Page 30 of Save Me

“Okay,” she said, and then took her first bite of food in three days. It was manna in her mouth.

It was full-on dark, but the lantern shed good light. Good enough for Hunt to see the numbers on the SAT phone. He was relieved by the gusto with which she was eating. She was a raggedy, bloody mess, but she wasn’t too sick to eat. He was trying to remember if it was “starve a cold and feed a fever,” or the opposite, when the ranger suddenly answered.

“Hello? This is Scott.”

“Scott, this is Hunt. I found her. She’s alive, mostly cognizant except when she’s afraid I’m going to disappear, and wolfing down an MRE as we speak. But she’s not out of the woods. She’s definitely suffering from dehydration, hypothermia and fever. She wore out her socks walking and running. Her feet are shredded, and infection has set in to some of her wounds. She’s running a 104 degree fever, but I just gave her some Bactrim tablets for infection, and some meds for fever. I hope that will offset the worst until we get her down. She’s also a lot farther up the mountain from where her belongings were found, but my initial impressions were right. Take my GPS location. She’s okay to wait it out until morning, and she’s safe here with me now.”

“Man...this is the best news ever. I’ve got a fix on your location. We’ll have to pack her back to a trail and then bring her down to where one of the Life Flight choppers can pick her up. You stay put. We’ll head your way at daybreak.”

“Understood,” Hunt said, and disconnected. “Okay, the authorities have been notified, and there will be a lot of happy people tonight. They have been searching hard for you for three days.”

She had finished the spaghetti and was licking her spoon when a thought occurred to her. “How did they know I was missing?”

“Not sure why, but the hiker, Randall...took himself to an ER and told some big story about hiking with you and being attacked by a bear.”

Lainie tried to laugh, but it came out in a groan. “The bear was me.” And that’s when she began to describe the attack in detail.

Hunt could only imagine what Randall must have looked like when he walked into the ER, and kept staring at her. The defiant girl he’d loved had grown into a warrior. But there were pending battles she knew nothing about.

“Your parents were at the trailhead with the search crew when I arrived.”

She went pale. “I don’t want to see them, ever. Don’t let him near me. Please, I—”

“I won’t, darlin’. I promise,” he said, and then began unrolling the sleeping bag he hadn’t used the night before. “It’s getting colder, and I need to keep you warm. I’m going to slide in, and then you nestle in against me, and I’ll zip us in, then cover us with the blanket, okay?”

Her face was in shadows, but she had an odd expression on her face, and she hadn’t answered.

“Lainie...darlin’, what’s wrong?”

“We’ve made love a hundred times, but we’ve never slept together. I never imagined it would happen when I look like and feel like this, or that it would be on a mountain under a pile of brush.”

He grinned. “What do we do when faced with a difficult decision?”

She sighed. “The unexpected.”

“So...we’re right on target,” he said. He took the lantern to the sleeping bag, spread it out, then carried her there and laid her down on the outside edge. Then he began pulling all the limbs and brush back into place so they were once again enclosed. He situated his backpack and gun within reach before scooting himself into the bag behind her.

After that, it was a simple matter of zipping them in, spreading the blanket and the sleeping bag over their shoulders before turning off the lantern. Now they were lying on their sides, her back to his chest, with her head beneath his chin, enfolded within his arms.

“My poor, darlin’, what a nightmare you have had. Are you okay? Do you need to move to a more comfortable position?”

“I’m okay,” she said, but he knew she was crying again.

“I love you, Lainie. Time hasn’t changed any of that for me.” His voice was a rumble in her ear. She was glad it was dark, and he couldn’t see her face, because she had yet to talk about the elephant in the room.

“Hunt...there was a baby.”

He took a breath, careful to choose the right words without sounding like an accusation. “I know, honey. I found out after I learned you were missing, but why didn’t you tell me?”

His arm was across her shoulders, holding her close. As she reached for him, his fingers curled around her hands.

Her tears were rolling in earnest now.

“I didn’t realize it myself until I’d missed my second period, which meant I was nearly two months along. I panicked. I knew what hell the news would unleash, and kept trying to find the right time to tell you, and then I started bleeding, and I thought I’d miscarried.”

He hugged her closer, waiting. It was her story to tell.

“But then I didn’t have my third period, either, and so I took another pregnancy test, and it was still positive.” The timbre of her voice lifted. “I’m not going to lie. I know we didn’t plan it, but I was happy. I knew it would be hard, but I figured we’d find a way to make it work once we were both at college. I told myself I could start a year later, and you’d already be there on your scholarship and...well...then it all became moot. Remember when I disappeared the night of the storm?”

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