Page 60 of In Too Deep
“What changed?”
“Last month when you walked in with blood on your shirt, that day after the rescue.It wasn’t your blood but seeing someone I lo—care about with blood all over them that seemed to trigger them again.And now I’m right back where I?—”
Noah’s boot squelched as he shifted his weight.He glanced down.
Water covered the floor where he was standing, ankle deep.It didn’t just fill the pool by the entrance anymore.Now it was spreading across the uneven stone and advancing slowly but steadily toward where Meg knelt with Alex.
The explosion must have shifted the path of the spring.
And now the water had nowhere to go.The explosion had sealed the only outlet.And the cave was getting more water from the fissures in the ceiling.
And it was rising.Measurably rising.
“Meg.”His voice came out sharp and urgent.“We need to move.Now.”
She followed his gaze to the water lapping less than a foot away from Alex’s boots.Even in the dim light, her face went notably pale.
“We’re in too deep.We have to get to higher ground.”Noah was already pulling equipment from his pack, his hands moving fast.“The best place would be down the tunnel that seems to have collapsed”—he motioned to their left with his chin, where another pile of rubble blocked what had once been a passage—“so I guess we’ll see if this one leads to anything.”He gestured to a dark opening on the opposite side of the chamber, black and uninviting, but slightly above the waterline…for now.
“We can’t move him.”Meg’s hand was still on Alex’s wrist.“Moving him could make a spinal injury worse.Maybe I can wait here with him while you?—”
“No.”Noah met her eyes.He saw the determination, the set of her jaw.
This was the Meg who’d walked into the cave despite her terror.The Meg who’d covered Alex’s body with her own when the explosion hit.The doctor who’d chosen to run toward the hard things instead of away from them.She was tough but she didn’t understand.
“I won’t leave you behind.”
Not ever.Not in a million years.
Eden Garrison had been staring at the same incident report for the last twenty minutes, the words blurring together.She tried to focus, but her gaze kept darting to the satellite image of the storm on her monitor.
The dispatch office at the North Rim ranger station was quiet this afternoon.
Too quiet.
The kind of silence that made her upper back tense and knotted.
Who was she kidding?
She’d done this drill hundreds of times and had coordinated countless emergencies.There was one reason and one reason alone that she was so jumpy.
Her friends were out there in this storm and they hadn’t checked in.
Okay, one friend in particular.
But she refused to think about that.
The radio crackled to life.
She jumped.
“Eden, this is Teague.We have an emergency at Tapeats Cave.”
Eden’s hand was on the mic before her brain fully processed the words.Her heart was already accelerating.“Copy, Teague.What’s your status?”
Static filled the pause.
And in that half second of silence, Eden’s mind catalogued every terrible possibility—collapsed lungs, crushed limbs, buried bodies.
