by Meg Maguire
“I’m not leaving you, Kate,” he murmured. “I just want to guarantee nothing bad will happen to you. I’m doing this because I can’t stand the thought of you leaving me. Permanently.”
“You’re doing it because you’re picking this ridiculous survivor’s guilt bullshit over what we could have.”
She watched Ty’s jaw flex as he thought. “And you’re picking your need to bloody control everything.”
Kate sighed silently to herself. “Yeah, I am.”
“I guess I see where we stand, then—” Ty fell silent as a sound in the distance became audible to them, then grew louder. Motors.
11
TY STRAINED FOR CONFIRMATION, the sound too wonderful to be real.
“Snowmobiles,” Kate said, eyes widening. “The safety crew!”
“Or somebody, anyhow. Get out of the middle of the trail.” They stood a few feet from the woods and waited, poised to hail their rescuers as the hum of motors grew louder, perhaps a half mile away. Ty held his breath, listening to the beautiful sound of their salvation approaching.
Then as quickly as it had come, the noise faded.
He stepped forward, looking all around. “Uh-oh.”
The snowmobiles were on some other, parallel trail—the other side of the fork, now a two-hour walk back in the direction they’d come from or a who-knew-how-long trek through the dense woods.
“Oh, no! Hey! Hey! Help!” Kate screamed in the direction of the dying noise, waving her arms and the axe, but they’d never be able to hear her over the din of the motors.
“Bollocks,” Ty groaned.
“Oh, God.” Slumping against a nearby tree, Kate succumbed to defeat. Wallowed in it, by the look of her face. Ty could relate. Another two hours of this. And then what? No helicopters would be able to look for them in this fog, and it could easily take a couple of hours for the rescue team to spot a signal fire or come upon them on the trail again. Well, at least they knew which route was correct.
“Sorry, Kate.”
She sighed, sounding too exhausted now to stay angry with him. “It’s okay…we’ll get home. I’m just so frigging tired.”
He nodded, accepting her unarticulated truce.
“Let’s just cut through the woods, toward the other trail,” she said. “I can’t walk back all that way. I’ll go crazy.”
“We can try,” Ty said. “But we might miss them if they come up this branch.”
“Let’s split up, then. One of us can cut through to the other trail, and whoever grabs the rescue guys first can take them to where the other is.”
“No way. You have any idea how many times I’ve preached on camera how stupid it is to split up in the wilderness? And out here?” He waved an arm around the cold and homogenous landscape, a perfect recipe for getting lost and disoriented.
“I’m trained, Ty, same as you. We’ve got compasses—one in the pack and one on my watch. Seriously. We’ll stay within shouting distance. But if the snowmobiles come by again and we miss them… Forget my sanity, okay? Just save my toes. We’re so close.”
He scanned the woods, uneasy. “Shouting distance?”
“Every minute, you shout, I’ll shout back. That’s got to be a half mile, maybe more. Maybe close enough for whoever’s cutting through to make a run for the other trail if the rescue team comes back. Flag them down.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Please, Ty?”
The look on her face did him in. He’d never seen her so helpless before, so openly pleading.
“Fine. But only on those conditions.”
“That’s fine.” Kate took her glove off again. “Stripes, I’ll stay on this trail. Black, I’ll cut through the woods.”
Ty nodded and she tossed the glove into the air. Once again it landed black-side-up.
“What supplies do you want?” she asked as she pulled it back on.
“I’m fine with just the compass. You keep the pack.”
“Okay…” Kate trailed off, shifty eyes darting through the woods. “I’m leaving you the camera, though.”
Ty smiled grimly. “Of course you are.”
“Can—”
“Lots of footage, yes, no worries.” Ty rolled his eyes, dropped Kate’s frame pack off his shoulders, grabbed the compass clipped to the front pocket. She adjusted the straps and shrugged it on. They exchanged an awkward glance, neither able to look the other fully in the eye.
“Well,” she finally said. “I guess this is where we go our separate ways.”
Ty nodded, hating her word choice, hating the fact that she chose it in lieu of a good old honest kick to his balls. “I’ll see you soon,” he said. “Lakers tickets say I find the rescue crew first.”
Kate smiled, just a tiny sliver of how they were supposed to be, but it warmed Ty nonetheless. “You’re on.”
She offered him a tight, melancholy smile and a wave of her gloved hand, then turned away, walked directly into the woods and left him behind.
AS MUCH AS KATE WANTED to blindly propel herself away from Ty, she mustered the good sense not to waste all her years of on-the-job training. She rolled up her sleeve and checked the compass on her watch, noting that she was heading northwest so she could check in five minutes that she was still making a straight line. It was tough, surrounded by all these uniform, scraggly black trees and white snow. Easy to get turned around.
In the distance, she heard Ty’s shout, loud and clear. “Marco!”
She rolled her eyes and bellowed right back. “Polo!”
Kate had never been in the wilderness without Ty by her side, and it was unnerving. Unnerving but liberating. She’d be without him from now on, period, but she’d live. Her eyes jumped between the trees, on the lookout for any of the animals she’d seen listed in all the research she’d helped conduct on the region. None scared her too badly…. The worst were wolves and bobcats, but given the sled trail’s relative noisiness and activity, she was willing to bet the animals stuck to the real woods. And even there, when Ty had been desperately looking for any creature at all to snare for his meals the first two days in the bush, they’d spotted next to nothing. A goose, those eggs, the occasional emaciated rodent.
“Marco!” Fainter, now, but still clear.
“Polo!”
Kate trudged onward, went into the meditation she’d routinely called on to escape the drudgery of the wilderness. She fantasized about her apartment, her favorite restaurants, the movie release dates she’d marked on her calendar. The bubble of happy anticipation grew, then deflated. All those places were better with Ty.
Whatever. She didn’t need him. She wouldn’t die without him, or this job. The shock was fading, morphing into mourning, but that too would pass. If life had taught Kate anything, it was that she couldn’t make someone the center of her world. Yet here she’d done it again—moved to L.A. to escape her old, clingy self and woken up a helpless satellite caught in Ty’s gravity. She’d fallen in love with him, like the incurable idiot she was.
“Marco!”
“Polo!”
At least she hadn’t told him so. That was an improvement. Kate still fell hard, but she’d learned to save face.
Aside from their intermittent shouts, the woods were silent and lonely. She checked the compass and adjusted her course a little. Her feet ached, alternately cold and eerily warm, stiff and tingly. She missed music, missed the drone of her TV as she puttered in her home during the show’s off-season. She wondered if maybe she’d get a cat now that she’d be around more. Or at the very least some houseplants…
Three things happened at once. A dull, mechanical snap sounded, shocking pain engulfed Kate’s ankle and her own scream pierced the silence. She doubled over, grabbing her leg and falling on to her side. A metal trap was snapped tight around her foot, two hinged jaws biting into her skin. She stared at the black steel, her mind fighting her body’s animal panic. She gulped deep breaths, willed herself calm.
“It’s not broken,” she tol
d herself, half believing it. Her ankle was screaming with pain, but she prayed it hadn’t fractured. This wasn’t a bear trap—the jaws were smaller and unserrated, designed for big cats or maybe wolves. Kate suffered through the pain of relocating her butt, scooting forward to pull at the trap. Nothing—she couldn’t budge the spring-loaded jaws.
“Ty!” She screamed it as loud as she could, prayed it might cover the distance now separating them. She tried prying at the trap again. No use. She swore a blue streak, shouted Ty’s name until her throat burned. She couldn’t make out a reply. Her head was consumed by a rushing noise, like radio static filling her up and dulling her awareness. She blinked and tiny white blobs danced in front of her eyes. She fumbled through her pack, tried using the handle of her folded utility knife to lever the jaws apart. It budged millimeters, if that.
“Crap. Crap crap crap.” Kate tugged at her bad ear as a dark, crippling helplessness engulfed her. She felt alone not just in the woods but in the world—abandoned, forgotten. The pain in her leg intensified, metal clamping bone, the damage to her skin hidden behind her thick hiking pants and wool socks. Thank goodness for those. But something was off, beyond the pain…darkness was seeping into her head, dulling her thoughts. Her lungs raced for breath against her will, her heart beating wildly, so fast it terrified her. She felt an invisible hand closing on her throat. Kate fought the feeling, clawed through the pack and got the gun out, two flares still left in it. The last thing she was aware of before the shock won out was the bang as she squeezed the trigger, the spark as it shot up through the treetops.
“KATE? KATIE?”
Ty had been running full tilt through the trees, but now he slowed. Kate had stopped yelling and he didn’t know where he was supposed to be heading. There were no tracks to help him, as he was coming from a totally different angle than she’d been traveling. He squinted for her bright green coat through the woods, but nothing.
Pop. Ty’s head snapped up at the crackling of a flare and he could just make out the glittering of red light against the cloudy sky.
“Kate?” he shouted. Still nothing, but he ran once again, dodging trees, dodging mental images of Kate clinging to the broken ice in some frigid, snow-hidden pond, dropping below the surface. God, how could he have let her go like that? The one time he knew which decision to make and he let her talk him out of it. Idiot.
Ty jogged until his lungs burned, his throat dry from the icy air and his intermittent shouts. Then, there it was—a sliver of leaf-green nylon in the distance.
“Kate!” Ty sprinted the last hundred slippery, slushy yards, his heart hammering as he found her lying on her side, pack open and supplies scattered beside her. He slid to a halt and sank to his knees, touching her face and hair, confused. Her eyes were open and her breaths raced in violent bursts, endless puffs of fog between her lips.
“Kate? Can you hear me? What’s wrong?”
No sign of acknowledgment. Ty didn’t need one. He needed only to get her to safety. Just as he was about to hoist her into his arms, he saw the black chain stretched from her foot across the snow.
“Oh, God.” He scrambled to inspect it, relieved there was no blood. But she was in some kind of shock; she had to be. That meant she’d suffered horrible pain, and that could easily mean a broken bone. Ty didn’t know a ton about traps, but enough to wonder if this one was illegal, given the area and the time of year. Thankfully he knew how to open it. He gently angled Kate’s knee so her foot was flat on the ground and got himself to standing. Each side of the trap had a spring mechanism that jutted out. Ty pinned one to the ground with his foot and did the same to the other to release the tension. He eased the jaws apart and gingerly lifted Kate’s foot out. The metal slapped shut again as he stepped away and stooped to haul Kate into his arms.
She was a small woman but the shock racking her body made her a pile of twitchy dead weight. No matter—Ty would carry her all the way to L.A. if he had to. He left the pack, axe and camera on the ground, aimed himself in the direction Kate had been heading, and just walked.
As he walked, Ty felt strange—more lucid and focused than he could ever remember being in his entire life. The black trees against the gray sky and the white snow were cast in such sharp relief that it felt surreal, as though he were traveling through a charcoal drawing. He could feel his heart beating, feel each ounce of blood humming through his veins. He’d been without food and rest for nearly four days, but somehow, with Kate’s quaking body draped over his arms, he suspected he could run a marathon.
“Ty.” She mouthed the word more than actually uttering it, eyes unfocused.
“Can you understand me? Can you hear me?”
No answer. Her breaths were raspy and rapid, terrifying.
“Hang in there, Katie. I’m going to get you home real soon,” he promised. “We’re going to get you warm, and fix your ankle. And if you even think about asking about the camera I’ll throttle you.”
He glanced down, saw Kate had succumbed to her hyperventilation and passed out. Her exhalations had slowed, her eyes closed. Ty swallowed and prayed that might be an improvement.
“If you promise you’ll be okay,” he said to Kate’s inattentive face, “I’ll give you anything you want. I’ll even give you your stupid filming back, maybe. We’ll do a whole season of open ocean scenarios. In the tropics. At Cannes. With celebrities. I’ll wear a tux. Anything you want.” He continued on this rant for a long time, bargaining with her using any and every currency he could think of. It struck him after a while that he wasn’t bargaining with the universe for a change. There was a different source of meaning to his life now.
“And I’ll even do that bloody Esquire interview and let them gel my hair—” His rambling cut off after about twenty minutes as the most glorious sight in the world met his eyes—the bright orange paint of the rescue team’s parked snowmobiles in the distance. A few yards beyond stood the cabin where the team had set up.
“Hey!” Ty bellowed. He shouted it again and again, his lungs burning. He staggered onward, step by aching step, until the door opened.
THE FIRST THING KATE noticed as she regained consciousness was the sound of her own voice. She heard herself moaning before she felt it, and long before she could begin to control it. Behind the pitiful groans she heard Ty on her right.
“Katie?”
Then a woman’s voice, difficult to make out on her left side. “Kate? Can you swallow?” The brim of a mug was pressed to her lips and the liquid that slid down her throat felt as if it must be boiling hot. She felt herself cough, heard Ty say, “Good girl.”
They were inside and there was heat—steady heat, not fire. Electric lights. The woman holding the mug withdrew and Ty scooted his chair closer to touch Kate’s hand, running his fingertips over her knuckles. His eyes looked darker, not lit by the sun for a change. They looked like the sea. She struggled to form words, her muscles uncooperative. The room seemed bright, like an overexposed photo and she felt trapped in her own body and unable to help herself—an old and very unwelcome sensation. Her first of many hurtful memories from her childhood, more than twenty years past but still more vivid than things she’d experienced even a month ago.
Ty sat patiently at her side, carrying on a rambling one-sided conversation for her entertainment, or possibly his own. Kate’s bad ear ached, as badly as when she’d been four and had the infection that left her half-deaf. Her throat went tight, the muscles there remembering the hours she’d screamed and screamed from the pain, for nearly two days until her mother had finally had to accept that it was no mere tantrum. By then it’d been too late. By then she’d been doomed to a lifelong reminder of how inconsequential and inconvenient she was. Afterward, no apologies. No soothing or coddling. Just angry words about bills and insurance.
But this was so different. This time Ty was with her. Kate couldn’t help it when she started to cry, and she hoped it would just look like a symptom of whatever had landed her here on her back. Ty’s fin
gers wiped the tears from her face and more streamed out to replace them.
“Well, your tear ducts work,” he said absently, thumbs running over her cheeks.
Kate wanted her muscles to comply so she could throw her arms around him and sob her appreciation into his shoulder. She felt herself smile weakly.
“There’s an improvement.” Ty offered her a smile in return.
She felt herself getting control again, her muscles obeying her brain’s commands.
“Ty.”
He smiled. “Can you hear me all right?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Can you see me?” He leaned in close and grinned at her.
“Yeah. Just fine.”
His hands, warm and dry, cupped her face, thumbs stroking the feverish skin of her cheeks.
The image of the snow and black metal flashed across her mind, Ty’s red coat, the treetops streaming by above her. “You saved me.”
“Yeah. I guess I did.”
“What happened?” she asked. “There was a trap.”
“Yeah. Your ankle’s okay—badly bruised, but not broken. And you hyperventilated. The medic thinks you went into shock from the pain.”
From more than the physical pain, she thought. From a lifetime of emotional weight she’d been dragging around behind her, trying to ignore. She’d tamped it all down for years, that awful, helpless sensation, only to have it rush back the second that trap snapped around her ankle. Except this time, someone had cared. She stared into his eyes. “Are you angry at me? For making us split up?”
