Chapter Six

Lainie felt the chopper lift off, and then an EMT began taking vitals, while the nurse on board started an IV. They were talking to each other on their headsets, but the noise inside the chopper made hearing them impossible, so she laid still and closed her eyes. The end of this journey was where her healing began.

The trip was brief. The landing, little more than a bump, and they were down. The doors opened then they were pulling her out on the gurney and pushing her toward the hospital on the run.

The spinning rotors whipped the air into a frenzy, while the heat coming off the roof washed over her in a wave. She closed her eyes against the glare, and only knew they were inside the building by the sudden waft of cool air and people saying her name. Then they were on the move again, pushing her to the dedicated elevator that would take her down to ER.

ITWAS CHARIS'Sday off, but she'd heard the new update early this morning that Lainie had been found alive, and the rescuers would be bringing her down the mountain today.

Charis had cried buckets when Lainie went missing, and now, knowing she had been found by the man she'd loved and lost, was like something out of a fairy tale. She was guessing they were using a chopper to pick her up somewhere along the trail, but without knowing the schedule or the ETA, she just went straight to the emergency room to wait for her arrival.

A couple of hours passed before they got word the chopper had landed. At that point, the ER erupted in a scurry of doctors and nurses readying for her arrival, along with a detective from the Denver PD, and a crime scene investigator.

Suddenly the paramedics appeared with their patient and rolled her into an exam room then transferred her to the bed as they were debriefing the waiting staff on her stats and condition.

Between the pain and fever, the trip down the mountain and then the chopper noise, Lainie arrived in the ER with a pounding headache and was on the verge of nausea. The room was spinning, and she was afraid she'd pass out when she suddenly spotted Charis at the door.

"Charis. I need to talk to Charis."

Charis hurried into the room. "I'm here, honey... I'm here."

"Hunt will be coming. Can you watch for him, and tell him what's happening and where I am so he doesn't tear up the hospital looking for me?"

"Of course, but how will I know him?" Charis asked.

"Look for tall, dark and handsome, ice-blue eyes, devil-black hair and stubble to match, and if you hear Louisiana coming out of his mouth, that's him."

"Consider it done," Charis said, and left on the run, while one of the other nurses looked at Lainie and groaned. "Dang, girl. Does he have a brother?"

"No, and hands off," she mumbled.

All of the staff in the room knew Lainie, which made what was happening personal to everyone, including her, but when they began cutting off her clothes, she had no recourse but to let it happen.

Clay Wagner, the ER doctor, quickly moved to the side of her bed. "Welcome back, Lainie, and apologies upfront before we start. This is Della Pryor, a detective with the Denver PD, and she's brought a tech from the crime lab with her. They'll be taking photos of your injuries to back up their case against Justin Randall."

Lainie winced as they kept cutting off her clothes. "Whatever it takes to put him away. And don't lose the car keys in my pocket!"

Wagner continued his examination as every garment was cut away, and when more injuries were revealed, photos were quickly taken. They had her down to socks and panties when Detective Pryor asked them to turn Lainie on her side long enough for them to get photos of her back.

The scrapes and bruises visible there were purple, telltale evidence of the fingerprint bruises on her shoulders and neck where Justin Randall tried to hold her down. Being manhandled exacerbated the pain, but Lainie said nothing, and then they took off her socks.

There was a mutual gasp at the sight and then she heard someone crying. It wasn't as if they hadn't seen worse. It was just because they knew her, and knew everything she'd endured to stay alive. Lainie felt tears welling, and blurted out a joke to change the emotionally charged moment.

"Come on, guys, they feel even worse than they look, so nobody gets to cry but me."

Joking among themselves was how doctors and nurses got through the trauma of what they saw, and the ensuing laughter shifted their emotions.

"Do we need to do a rape kit?" Pryor asked.

Lainie shook her head. "No, ma'am. He only wished. All we had was a nasty wrestling match, and I took him out with a rock before he could unzip his own pants."

"Noted," Pryor said. "We do need to collect DNA from beneath your fingernails. It won't take long." She then signaled her tech, who quickly gloved up and began taking scrapings from under Lainie's nails.

"Apologies for invading the ER and your personal space, but I think we're done here," Pryor said, and she and the tech left the room.

The staff covered Lainie with a sheet, as a tech rolled in a portable X-ray, followed by a lab tech who'd come to draw blood.

Dr. Wagner moved to the foot of the bed to check her feet and the depth of the cuts, but at the first sign of pressure, Lainie screamed.

Wagner jumped. "I'm so sorry. I didn't realize... As I look at the damage here, I think I'll be better able to treat you if we do this in surgery, so we're going to put you under."

Still reeling from the pain, Lainie's voice was shaking, but it was the best thing she'd heard since her arrival. "I second your suggestion, but you might want to run me through the car wash before you start."

They laughed again.

"Having spent four days lost on a mountain, you don't look so bad," Wagner said.

"It was probably the soaking I took from that last creek I crawled into trying to bring down my fever. You know what they say in Texas about women's big hairdos? The higher the hair, the closer to God? I can testify in all honesty that God did not pipe in hot water up there."

They were still laughing when they wheeled her out of the room.

BYTHETIMEHunt reached the trailhead, he was exhausted. His clothes were drenched with sweat, and he was in no mood for the reunion he knew was waiting. What he didn't expect were his parents on the scene, as well, but there they were, all running toward him with panicked expressions on their faces. His first thought was, What the hell? then he tuned in to what they were saying.

"Where's Lainie? What happened?" Tina screamed.

Hunt dropped his backpack, started to reach into an outside pocket for something to wipe off the sweat, then used his shirtsleeve, instead.

"Nothing happened. A med-flight chopper picked her up halfway down."

"What hospital? Where?" Greg shouted.

The moment Hunt heard that voice, he turned to face him, his voice deepening in anger with every word that he spoke.

"I told you, never look at me again. Never talk to me. Never speak my name." Then he stared Tina down until she took a step back. "Lainie sent you two a message. She doesn't want to see you. She doesn't want to hear your voices, or see your faces. Ever. You don't go to the hospital. You don't interfere in any part of her existence, ever again. You lost the right to her the day she was knocked unconscious in her own bedroom. You kidnapped her like a criminal and locked her up in a velvet jail."

Hunt's rage was frightening, and Greg made a crawdad move backward as Hunt moved toward him, so close now that Hunt could see blood pulsing through a bulging vein in the old man's forehead.

"I don't know who you paid off to get away with what you did, but I know the truth. You ran your daughter down, rammed the back end of her car and caused the wreck."

Greg's face was flushed. His eyes were bulging with a level of fear and anger that he didn't dare turn loose, then when Hunt took another step toward him, it was all he could do not to turn and run.

"You killed my son. And you tried to kill Lainie because of your bullshit feud with my father. The only reason you're still breathing is because she's still alive. Now get in your car and get the hell out of my sight. Both of you!"

The rage in his voice sliced through them. Tina slid her hand under Greg's elbow as Hunt turned to his parents.

"I don't even know what to say to you, but I don't know you anymore. You betrayed me in a way that should haunt you for the rest of your lives. Your silence abetted Lainie's abduction. Your continuing silence led to the death of your own grandchild. You all fed off a war that had nothing to do with the children you both bore. You gave us life, and then you broke us. Lainie and I were pawns. You tossed us about like grenades, daring each other to pull the pins. And when you finally did, we became collateral damage."

Chuck was pale and Brenda was weeping.

"I'm sorry, son," Chuck said.

"No, you're not, and don't call me ‘son.'"

Hunt shuddered. He felt empty. Like all the negativity they'd fed him was gone. They were staring at him, pale-faced and silent. His parents. Her parents. All of them. For the first time holding and owning their guilt.

"I don't know how your lives are going to end, but I know Lainie and I will thrive without you. You men are worthless. Whatever tiny bits of good you have put out into this world, you have negated it a thousand times over with your hate. When you die, they should burn you into ashes, bury you both in the same unmarked hole, then forget you ever existed. You have wasted your entire lives fighting over nothing but a common dislike for each other, so you should spend eternity together. And if God wants your sorry souls back, He'll know where to find them."

Greg shuddered, and Chuck was slack-jawed in disbelief. Had Hunt just heaped a curse upon their souls? They wouldn't look at their wives, and they wouldn't look at each other. But they were all watching Hunt as he picked up his backpack and walked away, and they were still watching when tossed his backpack inside his Jeep and began stripping down to his briefs.

Even from a distance, they could see the man and muscle the Army had built, and to their horror, the scars it had left behind. They were still watching when he retrieved clean clothes from the back seat, then put them on and drove away.

The parents parted company without a word. It was going to be a long silent drive back to Louisiana for all of them, with plenty of time to reflect on what they'd wrought.

As they were driving away, Hunt was entering the hospital address into his GPS. He followed them all the way to Denver Health, eyeing the massive edifice as he pulled into the parking lot, then drove to the emergency room entrance and parked. He grabbed his backpack as he was getting out, and hurried inside.

CHARISHADBEENin the ER lobby for hours, eyeballing every man who walked in. She knew it would take time for Hunter Gray to get off the mountain and then back into the city, but it didn't matter. She was here for Lainie.

And then she saw a man coming toward the entrance. His head was up, and he was moving at a fast pace, with a trail-dusty backpack slung over one shoulder.

The moment he entered the lobby, she knew it was him. Tall, dark and handsome didn't cover it, and even though she was close to the date of her own wedding, just looking at him sent shivers up her spine. She jumped up, running.

"Excuse me! Excuse me! Are you Hunter Gray?"

Hunt skidded to a stop and turned around. "Yes. Who are you?"

Charis sighed. "The scout your girl sent to find you."

His relief was evident. "She's okay?"

"Yes, or will be. They took her to surgery to—"

He panicked. What had he missed? Did delaying her retrieval make it worse?

"Why surgery? What happened?"

"I'm sorry. Nothing dire. They decided anesthesia was the best option before they began treating her feet."

"Oh, right," he said. "She passed out last night when I started pouring disinfectant on them. It scared the hell out of me. Can you tell me where she is?"

"Consider me your escort. I work here, too, although this is my day off. I'm to take you to her room."

"Yes, ma'am. Lead the way."

"Oh, by the way. My name is Charis, and Lainie is one of my best friends."

BETWEENTHEDRUGS, the shampoo, and the bed bath they'd given her, Lainie was feeling no pain—or at least, not much. But being a patient here was the flip side of her daily life. In here, she felt isolated from everything.

She frowned as she fingered her scalp around the head wound. They'd shaved a little bit of hair away to staple it up, so she'd chosen not to look at herself in a mirror. The expressions of horror on her friends' faces when they'd first seen her said it all.

She quit fiddling with the staples, and was staring at the ceiling and thinking about Hunt when someone knocked, and then the door swung inward.

Charis came through, then stepped aside. "Mission accomplished, dear friend. Rest well. We'll talk another time," she said, then blew her a kiss and left the room as the door swung shut behind Hunt.

Seconds later, he was at her bedside. He dropped his backpack to embrace her, then froze. Between the stitches in her head, the bandages on her feet and the cuts still healing on her lips, he was afraid to touch her body at all, and took her hand instead.

"Hey, baby...what did they say? What all did they do? Are you hurting?"

"Pain-wise, I'm better now. I have a concussion, which is healing in spite of me. Bruised ribs but nothing broken. The obvious staples in my head. I'm told that after they cleaned my feet, they glued the deep cuts, and left the rest to heal on their own. A couple of places were infected, as you know, but I have double doses of antibiotics in me, and enough pain meds in me to make the world look pretty in pink."

He smiled. "I'd almost forgotten your sense of humor, and now I'm wondering what kind of description you gave to your friend that made her identify me so fast."

"Oh...basically just look for the best-looking guy with black stubble," she said, and ran her fingers against his chin.

"Ah, yes... I'm going to have to deal with all that."

"They're going to let me go home tomorrow. I'm still here only because they administered anesthetic. When do you have to go back to work?"

His eyes darkened. "Never. I'm not leaving you."

"But your job?"

"Darlin', I can fly choppers anywhere. However, I may be ahead of myself. I guess I need to ask, is there still room for me in your world?"

"Dumbest question ever, and yes," she said. "I have a house. I bought it years ago. I love the house. Everything I did to it was with you in my heart. I guess I should have sent out an SOS years ago, but I think I was afraid to face you."

"Well, that's bullshit, and now you know it," Hunt said. "Then it's settled. I'll call my boss, Pete, and tell him I'm staying. I can catch a quick flight back in a few days to pack up my clothes, and we'll go from there."

Tears quickened. "Go from there... We finally have a future, don't we?"

"Yes, ma'am, we do, but we can't go back. Life happened. We both changed, but without each other to monitor the changes. We're gonna take this slow and this time, do it right. No running. No hiding. We already love each other. We just need to feel the solid ground beneath our feet here as well," he said, and brushed a kiss across her forehead.

She was crying again. "Thank you for coming to find me. Thank you for still loving me even after all the chaos my parents caused. I'm so sorry about your scholarship. I cannot imagine how that felt."

Hunt slid his hand beneath her palm and felt her fingers curl around it. Just like they were before—always needing that feeling of connection. She'd bared her soul to him on the mountain, and he was still living with his hell. It wasn't fair to her, and there were things he needed to purge. They were already talking about their future, and he was still buried in the past.

"I need to tell you stuff, but at the same time, I keep thinking, wait until she's better. Only we both learned the hard way what happens when you wait."

Lainie tightened her grip on his hand. "Lower this bed rail and sit down beside me. Whatever it is will never change how I love you. Give me your demons to hold. I know how to handle them."

Hunt lowered the railing, then scooted onto the side of the bed. He glanced at her once, then dropped his head.

Lainie reached for his hand as she waited. She could feel the tension in his body and gave his hand a little tug. "Hunter, it's okay."

He took a deep breath and started talking.

"I've never talked about this before, and you deserve to know. Because there can't be secrets between us again. Ever. I have nightmares that will never go away. Just as I'm sure you do. But you told me yours. And I need to tell you mine."

"I'm listening," Lainie said.

Hunt nodded. "I shut down after I left New Orleans. I packed up the boy I'd been and tried to forget he'd ever existed. There were days in Iraq when I thought I would probably die. Looking back, I think I joined the Army expecting it to happen. By a twist of fate and an aptitude test, I wound up in Aviation training and came out good at what I had learned to do. The whole time I was deployed, I carried out my job in the cockpit of an Apache Longbow, the Army's most impenetrable helicopter. I occupied the front seat as gunner and copilot, with my pilot, Preacher, behind me quoting Bible verses as he flew. Every pilot has a call sign. They called me Gator because I was from Louisiana. There were days when we felt invincible, and days it felt like not even God could save us. Yes, we got shot at every time we went up. And yes, they threw everything at us from ground fire to blasting at us with RPGs, and MANPADS. But we were in Longbows, and what we didn't evade was deflected. We were not on the ground like foot soldiers, being moved from place to place in truck convoys, riding along with your buddies in the middle of nowhere and getting blown up by an IED while you're in the middle of laughing at someone else's dirty joke. But pilots did die. And war sucks. You know?"

Lainie's heart was hammering. She could feel every nuance of the nightmares within him, and yet there were no platitudes that fit. No words to take away the pain, so she did what he needed most, and just listened and watched the shadows come and go on his face.

He was staring out a window now as he talked. She knew he'd gone back there in his mind, and there was no way for her to follow.

He glanced back at her face. She hadn't flinched, and this was good, because it was her permission he sought, to be able to continue.

"We'd been in-country for almost eighteen months and were having a little downtime at the base. It was hot and sunny, and the endless wind was blowing sand in our hair and in our eyes, and if we laughed, we had grit in our mouths, but on that day it didn't matter. We were just hanging out, playing a game of pickup. Rat had the basketball. I was defending under the basket. T-Bone was dancing around in the corner, waving his hand for a pass, and Preacher was coming in behind Rat for a steal when a sniper hiding in the surrounding mountains fired a shot. Preacher had this look of surprise on his face." Hunt stopped, swallowing past the lump in his throat. "And then I saw the hole in his forehead about a second before the next shot hit me in the back."

Lainie flinched. He'd never said he'd been shot!

Hunt looked up and out the window again. "I watched him die in front of me. The last thing I saw before I passed out was Rat running for a weapon. Preacher died and I didn't, and guilt set in. I didn't want to get close to anyone like that again. I'd lost you and then him, so I shut down emotionally and focused on nothing but what I'd signed up to do. Even after we were stateside again, and then deployed in different places during the ensuing years, I began to burn out. Ultimately, I left because I was tired of running away from the past. Then I saw your story on the evening news, and the rest you know."

TEARSWERERUNNINGdown her face. "Oh, Hunt... I need to hug the hurt out of you so bad I can't stand it, and they've hooked me up to everything in this hospital except WiFi. Come lie down beside me. You've stayed awake for days because of me. Let me hold you now while you sleep."

He damn sure wasn't leaving her and didn't have it in him to refuse that offer. And, since she hadn't thrown up her hands in shock at what he'd told her, he guessed she'd decided to keep him.

"You know it's against the rules?"

"You leave the demons and the rules to me," she said, and scooted over until her back was against the bed rail.

Hunt kicked off his boots, lay down beside her and pulled up the bed rail, then turned to face her with the railing at his back. He searched her face for doubt and saw none. All he felt was love. He'd bared his soul, and now his heart was in her hands.

"I love you, Lainie."

She sighed. "I love you, more."

"We're breaking all kinds of hospital protocol," he said.

"I am a dear and beloved employee here, and you're already everybody's hero because you found me, so, in their eyes, you can do no wrong. I love you. Close your eyes."

So, he did.