“Shit,” she breathed. “I’m sorry.”
My jaw tightened. “They were drilling in a National Park. They paid off some greedy asshole who had mineral rights within the park and set up a rig.”
She gasped. “Is that… even legal?”
I scoffed. “That’s the thing about oil money. There’s so much of it, it’s more profitable to fight the legal battle over mineral rights than to not drill at all. Hell, sometimes you can get all the oil out before the case would make it to court.” I laughed bitterly. “Sometimes, they could get what they wanted and leave the environment in shambles before anyone could do anything about it.”
“That’s fucked up.”
I stayed silent, having no better words for it.
“So that’s why you’re a park ranger?” she turned and asked. “To right all their wrongs?”
I slowed the ATV, hearing my radio beeping.
“That’s why I’m only interested in things that last, and rules… they guarantee that.”
Before she could reply, I held the radio up to my ear.
“This is Daniels,” I answered.
I listened to Chief Larimer on the other end of the line dictate rapid orders, replying with, “We’ll find him,” before ending the call.
Shay’s eyebrows rose.
I turned the ATV around and began heading back toward the trail that would take us down into the canyon.
“The center just got an emergency call from a woman. Her husband is trapped in a pool of water that he says is filled with snakes,” I informed her. “We’re the closest responders.”
Her lips set in a firm line as she pulled her hair back and nodded.
This situation had to come first, leaving our conversation ‘to be continued…’
I shifted the ATV into low gear just at the top of the canyon road, and it was a good thing. The mud and rocks were dangerously unstable—and definitely in a regular vehicle.
Our conversation didn’t continue. If our task wasn’t enough to distract us, the sights of homes torn asunder by the flooding was enough to make any person speechless.
Whole houses. Parts of houses. We even watched a car carried by the waters moving faster through the canyon than we were.
“Holy shit,” Shay murmured.
I slowed the ATV as we came around the bend, watching as though it were a scene from a doomsday film as trees tipped into a powerline, pulling in one direction by the disintegrating ground holding them steady, yet trapped in the wires.
I felt her hand reach for mine on the shifter as the lines stretched to their limit and finally snapped.
The tree sank into the brown torrent and we both flinched as the severed lines connected with the water and began arcing.
“We’re almost there,” I said gruffly, gassing the ATV once again and sticking as close to the sides of the canyon as the rock slides would allow.
A few minutes later, we came to the house Larimer had indicated on the phone.
The couple had been one of the few who refused to evacuate yesterday. According to the Chief, the man had been standing on his back porch this morning, watching the water when a sudden rush of the ravaging river pulled at the earth supporting his porch.
Thankfully, it hadn’t taken him with it. Sad to say, but even being trapped in a deep pit of water with snakes was better than drowned by the flood.
“Over here!” A woman came rushing toward us.
Parking the ATV, Shay and I met her halfway as she frantically led us behind the still-standing house to where her husband was.
“It happened so fast,” she gushed. “One minute, he was out there just watchin’ and the next, the deck was gone and there was just this hole.”
We slowed and approached the giant sinkhole. Peering over the edge, we saw the man clinging to the sides of the pit in chest-high water, crying and begging for help.
“Barry, help is here!”
“Oh, thank God,” he cried. “There are snakes down here. I feel ‘em. Oh God. They’re movin’ all around my legs. Please, help me.”
I drew a steadying breath, scanning around the walls of the pit.
It wasn’t completely vertical, but there was no way he could climb out or we could climb in; the drop was too steep. And even rappelling down there was risky, given how shiny and slick the mud was coating the lower half of the walls.
“We’ll need a rope,” Shay said before I even voiced my ideas.
I turned my wary gaze to hers. Rappelling was dangerous. But it was really the only option.
“Please, help me. I-I feel them. Oh, God…”
Dragging a hand through my hair, I turned to Shay.
“There’s cable and ties in the back of the ATV.”
While she went to get them, I turned around, looking for possible anchors to support my weight.
There weren’t many.
Even fewer that were completely secure.
“Shit,” I swore under my breath.
There was no stable ground here. Not the house. Nor the trees. Or even the rocks.
Nothing was spared from the effects of the floodwaters.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I growled, turning to see Shay approach as she attached the cables to her own waist.
“I’m going down there to get him,” she informed me.
My fists tightened and honestly, I wanted to punch myself, hoping it would knock the surge of fear from my blood.
“You’re not going down there. It’s too dangerous. I’ll go,” I insisted.
She paused and planted her hands on her harnessed hips for a second before turning and pointing to the pit.
“The walls are slick. The supports up here are questionable. The lightest person needs to go down—and that’s me.”
It hit me—like a wave crashing over my head—I wanted to protect her. Not because it was my job but because she was mine.
And I realized the real reason I pushed her away last night. Not because her situation here was temporary, but because of the nature of her job, her presence in my life would always run the risk of being cut short.
And that scared the shit out of me.
“Are you going to stop me?”
My attention snapped back to her from where it had fallen.
Her question shoved me back to the night we met when she told me she was afraid I would stop her.
Stop her from her dreams.
Stop her from her duty.
My lips thinned and my heart tightened as I replied the same as I did then, “I don’t want to stop you.”
Her determined expression faltered, remembering the same moment I was.
I wasn’t going to stop her.
But I sure as fuck was going to hold her—and more—once we were done.
“I f-feel them around my legs! Please, hurry!”
With a nod to her, I grabbed the other end of the line, wrapped it around my waist several times before walking over to the house, and tying it to an exposed steel beam in the foundation.
Tugging several times, the cables held taut and steady; it was the most assurance I was going to get.
“Go,” I conceded.
Obeying my order, she checked the knots at her waist and carefully lowered herself over the edge.
When her head sank below the level of the ground was when the real fear sank in. Every slight or sudden vibration of the rope caught my breath and burned a hole so raw in my lungs I didn’t even register how the cable began to cut into my palms as I gave her more slack inch by inch.
“You alright, Shay?” I yelled.
“Almost there,” she responded.
Grinding my teeth together, I counted in deep rough breaths until I heard water splashing and some commotion.
“He says the snakes are wrapped around his ankles.” Her voice came from inside the ground. “I’m going to have him climb up first so I can get them off of him.”
“Jesus.”
My heart pounded against my chest
, fear its own brand of particularly poisonous venom.
“Go ahead,” I yelled back, hearing the strain in my tone.
I tried to stay focused as more weight pulled on the other end of the cable. Thank fuck the house was still stable enough to support this.
I grunted. Barry was heavier than Shay. I could feel each move he made climbing up the rope.
“Did you get the snakes?” I shouted.
And when she didn’t respond right away, I felt the lightheaded rush of panic. Not being able to see—not being able to know was ripping me apart.
“Shay!”
“These aren’t snakes, Logan,” she replied quickly with a voice that was suddenly off-kilter and shaking. “They’re power lines.”
It felt like the earth had been ripped out from underneath me. Images of the scene we’d witnessed on the way over here—the broken lines hitting the water and electrocuting anything that might be living in it.
I struggled to breathe.
And now Shay was trapped in a well of water with those same lines—ones that could turn it into a mud-lined electrocution chamber.
“Shay…” I said her name, but I didn’t even know what to really say.
She couldn’t leave him there. But if anything happened to her…
“I’m going to have to untangle them from around his ankles,” she yelled up, leaving out the part where once they were unknotted, she’d have to set live wires back into a pool of water.
But what choice did she have?
“Be careful,” I said, dumbly, knowing that yelling, ‘don’t you dare die on me’ wouldn’t do any good.
The next few minutes tested the bounds of my restraint… of my strength… of my whole fucking composure.
“Two left.” I heard her shout. There was no reason for the announcement except to quell my fears.
I dug my heels into the ground, my fingers, bright red and burning against the corded cable, flexing like a thoroughbred at the gate, ready for the signal that everything was clear and it was safe to pull them up.
“Shit!”
“What happened?”
“The rubber around the last one split. The only way for me to get it off his ankle without submerging it is to cut it.” Her voice shook.
“Fuck.” I squeezed my eyes shut, letting my mind race through the scenario without distraction.
If she cut the wire to free him, she wouldn’t have both hands available to climb back out. But if she let go of the severed ends and the wire was live, it wouldn’t matter; she’d be dead.
“Shay?” I waited for her answer before I instructed firmly. “Cut the wire and let Barry climb out first.”
“Okay…”
“Then, I want you to hold on to the ends while I pull you up from the water,” I continued with my plan. “Once you’re clear, you can let the wires go.”
“Got it.”
A few seconds later, the cable vibrated in my grasp, rubbing through the skin as the older, heavier man scaled the muddy walls of the pit.
My arms began to shake, and I caught the first trickle of blood as it snuck down the back of my hand before dropping onto the ruddy ground. Then Barry appeared over the edge, red-faced, huffing, with lingering traces of panic on his face that probably wouldn’t disappear for some time.
I sucked in a breath of relief as he hauled himself out, his weight releasing from the line and removing some of the strain on my hands. He scrambled over to his wife and they collapsed onto the ground together.
“Shay?”
“Still here.” Her voice lifted at the end as though she were teasing me.
Right now.
When her life was on the line.
If she survived this, I was going to kill her for being able to manage such a light-hearted tone at this moment.
“You think you have enough slack?” I asked, knowing that if there wasn’t enough room on the line for me to pull her safely from the water, we’d have another problem on our hands.
“I think so.”
“Alright. You ready?”
I sucked in a breath and sent up every species of silent prayer I could think of for both of us to get through this.
“As I’ll ever be.”
Clenching my jaw, I heaved with all my might.
My muscles pulled as taut as the cord as I threw every ounce of my strength into lifting the woman who held the rope with one hand and live electrical lines in the other.
My hands burned, bleeding onto the cable and oozing dark red streams down my wrists. I stepped back one foot at a time. About five feet back from the original marks my feet left in the mud, I heard Shay.
“I’m clear of the water, Logan,” she told me.
“You sure?” Sweat rolled down my face, burning into my eyes as I held steady.
“Yes.” She sounded confident, but I knew she’d never let me hear if she wasn’t.
“Okay,” I bit out. “I’ve got you.”
“Logan?”
My heart stopped, knowing something was wrong.
“I just want to tell you that there hasn’t been a day when I haven’t regretted not calling you,” she yelled up to me. “Just needed you to know.”
My mouth opened but before I could say anything, I heard a small squeal as she presumably dropped the lines and then felt the frantic tugs on the cable as she climbed.
She reached the top of the pit a hundred times faster than Barry had, yet the seconds it took her felt like an eternity.
An eternity of wondering.
What if the wire was live?
What if she slipped and fell?
What if there was something she hadn’t seen?
But mostly, what if I lost her without ever really having her?
As soon as the rope sagged without her weight dangling from the other end, I dropped the cable from my hands, ripped raw from the strain, and hauled her farther away from the edge.
“Logan—”
My mouth silenced her.
Words weren’t enough at times like this.
I kissed her until lack of oxygen grew more dangerous than the threat of electrocution.
I kissed her because I needed her.
For whatever it was worth… For however long I had…
I was going to take any moment I could with her and mark it as mine because the truth was, I would rather have her and lose her than never have her at all.
I’d almost died today.
The thought finally crossed my mind after the longest day yet.
The rain had stopped but the flooding didn’t.
Silent and hands bandaged and bloody, Logan was finally driving us home. After getting Barry and his wife to the rescue team to escort them to the evacuation complex, we’d continued into town. I thought about arguing that he take it easy because of his injured hands, but decided against it, knowing there was no point.
Duty superseded injury. Needing to help superseded being hurt.
At least once we’d checked in at the Emergency Command Center, he’d begrudgingly let me clean the raw and broken flesh, place some antibiotic ointment where the cables had cut right down to the muscle, and bandaged them as best I could.
A small crew of the Estes Park Fire Department had become stuck on a mountainside near a washed-out road, and we’d spent the afternoon as part of the rescue effort to bring them back to safety. Now, after a full afternoon of search and rescue through mud and debris, the gauze wraps were brown and dirty, and desperately needed to be changed.
They were a bloody reminder of what had happened—of the thought I’d been both avoiding and too busy to fixate on earlier.
I’d almost died today.
“There are still people out there,” I murmured softly.
It was a humbling thought to know I’d almost made the greatest sacrifice, but even if I had, there would still be people stranded or possibly claimed by the flood tonight.
Chief Larimer’s report said there were dozens of houses still standing in
the canyon, but completely cut off from any exit by the water—houses that only the National Guard’s helicopters could reach.
The bad news was a handful of choppers wasn’t going to evacuate hundreds of people very quickly. They’d done what they could today, but there were still numerous houses to be searched.
“And we’ll find them tomorrow,” he said in a low voice with such surety—as though he were telling me the sun would rise tomorrow—it was hard not to believe him.
Chief Larimer had requested more air support just before we left for the night, and now that the President had declared it a State of Emergency in Colorado, I hoped tomorrow would finally feel like we’d turned the corner in our relief effort, because right now, it felt like we were bailing water out of a sinking ship.
When we left, there were still four-hundred-and-eighty-two people unaccounted for in the area.
I’d almost died today.
In all, there was no time to think. No time to sit down and process that I’d come very close to being electrocuted this morning—very close to not making it out of this disaster alive.
Very close to dying without knowing what it was like to be with a man who saw past the shiny medals and necessary bravado to the woman who wanted to be a woman, and just a little bit vulnerable in his arms.
My shoulders sagged with relief as we pulled into the garage, my muscles burning from the strain of the day. Logan grabbed all our gear before I could help and ushered me inside.
“I need to clean your hands again,” I said, half-turning to him when I heard the bags thud onto the ground.
My breath caught at the intensity of his stare. Maybe I wasn’t the only one bombarded by the almost-dying realization from this morning.
His nostrils flared as though fire coursed through his veins.
I blinked and he was in front of me, his battered palms cupping my cheeks.
“You could’ve died today.”
And then his lips crashed down on mine.
We were exhausted. We were dirty. But this… this was what we needed.
He was what I needed.
My lips were already opening when I felt the probe of his tongue against their seam. Silken and strong, sweeping inside and demanding every inch of my mouth. He tasted like coffee and courage, the only two things that kept us going. And Logan.
Tequila Page 9
