Lauren laid a hand on his arm. “We still don’t know why she tried to destroy the plane.”
“That, and which one of our passengers was in on the deal.”
“What do you mean?” Her brows knit together.
He grimaced. “This is a tandem chute. Two people dive in it. Somebody was planning to leave with her, but got stuck in the plane with us because Mags was incapacitated.”
Lauren’s jaw dropped, and she leaned in toward him. “Someone walking around in this room tried to kill us? Wow. And they could try again!”
Kent delivered a single, decisive nod. “For now, let’s keep the discovery of this parachute our secret. Her accomplice doesn’t need to be alerted that his existence has been exposed.”
“Allow him to relax, get complacent and maybe slip up somehow?”
“Exactly. And we need to pray that Mags wakes up—at least long enough to tell us his name—or we’re all the proverbial sitting ducks. Anybody with the brains and guts to devise and carry out this sabotage plan will be quick to implement a Plan B that will glean him the same results—us dead and himself home free.”
FOUR
A deep cough rent Lauren’s chest, jerking her awake. A blanket wrapped around her where she lay against a hard floor, head cradled by a leather cushion. Acrid smoke gagged her nostrils and burned the back of her throat. She lunged to a sitting position, as hacking coughs and cries of “Fire!” converged from every direction.
Her mind spun. In front of her eyes, the room was dark as the inside of a barrel. From behind her shoulders, a ruddy heat cast a muted glow. Where was she? Oh, yes. The sabotaged plane. Emergency landing. Shelter in the abandoned mercantile. And now...fire!
Crash-bruised muscles protested her sudden scramble to get to her feet, but the blanket entangled her, and she fell backward hard on her behind. A moan and a cough came from her immediate right. Richard. No sound from her left. Mags remained unconscious...or worse.
“Help!” she cried through a strangled cough. “Help me with the patients.”
Thumping noises, like hurried footsteps, answered her, but the sounds were headed in every direction except her location on the far side of the stove.
“Where’s the door?” a male voice screamed. Cliff.
Yes, where was the door, but also, where was the fire? She glanced over her shoulders, and made out the dark form of the potbellied stove. All normal enough, and yet bitter, pine-tinged smoke swirled everywhere.
She had to get her patients out of here! Lauren yanked herself from the blanket’s grip and stood, staring around. Hazy lights bobbed here and there. As they’d done before the group turned in last night, people were using their cell phone flashlights. Without cell service, the phones weren’t good for much else, and from the volume of smoke in the room, not much good for lighting, either. The glow was more disorienting than illuminating.
“Where are you, Lauren?” Feminine tones rose above the panicked din.
“Mom!” Lauren answered. “Don’t look—” she coughed “—for me! Find a way out!”
“Jade Eyes!”
A burn in the pit of Lauren’s stomach joined the burn in her throat. Kent. She needed his strong arms and back to move Rich and Mags.
“Over here. Help me with the patients.”
“Keep calling ou—” A throaty hack chopped off the last bit of the sentence.
“He...re!” Her lungs cramped against the invading fumes.
“Get low. Stay low, everyone.” His voice was much closer and near her knees.
Lauren dropped down to join him. “Where?”
“Here.” His hand found her arm.
“Grab... Rich. I’ll...do my best...with Mags.”
“I found it!” Phil’s triumphal cry from the other end of the room announced the crash of the door flinging open and hitting the wall.
Chill air invaded the space, swirling the smoke, as the outdoor moonglow lit the atmosphere to fuzzy twilight. Even though smoke had to be escaping out the opening, the density around Lauren barely diminished. Smoke was being generated by something more quickly than it could disperse.
Watering eyes blurred her view of Kent’s crouched figure grabbing Rich’s shoulders and pulling him across the floor. Head spinning, Lauren struggled to focus and move Mags. Progress seemed almost nonexistent.
One foot. Two feet. Mags’s inert body was as stubborn as an anchor against the rough and dusty floor. Keep going. Got to keep going. Lungs aflame, mouth dry as soot, Lauren forced flagging mind and muscles to labor on.
She must be getting close to the exit, yet the chill of the outdoor breeze seemed as far away as ever. Strange warmth clouded her brain. Inertia shrouded her muscles.
Crawling backward, tugging her patient, she ran into something solid behind her. What? A set of shelves. She’d set up her makeshift hospital with walls of moveable shelving units, which meant she wasn’t even close to escape. She still had to pull her patient around the barrier. Nothing in her mind or body contained an ounce of ability to accomplish the impossible task. She wasn’t going to make it.
But if she didn’t make it, neither would Mags. The woman may have tried to kill them all, but she was a human being and Lauren’s patient.
God, help us!
Her faint prayer seemed no more effective than a spurt of cool water against the overwhelming crush of hot darkness, yet a tiny surge of will brought her and her patient around the barrier. She stopped. She’d reached the end of herself. Lungs screaming, she slumped back on her heels, covering her mouth and nose with her arm and sleeve.
Consciousness ebbed. A murky shadow loomed over her, and then blackness fell. A funny sort of blackness, all soft and fuzzy. Strong arms hefted her. Is that You, God, taking me home? The room moved. No, she was moving. Cold embraced her. She came to rest on dusty ground, and smaller arms wrapped around her.
The sound of excited voices and deep coughs trickled into her consciousness, one voice very familiar. Her mother crooning to her, over and over. “It’s okay, baby. Come back to me now.”
Deep coughs racked Lauren’s ribs, wrenching her insides. With a flailing arm, she flung the blanket from her head and hauled in a crisp, cold breath. Her head began to clear, but tears streamed from her eyes, clouding her vision. Vague figures, standing on the moon-washed street, appeared like swaying tree trunks.
“Be still, now, baby.” Mom’s arms tightened around her.
“I c-can’t.” Lauren pulled away, struggling to rise. Her dainty mother pulled her down, and Lauren had no strength to resist. “My patient...is in there!”
“Our hero pilot went to get her.”
“Oh, no! Kent!”
“It’s all right. He’ll be all right.”
“But—”
“If you must do something, dear, see to your other patient.”
The Georgia peach voice contained a hint of sauce now, and Lauren choked on a laugh. How her incorrigible mother could draw a chuckle out of her in a situation like this was an amazement of nature. Lauren climbed to her feet and stood swaying and scrubbing at her eyes.
Where was he? Why wasn’t someone helping?
Lauren stumbled forward, knocking against a figure that stepped into her path. The man cursed. Dirk. Who else! Lauren staggered around him, straining to see into the darkened doorway of the mercantile.
A strange-looking creature staggered out of the building onto the porch. Her clearing eyes finally sorted out the vision into a blanket-covered Kent carrying Mags’s limp body in his arms. Phil clumped out of the small crowd and up the steps to support the swaying pilot.
The vise grip around Lauren’s chest eased marginally. She made her way to the bottom step where Kent was laying out his copilot.
“There’s no fire,” Phil murmured as if to no one in particular, “just smoke.”
Lauren
knelt beside Kent and laid a hand on his spasming back as he coughed out the invading smoke from his lungs. His muscles rippled beneath her palm. Strong. Solid. Dependable. Lauren snatched her hand to herself as a memory surged to the fore. Her dad giving her four-year-old self a horsey ride on his strong, solid, dependable back. How she squealed and laughed and trusted that Daddies were forever. How deceiving appearances could be.
She shook her head, and pain shot through her oxygen-starved brain. No matter. She wasn’t going to dredge up that old mess. Not now. Maybe not ever. She just needed to forget—stuff that memory back down in the dungeon where it belonged. Kent was nothing to her but a brave guy, excellent pilot and fearless leader for the moment. When they got out of this valley, he’d go his way, and she’d go hers. He was no threat to her hard-won equilibrium.
Time to turn to what was really important—her patients.
Lauren leaned in and placed two fingers against the carotid artery in Mags’s neck. No pulse. She sucked air between her teeth and laid a hand against the woman’s slack mouth. No breath. She lowered her ear to the copilot’s chest. No heartbeat.
“Ma...gs? Is sh-she...?” Kent’s question came out ragged.
Lauren shook her head as she gazed up at Kent’s cleanly sculpted features outlined by the moonlight. From his expression, she suspected more than strained lungs had caused the brokenness in his tone. The woman had been a comrade-in-arms at one time. What else might she have been to Kent before she tried to kill them? He’d never said.
“We could...try CPR,” Lauren gasped out, “but I don’t think...any of us has the breath...and I don’t think...it would do any good. Her damaged brain...simply could not survive the lack of oxygen.”
Their gazes locked and communicated. Now, Mags would never be able to tell them the identity of her accomplice. Did someone plan this strange, flameless fire? Who? How?
“Is everyone...else okay?” Kent called.
“Where’s Neil?” Cliff’s voice answered. “He never came out.”
* * *
Heaving long breaths in and out of burning lungs, Kent climbed to his feet and squinted through watering eyes toward the mercantile. Smoke still poured through the open door like a chimney at Christmas, though maybe the volume had decreased slightly.
“If Neil is still in there,” his words were leaden, “there is no point in going in after him until the fire in the stove goes out and the smoke lets up.”
“What happened?” Dirk demanded. “Why are we driven out into the cold street in the middle of the night? This is unacceptable!”
“Would you care to speak with the concierge?” Phil rumbled.
A bout of snickers broke out, even as most of the group hugged themselves against the bitter wind.
“I would guess we have a plugged stovepipe,” Kent said. “Not something we can fix until daylight. To stay warm, we’ll have to climb into the transport wagon. We’ll be packed like sardines, but our combined body heat will keep us from freezing.”
“What about Mags’s body?” Lauren inserted softly. “We heard coyotes howling when night fell. We can’t leave her accessible to critters.”
Kent grimaced. “The safest place for the moment would be on top of the wagon.”
“But that would be pretty weird,” Cliff said. “You know...hunkering down under—uh—well, a corpse.”
“We’re past being squeamish in this situation,” Lauren’s mother pronounced. “We will do what is right.”
The velvet-gloved words generated action, at least from Cliff and Phil, as they assisted Kent in placing the blanket-wrapped body atop the wagon. Everyone’s teeth were chattering by now, but Lauren insisted Rich be loaded inside first. His injured kneecap did not allow bending, so others would need to arrange themselves inside in a way to avoid the outstretched leg.
The man was barely conscious and moaned as they loaded him. “Waterrr!”
Kent gritted his teeth. The bottled water from the plane was inside the building, so the plea could not be answered until they could reenter the mercantile. His own throat rasped with every breath. Morning could not come soon enough.
But at last it did.
Groaning, Kent unwound himself from the tangle of people hunched inside the hearse-turned-tiny-house and stepped down onto the ground. In the overcast dawn, the weathered wooden buildings looked more forlorn than ever. Bird trills wove a lonely melody through the silence. The door to the mercantile stood open, no smoke rippling from the interior.
Lauren stepped out beside him, and long groans from within the wagon announced others rousing from whatever sleep-stupor they had managed to find after crowding inside.
“We’d better go in and look for Neil,” she said.
Lips pressed together, Kent nodded. They walked in slow step onto the porch.
“Let me go first,” he said.
She halted in compliance, and Kent stepped over the threshold into dim warmth. The smell of smoke combined with a tang of pine hung in the air, but no tendrils curled from the darkened stove. Nothing moved in the interior. Unsurprising. Who could have survived that much smoke inhalation? It was just a matter of locating Neil’s bo—there! A huddled figure slumped on its side, facing the far wall.
Lauren’s fingers closed around Kent’s biceps. She must have seen him, too. Then she rushed ahead of him and knelt beside the still form. Kent caught up to her as she laid her fingers against his neck.
“What?” She snatched her fingers away as if burned and fixed a wide gaze up at him. “There’s a pulse!”
The man groaned and lifted his head. Outdoor light showed through a small gap in the wall boards at floor level.
An invisible fist released its grip on Kent’s lungs, and he barked a laugh. “You wily old curmudgeon!”
Neil coughed and shuddered as Lauren helped him sit up. Redness rimmed the man’s eyes, his lips were cracked and his face was smudged with smoke and gray whisker stubble, but he was alive and breathing.
“Wily? Hardly, young man.” He coughed. “More like the stupid chance of falling down in the dark and feeling a tiny breeze on my face. I snuggled up close to the wall and concentrated on taking my next breath. But I must have passed out. How did everyone else fare?”
Kent glanced at a tense-faced Lauren. She dropped her gaze.
“My copilot didn’t make it,” he said.
Neil lowered his head and huffed. “I’d hoped we’d all get out of this valley alive. What’s the plan now?”
Noises from the other end of the mercantile brought their heads around. The bottled water was being ravaged by the thirsty travelers. Someone had even brought Rich inside and set him on the counter sideways with his injured leg up. He was gulping a drink as fast as he could.
“His color is better.” Lauren smiled in Kent’s direction. “If we can rig up some kind of crutch, he may even be able to get around a little.”
Her smile sent a puff of warmth through his chest. Nothing to do with attraction, of course. Just glad to see someone with something to smile about. Right? Right!
“Hey, guys, Neil made it!” Cliff’s near bellow turned attention to the amazing resurrection.
The elder executive received a round of backslaps, followed by a chorus of questions. In the melee, someone managed to pass Kent, Lauren and Neil bottles of water. Kent downed his practically in one gulp, and his throat felt less like the inside of a rusty pipe but tasted more like a pine tree from the hint of smoke that had seeped through the lid into the glass bottle. Perrier, of course. Nothing but the best in executive jets. Maybe the pine tang could be marketed. Kent swallowed his wry chuckle.
“Anything to eat around here?” Dirk’s whine sliced into the celebration.
“Not much.” Kent stuffed his hands in his jeans. “Whatever nuts and pretzels are left will have to be breakfast.”
“What about lunch
and dinner?” Dirk glared around at everyone.
“We’re going to starve.” Phil’s words came out in a whispered wail.
“Not if I can help it,” Kent said. “The great outdoors offers a variety of foods, even at this elevation, and I know what to look for. Haute cuisine, it will not be, but edible I can manage. We need to organize into pairs to explore the rest of this town and scavenge whatever we find useful. Rich can receive and organize whatever we scavenge, while Neil remains with him and restarts the fire in the stove once I clear out the pipe. Everyone is going to work together.”
Kent settled a firm gaze on Dirk, who looked away, but said nothing.
“Aye-aye, Captain!” Neil saluted with a chuckle.
Cliff lifted a hand. “What about setting up those reflectors like you mentioned yesterday?”
Kent shook his head. “We will get to that later, but as long as the cloud cover remains low and thick like this, a reflector will have nothing to reflect. On the positive side, the clouds will drive a search plane low enough to eyeball the wreckage without any attention-getting devices.”
“Yeah,” grumbled Phil, “but they would have to fly directly over us. About like plopping straight onto the proverbial haystack needle.”
“What else might we do to help ourselves be found?” Nina blinked up at Kent.
“Pray that the cloud cover lifts.”
The older woman broke into a smile so like her daughter’s. The two were definitely related, even though their appearances could hardly be more different.
“Excellent answer, young man.”
Lauren looked up at him from examining Rich’s leg. Her narrowed eyes and parted lips conveyed surprised assessment. Was faith a check in her positive column as it was in her mother’s? He might be flirting with fire, but he’d be interested to hang around the tender-hearted, steel-willed PA long enough to find out. She intrigued him, and as long as he reined in the attraction, his heart would be fine.
Rocky Mountain Secrets: Rocky Mountain Sabotage ; Rocky Mountain Pursuit Page 5
