Men of Courage II (17 page)

W
ITH THE DRIVING
,
punishing, icy rain beating down on her, Leah pulled out her cell phone and called the TV station. She could barely hear them over the roar of the winds and the clatter of the rain on the deck and canvas overhang, but they told her to hang tight, they were already doing what they could to get a rescue effort going. Unfortunately the entire county was being devastated by the drenching rains, on already oversaturated ground. Flooding was imminent.

Jimmy stood at the railing, divesting himself of anything he’d ever eaten, but it wasn’t motion sickness churning Leah’s stomach, just good old-fashioned ter
ror. Quickly as she could, she got Jimmy below deck with everyone else. There they sat, only five of them in life vests because that’s all they’d been able to find. They were on the galley floor, their backs to the cabinets, figuring it was the safest place for now. But as the rain bombarded the boat around them, shuddering the roof and windows, there seemed to be no true safe place.

Outside, the sky had darkened ominously, which somehow magnified the fear. Yet there was little to do but remain as cool and calm as possible and hope that any tornadic activity would bypass them…instead of ripping them open plank by plank.

Then suddenly Leah heard the unmistakable
thump thump
of a helicopter over the driving rain. After staggering to her feet, she climbed the stairs and opened the hatch door leading to the open upper deck.

Sure enough it was a helicopter, hovering as steadily as it could above them. Shading her eyes from the drenching rain, she squinted upward and saw it was black with a bright yellow stripe…the same helicopter from the other day.

Wyatt?

She staggered out onto the upper deck, followed by an equally startled Jimmy, only to be shoved back against the bulkhead by the wind.

“What is he doing?” she gasped.

“He’s on the SAR squad. Search and Rescue,” Jimmy
yelled. “I didn’t think he’d fly in a storm like this, but then again, Wyatt’s pretty crazy.”

Behind them, one of the students poked her head out from the lower deck. It was Sally, a freshman, and her wide gaze shot straight to Leah’s. “I can’t stay down there!” she cried. “It’s too closed in, too tight!” She began crawling toward them.

She was tiny, and no match for the weather. Halfway to Leah, she lost her hold and went flying toward the fiberglass rail.

“No!” Jimmy dove after her. Unable to stay upright on the slick deck, they fell, sliding across the planked wood, slamming into a steel railing post.

“Oh, my God.” Sally was sprawled over top of Jimmy, who hadn’t moved. Her face was so pale her freckles stood out in bold relief. “He hit his head!”

Leah crawled toward them and gripped the front of his T-shirt. “Jimmy!”

“Did I kill him?”

“No, he’s breathing.”

Above them, the helicopter lowered, hovering. A man exited the craft and began to rappel down toward them.

Leah shrugged out of her drenched blazer and shoved it beneath Jimmy’s head, which was bleeding freely out of a gash at his temple. She glanced up at their helmeted rescuer and gasped. Wyatt wasn’t flying the helicopter,
he was rappelling, landing easily on the balls of his feet only a few yards away from her.

For a single heartbeat, their gazes met, and for Leah, time stopped. How many times all those years ago had she looked into his eyes and just known everything would be okay? When she’d lost her student council election. When she’d been in a fender bender with a mailbox in her dad’s car. When a bully had cornered her at the park. With one touch, one look, Wyatt had always imparted a sense of composure, a reassurance that everything would turn out fine, no matter how crazy it all seemed.

And with just a look, he did it now, as well.

He unhooked himself and jerked once on the rope, giving a thumbs-up sign to the man peering down at them from the helo above. Then he swiveled back toward her, dropping to his knees beside Jimmy. Though water drenched behind the lenses of his goggles, his eyes glittered with adrenaline and authority. “How many of you are here?”

“I can’t remember.” Sally burst into tears.

Wyatt looked at Leah.

“Eight,” she said quickly. “No one else is injured.”

Jimmy groaned, and Wyatt put his hand on his shoulder. “Gotcha buddy. Just relax now.”

“I would but my head is going to fall off.”

“Nah, you’re hardly nicked.” He met Leah’s wor
ried gaze. “He goes on the first run, with two others. If we hurry, we can make the additional runs needed to get all of you before we’re forced to wait out the winds.”

His voice was tense and urgent, and yet somehow calm, and even though she was a woman who prided herself on being independent and levelheaded in an emergency, she had the ridiculous yearning to put her head down on his chest and let her fear rule, knowing he would take care of her.

To keep herself from doing anything stupid, she leaned down and hugged Jimmy, then backed up to let Wyatt work his magic. The next few moments were tense, the air filled with fear along with the shuddering thunder and lightning, and the ever-present driving rain.

Some sort of winch pulled Wyatt and Jimmy into the helo. Wyatt rappelled down again, taking Sally next, while the others remained huddled in the galley below on Wyatt’s orders. With the wind as heavy as it was, and the pilot fighting just to stay in place above them, he didn’t want to deal with anyone being blown overboard.

There wasn’t time to talk, not with the storm growing more violent by the second, and their very lives at stake. Wyatt handled everything with the same natural confidence he always had. Leah found herself staring at him, shaken by how familiar, yet utterly unfamiliar he was at the same time, as well as how, when he had
reason to look at her, he did so with a challenging gaze void of any of the fondness she felt swamping her.

Since she’d been the one to end their relationship, and had done so badly, she had no one to blame but herself. But damn it, they’d been teenagers, just kids really. No one in their right mind would have expected them to make it. They hadn’t been old enough, hadn’t known themselves yet, hadn’t the experience to make it work—

Excuses.
He’d loved her and she’d known it. And though she’d felt more deeply for him than she’d felt for anyone before, her past was such that she hadn’t trusted it. Or, when it came right down to it, him.

Once again, he landed on the deck.

“Come on,” he said, wiggling his fingers for her to move closer. “We can take one more.”

She twisted around and yelled down the stairs for another student. Debbie showed her terrified face, and Leah grabbed her, thrusting her at Wyatt, who was staring at her, clearly surprised she hadn’t elected to go herself.

She understood what it meant for her when she put Debbie ahead of her. She was risking that he might not be able to come back until the storm was over, and just about anything could happen out here while they waited. A twister that could break up the ship, or even sink them.

But she couldn’t go ahead of the students still below, she just couldn’t. “Just go!”

“Get below with the others!” He hooked Debbie up to the harness. Winds whipping at them, they began to rise, and the momentum turned Wyatt away from Leah. But he craned his neck, finding her gaze again, and for one split second, his icy calm cracked, revealing a tortured regret, even fear, at having to leave her and the others in the choppy dangerous waters.

She stared up at him, lifting a hand, not wanting him to worry, and yet oddly touched that he did. She didn’t fool herself though, this was a job for him. He’d be stressed about leaving anyone in this. Still, something loosened deep within her, and warmed.

“Below!”
he shouted down at her, through the slashing rain.

She nodded, and shoving her wet hair out of her face, did as he commanded. The way was slippery, dangerous, but she crawled to the hatch and then inside. Sitting on the top step, she gripped the railing. There, she dropped her head to her knees and took a couple of careful gulps of breath. “It’s going to be okay,” she whispered to herself in an old mantra. “It’s going to be okay.” She’d gotten good at believing this, starting years ago when her mother had left her and her dad.

Back then, Leah had thought she’d never be okay again, but she’d gotten through it. Her dad had done his damnedest to help her. His own life had been hell, but he’d never let her suffer for it.

She’d survived. And given what she’d gone through to get to this point, she could survive anything. She had a drive, a hunger within her. Once it’d been borne of a burning desire to prove herself. She’d been bound and determined to go off to college, then rake in her fame and fortune. Nothing would hold her back, not her love for her hometown, or her friends, or even Wyatt.

Wyatt himself had had different dreams. His childhood had been spent riding shotgun in his father’s big rig. They’d landed in Denton when his dad had fallen asleep at the wheel one night, hitting a telephone pole. Shaken, he’d turned in the wrecked truck for a job wrenching at Bob’s Motors. Wyatt had gotten the most out of that deal, thriving on having a real home for the first time in his life, thriving on creating lasting relationships…like the one he’d forged with Leah.

But then Leah’s dream had come true. She’d been accepted at New York University, full scholarship. In a testament to how much she’d let herself care for Wyatt, she’d actually hesitated, knowing Wyatt was going to a junior college here. But in the end, there’d been no choice. She had her father to repay for all he’d given her, and her future to grab. She’d broken up with Wyatt and left.

It hadn’t been easy. Wyatt had been quietly furious, and hurt that she’d refused to see their relationship through to the end. But she’d been young and so damn
sure that being on her own in New York was what she needed to do.

At first, the loneliness and fear had nearly done her in, but out of sheer grit and determination, she’d done what she’d set out to do. She’d made it in her fast-paced world of war and politics. She’d been able to support her father all the way up until his death a few years back. When she’d sold the house she’d bought for him, she’d put the final vestige of her past behind her.

Then the unthinkable tragedy had come along, shattering her dreams along with her confidence and drive to do her job.

Just the thought made her heart race and her palms go damp. She could still taste the panic, smell the death and destruction, and remember what it felt like to stand in the middle of the horror and be the only one alive. She hadn’t been able to reconcile that, to the point that nothing in her life had made sense.

Lost and unhappy, she’d come back to her starting point, back to Denton, thinking she needed to find a way to begin again. Somehow.

Up until now, it’d been working.

She’d known she’d run into Wyatt eventually, but she hadn’t expected it to be so soon, or in a capacity that could involve working with him. He still had the ability to steal her breath. He was different yet so much the same. There were tiny lines of life experience imprinted
around those knowing eyes now, eyes that still reflected only what he wanted them to, and laugh lines bracketing his wide, firm mouth.

Not that he’d flashed her a smile.

What had he been doing with himself all these years? Was he married, maybe with kids? As she sat huddled on the stairs, wet and cold and scared spitless, thinking too much, she knew she had no right to care one way or another. And in any case, it was all water under the bridge. Wyatt, and what they’d once meant to each other, didn’t have a place here.

The boat pitched and swayed, and she gulped hard, hoping to hell that
she
had a place here, and that it wasn’t the last place she’d ever see.

“N
EARLY THERE
.”

Wyatt nodded at his partner and best friend Logan as he flew them back over the lake. Dominic, their flight mechanic and winch operator, rode along. They were racing against time and high winds to get to the houseboat where they’d left five stranded victims.

That one of them was Leah shouldn’t matter.
Didn’t
matter. When he’d found out her station had called for help for her and Jimmy, he’d had time to brace himself. But still, he’d felt a hard kick to his gut when he’d seen her, drenched and battered and terrified. “Punch it,” he said to Logan.

“I am.” Logan flew with a calm skill that matched Wyatt’s. They’d purchased this helo together, and had done incredibly well business-wise. Flying for TV and radio stations had been a stroke of genius, and good for their bank account, allowing them to work volunteer for SAR. They’d done this for five years now, earning quite the reputation for daring escapades, but even they rarely flew under as harsh conditions as they were now.

“There.” Dominic pointed to the houseboat being tossed around on the water.

Squinting against the lashing rain, Wyatt wondered at the boat’s chances of surviving if a waterspout formed or a tornado from shore found its way onto the lake. Probably zilch. He didn’t care, as long as they got everyone off of it.

Then Dominic shook his head and tapped his headphone. “Tower says weather’s going downhill.”

“This is the last run, then,” Logan said. “How many are down there?”

“Five,” Wyatt said. His gaze met Logan’s and held. Eight of them in total, far over the limit for the helo, and in these winds they didn’t dare go overweight. “Where the hell are those rescue boats?”

Logan checked status on his radio. “One’s still on a rescue twenty miles away, the other’s beached with weather-related mechanical failure.”

“Up to us then.”

Logan nodded grimly. He’d been with Wyatt through too many disasters and treacherous rescues to count, pulling people out of raging rivers or from their own homes when the floods had come; whatever it took, wherever they were needed. Over the years they’d saved people who shouldn’t have been savable. And in some cases, they’d just managed to save their own hides, like when they’d been in a small plane crash together several years ago during a training session, and had been surprised to discover they would live to tell the tale.

They’d do whatever it took, they always did. With Dominic running the winch, Wyatt rappelled out of the chopper and landed on the houseboat, which was in much worse condition than it had been eighteen minutes ago. Half the canvas shading had torn free, the rest threatening to go at any minute. The upper railing had pulled loose on the port side. It was only a matter of time before it went, as well.

Leah popped her head out of the hatch and Wyatt took his first deep breath since he’d left her. “Let’s go,” he yelled through the winds and the chopper noise.

“The students first!”

It was the second time she’d put them ahead of her. Admiration, reluctant or not, was not what he wanted to be feeling for her. “Get them!”

Ignoring the brutal elements, she helped him with Stu, who’d apparently fallen below deck and had pos
sibly broken his ankle. Two more students went after him, while Leah stood helping through the drumming rain. Finally there was one student left, and Leah.

“Stop. That’s it,” Dominic said in Wyatt’s earpiece. “We’re maxed, and Logan can’t hold her steady.”

Wyatt looked at the remaining student and the woman he’d once loved beyond all else. “No. We’re taking more,” he said into his mike, wanting to reach for Leah. He knew she’d shove the student at him even before she did, and for the first time ever on a rescue, he hesitated. “Leah—”

“Do it.”

He couldn’t even hear her words over the roar of the wind and the whipping helo blades but he read her lips. He got the last student on the line, signaled Dominic, and they began to rise. The terrified student clung to him, but still he craned his neck and watched Leah from her precarious perch on the damned houseboat as she got smaller and smaller—

The lift seemed to take forever. In his ear he could hear Logan’s low oath as he struggled to keep the helo in check, fighting for all of their lives.

When the trembling student was in the helo, Wyatt stood in the opened door. “One more.”

Despite the freezing wind and rain all around them, Logan was sweating as he worked the controls, jaw tight, teeth gritted. “No.”

Dominic, looking bleak, shook his head.

Logan was the best there was. If he said no to saving a life, then they were hanging on by a thread. He met Logan’s determined gaze in the mirror. “I’m going back to stay with her.”

Logan didn’t waste time telling him he’d just given himself a possible death sentence. They both knew it. But Wyatt couldn’t leave Leah down there alone, they all knew it, and would have done the same.

“I’ll be back as fast as I can,” Logan vowed tightly.

Looking grim, Dominic operated the winch, and with a terse nod to them both, Wyatt rappelled back down to the houseboat.

To Leah.