Hold Your Breath (Search and Rescue) (2 page)

“Never let go of your patient!” Callum yelled. “Once you put your hands on him, you
do not
let go until he is being lifted into the ambulance, understand?”

With a heavy sigh, Lou tried to maneuver behind Phil again, but he was surprisingly agile for such a big guy. Plus, the training had been tiring, and she still had to help hoist Phil’s bulk out of the water. Clenching her jaw, she lunged toward him, managing to latch her arms around his waist.

“Got you!” she crowed, but her satisfaction was quickly overruled by irritation as her legs floated up behind her
again
, curving her spine into an awkward partial backbend. With Phil’s body in the way, she couldn’t pull her knees up very easily. After several unsuccessful attempts at getting her legs underneath her, she kicked out in frustration. But instead of passing through unresisting water, her booted foot hit hard against something.

“What the hell?” she mumbled, looking over her shoulder. She couldn’t see whatever it was through the murky water. It had felt fairly firm, although it had moved with her kick. She was tempted to thump it with her boot again, but reconsidered.

“What?” Phil had finally realized she was ignoring him. He quit his fake struggling, twisting his head around to follow her gaze.

“I kicked something.” She kept staring at the water, as if she’d suddenly develop X-ray vision. Her arms were still locked around Phil’s middle. No need to get yelled at for making the same mistake twice.

“The Mission Reservoir Monster?” he asked in his best spooky voice.

“What’s taking you so long?” Callum called from the ice. “For Christ’s sake, Sparks, your victim would be dead by now. Just complete the recovery, and let’s get his body out of the water so we can notify his next of kin.”

“You gave up on me so quick, Cal,” Phil whined. “Aren’t you even going to start CPR?”

“No way,” Derek yelled back. “He knows where those lips have been.”

“What’s the problem?” Callum didn’t sound amused. He
did
sound annoyed.

“There’s something under the water. I kicked it.”

“Shark?” Chad suggested.

“Seriously?” Derek scoffed. “In a freshwater reservoir?”

“Maybe,” Chad muttered with a shrug.

“Well, it didn’t bite me, so hopefully that rules out both the Reservoir Monster and all woman-eating fish.”

Moving a few feet closer, Derek peered at the water. “If it’s anything valuable, I call dibs.”

“No way!” Lou protested. “I’m the one who kicked it. Finders keepers!”

Callum expelled an impatient sigh loud enough for Lou to hear, even across the twenty feet that separated them. He moved to the edge of the ice and slid gracefully into the water. As he swam toward them, Lou turned back to scan for the unidentified object.

At first she thought she was imagining it, but she could definitely see something down there, and it was getting larger and more distinct with each second. She wondered if her kick had knocked whatever it was loose, allowing it to float to the top. As she stared, holding her breath, the faint shape got closer and closer, until a large, gray mass bobbed to the surface. Lou gave a muffled shout, her arms tightening around Phil. A part of her knew what it was as soon as it surfaced, but a larger portion refused to accept it.

No. No way.
No way.

“Is that a body?” Derek yelled from the ice.

“Yep, that’s a dead guy,” Phil said, his voice as casual as if it were a beer can floating next to them and not the waxy gray back of a corpse.

“Huh.” Derek didn’t sound too freaked out about it, either. “Lou, I’m good with finders keepers, then. You can have it.”

She couldn’t respond. For once, no words would leave her mouth. All she could do was cling to Phil’s middle and try to breathe. It wasn’t working.

As he pulled up next to them, Callum looked at the peacefully bobbing mass of flesh. “Fuck.”

Lou’s lungs had locked up again, and she felt as if her face had been dunked back into the frigid water. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the bloated body.

“Hey, Cal?” Phil still sounded much too calm. “Where’s the head?”

Lou didn’t know why she’d thought for a single moment that calling her mother was a good idea. It had been an impulse, an in-shock drive for comfort that had made her momentarily forget the reality of what her mom was actually like.

“Mom?”

“Louise? Is that you?”

“Yeah. I…um, well, I…” She trailed off, not sure how to go about telling her estranged mother that she’d just come face-to…well, neck…with a waterlogged, headless corpse.

“Of course you can, dear.”

Lou paused.
What?
“What?”

“Of course you can come home.”

“What? No!” It was beginning to sink in just how bad an idea this had been. Lou didn’t have the patience for the upcoming discussion, even on noncorpse-discovery days.

“Oh, don’t worry about anything. Your stepfather and I won’t even say a word about this silly…hiatus of yours. I’ll book you a ticket out of DIA and email the boarding pass to you. You’ll be home by Wednesday.”

“No! Seriously, Mom, do
not
book a flight for me.” Lou closed her eyes and let the back of her head hit the dive van. She’d holed up in the van, which was really a converted ambulance, to get some privacy for her anticipated nervous breakdown. It would be nice to be able to get around to that breakdown so she could just get it over with, but she’d been dumb and called her mother first and was now paying the price.

A heavy sigh gusted through her cell phone. “Louise Dutton Sparks, don’t start second-guessing yourself now. Coming home is the right thing to do.”

“My home is here now, Mom, in Colorado,” she explained for the thousandth time. “I’m not going back to Connecticut.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Louise,” her mom snapped. “That…shed you live in is not your home. It doesn’t even have running water.”

“It does too have running—” Lou cut herself off with a brisk shake of her head, reminding herself not to get sucked into one of her mother’s arguments. In all of her twenty-six years, Lou had never won a single one. “Whatever. Never mind. I have to go.”

“So, I’ll email you that e-ticket then.”

Lou started thumping her head rhythmically against the side of the dive van. “No. No ticket. I’m not going to Connecticut.”

Her mom tsked. “I don’t know why you insist on being stubborn. I’ve been
trying
to reach you for goodness knows how long now. And Brenton told your stepfather the other day that you’re not returning his phone calls either. We didn’t raise you to be rude, Louise.”

Oh God.

“Now’s really not the time, Mom.”

The rear door of the dive van flew open, making Lou jump. Callum’s backlit figure filled the opening. It was almost ridiculous how broad his shoulders were.

“Gotta go, Mom. Love you. Bye.” Lou ended the call while her mother was still sputtering.

“What was all the banging about?” he asked.

She shrugged and waved a hand toward the side of the van. Example one gazillion and three of Callum catching her at her most embarrassing moments. “My mother.” To her surprise, he didn’t press for details. After he stared at her for a moment, he seemed to accept her nonexplanation.

“Help me out of this, would you?” He turned and presented her with his back. After the coroner and sheriff had been called, Callum and Wilt had changed into less buoyant dry suits and scuba gear so they could dive and look for evidence. Lou had stayed on scene, intending to do her job and help get the body out of the water, but Callum had taken one look at her shivering miserably along the sidelines and sent her back to the dive van to change.

Chad had also been sent back to the van, although he was currently pacing in the parking lot. He hadn’t fared as well as Lou and had puked up his guts at the first glimpse of the body.

Sliding her cell phone into her dive-team jacket pocket, she shifted toward Callum, pulling the Velcro loose and then unzipping the heavy, waxed zipper that ran the length of his back. Even with everything that was going on, Lou couldn’t help but notice that the neoprene did nice things to his ass. It wasn’t the first time she’d made the observation. She wished she could be as oblivious to his obnoxiously perfect form as he appeared to be to her much-more-average one, but sometimes he just couldn’t be ignored. And at those times, it was almost impossible to control the stupid things that came out of her mouth.

“First body?” he asked, peeling the suit off his massive shoulders. His thermal underlayer had a wet ring that spread from his collar halfway down his chest, outlining the shape of his pecs.

She shivered. “Yeah.”

“Doing okay?” He wasn’t looking at her. Instead, he was stepping out of his suit, his focus on his feet.

She considered the question. “I think?”

The uncertainty in her voice brought her a quick glance. He considered her for a long moment, but then must have decided she wasn’t going to collapse in shock. “Good. Rob wants a word.”

The idea of reliving the past hour was not appealing. Lou made a face that was wasted on Callum, since he’d grabbed the back of his thermal top and was pulling it off over his head. Her heart sped up, though she blamed it on the upcoming chat with the sheriff. It had absolutely nothing to do with the beauty and definition of Callum’s stupidly perfect chest. “Maybe I should, you know, recover here a little longer?”

“You’re fine. Go.”

She sighed and went. The half second of sympathy from her team leader was obviously over.

Climbing out of the dive van and slamming the rear door behind her only a little bit harder than needed for the latch to catch, she looked around and saw that poor Chad was throwing up again. Derek must have been enlisted as babysitter, since he stood fairly close, although far enough away to avoid any splatter. He caught her gaze and waved her over. Suddenly glad that she had to talk to the sheriff, she made an apologetic face and pointed toward the ice. In return, Derek offered a rude gesture that she pretended to ignore as she moved toward Rob.

Field County Sheriff Rob Coughlin was easy to spot. Not only was he the size of an ex-college-football star, but he also had what Lou could only describe as
presence
. She imagined it was useful in emergency situations. Even if he hadn’t been wearing the tan uniform, she could’ve pegged him as both a cop and a leader.

The sheriff saw her coming and focused his attention on her. “Louise,” he called out when she got close enough for him to greet her without actually yelling.

“Hey, Sheriff.” They’d met a couple of times in passing—even worked a Search and Rescue op together once—but this was the first time they would actually have a conversation, or interrogation, or whatever. Up close, he didn’t lose any of his appeal. His dark hair was mostly covered by his hat, leaving only his lightly silver-flecked sideburns exposed. Midday stubble created just a shadow of a scruff over his cheeks and jaw. Everything about him was hard but appealing—from the lines of his face to the muscles in his body. Maybe not grumpy-Callum-level appealing, but still. She couldn’t complain.

“Rough training session, huh?” Although the corners of his eyes crinkled in sympathy, he never lost that watchful appraisal.

She gave an affirmative shrug.

“Let me just get your basic information, and then I’ll get your statement.” He touched something attached to his duty belt, and she cocked her head to see what appeared to be a digital recorder. At his prompting, she gave him her full name, date of birth, address, phone number, and pretty much every other piece of personal data she had.

Once finished, he asked, “Why don’t you run me through what happened?”

“Okay.” She tried to organize her thoughts, not wanting to be
that
interviewee, the one who sounded so dumb the cops all played the recording over and over at roll call. “We had ice-rescue classroom training all morning and then headed here after lunch for the practical.”

“Why not Verde Reservoir?” Rob interrupted. “Wasn’t that the original plan?”

“I guess.” As the newbie on the dive team, Lou just went where she was told. “Oh, wait—I do know this answer. Callum mentioned that the thaw a few days ago had melted a bunch of the snow in the parking lot. All that water refroze, so the steep hill at the entry is like an ice slide right now. We’d never have been able to get the dive van up that. Plus, he said the ice on Verde is more unpredictable, so I think he was glad to have an excuse to switch to Mission.”

He nodded and gestured for her to continue.

“We got suited up and headed over to the hole in the ice. After we practiced getting ourselves in and out of the water for a while, we moved on to getting other people out. It was my turn, and I’d gotten the harness around Phil. He was pretending to be a panicking victim, so he moved away from me toward the north side of the hole. I…ah”—this was the embarrassing part—“couldn’t really keep my legs from floating up behind me, because of the dry suit, so I got a little frustrated and ended up kicking…um, the dead guy. I must’ve knocked him loose or something, because he floated up to the surface.”

The sheriff watched her impassively, not saying anything. She didn’t know what else to add, so she just shrugged and joined him in silence.

“You see a lot of dead bodies?” he finally asked.

She paused before answering, examining his expression and trying to figure out where he was going with that line of questioning. “My first, actually.”

“Huh.” Rob darted a look toward the still-heaving Chad before refocusing on her. He really did have the serious-cop gaze down pat. “You’re pretty calm about it.”

“That’s thanks to the years of practice in suppressing my emotions.” Too bad she didn’t have more luck suppressing her smart-ass mouth. “Or maybe it was because I called my mom after…you know, the dead guy appeared. After our conversation, annoyance took precedence, so I forgot about being horrified and nauseated. I’m sure I’ll have nightmares for weeks to come, though—about the dead body, I mean, not about the call to my mom.”

The sheriff smiled, dissolving his poker face into a disarmingly attractive expression. Laugh lines had formed around his pretty brown eyes. “I have a mom like that, too.”

Was
everyone
in Field County improbably attractive—and completely out of her league? “Why did he float up now?” she asked, changing the subject.

“Sure you want to know?”

“Not really.” She chanced a look at his face. “But it probably can’t be worse than what I can come up with using my imagination. Hit me.”

After a long stare, he raised one shoulder in a shrug and jerked his chin at a small gray-haired woman talking to one of the deputies. “The coroner theorizes that the victim probably had been in the water for a few months, but it wasn’t until the recent warm-up that he started decomposing. Decomposing bodies float. His ankle was tied to a twenty-pound weight that Callum and Wilt just pulled out of the water. When you kicked the victim”—Lou had to hold back a wince at that—“the cord hooked to the weight pulled free, allowing the body to rise.”

She blinked at him, fascinated and disgusted.

When she didn’t say anything, he continued. “If you hadn’t disturbed the body, he still would’ve reached the surface this summer. When decomposition is far enough along, even the weight wouldn’t have kept him submerged.”

The coroner, who had joined them during the sheriff’s explanation, added in a gravelly smoker’s voice, “So you basically kept a summer tourist from being scarred for life by having a headless corpse pop up next to his pontoon boat. Good job.”

Lou eyed the other woman’s deadpan expression and wondered how to respond. “Oh. Um, good.” Time to change the direction of the conversation. “Hi. I’m Lou Sparks. I’m a new member of the dive team.”

“Belly Leopold.” She took Lou’s hand and gave it a single strong shake. “Field County Coroner. I’m not new.”

“Belly?”

“Belinda. Don’t call me that.”

“As long as you don’t call me Louise.”

“Deal.” Belly turned back to the sheriff. “Can I grab you for a sec, Rob?”

“Yeah, we’re done,” he said before lifting an eyebrow at Lou. “Unless you have anything else to add?”

“Nope. Kicked a dead guy so he popped up right next to me. That’s pretty much it.”

The coroner smirked. “Yeah, you’ll fit in around here just fine, newbie.”

“Thanks?”

As the two walked away, Lou realized she hadn’t asked something important. “Hey, Sheriff,” she called. “Who is it—do you know?”

“Not yet,” he said without breaking stride. “And you should call me Rob, now that you’re one of our divers.”

“Huh.” Lou glanced around, but no one seemed to be paying any attention to her. She followed behind Rob toward the emergency vehicles parked on the shore. None had risked driving on the newly rehardened reservoir, so they were hauling all the evidence across the slick stretch of ice to the shore. They’d loaded up the body onto a Stokes basket—a sort of floating stretcher—and covered it with a blanket. Two EMTs were in the process of pulling it across the ice like a grisly sled. The basket hit a rough patch in the ice and bounced hard enough for the blanket to slip, exposing the corpse’s right side.

Lou cocked her head and took a couple of steps closer to the body. The shape of the arm was strange, ending too bluntly. She sucked in a breath.

“They cut off his hands, too,” she muttered to herself, turning her head when Callum’s deep voice responded.

“Yeah. Delays ID.”

“Was it done before or after?” she asked, bracing herself for the answer.

“Death, you mean? You’d have to ask Belly.”

Lou thought she might be happier not knowing. She looked over her shoulder at Callum, who was frowning at the corpse as one of the EMTs hurried to readjust the blanket.

“How can they not know who he is?” Lou asked. “Do that many people disappear around here? I kind of figured it’s more of a one-missing-guy-a-decade kind of place.”

He shrugged, finally turning away from the receding body. “Hard to keep track of people out here. Lots of them don’t want the government—or anybody, really—in their business. More than one census taker has been greeted at the door by the business end of a shotgun.”