Page 37 of One Last Chance

Nothing. Her finger caught on the scratching of the bird.

Maybe it wasn’t a sparrow. Maybe it was a phoenix.

Maybe it was her one last chance to save a life out here in the bush.

* * *

“Moose, you okay in there?”

The voice came through the bathroom door from where Moose stood over the toilet, pretty sure that, nope, he wasn’t okay.

Might never be okay.

But maybe his stomach had called it quits for now.

He ran water, washed his face, rinsed out his mouth, and stared at himself for a long moment. His eyes bore the agony of the past five hours, reddened, raw, furious—and not just at Axel but at himself for not sticking around.

He’d left his brother to die in the frothing, roiling ocean.

Axelcouldn’tbe gone.

He opened the door to see the team EMT, Boo Kingston, standing there. Petite but fierce, her dark hair pulled back in a severe bun, she wore the red jumpsuit of the Air One Rescue team and held a Sprite and a stack of saltines. “You need to eat something or you won’t make it back out. And you need sleep.”

“Don’t talk to me about sleep with my brother out there.” But he did take the can of soda and walk to the massive hangar windows that overlooked Coal Bay. Outside, wind and rain lashed the Bell 429 chopper, sitting under the bloom of tall tarmac lights. The runway lit up the night, a trail of white into blackness. Voices and the bitter scent of burnt coffee languishing in the pot filtered into the room. Cessnas undergoing their 100-hour inspections filled the massive hangar, the mechanic boxes lined up against the walls.

Boo came up beside him. Said nothing, just stood, silent.

No amount of hopeful talk could deny the truth.

“How is the family?” he finally said.

“Alive. The father has a broken leg, and the mother is getting stitches and is being treated for a concussion. But the kids are alive and so is the captain.” She took a cracker from the sheath and took a bite. The crumbs spilled onto the floor.

He held out his hand, and she put a cracker in it.

If his brother, by some miracle, managed to stay alive, he wanted to be on his feet. Which meant that yes, he needed shut-eye or the FAA would shut him down and he’d have to rely on the Coast Guard, or maybe even Dodge from Copper Mountain to fly down and take the chopper out.

“Where’s the bunk room?”

She motioned toward the office area in back. “They don’t have a proper SAR bunk room, but they set up cots in the waiting room.”

“Thanks.”

He felt her gaze on him when he walked away. It wasn’t every day that their fearless leader lost it as completely as he had after they touched down and after the winds hit ninety knots.

He’d barely made it to the head.

But he’d never been as sick as he’d been watching from a safe three hundred feet above as the Lady Luck pitchpoled, bow to stern, then rolled over, exposing her keel before plunging under the waves.

Axel trapped inside.

Oh God, please save him.

He’d said the prayer then and again a thousand times as they tried to reach Axel via radio, and as he’d flown the crew back to the Homer Airport, where they’d tried to locate the boat on radar.

His brother had simply vanished.

Moose came into the waiting room and spotted London lying on a cot, her eyes closed, curled under a blanket. The other cots remained empty. He found one in the corner and lay down.

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