Page 10 of No Hope of Rescue

I told myself it was just a crush—a crush I had to get over. But that story is growing old.

It’s one of the reasons why I’ve lived in a self-induced limbo over the last three years. It’s how I’ve been able to work side by side with Brock Weston, how I positioned myself to be second-in-command and co-director of the rescue team: he has no idea.

Then Crystal dumped him, and all that pushing forward, that ability to keep perspective, evaporated. She broke his heart. He tries to hold it together, but I can tell he’s distracted. Unless he’s on a mission, he’s withdrawn, preoccupied.

We all know no one can afford to be preoccupied climbing or hiking in the Rockies—especially in winter. It’s a truth Carter clearly doesn’t want to think about right now.

΅

The snowmobile skirts the crest of Echo Mountain along an old logging trail I know for a fact they didn’t take.

My radio crackles with static as Jace and Ryan report in.

Nothing.

Carter, who’s with me on the other vehicle, is an excellent tracker, but he loses the trail less than two miles in. It snowed last night—the opener for the larger storm brewing. Sudden clouds have already blotted the sun out and swagger between the mountains, roiling dark and voluminous.

“What are you hearing about the snowfall potential?”

Jace’s voice comes in loudly over the speaker. “Twenty to thirty inches. Winds forty to seventy.”

He doesn’t mention the mountaintop. Wind speed there would be brutal. It was already beating around my head, making me adjust my goggles so my eyes wouldn’t water.

In the moments it takes to convene our vehicles in the bald clearing, the dark pit in my stomach that started when I saw Savi inside the cabin grows like a malignancy.

We stop for a moment to make decisions. This is hard to do with so little information.

“What do you want to do, Chief?” Carter says, wiping off his goggles. He’s trying to sound upbeat, like we have a plan. But he knows just how dire this situation is.

The question is: what can we do? “No idea of when they actually left?”

Carter shakes his head. “According to air traffic control, Brock asked about a down plane at 9:42 yesterday morning. That’s the last anyone’s heard from either of them.”

That means it’s already been twenty-four hours since they went missing.

Chapter Three

Brock Weston

The moment I spin over the lip, I try to twist, knowing the next impact will be into the cliff face like a pendulum. The rope is still attached at the top to the anchor, knotted high.

My side is both on fire and oddly numb. When I crash into the wall, the rope tightens, the harness compresses, and a rib cracks, but the knot above holds. I’m still twelve feet from the bottom.

Instinct takes over. I pull out the knife strapped to my calf, slice the harness from the rope, and fall the rest of the way.

A controlled fall is always dicey. Taking the impact on my legs, I crouch, roll to my side onto my shoulder, and turn my head to avoid a snapped neck. Not sure I can stand, I duck under a small outcropping of rock so I won’t be visible from above. It’s not quite a cave at the base of the cliff, but it’s a three-foot-wide shelter. I’ll take it. I stretch out as much as I can in the cramped space, trying to make myself invisible.

The rushing sound of water obliterates hearing anything the men are saying. In another minute, something small and pink is flung from above and lands in the churning water. It’s Codie’s cell phone.

Trying not to black out, I lie there as blood seeps through my heavy jacket.

Codie.

I have to get to Codie. All I can see in memory is her face, how terrified she looked trapped between those two assholes.

Minutes pass.

Then a voice rises above the rushing water.