Page 20 of Rescued By the Mountain Man

Desert heat. The whistle. Diaz shouting something I couldn't hear over the ringing in my ears. The smell of burning fuel and flesh. My hand reaching for Harper's shoulder and finding nothing but—

"Mack!"

Brynn's voice, impossibly present in this memory that belonged three years and thousands of miles away. I blinked, reality reasserting itself in fragments—muddy field, not desert sand; rain, not fire; Ashwood, not Afghanistan.

She stood before me, rain-soaked and wide-eyed, hand outstretched but not quite touching me. She'd recognized what was happening without needing explanation.

"Upstream dam breach," she said, voice deliberately calm. "They're moving everyone to higher ground for fifteen minutes while the surge passes. Captain Dawson sent me to find you."

I nodded, speech temporarily beyond me as I fought to regulate my breathing. Somewhere in the chaos, Scout had appeared at my side, wet muzzle pressed against my palm in canine reassurance.

"I'm good," I managed finally, the tremor in my hands belying the claim.

Brynn's eyes held no judgment, only quiet understanding. "We need to move to the equipment barn. Ian says it's on bedrock, safe from the surge."

The crisis management part of my brain re-engaged, pushing personal demons back into their box. "The levee needs three more minutes of reinforcement or we'll lose the whole system when the surge hits."

"The captain ordered everyone back," she began, but something in my expression stopped her. After a moment's hesitation, she nodded. "What do you need me to do?"

Five minutes later, as the leading edge of the dam release hit the lower valley, I secured the final reinforcement to the critical junction of the levee system. Brynn waited ten feet away on stable ground, prepared to alert others if the structural integrity failed.

The water rose with terrifying speed, nearly two feet in sixty seconds, cresting against our hastily reinforced barrier with physical force I could feel through the ground beneath my boots. For one heart-stopping moment, I thought it would breach, rendering our efforts meaningless.

Then the water held, diverted by the channel improvements into the secondary flood plain exactly as intended. Relief surged through me, momentarily more powerful than the adrenaline that had sustained me for the past hour.

As we jogged toward the equipment barn where others had sheltered, Brynn flashed me a smile so genuinely admiring it pierced straight through my all defenses like an arrow straight to the heart.

"You were amazing," she said, breathless from exertion. "The way you took charge, how you knew exactly what to do—Mack, you saved this place."

I shook my head, uncomfortable with her praise yet undeniably affected by it. "Team effort."

"Bullshit," she countered with surprising vehemence. "I watched you turn chaos into order in minutes. Those people responded to your leadership instantly."

Before I could formulate a response that wouldn't sound either falsely modest or egotistical, we reached the equipment barn where volunteers huddled, watching water levels through the open doors. Ian spotted us immediately, relief evident in his usually stoic features.

"Thought you might have ignored the evacuation order," he said, clapping my shoulder. "Should've known you'd make it work regardless."

"Channel holding?" I asked, deflecting his implied praise.

"Better than holding. Your reinforcement pattern diverted the main surge away from the orchard buildings completely." He lowered his voice, adding, "Damn good to see you in action again, little brother."

The surge passed within twenty minutes, leaving behind a transformed landscape but, miraculously, minimal structural damage to the main orchard facilities. As volunteers emerged from shelter to assess the aftermath, Harriet Lindstrom made her way directly to where I stood examining the now-stabilized levee system.

"Mackenzie Thornton," she pronounced, water dripping from her practical rain hat. "Three years you've been hiding up on that mountain, and today you decide to remember you're part of this community."

I braced for criticism—deserved, given my prolonged absence from town affairs—but instead found myself enveloped in a fierce embrace from the wiry orchard owner.

"Saved my livelihood," she stated matter-of-factly upon releasing me. "Ian says that reinforcement pattern was your doing. Without it, we'd be looking at total loss."

"Just helped where needed," I muttered, discomfort with praise not diminishing its unexpected impact.

"Well, you're needed more often than you think," she replied with the directness of someone who'd survived six decades of Montana winters. "Don't be such a stranger."

As darkness fell, the immediate crisis subsided into organized recovery efforts. The rain finally slackened to a gentle patter, stars occasionally visible through breaks in the cloud cover. My body, accustomed to physical labor but not the particular demands of flood mitigation, began sending increasingly urgent signals that it had reached its limits.

I found Brynn helping distribute coffee and food to exhausted volunteers, her borrowed raincoat exchanged for a blanket draped over her shoulders. Despite the mud splattered across her jeans and the utter depletion evident in her posture, something luminous animated her features when she spotted me approaching.

"Ready to head back?" I asked, surprising myself with how desperately I wanted her to say yes. The public nature of the crisis had provided temporary shelter from the private confrontation still looming between us, but exhaustion had eroded my emotional defenses to dangerous levels.

---