Page 19 of Danger In The Backcountry
Rome surveyed the steep decline, and his gut soured. There was no way Lettie would’ve been able to keep up a grueling pace at this angle. His feet were moving before he consciously ordered them to, but he’d lost sight of her tracks. Instead, deep gouges and broken branches peppered the hill. All the way down into the river snaking through the woods. The water would’ve dropped below freezing this time of year, and if she’d gone in… “Lettie.”
Her name was a prayer and a plea. Putting his weight into his heels, he raced down the decline and hit the edge of the water.
Right as a dark outline hauled a body from the depths.
Rome didn’t think, didn’t hesitate, as waning golden light identified the masked killer standing over his victim. Lettie. Any hope of his own survival vanished. The blade was already in his hand. And he never missed. Gripping the tip of the knife, he threw it with everything he had left.
The blade imbedded into the bastard’s shoulder, right where the killer had shot Rome with a crossbow. Momentum from the throw shoved the killer back a foot, and Rome charged. His good shoulder connected with the man’s midsection. Rome hauled her attacker off his feet with a scream full of desperation and something he hadn’t allowed himself to feel in a long time: fear. An elbow slammed into his spine. Once. Twice. But Rome wouldn’t give her abductor another chance to take her.
The killer’s heels fought for balance at the edge of the riverbank.
But Rome shoved the masked attacker into the river’s frozen depths.
Relief clawed at his insides, but one look at the woman on the ground chased it back. Collapsing to his knees, Rome turned her face toward his, saw the paleness of her face and the blue ring around her lips. “No. No, no, no. Come on, Lettie. Open your eyes.”
No response.
Biting through the pain in his arm, he fisted both hands over her sternum and counted off compressions, setting his mouth over hers to start breathing for her. Round after round, his heart dying a little more each time she failed to come to. But he wouldn’t stop. He wouldn’t lose her again.
Her chest arched off the forest floor a split second before Lettie sputtered river water. Her coughs destroyed the silence that’d taken hold in his head, and his entire world shifted. Alive. She was alive. Scooping his wife into his arms, Rome buried his nose into her neck, trying to infuse as much warmth into her body as possible. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.” He rocked her across his lap. “I’ve got you.”
Chapter Seventeen
Dying: Zero out of ten. Would not recommend.
Her lungs burned with each inhale, but Lettie leaned into the pain, let it pinch her chest. She’d refused the painkillers the emergency room physician had offered. If only to convince herself she hadn’t actually drowned. But every shift in her sprained ankle brought out a whimper. How was it possible for her throat to feel dry when she’d sucked down a river’s worth of water? Ugh.
The small, understaffed ER just outside Zion National Park wasn’t used to this much activity. The park’s superintendent—Randy—had already made his obligatory visit to check on her and make sure there wasn’t any legal reason she’d come after him or the park for what’d happened. Then there was her intern. Shawn had at least pretended he’d been concerned for her well-being at hearing the news she’d been attacked, showcasing a bouquet of flowers, which he’d left on the side table beside her bed before heading back to the lab. White roses. She didn’t remember telling him they were her favorite, but they’d spent hours together in that windowless office tracking Sam’s movements and the tracker’s data that needed to be combed through, exchanging embarrassing stories and favorite movie quotes over the past six months. Springdale Police and Zion law enforcement rangers had each taken her statement too, but the details were still hazy.
But she only had attention for the man who’d refused to budge from the side of her bed. He’d cleaned up in the hourssince he’d dragged her from those woods one armed, attracting a response from the ER doctor almost immediately with that hole in his shoulder. He’d fought treatment, demanding to stay with her, but it hadn’t taken much for the nurses to wrangle him into his own bed to be assessed. A myriad of stitches now secured the wound where the killer had shot him with a freaking crossbow. The fact that he’d started to regain use of his arm was a miracle in and of itself.
Because those hours clinging to him after he’d revived her… She’d never forget them. Each step in the dark had been excruciating, his pain written all over his face, but Rome had never left her. Never let his hold on her waver. He’d hailed the search and rescue team as soon as they’d cleared the trees. Within an hour they’d each been strapped to a backboard and flown out in one of the NPS helicopters. If it hadn’t been for him, she never would’ve made it out.
She studied him sitting in that uncomfortable-looking chair, his head set back against the too-low backing, eyes closed. He’d lost the multiple layers living outdoors required, showing off strong arms and shoulders beneath one of his old T-shirts. The baseball cap that’d practically become an extension of himself since college had seen better days, the white fabric more tan and stained than she remembered. Every inch of exposed skin had been tanned over hours under the sun and only highlighted the beginning grays in his five-o’clock shadow. Even after everything they’d been through, he still managed to take her breath away. And give it based on the fact he’d performed CPR to bring her back. “You look like crap.”
Rome didn’t stir, his cap drawn over half of his face as though asleep. She knew better though. Noted his breathing, the way he tested the use of his injured arm with the slightest shift no one else might pick up on. “I’m not the one who looked like a drowned rat a few hours ago.”
She didn’t want to think about that. How her lungs had burned as her body involuntarily sucked in the freezing, clouded water. Lettie rubbed at her chest, which pulled Rome out of his feigned peace. Swallowing against the lingering terror that seemed to have etched itself into every muscle she owned, she focused on the blanket currently hiding the splint around her ankle. “What now?”
Rome had told her what’d happened in the minute or two after the killer had pulled her from the river. How he’d injured the masked man and shoved him into the river, that there was a chance her attacker had survived. Why the man who’d killed at least four hikers had pulled her from that river, she didn’t know. Rome’s theory? Her abductor had wanted to make sure she was dead before stringing her up like the others. But Lettie wasn’t sure that’d been the case at all. More like… The killer had tried to save her. Which only lent more credibility to the fact Lettie had hit her head a little too hard during her fall down the riverbank. What kind of serial killer tried to save his victims after running them down through the woods?
“I still have a job to do.” Rome righted his baseball cap with his good arm, those small muscles in his forearm flexing, and her skin flushed at the memory of all that strength pressed against her. Hovering over her. Holding her in place. “Your bear is still out there.”
The beeping coming from the machine tracking her heart rate ticked up a notch as his words registered. “Sam doesn’t have anything to do with this. You know that.”
“I had to fill Randy in on what happened out there. My theory this killer is using a black bear claw to tear up his victims before stringing them up is just that. A theory.” He took on a stillness that could have only been trained into him since he was a young boy forced to scrounge for food in the middle of Montana wildernesses. “We don’t have any proof your bear isn’t involvedin these deaths somehow, and Randy can’t take the chance we’ve got this wrong. If the media gets hold of the story there’s a killer bear in the park or another hiker goes missing, it’ll force him to shut down the park. He’ll lose funding, rangers will lose their jobs.” Rome’s shoulders rose on a deep inhale. “I’m sorry, Lettie. But Randy ordered me to put Sam down.”
Blood drained from her face and neck. Lettie tried to sit higher in the bed, but only managed to remind herself of her injuries. The nurses had redressed the burns and the blisters on the bottoms of her feet, but new gauze did nothing to take away the pain. Inside and out. “He can’t do that. Black bears are federally protected in national parks. Not to mention, Sam is a research subject.”
Sitting forward, Rome exaggerated the tension running the length between his neck and shoulders. “Are you really willing to risk your career and the careers of a hundred rangers on your blind faith in an animal capable of shredding and mauling those hikers?”
“I don’t care about my career anymore.” Lettie snapped her mouth shut. She hadn’t meant to say that. Not out loud. But she couldn’t take it back. The realization she’d come to out in those woods still rang true after the threat had been neutralized and the adrenaline had drained. What good was having a career that no longer made her happy? What kind of person was she to choose her job over the people she loved?
Rome’s expression slackened into unreadable stillness. His voice dropped into dangerous territory. “What are you talking about? Everything you’ve done in the past decade—everything you’ve sacrificed, including our marriage—has been for your career. And now what? You’re going to throw it all away on the belief a black bear is innocent of murder?”
“Yes.” Her chin wobbled with the absolute devastation crossing Rome’s face. To the point she could almost read everyemotion he wanted to hide from her in the split second his guard dropped. Disappointment. Frustration. Heartbreak. All the things she’d ignored in the days, weeks, months leading up to him asking for a divorce. “The man who kidnapped me knows me. He knows my work. I think he intentionally used Sam to cover killing those hikers because that bear is important to my research, and I’m not going to let him get away with it.”
Icy tendrils snaked through her veins at the memory of stumbling upon those remains. How close she’d come to ending up just like them. How close Rome had come. She couldn’t stop the shiver from overtaking her, and Rome’s defensiveness slipped.
