Hiking for Danger

by Capri Montgomery

  Sahara had just stood up when she felt the rope cinch her waist and jerk just enough to pull her around.

  “And this is how you rope a pig,” Stacey had said. Sahara wasn’t sure if she were referring to her as being a pig or not, but she was getting pissed at the twenty-one year old for all the hell she had been putting her through. “Then you step back and pull it in,” she laughed and started walking backwards.

  Sahara plastered on a fake smile and tried to remove the rope from her waist. Logic dictated that she just swivel it over her hips and step out, but she hadn’t had time to process logic before another sharp jerk had her on the ground and speeding toward the rotting tree trunk.

  She felt the panic and heard the screams, but she reacted with all the placidity that she could. God forbid she panic too because if she did they would all be in trouble because right now she didn’t see Stacey. What she saw was the tree trunk and a rope dangling down what was probably a long drop. She tried to keep her body from twisting. Hitting the trunk with her back would be bad—very bad. She curled her knees up just enough to brace her feet for impact. The preparation had been to no avail because when she hit the sack of wood she felt every tendon in her leg spasm in pain.

  She let out a loud yell, but she held on. She held on to the rope that was cutting into her lower back, and kept her feet planted on the trunk for support.

  Cody was by her side first yelling orders to Parker to support her weight. She felt his arms go underneath her armpits and tuck up firmly on her shoulders. Cody pulled at the rope, slowly pulling Stacey further up. She had the nerve to start screaming and twisting which made Sahara’s pain worse. She took in a sharp breath and then it seemed that all of her breaths were sharp and quick. This was proof positive that Sahara and adventure just didn’t mesh. If she survived this trip she would never forget again that her place was in the lab, not off on some adventure trek.

  Chapter Three

  “Stop moving!” Cody hollered and after a few seconds Stacey complied. Cody pulled her up with a ferocity that only a sheer rush of adrenaline could provide. Once he got her up he took his knife from his boot and cut the rope from around Sahara’s waist. “Get her back to that rock. I don’t want to move you, but I have to,” he looked at her as if he were trying to make her understand why he had to cause her more pain by moving her. She would have put his mind at ease if she could have focused through the pain. She would assure him that every ounce of pain she was feeling was going to be there even if he didn’t move her. She wasn’t sure anybody was paying attention to Stacey because everybody seemed to be hovering near her. She wasn’t sure that Cody cared at that moment whether Stacey was or wasn’t okay.

  Cody bent in front of her, pulling her up into his arms and examining her back. She would have had some snappy dialogue like “thought you were supposed to help me up not feel me up” if she could speak. Parker’s weight was gone from behind her. “You,” Cody squared his eyes on Riley. “Come sit behind her, support the weight and hold her hand. Keep reminding her to breathe.”

  Breathe, that’s all she needed to do was breathe—and focus, but she couldn’t focus and breathing wasn’t really helping ease her pain right now. She was in so much pain she felt disconnected and with every breath she felt that disconnected feeling even more. It was almost as if she weren’t within her own body—but she was. The pain she was feeling was a sure indication that she was still very much in her own body, not floating above it, not disconnected from it, but right there within it—feeling every ounce of pain and feeling as if she were going to die because of it.

  Riley complied without hesitation. Tucking himself between Sahara and the rock and gently easing her back. “Dude you act like she’s in labor.”

  “First Aid kit now!” Cody hadn’t needed to holler because Parker was already kneeling beside him with the kit. “She’s going to feel like she’s in labor when I try to get this boot off.” He knew there was a huge risk he would get it off and not be able to get it back on when he needed to, but he needed to ascertain if there were any breaks. “Water,” he growled again. Parker reached back for the water as Cody ripped open packets of Advil. “Are you allergic to anything?” She hadn’t responded. She sat staring straight ahead as if the moment was merely a dream and she was powerless to control it.

  “Focus,” he said a bit more harshly than intended. “Are you allergic to anything?”

  She wheezed out a barely audible no. He pushed the pills in her mouth one by one and then gradually helped her sip the water. “This should help with the pain,” he said.

  By this point, Stacey was well aware that all attention had gone straight to Sahara—a situation she clearly wasn’t used to. “My wrist hurts,” she complained. Cody uttered a curse barely audible before non-verbally telling Parker to check her out. His attention fell back on Sahara. She looked pale.

  “What the hell are you doing?” He kept his voice as even as possible.

  “You said to…”

  “Support her weight kid, not feel her up.” He managed to say with some measure of civility. He wanted to beat the snot out of the kid for stroking her arm and occasionally letting his fingers move over her breast. He would have asked the Baker boy to sit behind her, but for a sixteen year old kid he was a big guy. Too big to easily fit behind her.

  Cody slowly unlaced her boot and started to pull. She sucked in a sharp breath and let out a loud scream. He wanted to stop, but his training told him going slower would be more painful so he pulled the boot off with as much force as he thought she could bear without going into shock from the pain.

  He gently felt her ankle noticing that nothing looked broken from first glance and no bones appeared to be protruding beneath the skin—a miracle he thought. It was swelling rapidly which meant she could have fractured it or severely sprained it. He had no way of telling except waiting a couple days to see if the swelling went down. But if she had damaged a nerve, if there were a fracture, if the swelling didn’t go down then she would need expert medical attention stat.

  “We have to at least get to our third stop and then we can get a chopper in there to get her to a hospital.” Cody calculated the timing. Parker agreed. He called in using the emergency radio and got Lula.

  “One injured—which one?” She asked and he remembered she was like a computer. She could probably spurt the names of every hiker that went on a tour since she had been there. Lula was a joy to work with and good at her job. She was also motherly; no matter who came before her if there was a problem she felt the need to fix it.

  “Sahara Daniels. The ankle’s pretty bad and we’re going to have to make our third clearing before a chopper can land. We’ll be slow getting there because she’s not going to be able to put much—if any—weight on it.”

  “That poor child.” Anybody younger than fifty and she always called them a child. “She was so nice when she came through the waiting room yesterday morning. You keep her safe and make sure she doesn’t go into shock,” Lula spurted off directions as if she were talking to an inexperienced hiker instead of one of the guides, but this was Lula she was always the worried mother hen until the last one came home.

  “And tell Ranger Cody to go easy on her,” she assumed it was her fault until Parker confessed that it was actually one of the other members fault. She swore a curse and wanted to know which one, but he assured her it wasn’t necessary for her to know right now.

  Cody saw the quizzical look on Sahara’s face. “I’m a park ranger, I do this on my days off,” he smiled. She tried to force one but her lips wouldn’t move completely upward. He knew she was in pain and he wished he could help her, but all he could do was give her painkillers and wrap her ankle to try to keep her from moving it around too much, or jarring it relentlessly as they tried to get to the third ridge.

  “Well it’s a good half day hike still before we reach the second stop and that’s with everybody at full strength. Then we have to get to the third stop before we can even think
of getting a chopper in here,” Parker had said when Lula asked when he wanted the chopper there. They had already wasted some daylight hours and with Sahara’s injury they would be moving slower. They would have to stop because none of their hikers could make that climb in the dark. Cody could, but if he were still thinking straight he would realize it wasn’t a good idea for any of them to try to continue after sunset.

  Parker rattled off the approximate date for pickup before looking to him for confirmation. The hike down to the third clearing was going to be a lot steeper, there wasn’t much choice because the only other trail was going back the way they came and that would have been longer than the other option. Cody shook his head and Parker confirmed. They both knew the timing wasn’t exactly accurate, but if they all pulled together they could do it. It was steep and on her ankle, he wondered if she would make it. Parker told Lula he would call again to let her know for sure what time they would need pickup and to give her an update on their progress, how they were all doing, and if they needed any additional hikers to come up to get anybody else. His eyes had cut to Stacey because she was the one still complaining about her wrist—a wrist that seemed fine to him, as opposed to Sahara the Romanian-Dutch-American goddess currently withering in pain.

  As if she had read his mind, she rasped out, “I’ll make it.” Her voice was weak from pain and chillingly close to giving out.

  “It’s downhill in some places,” he said. “Steep,” not that she had much of a choice, but he wanted her to know what she would be in for. She blinked to let him know she understood. Steep and downhill meant they would be fighting gravity, doing an almost run downward more than a walk.

  “Do you have any back pain?”

  Sahara tried to focus in on Cody’s question. Once it registered that he was trying to find out if she had pain in her back she couldn’t really answer him with certainty. “Right…now…I can’t…tell what…hurts.” She drew in a sharp breath. “It…hurts all…over,” she finally managed to say. She felt every nerve tingling from her ankle up through her leg and it felt as if bolts of pain were shooting clear out the top of her head. She closed her eyes and her head lolled backwards. How did she get in this mess? Good question, except she remembered exactly how she got in this mess. She had gone on a dare. Kallie and Jeff—her infamous and adventurous sister and brother had said she didn’t have an adventurous bone in her body. That she couldn’t make a day hike if God lowered the mountain into a plane. In her haste she had booked the trip and hadn’t realized that the day hike she thought she was booking was actually a camping and hiking adventure. So much for proving them wrong, she thought.

  Chapter Four

  “We’ll cut out the breaks,” Cody said and despite the protest he heard rising in the background he kept talking. “You’ll all be more comfortable sleeping up there than in the middle of the woods.”

  They all thought for a moment and kind of agreed that he might be right. “No breaks unless you have to pee or need to eat something.”

  “Cody.” Parker gave him a look that told him these weren’t advanced experienced hikers and he wasn’t sure if they could all pull that rate. “Fine, ten minute stops here and there, but no more.” They were all his responsibility, not just Sahara and even though he was more concerned about her right now he knew he had to put the best interest of the entire group above his need to protect this woman. From the moment she backed into him and he held her in his arms against his body he felt something for her. It was pure lust and he knew it. The thoughts running through his mind at the time included all the ways he would love to get to know the soft curves of her body, but now was a different story. Right now he felt as if he had to keep her safe and it had nothing to do with the lust-filled thoughts that had gone through his mind at first sight. She was just so small in stature that he wanted to protect her. She would probably hate that, but it was just who he was and how he was as a man. With her long mousy brown hair and innocent looking pale green eyes she was addictively beautiful. Beyond that, he really did want to declare her his woman—not for a lifetime because he didn’t know her well enough for that—but for as long as they were both willing to see where the road took them he would be willing to continue the journey.

  He had planned to explore a date with her after he got them all safely back to base. He was making plans to ask her out then because the business part of the relationship would be over. Now, his mind needed to focus not on the beautiful woman in front of him, but rather on getting her and everybody else back safely. Hiking on an ankle with this kind of damage wasn’t going to be easy—in fact, he knew she wouldn’t be able to do it at all.

  “I have to get your boot back on,” he said.

  “Does anybody have vodka, rum, tequila…?” She paused for a second. “Just hit me over the head it’ll be about the same,” she managed to say between breaths. At least her breathing had calmed some and she was no longer taking raspy quick breaths. He finished wrapping her ankle the best he could, considering he wasn’t one hundred percent sure of the extent of damage she had. He wished he didn’t have to try to get her boot back on, but while the weather wasn’t freezing cold, it wasn’t hot right now either. It would warm up, but he didn’t want to leave her exposed while they waited for the temperatures to climb.

  “You’ll be okay.”

  “I can’t,” the tears filled her eyes. He knew that she knew what it would take to get that boot back on her foot and she clearly didn’t think she could do it.

  “You can, and you’re going to have to,” he said. “Just think of something pleasant.”

  “Oh you mean like the sale at Macy’s or long walks through the park, or that great spa in Sedona that I went to two years ago.” She kept trying to talk to distract herself, but when he finally forced the boot on she hadn’t been able to speak. She took in a sharp breath, but curtailed her scream.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as he looked in her eyes.

  Tears flowed down her cheeks, but she managed to speak. “It’s okay; didn’t hurt a bit.”

  He smiled. “You’re a bad liar.”

  “Yep,” she agreed. “Get me up and we can be on our way.”

  He knew they had lost enough time and they needed to get moving if they were going to make it. He still didn’t think she would make it trying to hop on one leg. This hike was not for the faint of heart. “We need to hook some of the packs together for you to –” He could tell she was getting ready to protest again. “Look Super Girl, there will come a point going up that trail where we won’t be able to drag you, but until then, you’re riding on the packs.” That was the final word because he wasn’t going to yield to her protest.

  “I can pull it,” the Baker boy said. “I’m captain of the wrestling team and I play ball, I can handle an uphill climb while pulling light weight,” he winked and smiled at her.

  “Thanks,” she said, trying to keep it light, but failing miserably. Cody wanted to take her pain away, but there was nothing he could do other than try to make the hike a little easier for her. God, he wished Stacey had been the one to sustain this injury instead of Sahara. He knew his wish was wrong because he shouldn’t want this for anybody, but this was Stacey’s fault and if anybody was going to be in pain it should have been Stacey.

  Once they got the packs together, Cody lifted Sahara into his arms and carried her over to her new mode of transportation. He made sure she was situated and secured before shouldering his own pack and telling everybody to make sure they had all their stuff before moving out. He looked down at Sahara who didn’t seem to be feeling any relief from the painkillers she had taken. He figured it would take a while. It wasn’t as if he had given her a shot of morpheme or anything like that. Despite being in pain she was handling it well, not complaining, not crying, although she had every reason to cry she was not making demands they would not be able to keep.

  He shook his head at himself. “Sahara,” he knelt beside her. “I should have thought of this before, but I ca
n take your boot off and put a few blankets over you to keep your foot warmer.”

  “I’ll be too heavy to pull with all those blankets.”

  “No you won’t,” Shell assured her.

  She looked back to Cody and he could see the apprehension in her eyes. “It would probably be best. My ankle feels really cramped in this boot. Do you have an ice pack in that kit?”

  He smiled. “I do, but are you sure you want to do this now instead of waiting until the temperature heats up a bit?”

  “If it will help with the pain I’ll suffer the chill.”

  He nodded as he took her boot off and tied it to his pack. He took the hot/cold ice pack out of one of their emergency first aid kits, activated it and then secured it on her ankle before pulling the blankets over her. The last thing he needed was for her to go into shock. He was going to keep her as warm and comfortable as possible, but he knew some of the jolting she was bound to take would cause her pain. He wished he could count on somebody else to carry the back load of the makeshift gurney, but he couldn’t and he knew that.