15 Summers Later, page 19
Tears welled up in her sister’s eyes. “I do love him. I wanted his love in return, not his pity. I wanted him to see me as a strong, capable woman, not as...as a weak, frightened girl, so afraid that she actually went through with an abhorrent marriage rather than fight. A girl who had to be rescued by her younger sister!”
The tears glimmering on her lashes spilled over, gathering in the corner of her eyes before dripping out. The resentment and anger and sense of betrayal Madi had nursed for weeks, since the release of Ghost Lake, didn’t seem nearly as important when her sister clearly was suffering so much.
“We rescued each other, Ava.”
Her sister scoffed. “Only because you were the one who had the strength to do what I couldn’t. While I was torn by indecision, waiting for the impossible, you went ahead and gathered valerian root and deathcamas while you were forced to forage for food with the others. You were the one smart enough to remember what you learned about it from Grandma and Mom, then brave enough to hide it, to dry it, to crush it into tea.”
“I couldn’t let you stay married to that evil man. Partly for you and partly because I knew I would be next,” she admitted.
“I know. Which was one of the reasons I finally agreed to your ridiculous plan.”
“My ridiculous plan that worked perfectly, I’ll remind you. James fell asleep. He didn’t die. I wish you had been able to get him to drink it before he...before he...”
“So do I.”
Madi felt the same burning anger she always did when she remembered that dark time. She didn’t want to wish anyone dead, but she was glad James had been arrested and that he had died in a prison brawl six months after his conviction.
“It worked. Somehow it worked. For the first night since we arrived at camp, you weren’t locked into a room. You were able to sneak out and get me.”
She frowned at Ava. “You did nothing wrong. I don’t know why you couldn’t tell everything to Cullen.”
“Believe me, I’ve asked myself that over and over.”
“I also can’t understand how you could keep everything from your husband, the man you love more than any other, yet still go ahead and pour every single detail into that damn book.”
“It’s...complicated.”
Ava lapsed into silence. The squirrel had moved away and the mountainside echoed in the quiet.
Then, distantly through the forest, Madi thought she heard something. A faint cry that didn’t belong among the hoots and calls and chatter of the mountain’s usual inhabitants.
A dog’s whine.
“Shhh.” She held out a hand to Ava.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Be quiet,” Madi hissed.
Ava fell silent, her eyes going wide. “What’s wrong?”
Madi strained her ears and heard it again. A faint, unmistakable whine.
“Did you hear that?”
“It sounds like a cat or something. Is it a cougar?”
The whispered fear in Ava’s voice and her sudden wide eyes and trembling lips were visceral reminders of one of the most terrifying incidents during those days they spent in the wilderness, trying to get to safety. They had been making their way up a slope when they realized they were being stalked by a mountain lion.
They had faced an impossible choice between staying quiet to avoid discovery by their pursuers or making as much noise as possible to scare away an apex predator.
The abject terror in Ava’s voice now gave Madi pause, especially when her sister curved an arm over her abdomen.
She touched her sister’s hand, trying to reassure her. “I don’t think it’s a mountain lion. It sounds more like a dog.”
She heard it again, that distant yelp, and unbuckled her seat belt. “I have to go check it out.”
“You can’t leave me here!”
Madi pointed to the keys in the ignition. “If I don’t come back in ten minutes, you can go back to Cullen’s camp for help. It’s straight up the trail, then turn left at the fork.”
“No! I won’t let you go by yourself. Forget it!”
She thought about arguing with her sister, but that would waste precious moments of their remaining daylight. “Fine. You have to keep up, though.”
Ava scrambled out of the side-by-side. “I might be pregnant, but I’m not the one with a bad leg.”
“Fair point,” Madi admitted.
The undergrowth was sparse at this higher elevation, which made the going easier. They walked over pine needles and around clumps of wildflowers. The barks and yelps continued at random intervals, growing louder as they moved.
“Is it a wolf?” Ava asked, casting a wild eye through the trees.
“I mean, it’s possible a wolf might have strayed from the Yellowstone ecosystem but I don’t think so. I’ve not heard of any sightings up here.”
“Coyotes?”
“Again, possible. I suspect it’s a dog. Remember, I told you about those strays people have reported? In fact, Luke had planned to come up tonight to look for them.”
Ava didn’t look any more relieved about the possibility of stray dogs than she might have if Madi had said there were slavering werewolves.
“What kind of dogs?”
“From what I heard, maybe a border collie and a corgi mix that had a collar.”
Ava relaxed slightly at that. Madi wanted to tell her any dog could strike out in the right circumstances. If hungry, in pain or scared enough.
“We have to be getting closer,” Ava said, her attention fixed on the terrain ahead of them.
“There!” Madi exclaimed. She pointed to a small meadow ahead of them. Perched on the edge of a gaping pit, a small stocky corgi barked ferociously at them.
Ava froze and looked as if she wanted to turn and run back to their vehicle. While she stayed locked in place, Madi moved closer slowly, making her way around boulders and fallen logs scattered through the meadow. She tried to look as unassuming as possible.
“Hey there. Hi,” she crooned to the dog, who had stopped barking and was now growling ominously. “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. Look what I have.”
She stuck her hand in her pocket, grateful that she had had the foresight to bring some treats, just in case. “Look. It’s a beef stick. Yum!”
The dog’s growling stopped abruptly and it took a step toward her before retreating another step. The dog looked down at the pit and Madi heard it again, a whining yelp coming from the depths.
It was the other dog, she realized. Possibly injured and definitely trapped. Poor thing.
Holding out a piece of the beef stick, Madi took a step closer to the corgi. She needed to see what they were up against, how difficult it might prove to rescue the other dog.
She tossed one small piece to the dog, who almost swallowed it whole in her hunger.
The grasses and weeds growing around the pit were flattened, as if the small dog had spent considerable time crouched here, unwilling to leave the other animal. Her fur was matted, not unlike the grasses, with burrs and other random pieces of debris stuck in it.
Madi tossed her another piece of treat. The dog moved closer this time to retrieve it.
“Good girl. That’s right. I’m not going to hurt you or your friend. You’re both so hungry, aren’t you? Should we see if we can get him out?”
She continued speaking nonsense in the same low, calming voice. Dogs never seemed to mind if she stumbled over words, which was one of the things she loved best about them.
Finally, she managed to move close enough to the edge of the pit so she could look in.
It appeared to be an old mining shaft, about twelve feet deep and seven or eight feet at its widest point. She could barely make out a white blur in the fading daylight until she aimed her flashlight down and saw wary canine features looking back up at her.
“Oh, you poor thing. You must be starving. Here you go. Here’s a treat.”
She tossed down a large treat for the dog and almost instantly heard lips smacking together as he ate it hungrily.
“What is it?” Ava called.
“It’s the other dog. He’s stuck down some kind of pit. It looks like an old mine shaft, maybe? I’m guessing he was sniffing around the edge and must have lost his footing. Or maybe the side collapsed or something.”
“Oh, that’s so sad. How long do you think he’s been down there?” She moved closer, though still keeping her distance from the other dog.
“My guess is at least a day or two. See how the grass is tramped down around the opening? I think that was done by his friend here, keeping watch.”
Ava’s features seemed to soften at that. Madi wondered if she, too, could relate to the trapped dog, feeling as if she had no way out.
“What do we do now? Maybe we should go get Cullen. He and members of his team might know of a way we could get him out.”
“It will be full dark by the time we drive back up to the dinosaur camp and then make our way back here. I don’t think we’ll be able to find him again in the dark.”
“We can’t leave him here.”
“No. We can’t,” Madi said, feeling closer to her sister than she had in a long time. They shared a purpose now. “I’ve got a towrope in the side-by-side. I can attach it to a tree and belay into the hole.”
“No! No way! What if you get stuck down there, too?”
“Then, you can drive back to Cullen and he can come find me and help me out.”
Ava looked horrified at the prospect. “You just said we won’t find the dog in the dark. How are we supposed to find you?”
“I have a whistle.” She pulled it out from the chain around her neck. She never traveled into the backcountry without one now. She had spent enough time being lost in the wilderness. She wasn’t keen to ever go through that again. A whistle could be heard over longer distances than shouts, and a person could blow a whistle even after losing her voice calling for help.
“You wait here. I’m going to go back and get the towrope.”
Ava’s eyes went wide. “No! I’m not staying here by myself. I’ll come with you.”
“One of us needs to stay here or we won’t be able to find our way back. I can stay here if you want to go back to get the rope.”
Ava gazed at her, then took a few steps, turned and threw up into the undergrowth.
“Are you okay?”
“Swell,” Ava snapped. She wiped her mouth with the corner of her shirt, swished water from the bottle she had brought along and spat it out.
“It will be much faster if I go. Here, take the whistle. You can use my flashlight. I’ll use my phone for light if I need it.”
“You want me to stay here with the...the dogs?”
“The border collie is trapped and can’t hurt you. And the corgi wants to help her friend. Here. You can give her some of these treats. You can toss a few down to the other dog but not too much. I don’t know if he has water down there.”
After handing over the rest of the treats, she hurried back the way they had come, crossing the space in half the time as before, ever aware of the fading sunlight that cast long shadows through the trees.
She went to the cargo area of the side-by-side. After unhooking the dog crate, she was rooting through the back for the towrope and the headlamp she kept there, as well as extra rope and leather gloves, when she glimpsed the flash of movement coming up the trail and heard the thrum of an engine.
As a woman currently standing alone in the backcountry, with no one else in sight, Madi couldn’t help the instinctive spurt of adrenaline and wariness.
She closed her good hand around the heavy winch, in case she needed a weapon she could swing at someone who might decide to take advantage of the situation.
Her fear instantly eased when she recognized the man driving a side-by-side newer than her own and she relaxed her grip on the winch.
“Oh, am I glad to see you!” she exclaimed to Luke. It was all she could do not to rush to his vehicle and hug him.
He shut off his engine with a concerned look. “What’s up? Are you having mechanical difficulties? Where’s Ava? Did she stay at camp with her husband?”
She shook her head. “It’s a long story, but we found the dogs everyone has been looking for. One of them is caught in some kind of pit about two hundred yards off the trail. Ava stayed with them while I came back here for supplies.”
He looked at the array of items in front of her. “Supplies for what? What exactly are you planning to do with your kit here?”
“Get him out,” she said simply. “We can’t leave him there. I thought I would belay down, have Ava lower the crate down, put the dog into it, then use the pulley and winch to get him back out.”
“And how were you planning to get back out?”
“The same way. With the pulley and winch.”
He sighed. “Of course. Why not? What could go wrong?”
She decided, in this case, she couldn’t do everything on her own. Her customary need for independence seemed pointless when an animal was in need.
“I could really use your help. Ava’s not...feeling her best right now.”
Without hesitation, he climbed out of the vehicle, grabbed a few supplies of his own out of his vehicle, then picked up the heavy winch in one hand, the crate in the other and followed her into the forest.
21
We find ourselves scrambling across a rocky scree, loose stones cascading beneath our feet. The jagged terrain threatens to betray us, and I feel my sister’s hand slip from mine as we stumble and slide down the unforgiving slope. Bruised and battered, we rise again, our determination unbroken, a testament to the strength that has emerged from our shared ordeal.
—Ghost Lake by Ava Howell Brooks
Luke
“Where’s Sierra? I thought you wanted to bring her up, looking for the dogs with you,” Madi asked as they made their way toward Ava.
“She had a better offer, apparently. My mom scored last-minute tickets to a concert in Sun Valley and invited her along.”
“That’s fun.”
“Yeah. Seems like she is a social butterfly these days. I wonder if I should be feeling left out that she seems to have time for everyone but me.”
She gave him a sympathetic smile. “You might want to get used to that.”
As he followed Madi through the forest, on no discernable trail, Luke could see she was in pain. She always walked more carefully when her weak leg was giving her trouble, though she would never admit it.
He wanted to tell her to wait back with their vehicles, but he knew that would be like telling the grass not to grow or the snow not to fall in January.
Would she really try to belay down into a mine shift?
Yes. One hundred percent. His Madison was completely fearless.
Not his, he reminded himself.
“There they are,” she said, pointing through the undergrowth. As they moved into a clearing between Douglas fir and lodgepole pine, he saw a sight he never would have imagined in a hundred years.
Ava Howell Brooks was sitting perched on a fallen tree trunk, crooning softly to a matted corgi with a pink collar.
“Look who I found,” Madi called out cheerfully.
Ava looked up and the vast relief on her pale features made him smile.
“Luke! Oh, thank heavens. Maybe you can talk some sense into her. She can’t go down into a mine shaft to rescue a dog. It’s ridiculous. We have to come up with another way.”
Madi glared at the two of them, as if daring him to agree with her sister. The fierce expression on her features made him check his impulse to do exactly that.
She hated people coddling her, treating her as if she were incapable of anything she set her mind to. He knew he was guilty of the same thing, of wanting to protect her. Sometimes he couldn’t help treating her like a fragile flower that would bend and break at the first sign of a breeze.
“She’s tougher than she looks,” he said, a reminder to himself as well.
Madi sent him a swift look of shocked gratitude. “That’s right,” she said. “I am.”
“I know she’s tough,” Ava said impatiently. “My sister the superhero, who can leap tall buildings in a single bound, blah blah blah. But now that you’re here, she doesn’t have to go down there, right? You can do it.”
He almost agreed with her, but somehow sensed Madi wanted to do this, if only to prove to herself that she could.
“I should stay up here while she belays down so I can help pull her and the dog back out. I would be too heavy for you to pull up if something went wrong. It should be one of you two. Unless you want to go down, I guess that leaves Madi.”
“What about her leg? And her hand?”
“I have full use of both,” Madi said sharply.
Ava still looked worried for her sister. Luke didn’t blame her. He was worried, too. But he also trusted that she knew what she was doing. He also remembered that she occasionally went to the climbing wall in Sun Valley with Nicki and whatever guys they were currently dating.
If he hadn’t been here, how she had intended to climb out of the hole by herself, with only Ava to help, he had no idea.
He attached the pulley and winch to a sturdy tree limb over the opening, then helped her fashion the rope into a makeshift harness, up through her legs and around her waist, trying his best to ignore her softness and her strawberry scent that teased him.
“You sure you’re ready for this?”
She nodded, smiling with a confidence in him he found deeply humbling.
“Sure. You’re here. You’ve got my back.”
“Always,” he murmured.
She blinked, as if not sure whether she heard him or not, then she lowered into the mine shaft. He held on to the rope, giving her enough lead to rappel down into the hole, which he judged to be about a dozen feet deep.
