Holt thumped Dad on the shoulder. “We’ve got it. Can you keep us up to date on the weather?”
“No problem,” Dad agreed.
“Let’s hit it,” Holt called.
Our SAR teams were typically larger. Now that our second youngest brother, Holt, had come back to Cedar Ridge and taken over the team, it’d grown nicely. But I had a feeling he’d gone with a small, core group today because he knew we needed to move quickly.
And he trusted we all knew what we were doing. That was what happened when you grew up around SAR your entire life. Thanks to our dad, it was practically in our blood.
Grae fell into step beside me. “You were already on a callout?”
I grunted at my sister.
“I’m taking that as your very verbose way of saying yes. What was it?”
I shifted my pack on my shoulders. My siblings never stopped giving me a hard time about not being talkative. What they didn’t realize was that it was easier this way. I couldn’t say the wrong thing. Didn’t hurt people.
“Injured deer.”
Grae glanced up at me. “Is it going to be okay?”
“Think so. Got her out of the cold. Dr. Miller will take a look at her tomorrow.”
She grinned. “The hottie vet, huh?”
“I heard that, Gigi,” Caden growled behind us.
“It’s just a simple fact.”
Nash smacked Caden on the arm. “What? You can’t take a little competition?”
“Oh, shove off. You can’t even take it when your thirteen-year-old nephew sits next to Maddie.”
Nash glared at Caden. “Drew hits on her all the time.”
“He’s thirteen.”
I lost myself in my family’s banter. The din of chaos was both a comfort and a torment. I’d wished for so long that I could join in instead of hovering on the outskirts. But I simply wasn’t built for it. And all the secrets I hid didn’t help.
“I see something,” Holt called.
We all picked up to a jog, slogging through the drifting snow. I caught sight of a figure huddled against a tree. They weren’t moving. My stomach plummeted.
Holt and Lawson reached the man first. They sank to their knees. Holt felt for a pulse while Lawson began asking him questions. The man’s teeth chattered.
“Can you tell us your name, sir?” Lawson asked.
Holt looked up. “Pulse is slow. Likely hypothermic.”
Grae pulled out her radio. “We’ve got him. He’s alive but possibly hypothermic. Have the ambulance meet us at the trailhead if they can get up here.”
I pulled the stretcher from Holt’s pack and quickly assembled it with Caden’s help.
“I’ve got hot packs,” Caden said as Holt and Lawson rolled the man onto the stretcher.
Caden slid the warming packs under the man’s jacket while Grae pulled out a mylar blanket and covered him.
“Let’s move,” Holt ordered. “I don’t want his pulse getting any slower.”
I grabbed hold of one stretcher handle. Holt, Lawson, and Nash took the others.
“Grae, keep checking his pulse and breathing,” Holt instructed.
We made our way down the trail as quickly as possible, still traversing safely. None of us talked or joked; there was too much at stake.
As I saw the lights of an ambulance through the trees, I breathed a little easier.
Caden ran ahead to help them ready the stretcher we’d transfer the man onto. It only took a matter of minutes. The EMTs got a line running with a warming solution as we secured the man in place.
The female EMT cast me a wary look I was used to but tried my best to ignore. Fastening the belt around the man’s chest, I stepped back and out of the way. A few moments later, they’d loaded him into the back and were off.
My siblings and Caden slipped right back into giving each other hell. This time, it was about Nash stealing the cookies that Holt’s fiancée, Wren, had made for him. I stayed back and watched.
These SAR missions were the best and the worst. They gave me a sense of purpose. Let me be a part of my family I wouldn’t otherwise have. But I still felt like I didn’t fit. Like I was…other. And at the end of the day, it left me knowing one thing.
I was so damn alone. But I needed to be. It was the only thing that was truly safe. So, I slipped away into the shadows of that loneliness all over again.
5
ASPEN
My fingers curved around the coffee mug as I took in the blanket of white out my front windows. Something about it was so peaceful. As if the entire world had gone silent.