Holding On: A Colorado High Country Novel Read online

  “Okay. You can put Gabby’s crate in the back of my vehicle. I have to stop by the kennel to pick up Gizmo, and I need to put on some warmer clothes.”

  “Same here.” Jeans wouldn’t cut it on a cold-weather rescue that might go on all night. “How about I meet you at your place in ten?”

  “That sounds good.” She pulled her coat out of the closet, grabbed her handbag, found her keys. “I’ll see you there.”

  The moment she was gone, Conrad stripped out of his jeans and sweater and got into a pair of long underwear and some old summit pants. If they were good enough for the Himalayas, they could handle whatever the Rockies threw his way. He slipped into a T-shirt and a wool sweater and zipped himself into a down-filled summit jacket. Then he went for his Team gear.

  It had been almost a year and a half since he’d touched his Team backpack. He had always kept it ready to go so that he wouldn’t have to wonder what was in it before each rescue. He didn’t have time to unpack it and check his gear now. He wasn’t really on the Team anyway. He was just going to support Kenzie.

  You just want to be close to her.

  Was that such a bad thing?

  When he’d loaded his gear into his SUV, he put Gabby inside her crate, settling her with treats and kibble. “You ready to go on an adventure, kid?”

  Gabby curled up, closed her eyes, and fell asleep.

  “That’s how you have enough energy to keep me awake at night.”

  He shut the liftgate, climbed into the driver’s seat, and drove to Kenzie’s house— a modest two-story Victorian with a wrap-around porch. No sooner had he parked, then she stepped out of the front door, wearing ski pants and a blue down parka, a backpack on her back, Gizmo leashed and following at her heel.

  Conrad got out of his vehicle and greeted Gizmo, who did remember him, judging from the whimpers, licks, and wagging tail. “Hey, buddy. It’s good to see you, too.”

  “I told you he’d remember you,” Kenzie stopped at her tailgate. “Let’s put Gabby in the back of my truck. It will be easier than moving all my stuff over to your vehicle.”

  Conrad moved Gabby, together with his own gear, then climbed into the passenger seat. “Are we sure it’s okay for Gabby to be with Gizmo back there?”

  Kenzie took the wheel. “They’re in separate crates, so it should be fine.”

  “Where are we headed?”

  Kenzie turned on her police radio. “Indian Peaks Trailhead. A married couple went hiking yesterday morning and never came back. A sheriff’s deputy found their vehicle parked near the trailhead.”

  “Not good.”

  This couple’s survival depended entirely on how well equipped they’d been to spend the night in snow and freezing temperatures.

  Kenzie raised the mic, waited for a break in radio traffic. “Sixteen eighty-eight, K9 en route.”

  There was a burst of static as Dispatch answered with the time. “K9 en route, sixteen twenty-three.”

  As Kenzie backed out of the driveway, Conrad relaxed into his seat.

  It felt good to be doing something.

  Kenzie parked next to Rescue 1 in the parking lot at the Indian Peaks Trailhead. A couple of sheriff’s vehicles were already there, along with a rescue truck from the Scarlet Springs Fire Department. Team members stood together with sheriff’s deputies waiting for her—or, really, Gizmo.

  She reached over, took Conrad’s hand. “Just remember that everyone here is your friend and cares about you.”

  His eyes were hiding behind sunglasses, but he nodded. “Let’s do this.”

  She climbed out of the vehicle, got Gizmo out of his crate. “Are you ready to get to work, buddy?”

  He wagged his tail, standing patiently while she put him in his harness. Gizmo loved working. To him, it was all a fun game. He found the people and then got treats and playtime with his favorite toy.

  But this was about saving lives.

  Deputy Julia Marcs walked over to her, then stopped—and stared. “Oh, my God, Conrad!”

  “Hey, Julia.”

  Julia hurried over to him and gave him a hug. “I’m so glad you’re back.”

  “Holy shit. Look who’s here.” Eric grinned and started their way. He pulled Conrad into a bear hug. “God, it’s good to see you.”

  “It’s good to see you, too. I hear you’re a father now. What the hell was Vicki thinking?”

  Eric chuckled. “I’m a lucky man. I can’t wait for you to meet our little guy.”

  Kenzie’s throat went tight.

  She wasn’t the only one who had missed him.

  Austin hugged him, too, slapping him on the back. “I wasn’t sure we’d ever see you again. Damn, it’s good to have you home.”

  “I bet Lexi and Emily are keeping you busy.”

  Austin grinned. “You know it.”

  Chaska shook Harrison’s hand, slapped him on the shoulder. “Welcome home. You’ve been on quite a journey.”

  “And you went and got yourself married.”

  Chaska laughed. “No one was more surprised about that than I was.”

  A shrill squeal. “Conrad!”

  Sasha Dillon ran across the snowy parking lot and jumped into Harrison’s arms. “Oh, my God! I can’t believe you’re really here! You scared the shit out of me!”

  He kissed her cheek. “It’s good to see you, too, kiddo.”

  The top-ranked female sports climber in the country, Sasha was the other A-list climbing celebrity on the Team. At only twenty-five, she’d won more championships than any woman in the history of sports climbing. Athletic, sunny, and blond, she had always seemed to Kenzie like the sort of woman Harrison would want.

  Are you jealous?

  No, she wasn’t. Okay, maybe a little.

  Everyone adored Sasha, including Kenzie. She was always so bright and cheerful that it was impossible not to like her.

  Ahearn walked up to them. “Hey, Kenzie. Conrad. Can we do the reunion at Knockers after we’re done here? We’ve got some people out there who might be in a world of hurt right now.”

  Julia took over, bringing Kenzie up to speed. “We got a call this morning from a woman who said her son and daughter-in-law were supposed to have come to dinner after going for a hike on the Indian Peaks Trail. They never showed up, and they haven’t answered her calls. Cell service is patchy up here, of course, so that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. That Subaru Outback over there is theirs.”

  “Can we get inside the vehicle, find some scent articles for Gizmo?” Kenzie had trained Gizmo to be a trailing dog, not an air-scent dog. He needed a way to scent the person or people he was supposed to find.

  Julia nodded. “They didn’t lock the door.”

  Which meant they probably hadn’t intended to be gone for long and likely weren’t prepared to be out overnight.

  “Will you be staying here in the parking lot, Julia? I need someone to keep an eye on Gabby.” Kenzie had left the window open just a crack, but she didn’t want someone to come along and take the puppy.

  Julia nodded. “I’m Incident Command, so I’ll be right here.”

  “Perfect. Thanks.”

  Julia, as the sheriff’s deputy, opened the door, and Kenzie let Gizmo hop inside, where he could pick up their scent. She bent down and looked in, relieved to find a pair of gloves in the back seat.

  Kenzie took the gloves, drew Gizmo out of the vehicle and down to the trailhead, and then let him sniff the gloves. “Gizmo, go find!”

  Gizmo took off, heading up the trail, Kenzie walking as fast as she could to keep up, Harrison beside her, the others following behind so as not to mess up the scent trail.

  “It’s amazing to me that he can pick up a scent that’s more than twenty-four hours old and buried under three inches of snow.”

  “The snow actually helps, especially if not many people passed by here after our couple. From the look of things, the storm kept most people away.”

  They continued up the trail for a good half hour unt
il Gizmo stopped. Kenzie watched his body language for negatives—a sign that he’d lost the scent. He searched an outcropping of rocks just off the trail, sniffing his way toward the edge.

  “Careful, buddy.” She didn’t want him to slip.

  Harrison looked to the west. “They might have stopped here to look at that view.”

  It was a beautiful spot. Across the valley, Navajo, Apache, and Shoshoni peaks rose white against the sky.

  Kenzie waited for Gizmo to give her some sense of what was going on, wondering whether she should backtrack with him and try this stretch of the trail again. Then he stepped off-trail and led her to a steep hillside.

  From below came a cry. “Help! Help us! We’re down here!”

  She let Gizmo go, following him down the hillside toward his quarry.

  “Be careful.” Harrison walked beside her with long, sure strides. “It’s steeper here than it looks, and there are a lot of buried rocks. You might slip—”

  “Oh!” Kenzie stepped on a hidden rock, which flipped beneath her boot.

  “—and fall.” Harrison caught her, his gaze meeting hers.

  Her pulse skipped. “Thanks.”

  Nearby, she heard Gizmo bark, and she knew he’d found the hikers. They were huddled together in the shelter of a few boulders, wearing nothing but jeans, T-shirts, and light jackets.

  Kenzie got on her radio. “Sixteen eighty-eight to Indian Peaks Command. The missing party has been located.”

  “Oh, thank God, you’re here. My wife fell from the top of those rocks up there and broke her leg. I think she has a concussion, too. I tried to keep her warm, but…”

  The woman lay still and pale, her head resting against her husband’s chest.

  Kenzie wasn’t a paramedic, but she could tell the woman was in urgent need of medical help.

  Harrison opened his pack, drew out some hand warmers, and activated them. “Tuck these inside her jacket. Paramedics are right behind us.”

  “I’m Kenzie Morgan from the Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue Team, and this is Gizmo.” She petted Gizmo, praising him and giving him treats. “Good boy, Gizmo. You did it.”

  Gizmo had earned his paycheck.

  Now it was time for the rest of the Team to take over.

  Chapter 9

  While Kenzie walked back to the parking lot with Gizmo, Conrad worked with Belcourt to create the anchor that would enable the Team to bear the two victims in litters up the steep, snowy slope. He hadn’t tied a knot or worked with a piece of climbing gear since that awful day on the Icefall, but his fingers hadn’t forgotten.

  It surprised him that the others had let him be involved. He was no longer a member of the Team, after all, and Megs, who was staffing the radio back at The Cave, was a hard-ass about protocol. Team rules demanded that all rescue participants be Team members or first responders. The rules also required any Team member who’d been through any kind of trauma be cleared by Esri before working a call. But apparently, Megs hadn’t voiced an objection.

  Conrad double-checked the belay he’d rigged around a large ponderosa pine. “Do you want to look at this?”

  Belcourt shook his head. “You’ve been at this a lot longer than I have. Maybe you should check my knots.”

  Conrad grinned. “Nah. I trust you.”

  “Likewise.” Belcourt was an engineer and a genius. He’d come to Colorado from the Pine Ridge reservation to study engineering and had fallen in love with climbing, mastering it in a year and becoming a primary Team member as fast as Moretti. For him, rescues were interesting physics problems that had to be worked out on the fly. He spent his free time engineering gadgets to make rescues more efficient and safer.

  This rescue was pretty straightforward. They had two adults to get up the slope in two separate litters, and the anchor had to be strong enough to support their weight, plus the weight of the six Team members who would carry each litter. The Team members would be walking, but to minimize the risk of them slipping and dropping the litter, they would also be on belay. That meant the anchor had to hold about two thousand pounds.

  Once the litter reached the top of the slope, they would remove the ropes and attach big ATV wheels to the bottom—one of Belcourt’s innovations—and roll the litters quickly down the trail to the parking lot, where two ambulances waited. Taylor and Hawke, who were both paramedics, said the woman had a fractured femur and that both she and her husband were hypothermic.

  They were both damned lucky to be alive. Conrad had seen more than one fractured femur sever the femoral artery, causing the victim to bleed out in minutes.

  Conrad and Belcourt finished the anchor, then attached ropes to the first litter while six Team members—Ahearn, Taylor, Sasha, Nicole, Herrera, and Moretti—roped themselves in.

  Apart from the fact that he didn’t have a radio and wasn’t listening in to the radio traffic, it felt like old times. The first litter up the slope carried the wife, who was much worse off than her husband.

  Conrad and Belcourt detached the ropes, then crawled beneath the litter and affixed the big ATV wheel, and six Team members headed off down the trail with the unconscious woman. Then they repeated the entire process with the husband’s litter. Now that his wife was safe and the adrenaline gone, he had lapsed into semi-consciousness, though he kept insisting he could walk.

  “Let us handle it from here, okay, buddy?” Hawke’s voice was reassuring.

  It was a quick rescue as rescues went, with both parties off to the hospital within an hour of being located. There were high-fives in the parking lot, where Kenzie was waiting for Conrad by her truck.

  “Good work, folks,” Ahearn called. “We’ll debrief this at The Cave and then head to Knockers.”

  Kenzie reached for Conrad, hugged him. “Thanks for being here.”

  “I didn’t do much.”

  “You helped solve the anchor problem, leaving another Team member free to carry a litter.”

  Okay, that was true.

  Inside her truck, Kenzie turned to him. “Are you sure you want to go to Knockers? It’s Sunday, so it probably won’t be too busy.”

  Knockers, named for the legendary tommyknockers that supposedly lived in the abandoned mines around Scarlet Springs, was the place where locals came to unwind, eat, drink great beer, play pool, and show off their moves on the climbing wall. Conrad had been avoiding the place, but now…

  “I’m fine with it. Are you hungry?”

  Kenzie backed out of her parking space and followed Rescue 1 back toward the highway. “Starving.”

  Back at The Cave, Megs had hot coffee waiting for them. Conrad helped unload equipment. Every rope would be washed, dried, and inspected, every piece of gear examined for wear or damage. Nothing would be loaded back onto Rescue 1 until they were certain it was safe to use again. Unloading took longer than the debriefing itself, which was over in ten quick minutes.

  “Good job, everyone. We saved two lives today.” Megs bent down to run her hands through Gizmo’s fur. “You are a rock star, buddy.”

  Conrad held Gabby to keep her away from Gizmo. “Thanks for letting me be a part of it, even though I’m not a member.”

  Megs looked confused. “It’s against standard operating procedure for anyone who isn’t a member to participate, so of course you’re a member. You’re tenured.”

  “I’m … what?”

  Tenured members were those with the most experience and the greatest privileges. They were free from having to attend routine meetings and trainings and could do pretty much whatever the hell they wanted on-site at a rescue—lead climb, fix anchors, render first aid, clean climbing routes afterward, act as Incident Command.

  “We made you a tenured member during your prolonged absence.”

  “But I resigned from the Team.”

  Megs looked over at Ahearn. “Did you get a resignation letter from Conrad?”

  Quiet snickers passed through the room.

  Ahearn shook his head. “I haven’t seen anyt
hing.”

  So that’s how they were going to play this.

  They didn’t have a letter because Conrad hadn’t sent one. He’d told Megs in person that he was off the Team—and she had ignored him.

  Conrad couldn’t help but smile. “Okay, fine. I’m a tenured member.”

  Megs pressed a pager into his palm. “Congratulations. We’re lucky to have you.”

  Cheers.

  Kenzie dropped Gabby and Gizmo off with her staff at the kennel, then climbed into Conrad’s vehicle. It was six when they arrived—the start of the dinner rush. The stage area off to the right was dark. Instead of a live band, music from the jukebox played Eighties hits over a sound system.

  Conrad leaned down. “This is like stepping back in time.”

  “In a good way, I hope?”

  He took her hand, nodded, his smile giving her belly flutters again.

  Cheyenne greeted them with menus, her long blond hair piled on her head. “Welcome back, Conrad. It’s good to see you. What the hell took you so long?”

  Kenzie and Conrad made their way toward the Team table in the back, but were stopped by Bear, who got up from a nearby table and stepped into Conrad’s path, his eyes wide with surprise.

  “Harrison Conrad.” Bear held up his hands. “My heart rejoices in the Lord, for I delight in your deliverance!”

  It was one of the things about Bear. He was able to express himself better when he quoted the Bible, which he knew inside and out, so he expressed himself mostly in Bible verses. It wasn’t easy for him to come up with words himself.

  But Bear had gotten people’s attention, and the restaurant fell quiet. Then came the whispers and hushed exclamations.

  “Oh, my God! That’s Harrison Conrad. He’s finally back from Nepal.”

  “Is that Conrad?”

  “Look who’s back.”

  Kenzie knew Conrad must have heard, too.

  He ignored it, releasing her hand to shake Bear’s. “Thanks, Bear.”

  But Bear pulled him into a hug. Bear was one of the few men around who matched Conrad in height, but when he spoke, his voice was soft and shy, deep and yet somehow childlike. “I didn’t think I would see you again.”