Chapter Thirty-Two
Sommer
Friday Night.
Hours had passed.
Miles had passed.
Gabriel had talked to her the whole time.
It was the fuel that propelled Sommer up the mountain.
Her body was rubber, and she had to focus on where she placed her boots.
How many times had he caught her and hefted her back to her feet?
How many times had he wrapped her in his arms and said, “Breathe for me. Just stop for a minute and breathe.”
At this stretch the path was too narrow, so he insisted she hold on to the back of his pack.
Their conversation had covered a broad swath of topics, sometimes rich with emotion, deeper than the conversations that she’d had with—well, any of her past intimate partners.
It must be the cathedral of the trees, the confessional of the greens.
“You said you go to therapy?” Sommer asked. “Is this to deal with grief?”
“Life in general. My past job. My present job, which has its own whack to my emotions. My family.”
“Your wife or … or your husband?”
“Hetero through and through. No wife. My past significant other took a job in Indiana. I stayed here for my brother.”
“Will you go join her now?”
“No, that ended. I guess it’s been six or seven months since she left? I think it was a good time for us to part ways, and her taking that job meant we could do it in a way that no one's feelings or egos took a ding.”
“You’re still in touch?”
Whiskey had come back and was lopping by her side, moral support. There was no reason to have her nose to the ground, and she must be exhausted hiking all those miles on her little legs.
“I sent her a text on her birthday,” Gabriel said. “She sent a donation in Daniel’s name when he died, and a card addressed to both Cathy and me.” Gabriel glanced over his shoulder at her. “You?”
“Me what? In therapy?” she asked.
“Involved with someone.”
“I’m living in my little-cottage-in-the-woods phase, my spinster-with-cats phase. Many cats.”
Gabriel whistled. “Whatever he or she did must have been massive.”
“He, singular, recently. They, plural, over the years. I’m hetero through and through.”
The truth was, she was very happy with how her life was shaping up. Truly.
Then this guy showed up, with Goth-hound howling along with her songs, interrupting that happiness with a tingle of “aren’t you lonely?”
It was inconvenient.
Did she want to think of Gabriel with those kinds of thoughts—thoughts of past loneliness and possible companionship?
When he didn’t answer, she said, “So the woman who moved to Indiana, she didn’t move to meet a guy? She wasn’t cheating?”
“Not that I know of.” He turned and caught her gaze, and his eyes got stormy.
“Did you cheat on her?”
“Nope.” He stepped over a log, then took her hand to help her step over. They reached down to lift Whiskey over.
Every time he did that, Whiskey would stiffen her spine and stretch her legs long, holding them rigid like the taxidermy of a dog.
It wigged Sommer out a little.
“Why does she do that?”
“I have no idea. My guess is she hates to be lifted off the ground, and that’s the posture that keeps her from freaking out.”
“Poor baby,” Sommer put her hand back on his pack and made sure her feet weren’t tangling with Whiskey’s lead. “So how do you define that? What does cheating mean to you?”
“Me personally? If I’m in a committed relationship, I don’t give anything else the kind of energy that belongs to my relationship.
Not physical attention in mind or body, not emotional attention.
I mean, I care about my friends. I show up for them emotionally.
But when I’m in a couple relationship, my partner is my priority, and that’s where my energy goes.
I’m trying to follow this conversation. Are you trying to let me know you’re a swinger, and you wouldn’t mind inviting me for a ménage à trois or something? ”
“Would you be down for that?” she asked.
“No. But thank you.”
“Any special reason why not?”
“I’m just not a sexual daredevil. I take my health and the health of my future partners seriously. I prefer intimate and emotionally connected relationships with my sexual partners.”
“Future partners,” Sommer repeated. “Because you had focused, rightly so, on your brother. How is your family doing?”
“My family situation has shifted; we’re no longer in crisis. Now, we’re trying to grieve and heal.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
They walked in silence.
“Sexual daredevil.” She laughed.
“Hey, if that’s the way you roll,” Gabriel said, sending her a grin, “good for you.”
“It is most certainly not how I roll.”
“I see tents,” Gabriel said.
“Green and orange? That’s them.” Sommer pushed his back, and they both raced forward.
The stench hit them hard.
Flies swarmed the area.
And even though she was the nurse, Sommer couldn’t force herself around to the tent opening to look.
She gripped Gabriel’s arm tightly. And he turned to her. Tipping her chin up, he gently brushed the damp hair from her face. “I’m going to take a look. Stay here for me.” Then he kissed her forehead, and it was the solace that she needed.
Gabriel pressed Whiskey’s lead into her hand, then slid his pack off.
Moving reverently over the open space, she knew that he believed they were too late.
But murmurings from their direction had Sommer in motion.
Any thought of fatigue was by the wayside.
She grabbed Gabriel’s pack and sprinted onto the scene.
Gabriel stood. “We need a plan.”
“Plan one. Don’t go near them,” Sommer said, pulling on her N95 and tugging her gloves from the front pocket of her hiking pants. “You don’t have protection, and this is the worst I’ve ever seen. I shouldn’t have let you do that.”
His brow furrowed. “You know what you’re doing. So I’ll be your errand boy. Dump my pack out, use anything you need. I’m going to call my friend, Reaper Hamilton, at Cerberus. He’s tracking our mission. He was developing extraction resources if they were required.”
“They’re required.”
Gabriel started off, but Sommer clung to his hand. “Can you please ask him to call my sister? Sloane is in agony over this.”
“Yeah, that’s about how I’d describe it. I’ll ask him to do that.”
Gabriel and Whiskey sat on the other side of the clearing while Sommer got to work cleaning and changing, medicating and spooning drips of electrolytes into Abbie and Marna’s mouths.
When they were off the mountain, Sommer didn’t think either friend would remember anything that happened.
They were delirious and limp. Just this side of consciousness.
Gabriel said that the search for the family in the swamps had concluded successfully and that they had already rerouted their helicopter toward Cerberus Headquarters. He’d have them reroute again.
A forty-five-minute ETA.
Prepare for touchdown.
“What does that mean, prepare for touchdown?” Sommer asked.
Medivac helicopters landed at her hospital all the time. A flat surface was all she knew they needed.
“The rotor wash is strong, and it throws rocks and debris in the air. Reaper said with the weather system that’s moving in, our window is short. They’ll land. We’ll need to move Abbie and Marna and our gear and take off again immediately.”
“Is there a chance they won’t be able to come?” Panic clutched Sommer’s heart.
“Sommer, listen to me. We’re getting Abbie and Marna down. I promise you.”
“Promise?” Sommer asked again because there was something big in what he’d just said; if Sommer weren’t so tired and distraught, she’d know what it was.
“Sommer,” Gabriel said, pronouncing his words clearly. “I’ve got you. We’ve got this. I promise.”