Playing With Fire: inspirational romantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 2) (15 page)

The bushes caught between lichen-covered boulders and rocky wash soon gave way to spindly aspen and the red spires of wild dogwood, then towering white-barked birch.

From here, the land sloped precariously down to the north fork of the Bull River. Liza stopped in a patch of blue columbine, noting the delicate blue-and-white flowers torn and scattered on the ground. “They made it this far,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at Conner.

He was on his walkie, calling in to Pete, who was still waiting for the rangers back at camp. Pete’s voice came through, sketchy and thin. They’d left the ridge trail far behind, the reception choppy.

Conner clipped the walkie to his belt, then came down to her. “I find it hard to believe the bear wouldn’t have overtaken them by this point,” he said, squatting to pick up a crumpled flower.

“Maybe it gave up—or what if they spooked it and it ran?”

He stood, hands on his lean hips, surveying the area, his mouth in a grim line.

It dredged up a memory, long buried, of his surveying the striated red-rock scenery of Sedona.

So maybe he
had
been into her. For an intoxicating summer moment.

He turned to her, his blue eyes catching hers. “Let’s keep going. Maybe they just got lost.”

Perhaps. She fell in after him, letting him part the forest, choose the trail.

With the forest thickening as they descended, with towering white spruce, Douglas fir, and shaggy hemlocks clumping together to form a canopy of shadow, they might have kept running, become disoriented.

At least that was the thought Liza reached for, clung to as she lifted her voice, calling. “Esther! Shep!”

A breeze shivered the trees, raking up the scent of cedar and pine as she and Conner cut around boulders the size of buffalo and over jutting limestone, following runs of ledge rock that corrugated the landscape.

She couldn’t imagine running through the forest without slipping on loose shale, careening down a gully, wedging her foot into a fissure, or face-planting into a ravine studded with chert and other jagged remains of mountain runoff.

They could be anywhere in this tangle of Kootenai forest, wounded, dying.

Conner had stopped, pulled out his map, apparently orienting himself.

“The north fork is about half a mile from here. Certainly they couldn’t have gotten that far, right?”

“Considering I climbed a tree over half a mile from where I encountered the bear, I’m thinking you cover a lot of ground when you’re freaked out.”

Conner looked as if he were sifting through her words. Finally, “Yeah, you’re right. Maybe, with nothing to stop them, they just kept running.”

He folded the map, shoved it in his back pocket, then picked his way down a spree of boulders, grabbing a low-hanging maple branch for support.

Liza scrambled after him, not wanting to lose him.

Under the canopy of forest, the air seemed languid, pockets of cool air lifting the hair off her neck. She pulled out her ponytail, did a quick, loose braid, and let it hang over her shoulder.

They reached a clearing and Conner took out his water bottle, took a drink, again consulted his map. Called Pete and got an update.

“The rangers are on site. They’ve brought tranquilizer guns and are going to track the bear. But if he’s out of the area and hasn’t attacked anyone, then they’ll let him go. So far there’s no evidence of him being a rogue animal—just a guy protecting his territory. It was a male, right? You didn’t see any cubs?”

She shook her head.

“Then he probably thought you were simply too close. He got startled, felt cornered.”

Now that made perfect sense, actually.

“He didn’t have to roar at me. I had no intention of invading his space.”

“He probably did what is called a bluff charge—they aren’t intending on attacking, they just want you to know they don’t like you in their space. Did it pop its jaw, maybe sway from side to side?”

“In a way.”

He frowned.

“He certainly let me know that he wasn’t interested in having me hang around.”

That seemed to satisfy him. “Hmm. Well, if it was a predatory attack, he would have been stalking you. And, in that case, playing dead doesn’t always help. You might have been able to scare him off by throwing something at him or banging a couple of sticks together and making loud noises. Basically making him think that you’re a risk if he decided to attack.”

“Yeah, I can be scary that way.”

This got a return smile. “You have no idea.”

And for a second, the world just stopped. Conner’s smile dimmed. Her breath caught. And, shoot, but the words felt like bait, the kind she couldn’t ignore. “That’s what it was, wasn’t it? I was too scary?”

He swallowed.

Then he turned and stalked away.

Because, yes, she’d hit on the truth. She was too scary—because she’d fallen too hard, too fast, and when she cornered him, he’d felt trapped.

Thirty feet ahead of her, Conner continued calling, his voice devoured by the tight canopy, the knot of forest. The breeze thickened into a shiver, and the sound formed around the flow of a waterfall in the distance. She could imagine the couple running through the brush, over logs, tripping on roots, crashing through bushes—

“Liza!”

The tone of Conner’s voice alerted her, and she spotted him on a rock, gesturing to her. She cut through low-lying ferns, crunchy brown needles, rotted, downed trees and climbed up beside him, tripping as she reached the top of the rock.

He caught her just before she would’ve fallen forward into nothing.

Or rather, into the cool breath of the Bull River. Forty feet down, a stair-step waterfall tumbled over cut rock and boulders to drop another thirty feet into a cauldron of foamy, brown water.

And on an outcropping forty feet down, no more than four feet across, crumpled and still, lay the broken form of sixteen-year-old Shep Billings.

“Oh no—” Liza dropped to her knees, barely aware of Conner’s hand on her shoulder as she braced herself and leaned forward. “Shep!’

The roar of the falls ate her voice. Below, the body didn’t move.

Conner knelt next to her. “We have to find a way down to him.”

“Do you see Esther?”

On the other side of the river the forest continued, dark, snarled.

“No,” Conner said. He gave her shoulder a tight squeeze as he pulled out his walkie.

#

The Great Bear Escape notwithstanding, it seemed like Liza recovered in a quick minute from seeing Shep crumpled forty feet below, pale, maybe even already deceased.

Her voice betrayed none of her panic as she called down to him. “Shep! We see you. We’re on our way.”

Well, Conner was at least, although the minute he secured his letdown rope to a nearby aspen, Liza picked up the length as if ready to rappel.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

She appeared to ignore him, looping the rope through her legs, around her left leg, back around and across her chest, over her right shoulder, letting the rope fall behind her, her left hand gripping the slack and riding below her backside for a brake. She leaned into it, testing.

For a long second Conner just gaped at her. “How did you learn to emergency rappel?”

She backed up to the edge. “I live in the boundary waters of Minnesota. It seemed only logical to take a survival course.”

Right. And she’d called him because…? “Maybe I should go down first.”

“I’m already roped up.” Liza leaned back, into her hand. “I just wish I had gloves—this is going to hurt.”

“Wait.” He pulled a pair from his pack.

She put on his gloves and reacquired her grip.

“I’m right behind you,” he said as she lowered herself over the edge.

As Conner knelt at the edge, his jaw tight, he had the terrible urge to leap all forty feet so he could be on hand to catch her. It had nothing to do with her needing him—which apparently, so far, she didn’t, despite her phone call—and everything to do with the fact that he couldn’t bear to see her get hurt.

That’s what it was, wasn’t it? I was too scary?

No. Not at all.
But he’d scared himself, if he were to be honest, with how much he’d wanted to do something crazy, like yes, make her promises, be the guy who stopped living with his crazy no-commitment rules and actually lived the life he’d always dreamed of.

Liza reached the rocky ledge, landed next to Shep. “I’ll send the gloves up.”

She tied them to the rope, and he pulled it up as she knelt next to Shep.

“I’ll be right down!”

Shep lay on his side, his bottom leg broken and jutted out beneath him. Blood pooled under the injury, suggesting an open fracture. His shoulder also looked crushed, the way his head sank into it. He wore a T-shirt and jeans, his skin gray, eyes closed.

Conner guessed him about five foot ten, maybe a hundred and eighty pounds, an athletic kid with a lean, toned body. No wonder he thought he could outrun a bear. At sixteen, Conner had thought the same thing, that he was king of his world with no idea how it could drop out beneath him.

At nearly thirty-eight, he was smarter. Knew exactly how fast he could fall.

The ledge was only four feet wide, and they would have been standing on top of each other if Liza hadn’t moved toward Shep’s head when Conner reached the ledge.

Liza tested for a pulse at the base of Shep’s jaw while Conner knelt next to him and lifted his shirt, looking for bruising. He found a dark splotch down by his lower rib, just above his abdomen.

“His pulse is weak, and rapid. His breathing is really shallow,” Liza said.

“After a fall like that, he probably has internal bleeding.” Conner worked off his pack and reached inside, pulling out a Mylar rescue blanket. He draped it over Shep. “I don’t want to move him, but we need to try and slow the bleeding. How’s his head?”

Liza felt around his skull, her hands gentle. The boy’s eyes didn’t open. “He’s got a wound just above his ear, but it doesn’t feel deep. And his skull isn’t soft, so I don’t think it’s broken.” She, too, had taken off her pack and now dug around, pulling out a first aid kit. She pulled out a handful of thick gauze pads and worked them under his head.

“We need to get a look at that leg wound,” Conner said. He pulled out his knife, sheathed in his belt, and began to tear at the fabric of the boy’s jeans, working his way past the fracture to the knee.

There a bone spur stuck out the back of Shep’s leg, tearing the calf.

A tap on his shoulder, and Liza handed him a roll of gauze, a handful of pads. “Cover the wound, and we’ll figure out if we can splint it.”

He could hardly believe this was the same person who’d called him just six hours ago, frantic.

Reflex? Panic?
He was hoping for Good Excuse to Call Conner because if she didn’t need him, she certainly wouldn’t invite him back into her life after they got Shep—and Esther—back up the mountain.

Conner pressed the pad on the wound, and Liza helped him wrap Shep’s leg.

Then he watched as she put her hands on Shep’s head and closed her eyes.

Was she—praying?

Yep. And seeing it, his entire body ached.

I kept praying for you...

Did she still think of him, still pray?

He got up and pulled out his walkie.

“Young, Brooks. Pete, come in.”

He waited, then the voice kicked in, crackly, but clearer than he would have expected.

“Brooks, Young. What’s your position?”

“We found the boy. He’s on a ledge overlooking a waterfall on the north fork of Bull River.”

Silence, then, “Roger that, Conner. And, uh, what’s his...status?”

Conner could picture Pete walking away from the rangers and especially Dr. Billings as he phrased his question.

“Alive. He took a fall, broke his leg, probably has internal injuries, maybe a broken shoulder. He hit his head, too. I think he’s in shock.”

A beat, then, “Roger that. We’re on our way. Can you give us your best position?”

Conner pulled out his map, gave the coordinates.

“We’re a good five clicks from you,” Pete came back. “Ranger Eric suggests we call in the chopper out of Mercy Falls. PEAK Rescue has a hoist and an EMT team.”

“Roger that. Can you get hold of dispatch?”

“Will do. Dr. Billings wants to talk to you.”

He shot a look at Liza, but she was still praying.

“How badly injured is he?” Billings’s asked.

“We’re working on getting the bleeding stopped and we’re keeping him warm.”

“Don’t give him any liquids, he might vomit them up.”

“Roger that. We’ll keep you informed.”

Conner clipped the walkie on his belt and crouched down next to the boy, touching his face. Cool, almost clammy. Please, let him not be going into shock.

That’s when he saw Liza’s hand trembling, her body shaking. Her breath shuddered out.