“Evie,” he warned. “One more hour, then I’m calling it.”
He was right, though she didn’t want to admit it. “All right. We’ll find him or his trail,” she said. He didn’t look all that convinced, but he stopped arguing.
For the moment.
CHAPTER 6
Wyatt recognized the signs quickly enough. Evie was pushing too hard and her energy was running out fast. She hadn’t eaten enough and she couldn’t search much longer on coffee and water alone. He decided they’d use the hour, but not a second more.
The fact that she’d agreed to his time limit at all worried him. At times like this, she rarely gave in without a big argument. As he was wondering if he could negotiate that hour down to thirty minutes, she gave a shout.
“Wyatt! Here.” She waved her arms, though she wasn’t too far ahead of him. “I found him.”
She turned, trudging through deep snow as fast as possible. Trying to run toward a drift that reached up to a rocky outcropping between a cluster of trees.
“Please let the man be alive,” Wyatt muttered under his breath as he followed with the emergency kit. He couldn’t pinpoint what made Evie so certain the search was over.
“Here!” she shouted. “Yes!” She swiped away snow with her gloves, calling Chris’s name as she worked. “Chris? Help is here.”
A feeble sound carried from the snow-covered shelter. “We found him,” Evie said, beaming at Wyatt.
He helped her clear the snow until they saw Chris huddled up under an emergency blanket. He’d burrowed himself in using the shelter of the outcropping and the snow itself as insulation. With the help of his own emergency kit, he had survived the night.
“Hi, Chris. We’re glad to see you,” Evie chattered as if she’d been his friend all her life. “No one told us you had exceptional survival skills. Well done.”
The man was groggy, but he would make it. With Evie’s coaxing and Wyatt’s muscle, they got him out of his shelter and into the weak sunshine and clear air. They wrapped him in another emergency blanket and Evie urged him to sip water. Wyatt inflated the rescue sled and secured it to the snowmobile while he coordinated with the search and rescue team.
They quickly decided the swiftest way out was for them to transport Chris to the nearest point where the helicopter could pick him up. Once the location was set, Wyatt and Evie loaded Chris into the sled, tucked heat packs around him, and made sure he was protected from the elements.
“You drive,” he told his wife. She was exhausted whether she would admit it or not. “I’ll follow on foot and keep an eye on Chris.” The snowmobile would struggle if he rode and he wasn’t about to let Evie walk.
She frowned. “You’re sure?”
“You drive. Just take your time.” He knew she worried about being too cautious with a man who needed urgent care. “We’re all good,” he assured her. “It’s not far to the pickup point.”
“And you’ll drive from there?”
“I promise.”
They handed off Chris to the search and rescue helicopter team within the hour and were on their way back to the main road. He could feel Evie sagging against his back and he talked to her, asking her questions about Christmas, just to make sureshe didn’t doze off on him. He didn’t want to add another injury or rescue mission to the tally this season. As they made their way down the mountain slope, Wyatt was thinking through the next steps. He’d get them to the barn and take Evie with him straight into the house and a hot shower. Then they could call Dale and see their boys.
Unfortunately, the radio chirped and Lisa informed him that Clark and other deputies were waiting to speak with them. He’d much rather deal with that at the casino than drag all those folks into his house.
He laughed, embracing his unexpected hermit-tendencies.
“What’s so funny?” Evie asked.
He slowed down just enough to twist around. “I was just thinking when we get home, I want to stay there until next year.”
Her lips curved. “That’s only a little more than a week away.”
“Yeah. Probably won’t be enough.”
She chuckled. “We’ll make sure it is.” She gave him a little squeeze, and he picked up the pace.
When they reached the road, their truck was the only vehicle left. Someone had towed Chris’s car and the search party, no longer needed, had dispersed. He started the truck to let it warm up and then loaded the snowmobile and equipment into the bed.
“Feeling better?” he asked, cranking the heat.
