Page 39 of Rescuing Dr. Marian (Made Marian Legacy #1)

FOSTER

We called the helo exercise when the wind advisory came with an added warning of sleet. The low front expected from Canada had moved much faster than predicted, sending us back to SERA.

After stowing our gear in the increasing darkness from heavy cloud cover, I set out to find Tommy. Despite my hurt feelings at him not telling me about Stanford, I knew I needed to congratulate him rather than let this fester any longer.

He shook his head. “Not since midday, but Robyn said she saw him take off on a hike. I assumed he was back by now.”

I shook my head and glanced back out at the darkening sky. Water droplets were beginning to fall. “I’ll call him and check the cabin again. If he’s nearby, I’m sure he’ll head back now that the rain is coming.”

Trace frowned and pulled out his phone to check the weather report again. “Let me know what you find out. They’re predicting snow at elevation. Possible we get flurries here, too.”

I nodded and jogged back to the cabin, Chickie hot on my heels and happy to stretch her legs after I’d had to leave her behind for the helo drill.

The fact Chickie had been in the cabin when I’d arrived led me to believe Tommy was back from his hike. He most likely would have taken her with him if he was going for a long walk in the woods, if only because he was a sucker for her big puppy eyes.

The cabin was still empty. His boots and hydration pack were gone. I quickly dialed his number, knowing cell reception wasn’t great on the hill behind campus. The ring trilled from somewhere in the room, sending a slither of dread down my spine.

Sure enough, his phone was in the pants pocket of the pair slung across his bed. I pulled it out and stared at the screen. There were multiple missed calls and texts, indicating he hadn’t checked it for several hours.

“Fuck.”

I glanced outside. The rain wasn’t heavy, but it was steady and cold. The wind blew through the trees, turning leaves silver in the odd light.

“Fuck,” I said again. My rational brain tried its best to remind me that Tommy was experienced in wilderness survival. He knew all the rules about watching the weather and taking shelter when necessary.

But my rational brain wasn’t the one in charge of my body.

I raced through my supplies, hauling out warm, dry layers as well as rain gear, extra socks, and the few remaining packs of trail mix in the box on the little table in our room.

After shoving several more things in my pack and filling up an extra water bottle, I took off for the office to grab a radio before heading out.

Trace looked up at me in surprise as he caught me striding into the building, dripping water from my rain gear onto the wood floors. “You find him?”

I shook my head. “I need to find Robyn to see what direction he took. He’s not back yet, and he doesn’t have a phone.”

Trace’s eyebrows winged up. “Doesn’t have his phone? Did he take his beacon?”

I shrugged. “He took his hydration pack, and I think he keeps the beacon in there along with basic med and survival gear. I’m sure he wouldn’t have gone off alone without taking any precautions.”

“Well he didn’t fucking tell anyone he was going, and that alone is grounds for fucking dismissal. He knows better than that.” I could tell his anger masked concern.

“I’ll find him,” I said, “I’m sure he’ll be fine. He knows how to take care of himself.”

Trace met my eyes. “If you really believed that, you wouldn’t be getting ready to go off half-cocked.”

“I’m not. I’ll take plenty of gear, including my beacon and a radio. You know as well as I do he could be hurt. I’d rather find him now than after the sun goes down and he has to spend a night in freezing temps without proper equipment.”

He reluctantly nodded. “Keep us updated. If I have to send a SAR team out for my SAR director, there’ll be hell to pay, do you understand me?”

When I found Robyn, she was wringing her hands. “I think Tommy might be stuck on the mountain. He told me he was going for a long walk, but I never saw him come back, and now he’s not answering his phone.”

I didn’t bother asking why she hadn’t said anything to anyone. “Did you see which trail he took?”

She explained where she’d seen him, next to one of four trailheads scattered across the back and side of SERA’s compound. I thanked her and made my way out, calling to Chickie, who didn’t need any encouragement to follow.

I strapped Chickie’s raincoat on her and we hiked for twenty minutes in the wind and cold rain before my radio crackled.

“Base to Blake. You copy?”

I reached for the handset on my pack strap. “Blake here. Go ahead.”

“Storm’s coming in faster than expected. We’re getting gusts over 40 down here already—any sign of him?”

Unfortunately, even the best tracker would have trouble differentiating any sign of Tommy this close to the trailhead on a popular route.

Hundreds of hikers had most likely already been up this trail in the past month or so, but no one was still out to give me any idea of whether or not he’d been spotted.

I didn’t expect to see any signs of him until I got a little farther along the trail, past the meadow that featured the popular lookout point this trail was known for.

“Wind and rain are picking up. Visibility’s down. I’m about a half mile below Devil’s Backbone, heading northwest along Elk Fork Trail. No sign of him yet.”

“There’s a cave just under the ridge on the southeast approach from your location. Be sure and check it on your way past. There’s also an abandoned hunting shack just over the saddle between Devil’s Backbone and Slingshot. He could be there waiting out the weather.”

I thanked him and assured him I’d check in again once I got to the cave.

Another fifteen minutes later, I was almost to the base of the ridge when he called in again.

“Base to Blake.”

“Go ahead, base.”

“We’ve got reports of a rockslide on the southwest side of Devil’s Backbone. Repeat: rockslide reported near your location.”

My stomach dropped, and I felt a strange kind of numbness. “A rockslide?” I asked stupidly, forgetting to click my radio first.

I glanced up in hopes of seeing any sign of what he was reporting, but visibility was way too low. Could Tommy have been caught in a rockslide? It would have explained why he’d never returned, why he hadn’t been able to get back before the weather turned.

I needed more information and scrabbled for the button on the radio. “No way to see from here. Cloud cover too low. What do we know? ”

The radio crackled with static before his response came through. “Local climbers in the area almost didn’t make it out. Said half their gear was covered, and one of them reported a leg injury.”

My ears perked up. “They need medical attention?” Maybe Tommy had witnessed the incident and had made his way over there to help.

“Negative. They helped out their injured friend and headed straight to the clinic in town to get her checked out. They reported no sign of anyone else in the area.”

Damn.

“Let me know if you hear anything else,” I said.

“Foster… I know I don’t have to tell you this, but don’t do anything stupid. I know you care about him, but use your head.”

I knew the only reason he wasn’t commanding me to stand down was because he knew how much experience I had in situations like this. Threat assessment was my job. I’d just spent four weeks telling others when to take shelter and not be stupid.

“Copy that.”

After a few more minutes of slogging through the mud on the trail, there was a brief thinning of the cloud cover, enough to see the wet, rocky mess down the west side of Devil’s Backbone.

I stared at it, horrified at the sight. It had shoved full-grown trees over and left others with broken branches.

Rocks, mud, and other litter were strewn all over the hillside in a path leading away from town.

Fuck. Those climbers were damned lucky to have survived being anywhere near that devastation.

Please let him be okay.

The swath of destruction was wide enough that he could have easily been caught in it without the other witnesses seeing anything. Before I had a chance to catch my breath from the sight, Chickie took off like a rocket up the east side of the ridge.

“Chick!” I cried after her. “Come!”

She ignored me, leaping across downed trees and bushes, straight in the direction of the saddle between Devil’s Backbone and the main peak of Slingshot Mountain.

That area was above the tree line and would be exposed to lightning, not to mention another rockfall risk. “Chickie!” I called again, racing after her.

I slipped up the trail as fast as I could, grateful when the muddy trail ended and I caught the rocky grass under my boots instead.

Cold rain pelted me from all sides, whipped up by the howling wind.

The bright orange of Chick’s coat made her easier to see through the thick fog around us, but it wouldn’t take much longer for her to outrun the visibility.

“Chickie!” I continued to call before realizing there might be a very good reason for her failure to listen. The only other times she’d been this disobedient had come when she’d ignored me in favor of Tommy.

Hope threaded through me like a thin, shimmering wire. Please, please .

When I began carefully picking my way over the slick boulders and scree toward the top of the saddle, I saw a thin plume of smoke that seemed a little darker than the fog around it. I hoped it was coming from the hunter’s shack Trace had mentioned.

I quickly thumbed the radio. “Blake to base.”

“Base here.”

“Smoke coming from hunter’s lodge. Approaching now.”

“Thank fuck. Let us know when you have confirmation.”

In my excitement to get to the shack and hopefully find Tommy in it, I didn’t pay attention to where I stepped.

When my boot hit the next rock at a funny angle, the giant rock shifted, sending me sideways toward the sharp edge of another boulder.

I cried out in surprise as I scrambled to catch myself.

The ground underneath me continued to slip as the rocks began tumbling one over the other down the side of the mountain.

“Rock! Rock! Rock!” I shouted out of habit from my years of SAR and rock climbing. “Rockslide! Fuck .”

The entire ground below me was moving back down in the direction I’d come from, and if I didn’t act fast, I was going with them. The sound of Chickie’s barking came through the thick fog, along with a muffled shout.

“Foster?”

Tommy’s voice barely made it to my ears as I scrambled forward toward the thin plume of smoke and away from the sliding rocks below me.

“Stay there!” I shouted. “Stay back!”

The sound of his voice brought with it a new urgency to get to him, to make sure he was okay. To… to, I wasn’t sure. Keep him safe. Tell him how I felt. That the past four hours had been so me of the worst of my life, thinking he was alone and hurt in a storm.

I moved as quickly as possible from one boulder to the next in search of stable ground, but I was being carried down the slope, almost in slow motion.

Thankfully, the side of the saddle with Tommy on it, with safety and a warm fire, was out of the path of the rockslide, but the side I was on seemed hell-bent on creating the same path of devastation and broken trees that I’d seen west of here.

I felt like a lumberjack trying to stay on a spinning log in the river without being flung into the icy depths.

“Foster!”

The ground continued to shift under me as I tried to determine the safest way forward. I clawed at the rocks higher on the mountain and tried climbing up them. Smaller rocks hit others and bounced into my legs and feet. My hands slipped on the slick granite as I scrabbled to keep hold.

“Tommy!” I cried, hoping to god Chickie didn’t try and come to me. “Find Chickie and hold her! Stay back!”

His safety was the last thought I had before the ground disappeared beneath my feet.