Above and Beyond (Twist of Fate 4)

“I feel like an idiot,” he muttered as he stepped close to the open bay door.

“We’ve been over this,” I said more stiffly than I’d intended. “Interpreting visual cues is a big part of rescue.”

Lucky met my eyes with a frown. “I know that. I just… never mind.” He turned back toward the open door and reached for the handle to ready himself.

I grabbed his upper arm and turned him to face me again. “You double-checked your emergency pack?” I asked, referring to the small pack of supplies strapped to his lower back.

He nodded. “Affirmative.”

“If you get cold…” I forced myself to stop talking when Tag’s and Johnny’s voices came over the comms.

“Ready for rappel in three, two, one…” Johnny said, moving up next to me to help Lucky onto the rope with the rig descender.

And just like that, part of my fucking heart was falling away, into the wide-open air of the Rocky Mountains to try and find a tiny metal bolt on the side of a cliff face that would be his home for the next hour or two.

Tag hovered like a pro while Johnny spotted Lucky down to the bolt. The other two students remained silent while the three of us worked to make sure Lucky was safely clipped into the anchor before releasing from the helicopter’s line.

As we flew away, back toward the meadow where Morrie was preparing Lucky’s rescue, I watched the tiny orange speck of Lucky’s rescue jacket get smaller and smaller against the massive rock face of Cathedral Peak.

If his fathers had any idea what he was doing—under my very own supervision—I’d never see the light of day again.

And I’d fucking deserve it.

Chapter 12

Lucky

Lowering myself down from a helicopter in flight was even more exhilarating than the time I’d gotten up the nerve to skydive last year. I’d learned a long time ago that I was a secret adrenaline junkie, but skydiving had taught me that I preferred something active, something with purpose.

Like the night I’d been one of the first responders to a multi-vehicle auto accident and had spent an hour twisted half-inside a crushed sports car trying to keep a trapped victim from bleeding out. Or the time I’d had to free climb up a steep mountain of boulders in the rain to get to a lost hiker who’d sprained their ankle.

Maybe it was the combination of danger and purpose that gave me a thrill. I wasn’t sure what that said about me, but as I hung there from that tiny metal bolt, a thousand feet above the rocky ground below, I felt the familiar rush of adrenaline and intention. Hopefully, my actions today would help someone in the future. It was a crazy sort of win-win situation, and maybe justifying it in my head was silly, but I was actually a little proud of myself for finally feeling such a solid sense of rightness in what I was doing.

I knew what I wanted to be. I could see my future so clearly as a high mountain rescue expert. If only I could say the same thing about my relationship with my grouchy, growly, overprotective trainer.

When the first blast of frigid, misty wind whipped against me, I sucked in a breath and said a silent thanks to high-tech fabric for its ability to keep me both warm and dry while I waited.

But then the second gust flipped me around and pressed me hard into the rock wall, face-first. I heard the thunk of my helmet half a beat after feeling the vibration of my head hitting the rock and my cheek scraping the granite hard enough to bite.

Okay, thank you for helmets too.

I shivered and looked down at my hands, half-exposed from the ripped-up prop gloves.

“Lucky, status check.”

Zach’s voice over comms was clipped with tension.

“Good to go,” I confirmed. There was no way I was going to complain about a little weather at high altitude. It was to be expected in June. Hell, we could still get a snowstorm up here this time of year. A little wet wind was nothing.

A few minutes later, it was Tag’s voice in my ear.

“Slight delay, Lucky. Hang tight.”

I turned myself back around so I could spot them across the valley on the meadow. The mist had turned to thick fog, obscuring all the helicopter’s details. The unnatural red paint of the fuselage was still partially visible through the clouds, but I couldn’t see if they’d loaded Morrie in yet or not.

Several more minutes passed. The wind was much more consistent now, swinging me in my rigging enough to cause me to try and find finger holds in the rock to keep still. The temperature felt like it was dropping by degrees every minute and my hands were freezing for real.

I glanced over my shoulder toward the meadow. It was completely obscured now by the fog. If I couldn’t see them, there was zero chance they could see me, which meant visibility was too dangerous to fly a helicopter in.