Chapter Two

“Wh-what you got, boy?” Chance asked, though he already knew. Gallo had found a human body, and by the way his eyes glowed with wolfish pride, he wasn’t about to let it go.

Chance gave himself two seconds of shock-and-awe before he grabbed that delicate forearm and came up with two handfuls of a still-as-death, waterlogged woman. He jerked her face out of the water, tucked her under his arm in a lifeguard’s hold, and made for shore. Gallo followed, his jaws clamped on her other arm, helping transport her in his smiling, canine way, splashing out of the shallows and onto the frozen, snow-drifted shore.

H-h-holy shit. Shivers rattled Chance as he hunched over the prone body of a young woman, her legs sprawled like those of a forgotten mannequin out of a horror movie. Long, dark hair hid her facial features, not that they mattered. The dead weren’t known for their good looks. Chance didn’t want to leave her here, but if he didn’t hurry, he and his dog would soon be just as dead. Time had officially expired for this poor gal—whoever she was—and it would soon expire for silly lost dogs and men foolish enough to go into the storm after them.

Still… he had heard a groan before. He damned well knew it. It might have been the wind or a tree. It could’ve been Gallo. But it might have been her.

Canting his head to listen better—in case she made another sound—Chance dragged the seaweed-style-hair off her face. Two wide-open eyes stared back at him, not that he’d expected anything else. Damn, I’m right. She is dead.

Peering upward into the swirling storm battering his mountain, he wondered back to that cracking sound he’d heard. Was it her? Could she have fallen from his mountain? No way. What were the odds of anyone surviving something like that? The southern face of Old Man Mountain wasn’t particularly high, maybe thirty feet at the most. Nothing but a toothy, ragged ledge waited between the top lip of the cliff and the sheer drop to the bottom. The northern peak was the higher of the two, but no one could survive a fall from the south exposure. It just wasn’t possible. Not on a night like this.

Still. Here she was. And old habits died hard. Chance rolled the cramp out of his neck. He wasn’t one to leave anyone behind. He hadn’t in all his service years; he wasn’t going to start now. Stripping out of his waterlogged and frozen gloves, he pressed two icy fingers to her neck, hoping to find a pulse.

Nothing. Pressing his ear to her gaping mouth, he begged for the barest proof of life. A puff of frozen air. A wheeze. Anything! “Breathe for me, baby,” he commanded the frozen corpse. “Give me a reason to stay.” Because I’m dumb like that. I’ll stay.

The woman lay lifeless, as stiff as a board and just as responsive. Frost already glazed the tip of her pert nose and her eyelashes, but not a ghost of frozen vapor whispered past her blue lips.

Chance turned to the sky. “Goddamn it! Give me something to work with here! I don’t want to leave her, but I will if I have to. I have to save my dog.” And myself.

God didn’t answer any quicker than the dead body had. Jesus H. Christ!

Chance sat back on his haunches, as pissed at the Lord as he was the serial killer called Mother Nature. He couldn’t walk away from this sad corpse, even in this wicked storm. SEALs didn’t do that. The credo he’d taken into his soul resonated like a pulsing fire: Never Quit. Never!

Okay then. We do this the hard way. He steeled his nerve against the bitter weather. Interlocking his thumbs, Chance compressed both palms over her chest and pushed.

One-one-thousand. Two-one-thousand.

Her sodden shirt and bra squished under his hands. Shifting his knees, he pressed his mouth over her icicle lips and inflated her lungs with the last of his overheated air. Again and again, he pushed, counted, then exhaled into this dead body’s lungs. She was someone’s little girl. Someone, somewhere had to be missing her. Worrying about her. Her parents? Her husband? Maybe a baby?

One-one-thousand. Two-one-thousand. Refusing to give up, Chance gave her all he’d brought with him, his pig-headed heart and his last dying breath.

One-one-thousand. Two-one-thousand.

With each compression, water bubbled between her lips, but not once did she gasp, cough, choke, spit, or blink. Silly Gallo had taken up residence on her belly and thighs, the woman claimed and her left wrist still caught in his jaw. He held it gently though, not like a bone to eat so much as a—lifeline. Whether he knew it or not, his soggy body warmth had to be seeping into her, but was it enough?

Pursing his lips before he breathed into her one last time, he knew this was the end. He had no more to give. The wind tore the moisture out of his eyes as he labored to bring her back from the frozen dead, but nothing worked. This was yet another battle he couldn’t win. He sat back, exhausted.

Facts were facts. Shit. She’s really dead.

Swallowing hard at his failure, Chance rested as that bleak reality sank in, his chest heaving and his lungs on fire. Like that other time, he’d arrived too late to save this woman. She was gone, and he was a fool to think he could fight the odds. In a few minutes, his mother’s pup would be as frozen as this corpse if they didn’t start for home now.

A man can only do so much.

Yeah. Heard all that before.

But Chance was not most men. He’d made promises he refused to break, even now, at the worst of times. I humbly serve as a guardian to my fellow Americans, always ready to defend those who are unable to defend themselves. I will never quit. I will not fail!

“Goddamn it, you’re going to live,” he bit out, as the stiff wind stole Gallo’s whine of encouragement. Chance risked a quick swipe across his brow, surprised that he was sweating. Like the downward end of a teeter-totter, he leaned back into the face of Death and told it to, “Go back to hell!”

Sheer willpower flamed back to life. With a jerk, he rolled the righteous wrath of too many losses off his shoulders. Compressions began anew. Solid strokes that might break her ribs, but she would live, damn it.

One-one-thousand. Two-one-thousand. Working on borrowed time now, he covered her mouth and inflated her lungs with the warm moist air from his body. Breathe, baby. I know you can do it. Just try. You want to live. I know you do.

Shaking from the cold, he tipped back to his haunches to catch his breath, out of his ever-loving mind to be working this hard on a dead body, but the thought of leaving this waif of a woman out here by herself ate at him. She had no business being on his mountain. She sure as hell wasn’t going to die on it.

Gallo offered another anxious whine when—her chest heaved. It did!

The frozen lady sputtered. She blinked!

“Cough it all out,” Chance ordered, even as the wicked winter sliced like a switchblade across both their exposed throats. “I knew you could do it.” He tipped her up into one arm while water dribbled out of her mouth and down her neck. “Thank God, you’re alive. I’ve got you now. Breathe. Just breathe. Keep it up. There you go.”

She shook her head, just barely, but hell, yeah! She coughed and gagged and that was enough answer for Chance. Unzipping his sodden jacket and scarf, he pulled her onto his lap and tucked her against his chest, dislodging his faithful mutt from her legs.

“Let her go,” he told his dog, and for the first time that night, Gallo obeyed. The crazy kid’s black licorice lips stretched wide with a silly smile when he released his prize. “Good, good boy,” Chance praised.

With her wrapped up as tightly as he could get her inside the life-saving Gortex, he zipped it up to her chin. Between the two of them, a wet jacket was better than nothing. Worried that he might have caused his victim permanent spinal damage while saving her, Chance struggled to his feet. Catching his balance, he hurried back to his cabin and the fire he’d left banked and glowing in his fireplace, his charge pressed tightly into his body. The blaze would be close to ashes by now, but the cabin would still be warm.

Every step chilled the hell out of him, but seconds. He had mere seconds to get her out of the weather, out of her wet clothes, and warmed, or he’d saved nothing. Whoever this gal was, she was the important one now. Only her.

“Are you with me?” he asked the four-legged buddy dashing through the drifts beside him as if this was merely a fun romp in the snow.

A hearty “Yap!” sounded over the stiff wind, and mentally, Chance promised Gallo a big slice off the venison roast thawing in his refrigerator. Mom’s dog might be worth something after all.

Chance ran then, the icy snow pelting his cheeks, making it harder to see. The trail his boots made on his way to the pond was already well covered, but he didn’t need it. He was the finder of lost people on SEAL Team Three. He knew how many steps would put him at his bottom step, and he cut that time by half, the find of a lifetime secure in his arms. But God! She was so cold!

Whoever she was, she was light. Maybe a hundred pounds. Maybe five foot nothing. Soft, blessed with curves, and full-busted—yes, he’d noticed—but hell. She wore nothing but jeans, boots, and a flannel shirt, foolish get-up for a night so raw. Where was her coat? Her hat? Her gloves. Her damned friends? She couldn’t have been out here alone.

On his porch at last, his body thrummed with cold and adrenaline while his mind worked a ready list of imperatives if this stranger were to survive—and she would, by hell. Strip her wet clothes off. Wrap her in my warmest blankets. Wrap a towel around her wet head. Stoke the fire. Keep it hot in the cabin. Boil water to cleanse any wounds. But mostly, keep her breathing.

Angling her headfirst toward the door, he fumbled, one-handed at the icy knob. His fingers were numb, but he kept at it until it gave. He all but ran to deposit his sad guest on the leather couch facing his fireplace. Gallo took position on his spot, the rag rug at the hearth. Dogs were smart like that.

“Good, good boy,” Chance praised him as he returned to shut the door. Back at the fireplace, he put three hefty pine logs on the glowing embers of what had been a stout blaze earlier. The spent wood crumbled to ash under the weight, but three fresh logs ought to do it. For now.

It took three minutes tops to scrape out of his wet clothes and boots in his bathroom. Once again in jeans and a T-shirt from the stack of dirty clothes near the foot of his bed, Chance collected an armful of supplies from the linen closet on his way back to the couch. He draped one bath sheet around Gallo’s shoulders and back. “I’m sorry, but she comes first,” Chance told his faithful companion. “Be good and stay by the fire.”

Without waiting for an answer from a dog that was known to talk back in his grumbly German Shepherd voice, Chance stacked the rest of the supplies on the end table beside the couch. Next, he retrieved a deep pan of warm, sudsy water from the kitchen. Returning to the unconscious woman, he wrapped her head and most of her sodden hair, a deep scarlet shade, in another bath sheet until her face barely showed. He needed to keep her head warm.

While Gallo watched, the soggy Gortex jacket, her waterlogged boots and socks went into a pile at the other end of the couch. Her shirt and bra were next, lastly her jeans and panties. Even naked, she didn’t shiver, and that was a bad sign. But worse? An ugly gash on the outside of her left thigh ran in a ragged line from her kneecap to her hipbone, widening near her hip.

“What’d you do, run into a sharp chunk of shale on your way down?” Chance asked his silent guest while he wrapped his most absorbent blanket around her, then doubled it with another. That assessment made sense. Maybe she’d fallen in increments instead of straight down. That might explain how she’d survived, though he was fairly certain it was a dead drop from top to bottom.

The highest cliff on this side of Old Man Mountain was a ragged granite edge with a ten-foot lip that extended over dead air. On a good day, a guy could see forever from that vantage point. The seasonal waterfall began its descent there. Considering where she’d landed, she had to have fallen from that cliff, then struck the second ledge farther down the sheer granite wall, a narrow overhang of last chances, before she’d hit dead center of the pool.

The runoff spilling over that cliff had earned the name Mother’s Day Falls over the years, since May was the only season the snowmelt blossomed into an actual waterfall. Millennia of high snowpack years had hollowed the divot below the sheer granite face of that mountain, creating the pond. What the hell was she doing up there on a night like this?

Battle injuries he knew, but this woman’s condition had all the earmarks of an attempted suicide—a first for his corner of the world. She’d jumped. That was all that made sense. His reasoning? No coat. What kind of person climbed to the top of a mountain in a storm without proper winter gear?

One who wants to die.