This wasn’t happening. It was part of a dream.
It had to be.
But it wasn’t. She remembered falling.
How long have I been here?
She pushed the question aside, knowing it was only a matter of time before the team would come for her. They were good. The best. And they knew what to do.
Even as the thought occurred, she was certain she could hear the cold air pulsing through the giant blades of the rescue helicopter somewhere above her. But by now, her head was hurting so badly it was hard to focus. Hard to think at all.
She fought off a wave of dizziness as bitter cold seeped into her bones, and slowly began testing her limbs, knowing the team would need to know how she was. Slowly, she tested her arms, fingers—
Her right arm was no longer numb. There was a burning sensation high in her shoulder, but it was manageable. But as she continued testing her limbs, she choked back a scream when she tried to move her left hand. A mistake. Nausea and darkness closed in. She could feel excruciating pain in her left wrist and knew it was broken. A mixture of adrenaline and shock made her shiver, but she pushed through it. Tried to stay above the pain as she gingerly tested her legs.
And felt nothing.
She tried not to panic as a cold fear passed through her. She wanted to scream. Wanted to weep and rail against the unfairness of it all until she was wrung dry and the fear left her. But she couldn’t. Wouldn’t.
The snow was falling more heavily now, but she could still hear the beat of the helicopter. And then she heard her name over her com link.
“Kellen?”
Annie?
Her vision faded, her teeth chattered, and her world narrowed to that one sound. The knowledge that Annie was near stemmed the tide of pain and fear flowing through her, but it was a struggle to get any words out. Her breathing was coming in shallow gulps, her voice labored and weak.
Then Annie was there. Others were there as well, but she kept her focus fixed on Annie, who had dropped to her knees beside her and was gently brushing snow and her hair out of her eyes.
“I’m here, Kel. We’ve got you. Now try to hold still, sweetie. We’re going to get you out of here as quickly as possible. In the meantime, I need you to focus, okay? Can you tell me what hurts the most?”
She felt Annie’s hand clamp on her shoulder, anchoring her in time and place, and Kellen focused on that with everything she had. She tried to do as Annie asked, but it was getting harder to breathe. She shivered violently and felt someone palpating her neck.
What was the question? What hurt the most?
She tried to formulate a response and struggled to get the words out. “My head hurts…really bad…there’s something wrong with my shoulder…I’m pretty sure my wrist is broken and maybe a couple of ribs.” She swallowed painfully and forced herself to continue. Forced herself to say the words she didn’t want to think, let alone say. “Annie. Oh God, Annie, I can’t feel my legs—”
She heard Annie saying something and became aware of a penlight flashing in her eyes. Felt someone put a neck brace on her, and the prick of an IV needle. Someone was speaking, but the words simply flowed around her, meaningless and disjointed.
“…head injury…shoulder bleeding…legs…”
“Annie?”
“I’m here.”
“Promise me…the girls…you’ll look after them…”
She couldn’t say anything else as a cold numbness filled her. Embraced her. But it didn’t really matter. She’d done all she could.
One last time, she tried to focus, tried to keep breathing. But it was a losing battle. Her vision blurred and narrowed.
Became a dot of light.
Got ever smaller.
And then blackness.
Sitting on the side of a snow-covered mountain road with a blown front tire and no cell service, Dana Kingston was put in mind of T.S. Eliot’s thoughts on the end of the world. And she would have laughed if she could have managed it. But at the moment, the most she could manage was a small, strangled sound—a sound remarkably resembling a whimper.
What am I doing?
She’d been asking herself the same question for over two thousand miles. Since leaving New York on a cold and gray early January morning.
It really was a rhetorical question, because she already knew the answer.
At the end of her journey was a small town called Haven, Colorado. A recreation-friendly alpine community, population 6,200, although the town reportedly got its fair share of the millions of tourists that visited the Rocky Mountains each year, with skiing being the main winter attraction.
Located high in the Colorado Rockies among some of the state’s highest peaks, Haven boasted more than five thousand acres of skiable terrain, along with acres of biking and hiking trails, apparently all within walking distance of downtown. Add an abundance of lakes, streams, and rivers, and it also became a fisherman’s paradise.
And there, in a former mining town born during the Colorado silver boom, an opportunity awaited her that sounded frighteningly ideal. Almost as if it had been created with her specifically in mind.
Even better, if everything worked according to plan, she would settle into a life that would be as far removed from the life she’d known as she could get and still be on the same planet—or the same solar system for that matter. Far removed from everything and everyone she’d known. Making it everything she wanted.
Releasing a strained laugh, Dana shivered and watched the snow rapidly accumulating around her.
When she’d checked out of the small roadside motel that morning, the sky had been a perfect blue and the roads had been clear. Just over three hours into the drive, the clouds had moved in and a light snow had begun falling. But despite the lowering clouds, Dana had been enjoying her first foray into Colorado, awed by the spectacular displays of light and shadow. White snow and misty lakes. Dark green ponderosa pine, blue-tinted Douglas firs, and snowcapped mountains.
By the time the famed radio voice of the Rockies began issuing heavy snow warnings for higher elevations, Dana hadn’t been at all surprised. At most, she’d felt a mild concern. But she hadn’t felt any real cause for worry. Not even when the road became narrower and began twisting and turning back on itself and the surface grew slick with snow and ice. Or when the gusting winds increased and swirling snow further reduced visibility. She’d simply downshifted while her wipers worked furiously.
She’d grown up on the East Coast, after all. During her student days, she’d driven through some of the worst winters New England could offer, and though admittedly some time had passed since those days, it was like riding a bicycle.
Wasn’t it?
She never managed to answer her own question, because that was when the left front tire on her BMW blew and it all went to hell.
It sounded like a gunshot. Dana flinched and the acrid taste of fear rose in her throat as the car began to spin. Slowly. So slowly. In the curious way time has, it suddenly seemed to move forward in the most infinitesimal increments as she fought to regain control. The car slid through yet another blind curve before she was able to bring it to a lopsided halt at the edge of the road.
In the process, she stalled the engine and scattered her belongings. But she didn’t care. She was simply grateful the car had opted to grab on to the deeper snow on the shoulder of the road. The alternative would have been to disappear down the steep drop-off she could just make out a few feet ahead, and she didn’t want to begin considering what the consequences of that option might have been.
Releasing a shaky laugh, she leaned her head back, closed her eyes, and tried to gather her scattered wits. Then she began to shiver.
In the shadow of the mountain, the wind gusts had a cold edge, like a knife. Razor cold. But she knew her reaction had nothing to do with the chill in the air.
She shivered again.
I am so screwed
was Dana’s next cogent thought when she opened her eyes and considered the bright blue cast covering her right hand. The hand she’d broken three weeks earlier during what turned out to be her last shift in the emergency room.
Her mother had called immediately, having somehow heard what had happened through a mysterious grapevine that kept her informed at all times of all things Dana.
If you’d come back where you belong
—
in Boston, working for your father
—
this would never have happened. You know I’m right, Dana.
Her argument was an old one, but it was one her mother brought out without fail at every opportune moment.
Dana knew her parents had always wanted the best for her. Of that she was certain. And she had been raised to do what was expected of her without argument. Over the years, that had meant Harvard—her father’s alma mater—for undergrad, medical school, and residency.
It had taken until the end of her residency before she realized she’d been so busy living the life her parents wanted for her, she’d forgotten to ask herself what she wanted. And though she still wasn’t certain what that might be, she did know one thing for certain. She had no interest in going to work for her father.
In that moment, Dana had decided it was time to reclaim her life.
Finding herself at a crossroads, she’d left Boston and accepted a position at a hospital whose claim to fame was having the busiest emergency department and level one trauma center in New York City.
A very tough place by anyone’s standards. But she had learned and thrived in that chaotic environment where no one cared she was Davis Kingston’s daughter. It had also afforded her the time to learn more about herself and to decide what path she wanted to follow. And the path she’d chosen had led her here.
She allowed herself only another minute or two to dwell on the past before the pragmatic side of her nature took over, stilling her riotous emotions. Releasing a sigh of resignation, she reached for her cell phone. If nothing else, common courtesy dictated she call the woman she was scheduled to meet in Haven, where she would start her new life.
Annie Parker.
She’d met Annie three months earlier—a meeting arranged by a neighbor who also happened to be a headhunter. Annie had arranged to fly into New York and, over coffee, had told Dana about the position she was looking to fill.
What she offered was exciting—a chance to be part of setting up a combination medical clinic and emergency triage center from the ground up. The center would be part of a mountain search-and-rescue training center, high in the Colorado Rockies. It would also provide basic health care and medical services to the people living in the region. As the medical team lead, she would have final say on staffing the center. And if everything worked out, the offer included an opportunity after six months to become a partner.
Coffee had stretched into lunch. And then into dinner.
Search and rescue alone doesn’t pay the bills,
Annie had said
. That’s where the idea for the school originally came from
.
She went on to explain that since its inception, the school had grown beyond their original vision, becoming one of the highest ranked search-and-rescue training centers in North America. The plan to add the triage center had been fully endorsed by the communities the SAR operation served and would only enhance their success rate.
By the time they’d finished talking, Dana and Annie had both known she’d be moving to Colorado as soon as her contract with the hospital ended.
Now she would have to apologize to Annie and tell her she’d be arriving a little later than planned. She’d explain what the problem was. And then she would beg, if necessary, in the hope Annie could find someone to come to her aid.
Not the most auspicious of beginnings. But it couldn’t be helped. It was an accident, a temporary setback, and nothing more.
That was when she discovered she had no cell signal. She’d no doubt lost it sometime back, when she left the interstate and headed farther up into the mountains. No doubt there was a rational explanation like the snow-laden trees were too tall or the surrounding mountains too steep. Or maybe the storm had defeated local service. It didn’t really matter.
Staring once again at the cast covering her hand, she quietly released a string of words that were half expletive, half prayer. She knew it would be all but impossible for her to manage to change a tire. The best she could do was hope someone would come along before too long—not that she’d passed anyone in the last couple of hours on this lonely stretch of road.
On the plus side, she had a near-f tank of gas, a couple of apples, some trail mix, and a box of crackers in her backpack. She’d be able to keep warm and wouldn’t go hungry. On the downside, she could already feel the onset of a headache from caffeine withdrawal. Where was a Starbucks when you needed one?
Dana restarted the car and turned on both the headlights and emergency flashers in case someone came along the narrow road. Hopefully they’d see her in spite of the snow. For the moment, there was nothing else she could do, so she settled her head back, allowing her thoughts to drift while the radio provided a blur of background noise.
Maybe if she counted to ten she wouldn’t be here anymore, in a snowstorm in the middle of nowhere with a flat tire.
Right
. Or maybe if she clicked her heels three times, she’d open her eyes and find she was really in Oz with the Tin Man and the Scarecrow. Or maybe she’d find—
A sharp tapping on the car window drew her attention, startling her. Disoriented for a moment, she had no idea if she’d just been musing the time away or had actually fallen asleep.
“Are you all right? Do you need help?”
The low smoke-edged voice had her turning her head to look, but she couldn’t make out her rescuer through the frost- and snow-covered glass. Almost giddy with relief, she lowered her window and immediately got a face full of brutally cold, wet snow.
A wry groan escaped Dana as she attempted to clear the snow from her face. She was also fairly certain the next sound she heard—coming from the direction of her would-be rescuer—was low and amused.