Page 65 of No Hope of Rescue

“What?”

Then he hears me. He shakes his head. There’s only one set of headphones, making it nearly impossible to talk.

He figures the coordinates to the cabin where the men are holed up. We have no plan, except to circle around and follow the course we think Brock must have taken from McKibben’s Sawmill.

Though the cabin is sealed, the chopper is freezing. It’s smaller than the Bell, with less lift but more agility. I understand this after half an hour of riding with Ross.

We follow the contours of the mountains as much as possible, not dipping too low, maintaining as straight a path as possible. I scan for wreckage, my stomach flipping and diving worse than any ride in rough weather. I feel like I’m going to throw up.

Even if Brock makes it, they’ll shoot him as soon as he’s taken them where they want to go, and we have no idea where that is.

I press the binoculars to my face.

We’re ten minutes into the flight when I spot something. “Eleven o’clock!”

Ross pitches the helicopter forward so fast my stomach is left somewhere behind my eyes.

This is the feeling that triggers Brock. I saw it. Twice.

“Give me,” Ross says, sticking out his hand. I slap the binoculars into his palm. I don’t need them. I can spot the Bell easily. She’s ahead of us, on a jittery trajectory. Ross peers through the binoculars, takes them away from his face, then looks through again. He does this three or four times, and then he hands them off to me again.

“Something’s wrong. Something’s really wrong. The chopper’s listing badly. Nose down.”

My stomach twists. “What do you mean?”

“They’ve overloaded it.”

Now I pull the binoculars back to my face. As if on cue, the small dark outline of the Bell lists, flying dangerously, straining, dipping almost out of control. It’s definitely overloaded.

Or Brock isn’t piloting it.

“The cabin is to the west,” Ross shouts again. “And the Denver airport is behind us.”

I don’t know where he’s going with this. “What?”

“They’re heading north.”

So, a red herring.

Chapter Nineteen

Brock Weston

Holding the throttle open, the key turns as if I have nothing to do with it. Sitting in the cockpit of the Bell in the rear of McKibben’s Sawmill is surreal.

Compartmentalizing is a trained skill. I’ve grown good at it, and this will be a test. The control panels glow as I pull back on the throttle.

The moment the copter breaks gravity’s grip, there’s a release of adrenaline that can either unwind me or focus my plans. I don’t have permission to unwind.

The further the chopper rises from the ground, the more I have to find my bearings. Breathe low. Use the diaphragm. Circular breathing. I set coordinates in my mind and move out toward the cabin—blue sky above, deep green and brown below.

No broken glass. No blood. No friend hanging upside down. I can’t allow those images. Gripping the lever with one hand, I reach for my wallet with the other. There, buried in with a wedge of bills, is an old picture of me and Riley. It’s from the first day we met at Garden of the Gods.

I grab it and clip it to the dash. If I start to get that feeling in my stomach of pitching forward, I’m going to have to ground myself.

Carter took it right after I carried her down off that rock the first day I met her. Even without looking at it, I can see it. She’s tanned and smiling and looks exhausted. She’s just taken her helmet off, and her hat hair is hilarious. A few streaks of red dust powder her face and neck, either from the rocks themselves or from the Eco chalk, but I love this picture.

As the Bell climbs, it startles me how I never questioned why I always kept it in my wallet. Crystal found the photo once, and it sparked a discussion, but I still kept it there. For safekeeping.