began to slip free. For a moment, her arms clutched at him wildly, and then Aidan grabbed her. As their eyes met, he recognized the terror in her eyes. He’d seen it before, in another woman’s eyes, a split second before she slipped from his fingers and fell to her death.
He blinked, willing away the memory as he clung to the woman’s arm. Elena had struggled blindly in her terror. She’d twisted and flailed and begged him not to let her fall.
“I don’t want to die. Please, Aidan…”
That same plea was in this woman’s eyes, but amazingly, she didn’t panic, which would have made Aidan’s job that much more difficult. When he shouted for her to grab his other hand, she had the presence of mind to do exactly that.
“Just hold on, okay?”
She nodded, her focus never leaving his.
They dangled over the canyon for what seemed an eternity, but she never once lost her cool. She had to be in pain, not just from the fall, but from the way he clutched her arm. She didn’t so much as flinch.
When they were finally hoisted up to the chopper, Aidan hauled her onto the ski and then boosted her through the jump door. Only then did he breathe a sigh of relief.
He climbed in behind her, slid the door closed and turned. She’d collapsed on the floor and gone into convulsions. Throwing off the harness, he knelt beside her.
“Get us out of here!” he shouted up to Powell.
“I’d love to do just that,” Powell shouted back. “Unfortunately, we’ve got a little problem.”
They were trapped in a wind shear that kept dragging the helicopter downward. As the tail slewed about, it came dangerously close to the wall.
“Come on,” Aidan said under his breath. “Come on!”
Powell practically yanked the joystick out of the floor to give them lift power. For a moment, he was forced to ride the wind backward, getting closer and closer to the wall until he could maneuver the chopper around and fly with a tailwind out of the canyon.
While Powell battled the wind, Aidan cut off the woman’s wet clothing. Beneath all those soggy layers, her skin was like ice. He rubbed her arms and legs, trying to create enough friction to warm her up.
Rousing, she clung to him for a moment, as if she didn’t yet realize that she was safe.
“You’ll be okay,” he assured her. “We just have to get you warmed up.”
“Don’t let me go,” she whispered.
“I won’t. I promise.”
She was tiny, but surprisingly curvy, and her muscles were rock hard. At the moment, though, Aidan was more interested in the temperature of her body than in its shape.
“F-freezing,” she gasped.
When he had her clothes off, he wrapped her in a blanket, then pulled her into his arms and held her close to his own warm body. She still couldn’t stop shaking.
“Is she going to be okay?” Powell shouted.
She’d better be, Aidan thought grimly as he held her tight. He couldn’t afford to lose another one.
Chapter Three
Thursday, 0900 hours
Kaitlyn came awake with a start. She’d been dreaming that she was falling, and she gasped as she tried to sit up. A firm hand on her shoulder pressed her back down.
“Try to take it easy.”
That voice! Kaitlyn knew it.
She couldn’t place it, but she knew it…
The dream was still so fresh in her mind that she almost expected to feel wind rush past her face as she fell, but instead, she was lying perfectly still in a nice, warm bed.
A hospital bed, to be exact.
Someone had brought her to Ponderosa Memorial, but she only had a vague recollection of being rushed into the E.R. Of bright lights burning into her eyes. Of urgent yet somehow soothing voices speaking to her and above her. She’d been examined and x-rayed…all of which had passed in a blur of pain and confusion.
She was still a little out of it, but not as disoriented as she’d been then. Maybe it was the pain that had snapped her out of the haze. She suddenly felt as if every bone in her body had been crushed. But she knew that wasn’t the case. She was going to be fine. Someone had told her that.
She glanced up at the man whose hand was still her on her shoulder. He had dark eyes and an even darker expression.
“I know you,” she blurted.
Something flickered in those dark eyes. “I hope so. We went to high school together. I’d be very disappointed if you didn’t remember me.”
Frowning, she continued to stare up at him until the lightbulb went on. “Phillip? Phillip Becker?”
His lips tilted slightly, but Kaitlyn had a feeling that for him the gesture was significant. Although she hadn’t seen him in years, the few faint memories she had of Phillip Becker were of a somber, overstudious young man who rarely cracked a smile.
“What are you doing here?” she asked in confusion.
“I’m a doctor. I’ve been on staff here at Memorial for a couple of weeks.”
Why hadn’t she known about that? Word usually traveled fast in such a small town.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“A little after nine.”
She glanced at the window. “But…it’s daylight.”
“Nine in the morning,” he clarified. “You’ve been here all night.”
“I have?”
“You don’t remember being awakened every two hours? The nurses said you were responsive.”
She had a vague recollection, Kaitlyn realized. She frowned as she tried to think back.
Dr. Becker took a light from his lab-coat pocket and bent to check the dilation of her pupils. Next, he held his finger in front of her face and moved it slowly back and forth. “Try to follow my finger,” he instructed. When Kaitlyn did as she was told, he nodded. “Very good.”
Very good. Evidently, she’d passed some kind of test. Yea for her. “How did I get here? I mean, I know how I got here. Someone brought me in, right? But I don’t know…I can’t seem to remember all the details.”
“Two men brought you down the mountain in a chopper,” he said absently as he glanced at her chart.
“A chopper?”
“A helicopter.”
Kaitlyn wasn’t confused by the term. She knew what he meant. But the word had conjured up an image that left her even more confused. A deep voice commanding her to hold on tight. Blue eyes staring deeply into hers as he ran his hands over her body. “We just have to get you warmed up.”
Who was he? she wondered. Where was he?
“I can’t seem to remember a lot of things,” she realized on a note of panic. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing that a little rest won’t take care of,” Dr. Becker assured her. “You have a mild concussion. That explains the disorientation and the memory loss. Short-term amnesia is fairly common with head injuries.”
“What? I have a head injury?” Even more alarmed, Kaitlyn lifted her hand to her head and winced when she felt a bump the size of a goose egg near her right temple.
“Try not to worry. Your MRI and CT look fine. Other than a little soreness, you should be as good as new in a couple of days.”
Relieved,