Page 20
The words settled heavily in his chest, right beside everything else he carried. The abandoned team on the mountain and all those weeks he’d fought to be there. He’d walked away from it because he knew the truth of the woman’s condition.
“Good.” The voice came from the doorway, and Wyatt turned to see Carson Malone standing there with Gabe a step behind him. Both men had clearly caught Hitchcock’s assessment.
Carson’s gaze cut past Wyatt to the unconscious woman on the table, then back to him. His face was unreadable.
“I’d hate to think he deserted his team for nothing.”
* * * * *
Whitley opened her eyes to white ceiling tiles.
For a moment she lay there, taking stock of her body. One by one, she located each body part and catalogued the sensation she was having.
Feet, fine. After a month of blisters, her feet had gotten used to being in boots more than not and walking thirty thousand steps a day.
Legs? Okay too.
Her neck was a bit stiff from wherever she was lying. Arms?
She concentrated on them one at a time because something was off. Her right arm felt tight. Without turning her head, she flexed her fingers but it didn’t ease the restricted feeling on the underside of her forearm.
Chest seemed all right. Hips the same as always. Her head ached with a dull thud, but it wasn’t enough to consider.
Back?
She blinked up at the ceiling. The scorching pain she’d been experiencing for days seemed to have ebbed completely. No amount of ibuprofen could do that. Which must mean—
She turned her head left and right, shocked that the world wasn’t lush green or a myriad of brown trees and branches. No canopy of pine needles, no dirt floor or gray rock. White walls instead of a cap of snow, and the wind was replaced by the rhythmic beeping of a machine nearby.
Oh god. She wasn’t on the mountain. This was bad.
Very, very bad.
With all her strength, she tried to push into a sitting position. Her arm gave a hard pinch, and she looked down at it to see an IV taped into her vein. She followed the tubing to a pump.
Her brain scrambled to catch up with what her body already told her, dragging through fog thick enough that thinking felt like wading through a swamp.
Where was she?
Fragments trickled into her mind, disconnected and out of order.
A man’s face in the dark. Camo clothing. The tang of woodsmoke and clean cotton. A road appearing out of nowhere and headlights blinding her as they rushed across the pavement.
She floundered for more, but her brain came up with nothing solid, just impressions bleeding into each other and no way to tell how much time had passed between the mountain and here.
Her arms trembled, but no matter how hard she pushed, she couldn’t haul her body upright. She was lying on…a bed? Under a blanket.
She was warm. Actually freakin’ warm for the first time in months. Not that sick warmth that drove her to ask the stranger in the woods for painkillers. The awful shaking had gone too.
Which was good, because if her ex was catching up to her, she needed strength to run.
The IV beeped. At least she’d be well hydrated when he finally killed her.
The thought shouldn’t be funny, and though a hysterical laugh bubbled in her throat, she didn’t release it.
If she was warm and her back wasn’t killing her, if machines were beeping and she was lying beneath ceiling tiles…
She was in civilization.
