling the need to defend the man. “I remember the first time I broke my arm—I was riding a four-wheeler, took a turn too fast, and down I went. My dad completely lost it—drove to the hospital like a maniac. That’s just the way fathers are when their kids are hurt.”

  “I’m sure. I don’t remember, really, but I believe you.”

  He went silent. She’d told him, of course, of her father dying when she was only five.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Of course not.”

  “Let’s just get going. We have a promise to keep.”

  The words simply emerged—she didn’t mean to drag up old wounds. Still, Conner’s mouth tightened.

  “About a quarter mile from here, the river thins. Skye and CJ are going to cross over to the other side, just in case Esther washed up and got stranded on the opposite bank. You and I will hike down the river on this side just in case she’s there.”

  Liza was still watching the chopper, a blue-and-white bird, as it glided down the river. “What I wouldn’t give to be able to get a bird’s eye view.”

  Silence beside her, and she looked at Conner. He wore a faraway look, but came back to himself at her glance. Then, a smile curved up his face. “Oh wow—why didn’t I think of that earlier?”

  Huh?

  He turned to Pete, sitting on the rock nearby, winding up the letdown rope between his feet into a perfect loop.
“Pete, you gotta do me a solid here.”

  Pete seemed built for the outdoors, with a lean, tight frame, wide ropy shoulders, a calm agility around danger. He had dark-blond hair tied back with a lanyard, a square chin, blue eyes, and seemed the kind of guy built to get the lost out of trouble. She had no doubt he probably got into trouble as well, with his charming smile and easy laughter, the kind that could woo his way too easily into a girl’s heart.

  “Name it.”

  “I need you to get back to Ember and pick up my drone.” Conner reached into his pocket and fished out a ring of keys.

  “Dude, you brought your keys on a jump?”

  “I didn’t stop off at my locker, remember?”

  “Right,” Pete said, catching the keys with one hand. “Okay, what am I getting?”

  “My last drone. I rent a storage locker just outside town. Listen, you’ll also need the remote control—that’s in my trailer, locked in my nightstand.”

  “You lock your bedroom furniture?”

  “I keep my gun there, too.”

  “Right.”

  Pete got up, handed Conner the rope. “So, do I call Gilly to drop me again?”

  “Maybe. Check in, I might have a better jump spot than camp. Unless, hopefully, we find Esther before then.”

  “It’ll take me a few hours—I gotta hike back, then drive back to Ember—it could be nightfall.”

  “I know. And if we haven’t found Esther by dark, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow. But by then, we’ll definitely need the drone.”

  “Roger that.” Pete glanced at Liza, gave her a tight smile. “If anyone can find Esther, Conner can,” he said and nodded as if trying to dispel comfort.

  “I know.”

  Conner had already walked away, but Skye came up, buckling the waist strap of her pack. “A drone?”

  Away from them, Conner had folded the map into a square, pulled CJ over for consultation.

  “Conner’s an inventor,” Liza said, watching him. He’d seemed intense before, when they’d hiked down from the ridge. But with the set of his jaw, his gestures and instructions to CJ... He’d taken out a bandanna and tied it over his head to keep the hair out of his face, and now the wind rippled his blue T-shirt across his strong back. Nothing would stop Conner this time from keeping his promise.