“I TOLD YOU they were still alive,” Leah cried. “That was Taylor’s voice!”
“Brian!” Aiden shouted. “Brian, answer me!” What came back was the same female voice he and Leah had first heard, from somewhere west of them in the forest. Aiden fought back the rising fear that the reason Brian hadn’t answered was because he couldn’t answer. Maybe Brian had left Taylor behind and was off hunting somewhere.
In his heart of hearts, he didn’t believe it. He’d seen Brian’s limp in his footprints, seen him drag his right foot in the ashes rather than pick it up. Brian was badly hurt.
They’d followed Brian and Taylor’s trail easily for about the first hour after they’d left the cave. Then the rainstorm had hit and washed it out. They’d headed in what they thought was a logical direction the two could have taken, but they didn’t find their tracks again. They’d searched in one direction and then another. The past four days had been a nightmare of disappointments. Aiden had begun to lose hope. It had been difficult to admit that Brian might be gone.
His father had exhorted him to give up the search and come home. “Either he’ll walk out of the forest, or he won’t,” Angus had said. “You’re not going to locate Brian in a wilderness that vast.”
“Don’t argue with me, Dad,” he’d replied in a steely voice. “I’m not coming back until I find him.”
King had apparently said pretty much the same thing to Leah. Her response had been considerably more blunt.
After she’d ended the satellite phone call to her father, Aiden had looked into Leah’s desolate—and determined—hazel eyes and seen that she had no intention of giving up. He would cheerfully endure a little obstinacy in the woman he loved for the sake of spending his life with her. That is, assuming he could get her to forgo an annulment.
At least she’d been speaking to him, sharing stories about her sister. When they’d exhausted that topic, she’d asked him about Brian, to keep him talking. He’d realized that Leah needed their conversation to hold back the fear that threatened to overwhelm her.
He’d resisted the urge to offer the comfort of his arms. He could tell by the way Leah occasionally eyed him askance that he’d given her food for thought in his recent confession. It was equally clear, from the way she kept her distance, that she had no inclination—yet—of offering dispensation. It wasn’t easy to give her the space to make up her mind, but he knew enough about Leah to understand that she measured all the pros and cons before coming to any decision. And she couldn’t be rushed.
This morning, they’d finally stumbled onto Brian and Taylor’s trail again, but it had been days old. Nevertheless, they’d shadowed their siblings’ footsteps. Taylor’s shouts confirmed that, at long last, they’d located their missing family.
“This way!” Leah cried, running off in the direction of Taylor’s voice.
Aiden listened to Leah’s frantic shouts and Taylor’s hoarse replies until they could see Taylor sitting on the ground beneath an aspen, Brian lying beside her, his head in her lap.
Leah kept running until she was able to drop to her knees and wrap her arms around her sister.
Aiden stopped short, unable to breathe, his heart caught in his throat.
It was hard to believe that the gaunt woman Leah was hugging, her blond hair a mass of rat’s nests, her face filthy, her clothes ragged and hanging off her body, was Taylor Grayhawk. He looked from Taylor to the equally emaciated man on the ground, his damp hair sticking up, brushed away from his brother’s forehead, he imagined, by a soothing hand. Brian’s bearded face was devoid of color and his chest lay still, with no air moving in or out, at least as far as Aiden could tell from where he stood.
He tried to take a step closer, but the shock of seeing Brian laid so low had rooted him in place. He met Taylor’s despondent gaze and knew the awful truth without having to be told.
Taylor said it anyway. “He’s dead.”
Leah immediately pressed two fingers to Brian’s carotid, then leaned over and held her cheek next to his nose. “No, Aiden. He’s still alive!”
That bit of hope freed Aiden, and he threw himself across the last few feet, dropping to his knees at Brian’s side. He took Brian’s cold hand in his own and urged, “Hang in there, Brian. We’re here. Help is on the way.”
Then he smelled the gangrene that was killing his brother. He choked on the stench, then swallowed his gorge.
He might never forgive Leah for those few moments of hope he’d experienced when she’d told him Brian was alive, because now he would need to go through that awful moment of acceptance all over again. It was plain that Brian had traveled far more than halfway across death’s doorstep.
“Brian needs a medivac,” Leah said, one arm around Taylor and the other on Brian’s shoulder. “Now!”
Aiden realized he’d been sitting doing nothing while Brian edged slowly, but surely, away from the world of the living. He grabbed his satellite phone and called for a helicopter, explaining what he needed.
“They can’t get a basket in here,” Leah pointed out. “The forest is too dense.”
“I’ve got Primacord. I’ll make a space big enough.” He looked for the largest opening he could find in the trees, then set about wrapping Primacord around tree trunks, setting off explosions to neatly take down everything necessary to make a space sufficient for a medivac helicopter to lower a basket and get it back out.
He was grateful for the hard work. Even so, it took a lifetime—Brian’s ebbing lifetime—for the helicopter to appear. Aiden had plenty of time to take another good look at Taylor. She was suffering from more than malnutrition. Her vivacious spirit seemed to have eked out of her, like air out of a balloon. He wondered how much longer she would have lasted, if she and Brian hadn’t been found. He had no doubt that her tireless care of Brian was the reason his brother had lasted as long as he had.
He crossed to her and said, “Thank you.”
She looked up at him with dull, despairing eyes in a skeletal face. “For what?”
“For keeping Brian alive.”
He’d been surprised by her lack of tears in her emotional reunion with Leah, who’d been blubbering like a baby, but his words must have reminded her that Brian was hanging on to life by a thread, because her eyes suddenly filled with tears.
“I didn’t know what to do,” she whispered in a voice that sent chills down his spine. “There was nothing else I could do. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Leah shot him a warning look and took her sister in her arms, holding her tight, as though to keep her from slipping away.
He heard the flackita, flackita, flackita that announced the helicopter had arrived.
“Help is here,” Leah crooned to her sister. “Your work is done, Taylor. You can rest now.”
Aiden watched Taylor’s eyes slide closed and her chin drop to her chest.
“I’m so tired,” she said.
Her body sagged and then went completely limp.
Leah met his gaze, her arms wrapped tightly around her unconscious sister, while silent tears streamed down her face.
Aiden couldn’t look any longer at the desperate tableau. He stepped into the clearing he’d made and popped colored smoke to show their exact location.
He and Leah had done what they’d set out to do. They’d found Brian and Taylor. Now all they had to do was keep them both alive until they reached the hospital in Jackson.