Recalled (29 page)

“Almost there,” she whispered and I nodded.

And then the ice spilt.

One minute her eyes were trained on me and the next I couldn’t see her at all. The lake seemed to open up and Piper was falling… plunging right down into the unknown icy depths of the lake.

“Piper!” I yelled, stepping forward, desperately seeking some kind of sign that she was still there. I saw the red of her hat bob up from the water and heard her cough.

I watched as she reached for something to grab onto, anything to pull herself to safety.

But there was nothing. The ice around her had shattered, leaving her in the center of a circle of water. She could maybe swim to the edge and pull herself up… if she didn’t die of hypothermia first.

Die.

Death.

Dead.

This was it. This was what I’d been waiting for. This was the perfect opportunity to let her die. Chances were I wouldn’t be able to save her anyway.

“Dex,” she sputtered, her red head bobbing to the surface again. I looked up as she reached her gloved hand toward me. “Dex!”

She would be dead in minutes… if not seconds.

All I had to do was wait.

And then the ice split beneath me.

Icy water hit me and it felt like a million sharp needles stabbing me at once. It was so cold it stole my breath and then made me cough. Coughing delivered a frigid dose of water down my throat and then I was floating…

Floating in a dark sea of ice, my body completely numb.

And then my eyes opened. Through the water I could see something flailing around. Something struggling to live.

My survival instincts kicked in and gave me a burst of adrenaline.

I pushed my arms upward, hoping to break the surface, and when I did, I gulped in the air like a starving man. My glasses were gone, claimed by the lake, so my vision was blurry.

But I could still make her out.

We were closer now. The current must have pushed me closer, or maybe it was the force of my fall. Whatever it was I pushed myself toward her, the weight of my wet clothes making it nearly impossible. I made it to her and latched onto her arm, seeing her lips were already turning blue. Out around her floated a red scarf and I yanked it away from her body and drug myself and her toward the edge of the ice.

The edge was brittle, but it was our best chance. I tried to hoist her up onto the solid sheet, but she was heavy and my arms were weak. The snowmobile was so close, but it felt so far away.

“Help me, Piper,” I told her. “Help me help you.”

She wasn’t as responsive as I needed her to be. She was sluggish and felt like dead weight to my shaking, heavy arms.

Holding on to her with one arm, I used my free arm to reach toward the snowmobile. Maybe if I could get a hold of it, I could use it to pull myself up out of the water. Every time I leaned on the ice to pull myself up, it broke off a little more, plunging us back down into the water.

It looked like I was, in fact, going to kill my Target.

But I was going to die with her.

I threw my arm out again, giving it one last try, when something latched on to me and I felt myself being pulled upwards. I looked up and saw nothing but blackness…

My vision was going. I was losing consciousness.

“Come on, man,” a familiar voice said, and I looked again.

My vision wasn’t darkening, I wasn’t passing out. It was Storm. Somehow the black translucent mist that made up his form had grown solid enough for him to grasp me. He was trying to help me.

He was pulling me upward.

“The ice, it’s going to crack,” I warned.

“Not when I don’t weigh anything,” he said and gave another yank.

I was pulled up, free of the water, and collapsed onto the ice. I wanted to lie there and catch my breath, but Piper was still half in the water and I knew the ice I was lying on could crack at any moment.

I looked down at Piper who was completely unresponsive; then I looked at Storm who nodded.

I let go of Piper’s hand.

Chapter Forty

“
Struggle -
to move about strenuously so as to escape from something confining.”

Piper

When I realized the sound of splitting ice was coming from beneath my feet, I knew true fear. All I could think about was the glacial, dark water that churned just below me, waiting to swallow me whole.

I called out to Dex, knowing he was too far away to help me, knowing if he came any closer he, too, would be captured by the ice, but I couldn’t stop my lips from forming his name.

At first he looked confused. Like me, he hadn’t realized we’d driven onto a frozen lake. Then he looked scared, like watching me drown would be too horrible to experience. And then I was falling, thrust into the shadowy, subzero water. The layers of my clothes acted like an overzealous sponge that soaked up the water as fast as it could, and then the weight of the wet layers seemed to drag me down. Down, down, down I went until I thought I would never go up again.

But then my arms started working and my brain started screaming.

I have to get out!

When my head broke the surface, I gasped, taking in air, air I knew was cold but actually felt warm compared to the rest of my body. My lungs filled painfully, almost as if the warm air was too much to breathe.

“Dex!” I tried to call, but I got a mouth full of water that I had to spit out. “Dex!” I called again. This time my voice was stronger.

Finally I caught sight of him. He was still in the same place he had been when I fell and I wondered why he was still standing there. It felt like I’d been fighting this water for hours.

The rational part of me knew it probably had been only a minute, but when the water was this cold minutes might be all I had.

I glanced at him again as I struggled to stay afloat, my arms straining under the weight of my layers, and he had the strangest look on his face. Almost like resolve. Almost like he was watching something he didn’t quite like but was still going to do nothing about it.

I heard another jagged cracking sound and then Dex was gone—my only hope of survival swimming with the ice as well.

In that moment my arms stopped cooperating and my thoughts became sluggish. It became harder and harder to stay afloat and I felt myself sinking… sinking down into the depths of a frozen world. A world where nothing would be warm again.

Chapter Forty-One

“Drown-
To kill by submerging and suffocating in water or another liquid.”

Dex

I spent a lot of time in medical facilities these days. It seemed ironic that, since making a deal to essentially give me a life, I’ve done nothing but get into freak accidents and almost die.

I was beginning to wonder about that…

The door to my room opened and a man wearing a white coat came in. “Ah, you’re awake.”

I nodded, pushing myself into a sitting position. I had about ten blankets piled on me so it took a minute.

“Your body experienced an extreme cold shock. We estimate your time in the water at about four to five minutes. You were lucky to get out quickly and it likely saved your life. Your thinking may be unclear for the rest of the day, but that is normal. Sometimes after a shock like this your brain can be slow to work. That’s normal and no cause for alarm.”

I nodded again, looking around the room and wondering where Piper was. Then I remembered letting go of her hand and watching her slide slowly back into the water…

“How are you feeling?” the doctor asked. “Are you warm enough? Do you have feeling in your extremities?”

I nodded. “I think so. I feel fine.”

He proceeded to check my fingers and toes and check my core temperature. Everything looked good because he called the nurse to get me some forms to fill out before I could be released.

“I want to see Piper,” I said before he could leave the room.

“Of course,” the doctor replied. “I was just going to her room next. Give me a few moments and then you can see her. She’s right across the hall.”

“She has her own room?” I asked, making sure I heard him right.

The doctor nodded. “Your clothes are over there. The nurses had them dried for you.”

I came so close to killing her. But as she was sliding back into the glacial water she moaned. She was awake. I couldn’t let her go back into that dark, lonely water. I couldn’t let it swallow her whole.

I had been in there. I knew what it was like. How could I sentence her to a death as horrible as that? And so I grabbed her, I pulled her free, and then I raced down the mountain with her in my lap. She made no more sounds and her lips and face had long turned blue. From the dead weight of her body against mine, I truly thought she was dead.

The last thing I remembered was waving down a patrol vehicle and them rushing to help. Then I passed out. When I asked to see Piper just now, I thought I’d be visiting the morgue. I thought I’d only be seeing her body.

But she was alive.

“How long have we been here?” I glanced around for the clock.

“It’s late morning. You were here all night. Bringing the core temperature back to stable levels can take time. But you both look great.” He smiled. “You were very lucky.”

I nodded as he let himself out the door. Funny, I hadn’t felt good that my job was finally complete. I hadn’t felt any kind of elation.

I told myself that was because I’d been half frozen as well. I could hardly call G.R. and announce a job well done when I was ready to pass out.

And knowing she was alive, I was disappointed. Wasn’t I?

I threw off the fifty blankets and began dressing. Halfway through putting on my layers, the nurse brought in a million and one forms for me to fill out as well as my release papers. She looked alarmed when I told her I had no insurance. But when I slapped my credit card into her palm, she seemed a little less frazzled.

“I’m taking care of the woman I was brought in with too,” I said, not overthinking my need to make sure Piper was taken care of.

“Sir, are you sure?” the nurse began. “The bill…”

“The card will go through. Don’t worry about it,” I snapped.

That shut her up and she went on her way. I finished dressing and shoved my feet into a new pair of boots. They weren’t the ones I’d been wearing. I had no clue what happened to them. I had no clue where these came from, but I didn’t really care.

I did, however, miss my glasses with their thick, black frames. Having blurry vision wasn’t fun. Because I could barely see the forms, I only filled out two and made sure to sign the release. Something told me they didn’t care about their records, only the payment.