In the Clear (8 page)

“I’m so sorry,” she said softly, though she wasn’t sure what she was apologizing for. For being a crappy human being, maybe. For not understanding his struggles. For taking him for granted.

“I also carry snacks,” he said, ignoring her.

She accepted the change of subject with a soft laugh. “Snacks?”

“Snacks are the most important part. I even have coffee in there—provided we have a fire to make it with. It doesn’t always happen.”

“I’ve never understood how people can drink that stuff without at least ten sugars in it first. Surely you guys can think of some other way to keep warm out there.”

“There are ways,” he conceded, though with his face averted to the window, so she couldn’t tell if he realized she’d made a joke.

The drive took about twenty minutes. Lexie could have gotten to the base of the mountain faster—she had a slight lead foot hiding inside the fur-lined winter boots and snowpants she’d thrown on in the car—but it looked like the snow advisory on the news that morning hadn’t been lying. Large, swirly flakes blanketed her Jeep, obscuring her vision and adding a sheen of slippery ice to the road.

These were the sort of conditions that made most of her passengers sit on the edge of their seats, sucking in sharp breaths and gripping the dashboard as if she might slide off into a ditch at the tiniest swerve. But a girl didn’t make it through ten winters as a driver in Spokane without learning a few tricks. Slow down. Pump the brakes. Turn into the skid. She wasn’t an idiot.

Fletcher, though, just sat relaxed in his seat, watching as the scenery changed from white, slushy buildings to white, not-quite-as-slushy trees. As she turned on the road he indicated with the point of his finger, there was no question they’d finally arrived at the scene.

Lexie wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting. In her head, a winter rescue search party included nebulous visions of sirens and big yellow snow-cats, helicopters buzzing around and people in uniform barking orders. What she got instead was one forest-green sheriff SUV, a small circle of cars, and two heavy-duty trucks parked near an RV that had clearly made its debut in the mustard-yellow glory of the seventies. Both trucks were hitched to trailers to add a touch of authority, but other than a snowmobile pointed in the direction of what was clearly a trailhead, the heavy artillery had been left behind.

Even the small cluster of people—vibrant pillows of oversized coats with neon yellow vests over the top—seemed awfully anticlimactic. There were half a dozen of them, at most.

“Thanks,” Fletcher said as the crunch of her tires came to a stop. “I should be able to get a ride back with one of the guys.”

“That’s it?” She stopped her hand on the door handle. He wasn’t even going to let her get out?

Apparently not. Without offering an excuse or explanation, Fletcher reached into the back seat and grabbed his pack. The corner of it snagged on the dry cleaning hook, and it took him half a minute to extract it.

And that was it. He was out the door, his lean frame moving in the direction of the circle of people, cool and efficient even in the face of an emergency like this one.

An overwhelming urge to cry hit her. All the familiar sensations of her own ineptitude were there—the hot, sharp stinging behind her eyes, the hazy lines in her vision—and she hated herself for letting the situation get to her. Stabbing the keys back in the ignition, she vowed not to give in.

At least not until she hit the highway.

The passenger door yanked open again, and Fletcher’s head appeared. She was just able to hold back a large sniffle. “What now? Any last minute instructions on how I can stay out of trouble on the long drive home?”

His eyes softened, drooping at the corners and filling her with the profound urge to rub each line of sadness away. “I’m sorry I was so short with you before. I
do
appreciate you. It’s just that I’m not used to sharing this part of my life with anyone. Especially . . . ”

She waited, expecting him to say something along the lines of
someone like you
. Instead he shook himself and took a deep breath, as if bracing for pain. “Is it okay if I call you later? When I get home?”

There was a warmness in his tone that, in any other man, she’d take as the rumblings of interest.
Real
interest. The sexual kind, with nipples and everything that came with them.

“Of course,” she replied, her own tone a little wobbly. Since when had Fletcher’s gaze become so direct? Since when did it have the power to make her feel so throbbingly, achingly feminine?

“Be careful out there, okay?” she added. “No jumping into freezing lakes or careering off mountains unless you have to.”

“I’m always careful.” As he turned away, she thought she heard him add, “Too careful.”

But that might have just been a figment of her imagination.

# # #

She almost missed it.

The flash was so small it was barely noticeable. The snow was coming down thick enough now that cars had to have their headlights on or risk being unseen amidst the swirls of fluffy white snow, and a car pulled into the parking lot with its brights on high. Lexie had to look away so that her eyes didn’t over-adjust, which was when she noticed the tiny silver medallion, almost like a jewelry locket, wedged next to the passenger side door.

Fletcher’s compass.

She touched the brakes, cursing as the wheels locked. It would be a treacherous drive home if she waited much longer, but there was no way she was releasing Fletcher into the wild without his navigation system and good luck charm, no matter how much they might rely on GPS these days.

She turned the car around and parked again, this time behind a small turnoff so Fletcher wouldn’t come running the moment he saw her car. Pocketing the compass, she pulled her scarf tight around her ears and ventured into the cold.

And cold it was. Not city cold, where buildings and cars brought the temperature up a few degrees and made everything a grubby mess, but mountain cold, the overspread trees the only thing standing between her and the afternoon sky. It was hard to imagine Fletcher’s backpack containing enough blankets to keep him from freezing in this stuff overnight.

She approached the rescue site cautiously, not wanting to interrupt. As he’d mentioned this being a missing person situation, the gathering of vehicles and people appeared to be their base of operations, a sort of mobile rescue center for the men and women initiating the search. The people—ten in all—stood gathered around a heavily mustachioed older man in what looked like a ranger’s outfit, many of them taking notes, all of them shuffling anxiously.

This was a bad place to be lost, that was for sure. Further up the hill, Mt. Spokane was a popular ski resort, but down here at the bottom, the forest stretched off for miles in every direction. Unofficial cross-country skiing tracks were located down here, and prints of several long, heavy skis went up one well-marked path.

That wasn’t where the group’s attention rested, though. They were focused on several sets of roundish prints heading into the woods—right next to a sign clearly marked Trail Closed.

Lexie shivered and wrapped her arms tighter around herself. It was all too easy to imagine herself in that situation, lost and scared, leading the way with yet another well-meaning attempt gone wrong. It was a good thing she kept her athletic endeavors well within the confines of yoga and Zumba, where the gym’s well-lit and fully staffed interior kept her away from any major harm.

She must have been louder than she thought, crunching along in the snow. Fletcher’s head—a good half a foot above everyone else’s—turned her direction. With a leap, she vaulted herself behind the larger of the two truck trailers.

No need to make this a bigger deal than it already was—no need to draw Fletcher away from his task. Get in, get out, get home. Leave the professionals to the real work while she went home to drink her expensive hot chocolate and curl up with a book.

All while someone else faced death. Never before had Lexie felt so ornamental. So useless.

There were a few packs on the ground next to the trailer. She didn’t see Fletcher’s, but the door to the trailer was slightly ajar. It was one of those tallish ones, the kind people used to move furniture, big enough to stand up in, as long as she hunched. Pushing gently on the door, she peeked inside.
There.
The space looked to be full of extra gear—harnesses and huge jugs of water, a first aid kit. A stretcher. Included with these more ominous items were the rest of the packs.

It didn’t take long to spot the dingy blue of Fletcher’s. Crouching near it, she reached into her pocket so she could clip the compass to the outside. But her hand grasped nothing, save for a ball of lint and one really old Godiva chocolate.

“What the—?” She shed her glove and dug harder.
Typical.
Trust her to lose the darn thing between here and the car. When her hand finally hit metal—seriously, how deep did this pocket go?—she was so relieved she shot to her feet.

She heard the sound of her head cracking against the ceiling of the trailer before she felt it, loud and splintering and reverberating through her skull. The last thought she had before the bright white behind her eyes gave way to darkness was that she hoped they didn’t hear her outside.

Chapter Eight

“Owens, help pack up the snowmobile, and then you’ll go out with the eastbound search party.”

Fletcher nodded, accepting his relatively tame assignment without demur. The eastbound route was flat and accessible—the bunny hill of mountain rescues, and the least likely to yield the missing snowshoer, as there were several lookouts along the way where she could have stopped for help.

But Fletcher wasn’t a medic or a helicopter pilot, and he rarely took on a leadership role, which left him a regular in foot-bound searches. His part wasn’t flashy, and it was far from the heroic face the media put on him, but someone had to make up the numbers. Someone had to be the reliable face in the crowd.

“You guys better set out soon. The storm is picking up, and we only have a few hours of daylight left. The daughter indicated that Martha has some wilderness training, so look for any signs of fire, flares, or other clues. Stay in teams of four, and we report back here at eighteen hundred hours. Got it?” Newman, the Unit Leader and a man with one of those huge, motorcycle mustaches that made him stern and commanding even when he smiled, wasn’t the type to mince words. He’d been in charge for as long as Fletcher had been participating in the group, and his command was a starting bell for action.

They moved out.

“Where’s your news crew this time?” joked a woman in a red parka as they broke from the team and prepared to load up their packs. Once a nurse, Lisa was now a stay-at-home mom whose search and rescue work came second only to her kids. With curly hair that sprang from her head in all directions and a wicked sense of humor, she’d always been one of the few bright spots in these situations. “I can’t tell you how many of the single parents in my playgroup have asked for an introduction to the Internet Hero. Men
and
women,” she added knowingly.

“I hate that picture.”

Lisa laughed and helped him hoist a first aid kit onto the back of one of the snowmobiles. “You can tell me all about it on the search. Maybe you can even sign a few autographs for me to hand out at birthday parties.”

Fletcher offered to run through the checklist to see if they had everything loaded up while Lisa added an underlayer to her jacket. She, a volunteer firefighter named Ace who looked and acted at least two decades younger than his fifty years, and a local climber named Max would be accompanying him on foot along the eastbound route. They always moved in teams of four. Newman liked nice, round numbers.

Fletcher was elbow deep in flashlights and spare batteries when the shout came from behind the trailers.

“We need a medic over here! Where’s Lisa?”

Both Fletcher and Lisa looked up at the same time, sharing a glance. Although he only saw this woman a few weeks out of every year when all was done and tallied up, they’d spent enough time in situations like these to move without speaking. Lisa brushed off her pants and trotted to the scene while Fletcher grabbed a white box marked with a bold red cross.

And then he stopped, the first aid kit hitting the snow with a muted thump. He wanted to rub his eyes like a little boy, hoping to wipe the horrors away, but a paralyzing fear overtook him. That couldn’t be Lexie—not
his
Lexie, not that very limp woman being carted out of the storage trailer.

Except it was. Of course it was.

“Fletcher, move.” Lisa pushed him gently out of the way and dropped to Lexie’s side, doing all the normal things like checking her pulse and assessing her for injury. Still Fletcher didn’t move, unable to do anything more than take in the chalky white pallor of that normally animated face.

His own was probably just as pale, but he would have gladly leeched every drop of blood from his body and bathed her in it if it meant she’d be okay.

Lexie groaned and thrashed, coming to life with all the fervor one could hope for in a situation like this, and Fletcher realized just how creepy that last thought had been. Creepy, yet true.

“Fletcher,” she said, recognizing him. All eyes turned his way. In his stupor, he’d somehow failed to notice that the entire team was gathered around them, concern knitting every brow into a tapestry.

“You know this woman?” Lisa asked.

He nodded. “She’s my . . . ” Friend? Fantasy? Nothing but a what-if dream? “Lexie,” he finished lamely.

Lisa’s expression shifted, softening as she assessed the pair of them with her quick, efficient eyes. “Well, your Lexie has quite the contusion on her head. Let me guess, darling—stood up too fast in that trailer, didn’t you? Done it myself plenty of times.”

Lexie nodded gingerly and struggled to sit up. Ace lifted an arm to brace her, but Fletcher’s body finally decided it could, in fact, move of its own accord, and he practically shoved the larger man out of his way.