Page 1 of Mountain Captive

Chapter One

Rand Martin had built his reputation on noticing details—the tiny nick in an artery that was the source of life-threatening blood loss; the almost microscopic bit of shrapnel that might lead to a deadly infection; the panic in a wounded man’s eyes that could send his vitals out of control; the tremor in a fellow surgeon’s hand that meant he wasn’t fit to operate. As a trauma surgeon—first in the military, then in civilian life—Rand noticed the little things others overlooked. It made him a better doctor, and it equipped him to deal with the people in his life.

But sometimes that focus on the small picture got in the way of his big-picture job. Today, his first call as medical adviser for Eagle Mountain Search and Rescue, he was supposed to be focusing on the sixty-something man sprawled on the side of a high mountain trail. But Rand’s attention kept shifting to the woman who knelt beside the man. Her blue-and-yellow vest identified her as a member of the search and rescue team, but her turquoise hair and full sleeve of colorful tattoos set her apart from the other volunteers. That, and the wariness that radiated off her as she surveyed the crowd that was fast gathering around her and her patient on the popular hiking trail.

“Everyone move back and give us some space,” Rand ordered, and, like the men and women he had commanded in his mobile surgical unit in Kabul, the crowd obeyed and fell back.

SAR Captain Danny Irwin rose from where he had been crouched on the patient’s other side and greeted Rand. “Thanks for coming out,” he said.

“Are you the doctor?” Another woman, blond hair in a ponytail that streamed down her back, rushed forward.

“Dr. Rand Martin.” He didn’t offer his hand, already pulling on latex gloves, ready to examine his patient. The blue-haired woman had risen also, and was edging to one side of the trail. As if she was trying to blend in with the crowd—a notion Rand found curious. Nothing about this woman would allow her to blend in. Even without the wildly colored hair and the ink down her arm, she was too striking to ever be invisible.

“My dad has a heart condition,” the blonde said. “I tried to tell him he shouldn’t be hiking at this altitude, but he wouldn’t listen, and now this has happened.”

“Margo, please!” This, from the man on the ground. He had propped himself up on his elbows and was frowning at the woman, presumably his daughter. “I hurt my leg. It has nothing to do with my heart.”

“You don’t know that,” she said. “Maybe you fell because you were lightheaded or had an irregular heartbeat. If you weren’t so stubborn—”

A balding man close to the woman’s age moved up and put his hands on the woman’s shoulders. “Let’s wait and see what the doctor has to say,” he said, and led Margo a few feet away.

Rand crouched beside the man. He was pale, sweating and breathing hard. Not that unusual, considering the bone sticking out of his lower leg. He was probably in a lot of pain from that compound fracture, and despite his protestation that nothing was wrong with his heart, the pain and shock could aggravate an existing cardiac condition. “What happened?” Rand asked.

“We were coming down the trail and Buddy fell.” This, from another woman, with short gray curls. She sat a few feet away, flanked by two boys—early-or preteens, Rand guessed. The boys were staring at the man on the ground, freckles standing out against their pale skin.

“I stepped on a rock, and it rolled,” Buddy offered. “I heard a snap.” He grimaced. “Hurts like the devil.”

“We’ll get you something for the pain.” Rand saw that someone—Danny or the blue-haired woman—had already started an intravenous line. “Do you have a medical history?” he asked Danny.

The SAR captain—an RN in his day job—handed over a small clipboard. Buddy was apparently sixty-seven, on a couple of common cardiac drugs. No history of medication allergies, though Rand questioned him again to be absolutely sure. Then he checked the clipboard once more. “Mr. Morrison, we’re going to give you some morphine for the pain. It should take effect within a few minutes. Then we’re going to splint your leg, pack it in ice to keep the swelling down, and get you down the mountain and to the hospital for X-rays and treatment.”

“But his heart!” Margo, who’d shoved away from the balding man—her husband, perhaps—rushed forward again.

“Are you experiencing any chest pain?” Rand asked, even as he pulled out a stethoscope. “Palpitations?”

“No.” Buddy glanced toward his daughter and lowered his voice, his tone confiding. “I had a quadruple bypass nine months ago. I completed cardiac rehab, and I’m just fine. Despite what my daughter would have you believe, I’m not an idiot. My doctor thought this vacation was a fine idea. I’m under no activity restrictions.”

“Your doctor probably has no idea you would decide to hike six miles at ten thousand feet,” Margo said.

Rand slid the stethoscope beneath Buddy Morrison’s T-shirt and listened to the strong, if somewhat rapid, heartbeat. He studied the man’s pupils, which were fine. Some of the color was returning to his cheeks. Rand moved to check the pulse in his leg below the break.

“Chris, come hold this,” Danny called over to the young blue-haired woman after he had hooked the man’s IV line to a bag of saline. She held it, elevated, while he injected the morphine into the line. Rand watched her while trying to appear not to. Up close, she had fine lines at the corners of her eyes, which were a chocolatey brown, fringed with heavily mascaraed lashes. She had a round face, with a slight point to her chin and a Cupid’s bow mouth with a slightly fuller lower lip. It was a strikingly beautiful face, with a mouth he would have liked to kiss.

He pushed the inappropriate thought away and focused on working with Danny to straighten the man’s leg. Buddy groaned as the broken tip of the bone slid back under the skin, and the gray-haired woman let out a small cry as well. Margo took a step toward them. “What are you doing?” she asked. “You’re hurting him!”

“He’ll feel a lot better when the bones of the leg are in line and stabilized,” Rand said, and began to fit the inflatable splint around the man’s leg. Once air was added, the splint would form a tight, formfitting wrap that would make for a much more comfortable trip down the mountain on the litter.

The splint in place, Rand stood and stepped back. “You can take it from here,” he told Danny, and watched as half a dozen more volunteers swarmed in to assemble a wheeled litter, transferred Buddy onto it, and secured him, complete with a crash helmet, ice packs around his leg and warm blankets over the rest of his body.

While they worked, another female volunteer explained to Buddy’s family what would happen next. In addition to the family and the search and rescue volunteers, a crowd of maybe a dozen people clogged the trail, so each new hiker who descended the route was forced to join the bottleneck and wait. The onlookers talked among themselves, and more than a few snapped photographs.

Danny moved to Rand’s side. “It’s a little different from assessing a patient at the hospital ER,” Danny said.

“Different from the battlefield too,” Rand said. There was no scent of mortar rounds and burning structures here, and no overpowering disinfectant scent of a hospital setting. Only sunshine and a warm breeze with the vanilla-tinged scent of ponderosa pine.

“Thanks for coming out,” Danny said again.

“You could have handled it fine without me,” Rand said. He had heard enough from people around town to know Eagle Mountain SAR was considered one of the top wilderness-response teams in the state.

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