Second Chance Summer(84)
Aidan was in the middle of an S&R training exercise with his team, hanging off the side of Heaven’s Peak when they were radioed about a weather change.
They ended the exercise and were still packing up when Aidan’s phone beeped. Seeing Gray’s name pop up on the screen when he knew where Aidan was and what he was doing made Aidan pick up the call. “What’s wrong?”
“She’s back at it,” Gray said.
Aidan grimaced. “Look, man, I’ve told you, whatever bedroom games you and Penny decide to play, just leave me the hell out of it—”
“Not Penny, you idiot.”
“Kenna?” was Aidan’s next guess. “You gotta give her a job, man, or—”
“I gave her a damn job, I gave her the ski school. Now stop talking and listen to me. It’s Lily. She’s back on the mountain. She just passed out of our range, heading north. Which isn’t exactly the way back.”
No, north from there would take her straight to Dead Man’s Cliff.
“And there’s a hell of a surprise storm brewing,” Gray said. “This morning we had a zero percent chance of precip. Now we’re at one hundred percent, expecting high winds and flash floods in the basin.”
“She’s still trying to get up to where Ashley—”
“She goes up there as often as she can,” Aidan said. “I’m sure she’s fine.”
“The storm—”
“She’ll be okay. She’s strong and more importantly, smart.”
“Your call,” Gray said, and disconnected.
Half an hour later Aidan was back from Heaven’s Peak. He’d decided to call Lily and meet her up on the trail. For company, not because he doubted her abilities. If she wanted to face the cliff, they would do it together.
But before he could, a rescue call came in—a report of a climber stuck on a ledge of Dead Man’s Cliff over the river. That was it, that was all the info they got, no exact location, no ID of the caller or the climber, nothing.
And Aidan’s heart stopped.
What if Lily had gotten to the top, been caught up in the moment, and gone climbing on the face? He called her cell but was sent right to her voice mail. In the meantime, Search and Rescue mobilized and set up an incident command center back at the clearing where Aidan and the others had left their vehicles, doing so in fifty-plus-mile-per-hour winds and an oncoming storm.
There were four places on Dead Man’s Cliff where a ledge overlooked the river, not a single one of them a safe place in a storm. A two-part plan was put into place. First, a Zodiac raft with a two-person crew would attempt to pinpoint exactly which ledge from far below. Second, Aidan, Mitch, and the rest of the team would come in from the park entrance, holing up at Dead Man’s Cliff’s trail-head until they got word from the Zodiac crew on which direction to go.
The wait wasn’t easy.
“We don’t know it’s her,” Mitch reminded him.
True. And it didn’t matter. Either way, they were going to get that person down safely. But God, he hoped like hell it wasn’t Lily. They had a high success rate with rescues overall, but Dead Man’s Cliff had earned its name the hard way, and all too often a rescue turned into a recovery.
As in a body recovery.
Aidan slammed the door on that thought and forced himself into work mode. The four overhangs were spread out over a few miles along the river. Within half an hour, the Zodiac crew called with the news that they’d found the lost hiker on outcropping number two, about four and a half miles from where Aidan and his crew stood.
They drove the mile and a half of fire road they had, and then had to hike the other three miles to the location.
It was a long-ass walk, hauling all their rope and gear in the wind. By this time the Zodiac had reported in with more details on their victim. The stuck climber was in a sweatshirt, hoodie up, and leggings, so no age or sex could be determined. It could be anyone out there.
But not Lily, he told himself. And yet a small doubt remained, messing with Aidan’s head. He locked that shit down and kept moving as the Zodiac made contact with the stuck climber. Sign language communication only, since they couldn’t hear each other over the roar of the wind barreling through the canyon and the water rushing along the canyon.
The climber was stuck. They couldn’t—or wouldn’t—go back up, and down wasn’t an option.
With each step Aidan’s fear grew that it was going to be Lily and he wouldn’t be able to get to her before the storm swept her off the ledge.
Chapter 28
Lily got back home frozen and desperate for a hot shower. She was shocked to find Gray coming out of her place with a grim set to his jaw.
“Lily,” he said, looking shocked as hell to see her.
Who else was he expecting?
But before she could ask, he had his cell phone to his ear. A few seconds later he said, “Fuck!” and stared at her. “You’re not up at Dead Man’s Cliff.”
“No,” she said slowly. “I never planned to be. I got to the three-quarter mark and turned around. The storm—”
“Fuck,” he said again, and hit the stairs, running down them toward his truck.
“Wait!” she yelled after him. He didn’t, so she took the stairs at a dead run as well but didn’t catch up to him until he was just about to peel out of the lot.