Off the Map (Winter Rescue #2) (12 page)

Yeah—that wasn’t a conversation he was having while the only thing standing between them all and death was Carrie’s grip on what amounted to a joystick. He’d seen her play video games. She couldn’t even line up rows of candy.

“Since when are you so scared of flying?” she asked. “Back at the church, you were all calm and mocking my fears about the beheading.”

“That was before you told Ace that helicopters are basically ten thousand different parts of machinery working together to kill us.”

She laughed and flipped some sort of mechanism on the vast panel of numbers, dials, switches, and different parts of machinery working together to kill them. “Lucky for you, I’m used to dealing with antagonistic equipment—and people. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if everything ran smoothly for once.”

He didn’t have a glib reply for that one, but after about thirty seconds of listening to the wind howl around them, he wished he could have come up with something. He didn’t like hearing the storm any more than he liked the nagging repetition of his own thoughts, which had been going nonstop for hours. It was as if he was listening to a constant loop of Mara-Carrie-Mara-Carrie.

One was missing; the other had already gone. And Scott couldn’t seem to make up his mind which one of them he wanted back more.

“I don’t like the look of those clouds over there.” Nate’s voice buzzed in Scott’s ear, providing him with a temporary respite.

“I don’t either,” Carrie said, but that didn’t stop her from turning toward the patch of grey that surrounded their destination. “That’s where you want us, right?”

“As close as possible without dying, if you don’t mind.” Even now, Nate was upbeat, his enthusiasm contagious. “I’m supposed to be at my parents’ for Christmas brunch next week. They’ll kill me if I miss it again.”

“And I want to make it back for Tina’s holiday pageant,” Max said. “She’s a sheep. I made her costume myself.”

“I don’t care what happens as long as we find her,” was Scott’s contribution. But that wasn’t in the spirit of things, so he tried again. “Newman’s expecting me for Christmas dinner, though, and he sucks at cooking for one.”

There was a pause and static as Ace’s headset crackled to life. “I got nothing. You wanna make plans for Christmas with me, Carrie? We can eat cranberries out of the can and watch
Die Hard
.”

“I’d love that,” Carrie said, and Scott’s chest snagged at how sincere she sounded. They’d never gotten around to making holiday plans together, and she didn’t have anyone else in the area. He forgot, sometimes, just how alone she was—how much of her high energy existed to make up for all the quiet times in between. “As long as
Die Hard
is a secret code for
Love, Actually.
”

“You wish.”

They might have clogged the airways with a heated discussion of the relative merits of a mumbling Bruce Willis versus mumbling Hugh Grant, but a gust of wind grabbed the tail of the helicopter and lifted it, tipping them like a teapot.

Carrie swore as she struggled to maneuver them flat again, pulling against the monumental weight of gravity. “I hope everyone is buckled in,” she said tightly. “Things are about to get rocky.”

“About to?” Scott muttered, more out of fear than condemnation, though of course it sounded like the latter—a fact Carrie picked up on in a second.

“Is this storm too violent for you? My bad. Let me turn around and find a different way around this seven-thousand-foot-mountain.”

“I’m sorry. That came out wrong. You’re doing a great job.”

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, no longer willing—or able—to take her eyes from the shaking control panel. “That better not be a compliment I hear coming from your lips right now.”

“I mean it,” he protested. “If we make it through this in one piece, I’ll—”
What, exactly?
Never doubt her again? Stop believing in superstitions? Beg her to take him back?

That last one sounded pretty good, actually.

But all he managed to say was, “Thank you.”

“Oh, no you don’t.” She swore again as the helicopter dipped to the tree line before pulling back up again. The closer they got to the ground, the faster it appeared they were going, the snow powdering off the trees from the spinning of the blades, the whole contraption shuddering against the change in altitude. It felt as if they were trapped inside a snow globe about to shatter against the side of a cliff. “No being nice. I want you to tell me how you feel. Tell me how I ruined your life. Tell me how much you’ll hate me if we don’t find Mara in time.”

“I would never—”

“
Please yell at me, Scott
.” Carrie didn’t even give him the side-eye that time, so concentrated was she on keeping them aloft. He almost couldn’t hear her over the whirring of the blades against the wind. “Muster up every bit of hatred you have and let it go.”

Tight white lines around her mouth gave her an intense look, and he could feel the tension and strength radiating from her body even on his side of the cockpit, but she didn’t once lose her concentration.

He’d never been further from hatred in his life. “I can’t.”

“Then make something up.” She practically bit the words off. “This is fucking scary, okay? There. I admit it. The wind is picking up and I lost radio contact with anyone outside this helicopter about five minutes ago and there isn’t nearly as much clearance as I prefer for landing. Voodoo Scott is still lying in the bottom of my bag without his head, and even though that doesn’t seem to concern you, it scares the crap out of me. And I’m about ten seconds away from losing my pilot’s license for a dog you love more than you’ll ever love me. If I need you to argue with me to make this feel normal again, then you’ll do it. Do you understand?”

Not even a little. Given a thousand years together, he would never understand Carrie Morlock—reckless and brash, kind and funny, the only woman who had ever made him feel whole.

But he could yell. Over the headset, in front of his best friends, without a care for who was listening in. If his heart was going to continue bleeding out here on the table, he might as well make it splash.

“Is this the fastest way to get to our destination?” he asked. “Steady Pete could have had us there hours ago.”

Some of the tightness around her lips relaxed. “Are you trying to tell me how to do my job, Richardson?”

“Someone has to. You almost ran us straight into that tree.”

“I missed it by at least a hundred feet. Trust a man—trust
you
—not to see what’s right in front of his face.”

Oh, he saw it. He dreamed it. He was scared to death of it. “Maybe I can’t see anything because I’ve been too busy trying to keep up with you. If you’d slow down for one goddamned minute…”

“…then I’d stall us in midair.”

“Or maybe you’d realize it’s possible to lead a normal, productive life that doesn’t involve the daily potential for death.”

“I didn’t realize you were such an expert in aerodynamics. Would you like to take the controls?”

“I couldn’t do any worse than you. Where’d you learn to fly, anyway? Did you take a
crash
course?”

The crackle of the headset prevented Carrie from responding, which was just as well, since Scott already knew the answer. She’d learned from her helicopter pilot father, now stationed somewhere on the other side of the globe, as far away from his offspring as he could physically get.

“Are we sure yelling at each other is the best idea right now?” Nate asked, his voice gaining a wary edge for the first time. “What with the gale-force winds and all that?”

“Let ‘em at it,” Ace said. “This is the most relaxed I’ve been all day.”

Max agreed with a laugh. “They’re always at their most productive when they’re at each other’s throats. It soothes their troubled souls.”

Scott growled a warning to the men in the back, but they hit another patch of wind. He could hear some of the cargo being tossed around in the back, along with Jenga’s yelp of fear as her crate rattled against the floor.

“Oh, shit.” Carrie began doing that disconcerting pilot thing that consisted of pushing at buttons in a seemingly random pattern, her feet pressing into the pedals at the bottom of the cockpit. “This isn’t good.”

“What’s happening?” Max called.

What the hell did he think was happening? They were attempting to land a helicopter in the middle of a snowstorm. Bad things. Bad things were happening.

They were close enough now to the mountain peak that Scott could make out the features of the landscape—blurry snow and spiky trees, far too many jutting rocks for his peace of mind, the snowy clearing coming at them too soon, too fast, too angled. It hit him at once how insane this entire mission was. Not because his own life flashed before his eyes, and not because he was seeing visions of Max and Ace and Jenga twisted up in the wreckage, but because he couldn’t handle it if anything happened to the woman seated next to him.

What the hell had he been thinking? His world had gone black the first time he almost lost her. This time, it was a blinding flash of white.

“Pull out,” he commanded.

“That’s what she said,” Carrie quipped between clenched teeth, her concentration unwavering from her target.

“I mean it. This is too dangerous.”

“You’re just now realizing this?”

“It was a mistake to come out here. You don’t have to make this sacrifice. Not for me.”

She pulled at the joystick she had in her death-grip and caused them to take a dizzying spin. Breathless, she said, “It’s a little late for you to start throwing yourself on the pyre, don’t you think? Take a deep breath and cross your fingers. It’s only going to get worse before it gets better.”

“Don’t do this. Please.” He kept his eyes on her profile, committing it to memory—the slope of her slightly upturned nose, the part of lips deep in concentration, the worried pucker that not even her headset could hide. “It’s not worth it.”

“You love this dog.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“You want this dog.”

“Carrie—it doesn’t fucking matter.”

“You told me you were willing to sacrifice my life and career for this dog.”

“I didn’t mean it. I was trying to rile you up. I’m always trying to rile you up.” Even though the scenery was a blur in his peripheral vision, he didn’t look away from her. He couldn’t. “It’s what I do so I don’t have to face any of the real emotions you stir up in me. It’s what I do so I don’t have to admit to either of us how much I love you.”

The look she shot him was pure shock, her eyes wide. She couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d told her that they were already dead and this was hell. That was how effective he’d been at keeping her back, at ensuring there was no way she could know how deeply he cared. They were being tossed around like a butterfly in a snowstorm, helicopter blades slicing through wind so thick it was a force of its own, facing certain death. And the thing that unsettled her most was the idea that he loved her more than he loved his favorite dog.

Neither one of them got a chance to say more. Just as she opened her mouth to respond, they were hit from the side with a blast of air so cold Scott felt it deep in his bones. He reached for Carrie, making a nonsensical grab to shield her from the storm, when they spun wildly to the right. Scott’s head slammed against the headrest, whirling his senses, and that was the last he remembered before the screech of metal took over.

Chapter Eight

“Don’t touch it. Don’t look at it. Don’t breathe on it.”

“How can I get your boot off if you won’t let me breathe on it?” Scott made another grab for the laces of Carrie’s La Sportiva, but she kicked him off with her uninjured foot. “Hold still for one goddamned minute, would you?”

“You’re a dog trainer, Scott, not a paramedic. Would you please stop freaking out at me? Ace said he’ll be right back.” She could tell Scott wanted to argue—when had he not wanted that?—but even he couldn’t come up with a reason not to wait for their only first-aid-certified team member to return from his quick call of nature. Apparently, the older man’s bladder didn’t stand up as well to near-death experiences as it used to. “Besides—you should be more concerned about the gaping head wound that’s bleeding all over your face.”

He touched a hand to his temple, where a swelling had formed and split in two, and winced. She winced with him. That was
not
a pleasant-looking injury.

“I told you my voodoo doll worked,” she said.

He scowled. “I still have my head attached, don’t I?”

“I think it works more on a metaphorical level than a literal one.”

He didn’t answer, instead scooping a handful of snow to hold to his face. One good thing about being surrounded by nothing but miles and miles of snow—they had all the natural ice packs they’d ever need.

They could hear Ace leave the rocky outcropping he’d designated as their new outdoor lavatory, but he stopped to check in with Nate and Max first. Both men had emerged from the landing unscathed and were currently unloading their gear, which was a nice way of saying they’d overheard their conversation on the helicopter and were choosing to keep a discreet distance.

She didn’t blame them.

“I just want to look at it,” Scott said, indicating her foot. “See if it’s broken or not.”

“It’s not.” She moved her foot out of his reach. It hurt like the devil, but it wasn’t broken. The helicopter had protested a little there at the end, but it also wasn’t broken. And Scott’s head was still in one piece.
So far, so good.
“I’m ninety-nine percent sure it’s a sprain.”

“How can you maneuver the foot pedals to get us out of here if it’s broken?”

“It’s just a sprain,” she repeated.

“Yeah, but what if—”

“Scott.” She spoke his name sharply—too sharply, the adrenaline of the past hour leaving her shaky and drained. It wasn’t enough that she’d just successfully made the most difficult landing of her career, or that they now faced the reality of their extreme isolation out here. Oh, no. He had to go ahead and throw a confession of love into the mix.