Expect the Sunrise (19 page)

Or maybe that he’d caught her?

“Mac!”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

She sighed, as if she knew her plot had been revealed. “I’m sorry, Mac, but you have to let me go.”

“Over my dead body.”

“No, preferably not.” She tried to twist out of his grip and frowned when he didn’t let her go. “Let me go, Mac. I promise you I’ll bring back help. But this is the only way. You saw the other passengers. They’re worn out, and we’re making horrible time. This time tomorrow we’ll be out of food, and we might not be near water yet. I have to go.”

She thought she could fool him with this story line? He shook his head.

Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t think I can do it?”

He should have been prepared, but her momentary disbelief had him unbalanced. She twisted out of his grip and jumped away from him. He lunged for her, but she stumbled back and launched out with a kick at him.

“Leave me alone!” She backed up. “I might be small, but I promise you that if you touch me, you won’t walk away upright.” Despite her bravado, her voice shook, her emotions breaking through.

Oh no.
His chest constricted, and a sick feeling welled inside him. Either she thought fast on her feet as a terrorist, or she believed he’d snuck out after her to attack her.

He held up his hands as if in surrender. “I’m sorry, Emma. I’m really sorry. I—well, I promise I won’t hurt you. I would never … I … just can’t let you leave.”

She froze, staring at him with fear in those kind eyes.

He’d done some stupid things before—like chase after a terrorist without backup—and apparently hadn’t learned anything from that lesson. This time he was accusing a woman who might be a hero of being a traitor.

No, she
had
to be a hero. After everything she’d done, how could he possibly still suspect her?

“Why not?” Emma’s voice sounded so thin he could barely hear it in the night.

He wanted to tell her, but the truth on his lips would sound so incredulous he couldn’t push the words out. “We … need you.”

Oh no
. That could be worse. Because it sounded more like “I need you,” and while he’d begun to wonder—just a little—about that, he couldn’t admit it.

Mac didn’t need anyone. Or rather didn’t
want
to need anyone. If he was honest, he did need her, not only as a trail guide but to keep everyone glued together while he figured out who owned the map and the radio he’d found. While he tried to find out who might be a terrorist.

She sighed and ran her gloved hands over her face. Her shoulders slumped, and her voice dropped to a murmur. “I’m so sorry that I got everyone into this mess.”

He didn’t know exactly how to interpret her words. He moved closer to her, his curiosity meter on high, but with enough wisdom to know when to mask it. “C’mon back.” He reached out, as if to take her hand, but she moved away from him. Thankfully, she began to walk in the right direction. He followed.

“If I hadn’t wanted to get into the air and get back for my birthday this weekend with Sarah, we’d be safe in the Fairbanks Airport right now. I’m such an idiot.”

Her voice sounded so forlorn he couldn’t help but touch her shoulder. She turned and looked at him, and he gave her a small smile. “You couldn’t have known the clouds would turn to ice.”

“A good pilot reads the weather. We should be prepared for anything.”

“Seems to me you were. Look at us. Safe, fed, sorta warm.”

“Sarah’s hurt.”

He nodded, realizing how prominent that thought hung in her mind. The top layer that eclipsed all other considerations, including her personal safety. Once he broke free of his suspicions, he wasn’t so stupid that he couldn’t tell she was putting her life in danger by hiking out alone. “She’ll be okay. You have to believe that.”

“I keep thinking about that Bible verse Phillips quoted last night,” Emma said. “Something about Paul expecting to die and learning to rely on God, so He could deliver him. I keep praying that God is going to get us out of this mess, that He’ll watch over us—”

“I think He did that today when we nearly went over the cliff. If you hadn’t—”

“No, if
you
hadn’t come down to help us.” A smile flickered on her face. “You were an answer to my prayers today, the way you helped Sarah, put up the shelter, and saved Flint.”

Mac wasn’t sure what to say to that. Instead, he nodded. Or shrugged. “Do you truly believe God cares about the details, like our shelter or even saving Sarah’s life?” He wasn’t sure what allowed him to ask that. Maybe being out here alone, without anyone to shout recriminations at him. Without his mother to send him a frown of disapproval. He’d been raised never to question God. Yet when he’d stumbled upon a terrorist in the woods, only to sacrifice his brother’s life … well, he’d had big, big questions for God.

None, it seemed, that had been answered.

“I do believe that,” Emma said. “He’ll get us out of these mountains.”

“I … I want to believe that, Emma.” He even lifted his gaze skyward, to where God lived, the void of space that separated the God of his childhood from the God he knew today.

The God that let “little details”—like his brother’s life—fall through the cracks.

But he hadn’t come out here to confront the wounds in his soul. “We won’t make it if you leave us,” Mac said. “We have to stick together.”

“Our safety doesn’t depend on me.” Emma shoved her hands into her pockets. “Have you ever felt saddled with a choice you couldn’t seem to make?”

His mind swept over the terrain of his life, seeing places and situations when he’d had to sacrifice time with his family or dreams for the sake of his job. His fishing trip with Brody had been an attempt to regain all that. Yet without a blink he’d made the choice to race after Al-Hasid.

“I’ve made choices I regret,” he said slowly, painfully aware that he’d opened a corner of his heart for her to peek into. But perhaps a new ordinary life meant letting someone inside gradually.

Someone with sweet brown eyes, freckles, and a smile that could keep him putting one step ahead of another. A smile he could learn to trust. Maybe.

“How do you live with that … regret?” Emma asked.

Overhead, he saw a swirl of color—lavender, pink, white—undulating against the night sky. “I guess I keep my head down and keep going forward.” No, that wasn’t entirely all—he also didn’t stop long enough to get mired in the details. Like relationships. Like broken hearts. “The northern lights seem especially bright tonight.”

Emma looked up at the sky. “I’ve always thought they were a reminder of God, of His brightness, His creativity against the bleakness of the moment.” She sighed. “In the Lower 48, I work on a search-and-rescue team. We call ourselves Team Hope because we go in when all other hope has died.”

He studied her, her profile. She had a small nose, a slight smile, a heart-shaped face perfectly framed by her stocking cap. He had the sudden memory of her in his arms when he’d pulled her from the plane, and he had to ignore the desire to twirl a finger into her curly hair. When she looked at him and smiled, he felt his heart leap.

It was such an odd, exhilarating, terrifying feeling that he nearly lifted his hand to his chest to calm himself.

“I can’t help but think that I should go for help, Mac. But I’m afraid that if Sarah wakes up, I won’t be there. That she’ll need me, and in the end I’ll fail her.” She didn’t look at him when she spoke, and he had the feeling that she might be speaking about someone else besides her friend.

He could relate. He’d had that feeling for the better part of his career. That if he didn’t pay attention, something would spiral right out of his hands. That everyone he loved would be killed and he’d be left alone, staring at the holes in his life. At his failures.

“So, you really grew up in Deadhorse,” she said, cutting through his thoughts.

“Aye. Why?”

“Frankly, your accent threw me off. My father’s Scottish, but aside from the occasional
aye
and
laddie
, he sounds like an American. Although your accent is only a bit stronger, something about you seems fresh from the Highlands. I feel like I should address you as ‘my laird’ or something.”

He smiled. “If you want to, my bonnie lass.”

She studied him with the barest hint of a smile.

“The truth is,” Mac said, “I was born in Scotland, and my father came over in the early seventies to work the pipeline. He had an engineering degree, and despite his love of the Highlands, he couldn’t turn down the opportunity to work on the project. He’s still one of the primary engineers.”

He watched the lavender ribbon of the borealis curl in the heavens before he continued.

“Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,
The birth-place of Valour, the country of Worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.”

His words died out, taken by the wind, and in the silence he felt like an idiot. Where had that come from?

Emma wore an odd expression. “You’re a poet?” Only she didn’t laugh, and her voice sounded the slightest bit impressed.

He liked impressed. In fact, a strange warmth kindled inside. “My father loves Robert Burns. Made us all learn a few verses.”

“Do you know anymore?”

“Aye.” He smiled.

“As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.”

Her gaze stayed on him, and he felt his mouth dry. He cleared his throat. “So, you really thought I was from Scotland?” he asked, his voice a little tight.

Emma shrugged. “I was trying to figure out how much time you’d spent in the backcountry.”

“Hey, I did my time. Back when I worked for the police department and later as a TAPS security officer before I joined the bureau. Even barely escaped the claws of a grizzly sow once.”

“All right, I’m sorry.” Emma shuddered. “I hate grizzlies. They terrify me. One wandered near our cabin when I was about eight. It would have torn me to bits if my father hadn’t been there with his hunting rifle. I stared at those glassy black eyes, those claws, those teeth, and just … stood there. Unable to move. I couldn’t decide whether to run, play dead, or climb a tree.”

“Climb a tree,” Mac said. He had a hard time imagining Emma freezing in terror over anything after he’d seen her bolt into action today. “Always better to get up high out of reach.”

“Can you fly a plane?”

Mac nodded. “Took lessons in Fairbanks a few years ago; the agency sponsored it.”

“So you’re really FBI?” She looked at him, and he sensed more in her question than just conversation.

“For now. I … I’m thinking of resigning.” Somehow his family understood, but he’d barely been able to get his mind around his failure. He just couldn’t spend the rest of his life seeing Brody’s face every time he closed his eyes. Deep inside, Mac knew that until he got face-to-face with Andy MacLeod, show him exactly what his decision had cost Mac and his family, he’d never find closure. Never escape his demons, maybe never be able to do his job right.

“Is it because of your brother?” Emma’s voice was quiet, compassionate.

Mac swallowed hard, caught off guard. Was he that transparent? He sighed. What would it matter if he told her, if he let her into his life just a little further? He knew it was an area he should work on anyway, especially if someday he wanted what his sisters had. What Brody should have had—a wife, a family, a heritage. “Aye, it’s complicated.”

She nodded. “All I can think about is being with my family right now. With Micah and Conner and Dani.”

“You have a big family.”

She gave a huff of laughter. “No, they’re my Team Hope pals. But they feel like family. More family than I’ve ever had.” She looked at him, and he saw sadness in her eyes. “My parents separated when I was sixteen. They never divorced, however, so I was left with that hanging hope they’d somehow reconcile.”

“What happened?” His own parents had fought, sometimes raucous shouting affairs that raised the roof. But they also loved each other with a fierceness that had taught Mac exactly what committed love looked like.

“Me,” she said simply. She stared at the sky, and he felt the loneliness in her voice.

Me.
It occurred to him that maybe her lonely flights across the sky above the jagged terrain resembled his own escape into a career that kept him moving and above the pull of relationships and heartache.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“What was your brother’s name?” Emma asked.

“Brody. He was two years younger than me. He died in my arms.”

She blew out a breath. “I’m so sorry.”

“The thing is, he could have lived. A pilot flew over, and I even radioed him, but he refused to land. Brody bled to death.”

She gasped. Then she closed her eyes, as if bearing that pain with him.

Seeing her reaction ministered to the place his grief had rubbed raw. He couldn’t stop himself from touching her hair.