by Katie Ruggle
Cara’s heart gave a little leap of excitement. “We’re getting close?”
Lifting one of his shoulders in a half shrug, he said, “Close enough to hear it.”
She narrowed her eyes at the back of his unhelpful head, but her spirits were still buoyed by the sound of rushing water. It helped that more vegetation was cropping up on and around their trail as well. Twisted, stunted pine trees with roots that seemed to be embedded directly into the stony mountain provided occasional handholds, and the melting snow mixed with the sparse dirt to provide a stickier walking surface than the slick bare rock.
The trees and shrubs grew thicker, forcing them to stop holding hands so that they could use both to push aside branches and scramble around protruding roots. The ground grew steeper and rougher, with frequent short drop-offs that made the trail look like uneven stairs designed for a giant. The closer they got to the river, the more the air cooled. Despite the fresh bite of cold, Cara appreciated the dampness after a day of extreme dryness.
Henry jumped down a three-foot drop before turning to help her. His hands gripped her hips as she hopped off the edge, and she marveled that she trusted him so completely, knowing he wouldn’t drop her. He lowered her down while giving no sign that she weighed more than a few pounds. Their eyes met for a charged moment, just long enough for her to catch the hungry flash in his before he released her and turned back around.
The slick ground didn’t give her an opportunity to dwell on Henry’s mixed signals, since it required all of her concentration to stay upright. The mud had thickened, as the temperature was just warm enough to melt the snow and keep the ground from freezing. The muck clung to the bottoms of her boots, weighing down her feet, and was both sticky and slippery enough to be treacherous. She almost missed the smooth bare rock from the start of their hike.
The sound of the river grew to a roar as the ground leveled out to a rock-strewn shore. The spray from the water hitting the protruding rocks misted over Cara’s cheeks, adding another level of cold. Her heart sank as she eyed the rushing current.
“Do we absolutely have to cross this?” She didn’t want to complain, but the question slipped out anyway as her nerves picked up. To distract herself, she pulled out a water bottle and took a drink before holding it out toward Henry. His attention was focused on the river, so she had to tap his shoulder with the bottle before he reached for it.
His brows drew together in an unhappy frown, which she took as a yes. “Abbott’s still after us. We have to keep moving. Let’s head over there,” he said, pointing to the right.
Cara followed willingly as they carefully picked their way through rocks and vegetation along the bank. The reminder about Abbott spooked her, and her entire body tensed with the need to run to safety. When Henry stopped, however, she eyed the new stretch of river doubtfully.
“Are you sure this is the best spot?” she asked. “It looks even wider here.”
“Wider, but slower and shallower.”
“Too bad there isn’t a convenient bridge.” Leaning forward, she peered at the river as it twisted away from them, but she couldn’t see any way to cross it without getting her feet wet. There weren’t even any handy fallen logs or stepping-stones to use.
“There never is.” Henry sounded grim, and Cara raised her eyebrows at him.
“Aren’t you optimistic.”
He gave her a sour look. “Why should I be? Nothing’s gone right since…I was arrested.” There was the tiniest pause that made her think he was going to say something else, and that made her infinitely curious. He turned back to the river before she could probe for answers. When he started stripping off his coat, she was immediately distracted. “Take off all your layers except for one, and leave your boots on,” he ordered.
“Won’t our boots stay wet?” she asked, even as she started pulling off her clothes.
“Better than ripping up your bare feet trying to cross.” He stepped out of his boots to pull his pants over his feet before placing his feet right back into the boots again. Cara copied him, stripping off everything except her boots, a thin pair of leggings, and a long-sleeve T-shirt. She shivered in the chilly air as he bundled all their clothes together, wrapping his coat around them to create an improvised pack. Hoisting it up, he strode straight into the river.
“Okay, so we’re just…doing this,” Cara muttered as she followed. Even though there was no reason to delay—and she wanted to get as far from Abbott as fast as possible—she still would’ve liked a few moments to work up her nerve rather than just jumping right in.
The first few steps were the worst, as icy water rushed in to fill her boots. At least the water wasn’t running very fast here. Instead, it eddied gently around her ankles, so clear she could see every detail of the riverbed.
“Step where I do.”
Henry’s order focused her attention back on him, and Cara did her best to place her waterlogged boot in the exact spot that his foot had just left. The water grew deeper, now sloshing around their shins, and it was harder to see where his feet landed. The movement of the current made it seem as if they were moving sideways, and it made her a little dizzy and disoriented.
“Don’t look down. Keep your eyes on my back.” She immediately lifted her chin and did what he said. Although it was impossible to see where he placed his feet when her gaze was up that high, she instantly felt steadier.
They were almost at the halfway point, and the water ran around his knees and her thighs. It pushed hard enough that Cara felt unsteady, and she was forced to slow her steps so she didn’t lose her balance. Henry’s longer stride carried him more quickly through the water, and the gap between them widened.
Not liking that he was too far away to grab onto if she needed to, she tried to speed up and lengthen each step, but the water fought against every stride, wanting to push her downstream instead. He glanced over his shoulder and frowned before stopping to wait for her to catch up.
“Keep moving,” she yelled over the roar of the river. “I’m fine.” As much as she wanted her security blanket of a man close, she knew there was no practical reason for him to stay in the river longer just to make her feel better.
He ignored her, still watching her progress as the water flowed around his tree-trunk thighs. She struggled to move faster to reach him, but a large shape upriver caught her attention. Turning her head, she caught a glimpse of the dark wood of the massive broken tree branch caught in the frothing current.
“Henry!” she shouted, pointing at the hazard, but he barely had time to turn his head before the branch struck him, knocking him sideways into the water.
Chapter 16
Her heart stalled out in her chest as Cara watched Henry go down, so stunned to see him fall that her own body swayed for a fraction of a second before she caught herself. He hit the water as she lunged toward him, but she was too far away, and her hands caught on nothing but air. In the next moment, her brain kicked in, and she didn’t have to rely on useless instinct.
Her leg muscles burned, the thigh-high water turning her attempted run into a nightmarishly slow slog. To her relief, he had a grip on a larger rock protruding from the surface, and he was struggling to regain his feet.
He’ll be fine, she assured herself as she fought the current to get close enough to help him stand. Wet, but fine.
Just as she stretched out a hand, a heavy surge of water hit him, knocking him back. To Cara, it seemed as if he fell in slow motion, his head bouncing off the rock that he’d been clinging to. He went limp and dropped into the fast-running water.
Without pausing to think, she jumped after him, desperately reaching out, trying to grab an arm or a foot or even a handful of clothes—anything she could use to keep him from being carried away from her. She landed chest-first in the quickly flowing water, the icy temperature stalling her lungs and her brain. Her arms moved too slowly, and Henry’s li
mp form was carried out of her reach as the current sucked her down below the surface. She struggled to get her feet under her, but the raging water twisted her body until she was battered and unsure which way was up.
Stunned by the intense cold, she was helpless as the river carried her downstream. The only thought that kept her from panicking completely was that she was being swept in the same direction as Henry. There was still a chance she could save him.
Her arm brushed a hard surface, and she pushed off it. Her lungs strained with the need for oxygen, and she shoved herself toward what she hoped desperately was the surface. When her head broke through the water, the air cold on her wet cheeks, she sucked in a rasping breath that sounded like a sob. The river rocketed her downstream as she strained to keep her face out of the frothing water. Her shoulder hit a rock dividing the current, sending her spinning off to the side. She knew she had to get out of the water if she was to be of any use to Henry. Every bit of her skin was numb from just her short immersion, and she couldn’t feel her fingers.
The cold erased her ability to think, and panic threatened to take over as the river churned around her. Icy water slapped her in the face, stealing her breath. Henry. Save Henry. She clung to the thought, repeating it over and over until the panic retreated just enough for her to get her bearings. A glimpse of the far bank gave her a target, and she forced her numb arms to swim. Propelling herself toward a protruding rock, she wedged herself against it as she gasped for breath.
The current hammered against her as Cara fought to get her feet underneath her. She stood, surprised to find that the water only came to her waist. When she’d been mostly submerged, the river had felt endlessly deep. She slogged through the water to the bank, stumbling over slippery rocks and the uneven riverbed, the current maliciously trying to shove her back down, but somehow she managed to keep from falling in again.
When she finally reached the bank, her body begged her to collapse, but she knew she was Henry’s last chance at survival. She ran downstream alongside the river as she scanned the water, hunting for a glimpse of him. Why did he have to wear black? she wondered desperately, trying to see beneath the white foam churned up by the speeding water hitting rocks and other submerged obstacles. In her panic, she resolved to make him wear blaze-orange clothing from this point on…if he wasn’t already gone.
Stop! she ordered as she ran faster, the heaviness of her soaked boots feeling like an anchor. She was tempted to take them off, sure that she could get to Henry faster without them, but she didn’t want to stop even for the few seconds needed to remove them. Instead, she set her jaw and pushed her legs to go faster despite the waterlogged weights attached to her feet.
A not-quite-right flash of color caught her attention, and she realized that she’d almost run right past Henry. The water tumbled over him, the white froth and reflected sunlight disguising his submerged form. Splashing into the river, she ran toward him, her breathing rough and uneven from her frantic sprint. It was deeper here than the point where they’d tried to cross, the water reaching her waist, then higher. The current shoved at her legs, trying to make her tumble over, and she automatically braced herself as she reached into the freezing water and grabbed onto Henry.
A huge wave of relief crashed over her at the feel of him in her grip. She finally had a hold on him, and her fingers tightened. She was determined not to let the river snatch him away from her again. Her joy at reaching him was quickly flattened by the realization that she couldn’t move him, and paralyzing fear filled her again.
He wasn’t getting any oxygen, but Cara couldn’t think about him drowning or she wouldn’t be able to function. Instead, she shoved down her rising panic and forced herself to look at things in a logical, step-by-step manner.
“Okay,” she said out loud, the high pitch of her voice nearly sending her into a helpless flurry of terror again. “Okay, okay, okay. Why won’t you move?”
Feeling along the length of his body, not letting herself think about how still and cold and lifeless he seemed, she realized that his hip had gotten wedged under the protruding lip of a boulder. The current had pushed a thick waterlogged branch up against his other side, trapping the lower half of his body against the rock.
With numb, shaking hands, she shoved the branch, fighting the weight of the pressing water until the wood was caught by the current and carried past the other side of the rock. Once that was gone and Henry was no longer caught against the side of the boulder, his body began shifting away from her.
“No, you don’t.” She caught his leg, clutching too hard since she couldn’t feel her fingers, and there was no way she was letting him go again. Hand over hand, she worked her way up his body until she could grab underneath both of his arms. Water pounded against them, the force of it even stronger now that it was pulling at both her legs and Henry’s huge, inert form.
She hauled him backward, the water providing buoyancy now that he was no longer caught. Knowing he had to get oxygen, praying he wasn’t already too far gone to save, she moved so quickly that she overbalanced and fell back in the water with a splash. The water surrounded her body, the painful cold of it numbing all the skin it touched almost instantly. The current threatened to drag her farther downriver, but she fought against its strong pull.
Keeping her grip on Henry made regaining her feet awkward, but she wasn’t about to let him be carried away from her again. She finally managed to stand, her muscles aching from the effort of holding him, and she backed toward the bank. This time, she went slow enough to control her movements, even though her brain was screaming at her to run, to get him out of the water as quickly as she could.
“Slow is fast,” she muttered under her breath, hardly able to spare the oxygen needed to make words. “Fast is slow, and slow is fast.”
Step by backward step, she dragged Henry to the edge, water coursing off both of them as the river grew shallower until the pebbles covering the bank crunched and shifted under her boots. She dragged him as far out of the water as she could manage, but he became heavier and heavier with no water to help support him. His feet were just an inch from the swirling water when she conceded defeat and eased his upper body to the ground.
His stillness was terrifyingly obvious now that he was out of the river and the current wasn’t moving his limbs. Frantically searching the corners of her mind for a long-ago lesson on how to help a drowning victim, Cara tried to turn him onto his side. When he didn’t budge, she sat on the ground next to him, placed the soles of her soaking-wet boots against his side, and pushed with her legs until she was able to leverage him up and over.
Water streamed from his nose and mouth, and his skin was a bluish-pale that made even his tan skin look wrong. He looks dead. The thought was there before Cara could push it away, but she clenched her teeth and refused to believe it. It was so wrong that Henry—always so strong and protective—was lying on the bank, completely helpless. He was her wall, protecting her from all possible dangers, but now he couldn’t even breathe for himself. Her jaw set.
After all the times he’d rescued her, now it was her turn to save him.
After all they’d gone through, all the brushes with death they’d survived, she wasn’t about to let him accept defeat because of a poorly placed rock and some cold water. With a final shove, she turned him over onto his back and then scrambled to kneel next to him. She tried to check for a pulse, but her fingers were so numb that she couldn’t even feel his skin, so she rested her head on his chest to listen.
He was too still and quiet, making her heartbeat so loud that she couldn’t hear anything outside her own body. Sitting up again, she tilted his head back, pinched his nose shut, and mentally thanked Molly for making them take a first-responder course when they’d started their business.
She blew a breath into his lungs, let it escape, and then did it again, her brain throwing unwanted comparisons to how it felt when he kissed h
er versus the cold, unresponsive mouth under hers now. It was almost a relief to move to chest compressions, the regular rhythm of the heel of her hand against his sternum allowing her to blank her brain of anything but counting.
Shifting back to his head, she gave him two more breaths, and then moved back to chest compressions. Back and forth, mouth to chest to mouth again, her motions became both a blurred rush and an excruciatingly slow crawl. It was between the seventh and eighth chest compression when she heard a choking noise and froze, her locked hands hovering above his previously motionless chest—a chest that was now heaving with the effort to cough.
Grabbing his arm, she helped him roll to his side, amazed and tentatively ecstatic when he did most of the work himself. As he hacked and choked and expelled what looked like the whole river’s worth of water from his lungs, she couldn’t stop rubbing his arm and back and side—everywhere that muscles tensed and moved when they’d been so limp and lifeless just a few moments ago.
Best of all, he opened his eyes, and his dazed expression quickly firmed into his normal Henry-ness. That was when Cara burst into relieved tears.
“What?” The question was little more than a croak, but he was awake and alive and actually talking, and that made her cry even harder. He struggled to push himself up, and still sobbing, she helped steady him. Once he was upright, she didn’t let go, clinging to his arm with one hand and his wet shirt with the other. He wrapped an arm around her, holding her in that careful and secure way that was becoming so wonderfully familiar. “What’s wrong?” he asked, and the demanding tone was so exactly him that it was glorious.
“Nothing,” she finally managed to get out semi-coherently. “Nothing now. Everything was wrong when I thought you were dead.”
“Dead?” He coughed again, and she clung tighter, irrationally worried that this was just a breathing, talking fluke and he’d fall over at any second, actually dead this time. Despite her worries, he stayed sitting up, his gaze only getting sharper and more focused. “What happened?”
