Montana Gift Page 8

  His part. Like he owned shit.

  "That helicopter had no business flying on a night like this," Ken said when Meg failed to respond to his jab. "It belongs to Henry Firestone. I know you'll recognize the name. He's the rancher who led--" Ken's voice crackled, saving her an unneeded explanation.

  Yes, she knew Henry Firestone. In the mid-1990s, he'd been the charismatic, vocal, and surprisingly articulate figurehead of a grassroots campaign called Ranchers Before Wolves. She and Firestone had occupied seats on the opposite ends of several panels. They'd spoken to county and state officials from opposite sides of the same room. They'd acknowledged each other in various venues like modern gladiators, but, to her knowledge, they'd never had an actual conversation.

  How strange that after all these years Henry Firestone would fall out of the sky into my backyard on Christmas Eve.

  Ken's voice came back on the line. "We don't know who was onboard...could have been stolen. Drugs, maybe. Meg? Are you there? Hello?"

  Their connection broke completely before Meg could reply.

  She tossed the phone on her bed and tugged off her fleece pajamas. "What drug runner in his right mind would steal a helicopter on a night like this, Ken?" she muttered, pulling her thermals out of the drawer. "You truly are an idiot with delusions of grandeur."

  And I let you take my virginity. "What kind of idiot does that make me?"

  One who learned from her mistakes. One who didn't trust blindly or take orders well. One who couldn't stay put like a good little girl when someone needed her.

  Since that initial survival course, Meg had participated in and led wilderness trips on three continents, including the South Pole. Every May she carved a week out of her busy academic calendar to refresh her Wilderness Emergency Medical Technician certification.

  Meg liked to be prepared. Back when her younger brother and sister recruited Meg to join the Big Sky Mavericks--their childhood game based on the Tom Cruise movie, Top Gun, Meg had been the one to rescue her fallen comrades.

  "Lone Wolf. Come in, Lone Wolf. Nitro is down. Repeat. Nitro is down. This is Striker. Over."

  Striker, Nitro, and Lone Wolf. The last had been her call sign.

  Still was.

  For a different reason.

  She pushed Ken Morrison out of her mind and began the highly refined art of layering for the cold. She'd logged hundreds of miles of winter tracking over the years making sure her wolf families were safe and staying out of trouble. She had the right gear, the right training. If there were survivors--drug traffickers or innocent victims of a bad choice--aboard Henry Firestone's chopper, she'd find them and bring them back to safety.

  If there were casualties, she'd leave a tracking beacon to make the Search and Rescue team's work of finding the wreck a little easier after the storm let up.

  In the kitchen, she filled two water bottles and stuffed a fistful of energy bars into her pocket.

  "In the morning," she muttered, repeating Ken's words. "What an ass."

  Obviously, Ken Morrison had turned into a pencil-pushing desk jockey who couldn't read a weather report. From what she'd seen, this storm was the first of several predicted to hit the area, and the wind chill was going to be a huge factor.

  If she didn't find that chopper tonight, there'd be zero survivors. She'd bet her life on it.

  She paused on the porch to take a compass reading before she walked into the worse blizzard of her life.

  Down.

  Alive.

  The two thoughts hit Hank Firestone simultaneously.

  I must have blacked out.

  He ripped off his headset, which had muffled the outside noise. Sounds of a great beast dying. Betsy, his beautiful R22 helicopter. He'd bought her used--and mostly gutted--ten years ago and slowly, lovingly, made her his own. He pictured parts of her scattered for miles. He'd sensed they didn't have a chance of making it over the summit when he heard a loud popping noise overhead. Something snapped and probably flew into the blades.

  Mechanical failure is what they'd call it. Stupidity is what they'd be thinking. Who in is his right mind flies into a storm on Christmas Eve with four kids and a dog?

  The kids.

  Like that, Hank's adrenaline shot into overdrive. He clawed at the release of his safety harness so he could shift in the confined, mangled space to look around.

  Emergency lights cast an eerie glow in the cockpit. Thirteen-year-old Jacob Landry, Jr.--JJ as he preferred--sat slumped in the co-pilot seat. A scratch above his eye. Nothing serious. Hard to tell if there was internal damage, but all the kids were well padded thanks to the oversized winter clothing Hank had insisted they wear. JJ's parka had belonged to Laurel, Hank's late daughter, the kids' mom.

  "JJ," Hank said, gently shaking the boy who'd turned thirteen a few days after his mom passed away from melanoma. Another stupid mistake on Hank's part. He should have lathered on sunscreen when she was a little girl riding her horse across the Montana prairie. Stinking lot of good hindsight did him. She was gone and he had four kids in his care--for now.

  Crashing a helicopter in a storm will add fuel to the bitch's fire, he thought.

  But the caustic thought passed quickly. Unless he got help, they'd all die and then the custody battle with Mystic and Bravo's father and paternal grandmother would die, too.

  "JJ, are you okay?"

  "Huh? Hank?"

  The older kids called him Hank because their mother did. He hadn't been much of a dad and now he was even less of a grandfather.

  "What happened?"

  "Something snapped. I couldn't steer. The snow helped break our fall, but we crashed."

  Jacob tried to turn to look in the back but his harness stopped him. Hank stilled his hands. "Whoa. Calm down. I need you to take a deep breath and tell me if you hurt inside. Ribs? Spleen? Anything broken?"

  Jacob inhaled and let it out, the air crystalizing between them. The warmth from the heater was gone. And the meager emergency light was dimming. "I'm okay."

  "Thank God."

  Hank grabbed the flashlight near his feet and turned sideways to shine it into the back compartment. The shell of the bird was noticeably caved in on Annie's side but all three occupants appeared safe and unhurt.

  Sweet little Annie, the quiet one, had her face pressed into her mitten-covered hands, her thin shoulders sobbing. Her half-brother, Bravo, was on the opposite side of the bird, strapped into a high-back booster seat. The normally boisterous three-and-a-half-year-old had his thumb in his mouth, his eyes wide and unblinking as he took in everything.

  "You okay, Bravo?"

  The little boy nodded.

  "What about you, baby doll? Are you hurt?"

  "My...my foot. Something landed on it."

  His toolbox had come loose, Hank figured. Molded plastic--which could become lethal in this cold.

  Hank reached behind the seat, his bad shoulder screaming in pain. His bare fingers stretched until he felt the handle. He didn't have the right leverage to pull or push it away and there wasn't room to maneuver.

  "I'll get it, Hank." Jacob, skinny as Hank had been at that age, squeezed between the seats, his butt nearly in Hank's face. It was a tight fit with the bulk of the boy's snowmobile bibs.

  Hank heard him grunting, followed by the sound of something sliding. "Got it."

  Hank grabbed a hunk of fabric and tugged backwards. "Good job."

  Annie, who was the spitting image of his daughter at eleven, pulled both knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them to bury her face and cry.

  Luckily, their rich, maternal grandmother, who once lived in Montana, had sent all the children snowmobiling boots for Christmas. The bulky black and yellow waterproof fabric didn't appear to be torn or compromised. "Your foot's not broken, is it?"

  She shook her head. The Chargers logo on her stocking cap reflected off the light.

  He noticed she was still wearing the high-end headphones her paternal grandmother had sent, too.

  Br
ibes, Hank thought bitterly. What little money he'd saved over the years had gone to cover his daughter's final hospital bill and cremation.

  Hank unzipped his outer jacket to reach for his phone. No signal. Big surprise. A full charge, though. That was good. Maybe the search and rescue team could ping it to locate them in the morning.

  From the cargo hold came a familiar whine.

  Damn. He'd forgotten about Rook, his nine-year old Alusky--part Malamute, part Siberian Husky, with a drop or two of wolf, the breeder said.

  "Take it easy, Rook, I'll get you out in a minute, buddy." Smartest animal he'd ever known and his best friend. The dog usually flew in the co-pilot seat with a special harness. This time, because Hank knew it was going to be a rough flight, he'd put the dog in the heavy duty cage they used to transport wolves that got too close to Hank's specialty highland cattle.

  "Is your sister okay?" he asked Annie.

  Hank had cursed his clumsy fingers and all the hooks and buckles that came with an infant car seat when he frantically tried to install it so they could beat the storm, but the darn thing was built like a brick shithouse. If anybody could survive a full-on helicopter crash, it should be his littlest grandbaby.

  Annie peeked under the alpaca receiving blanket an old friend of Laurel's had sent.

  "Still sleeping," Annie whispered.

  Probably the dose of fever reducer he'd given the fussy, squalling, feverish infant after talking to some stranger on his Ham radio.

  His whole HR community had rallied to help, but since most of his friends were on the other side of the world, what could they do? When Mystic's fever spiked to 104.5-degrees, Hank made the decision to go for help. He'd be the one who had to live with the consequences of that decision.

  And now he was going to have to break the first rule of winter survival: stay with your vehicle.

  The moment he opened the cockpit door the forty-knot wind would blow a foot of snow into their steadily chilling shelter. But the alternative wasn't much better. At this altitude, with the temperature dropping, if he did nothing, they'd freeze to death.

  Not the worst way to go, a voice in his head said. He'd seen worse.

  He cursed silently as he shined the flashlight around, taking stock of the damage. Each kid had a backpack filled with extra clothes and snacks and water bottles he'd figured they would need at the hospital. There were plenty of blankets and emergency provisions in the far back. If he let Rook out, Hank might be able to make a small fire in the tail -- with enough ventilation to keep them from dying of asphyxiation. Possibly, just possibly, they could last the night--or until rescue came.

  Like that was going to happen any time soon.

  There wasn't a crew on the ground within fifty miles that could make it to this elevation in time to help them.

  The baby made a little mewling sound that sent a shard of fear straight to his belly. He'd do what he could. Some of them might survive. Mystic wouldn't.

  Hank spent the next forty minutes doing triage. Luckily, the bumps and bruises the children had sustained weren't major. Mostly, his passengers needed hugs and reassurance that they'd be rescued.

  Hank lied through his teeth.

  "We're safe. We landed, not crashed," he told them. A bogus distinction, given he had no idea what his rotors looked like and he'd pretty much landed without rudder control.

  He honestly didn't know how they managed to land in one piece. A guardian angel, maybe? Had Laurel reached out from heaven to protect her babies? What other explanation was there?

  He closed his eyes and said a silent prayer. "I'm gonna need a little more help here, Gracie."

  Laurel Grace Firestone. The best thing that ever happened to him. Becoming a father at eighteen may not have sounded providential to most people, but his baby girl stole his heart with her first cry. She gave him purpose and focus. He'd treasured each of her thirty-one years and when she died four months earlier, her death left huge gaping holes in their hearts--and a mountain of unresolved custodial issues that made Hank feel like the captain of the Titanic. The iceberg he dodged yesterday might capsize them tomorrow.

  Of course, the upcoming custody war with Bravo and Mystic's paternal grandmother was a moot point at the moment. First, they had to survive before they could argue over which children were going to live with whom.

  Hank would fight with all his might to keep the children together. Unfortunately, he knew there would be armchair quarterbacks who would question his decision to fly on a night like this.

  He'd made a judgment call--one he hoped didn't kill them.

  JJ curled in a ball in the co-pilot seat, listening to the squeaks and moans and popping sounds as the helicopter settled into its death.

  A lot noisier than Mom.

  Her last sounds--the one time he snuck in to see her at the end--were low, ugly gasps that came from deep in her chest, like a trapped animal trying to crawl out. He would have done anything to make it stop, but everyone--the doctors, Grandpa, even, God--had given up trying to help her.

  A few hours later she died.

  Cancer.

  Mom's death wasn't his fault, but this was.

  He made a fist and pressed it to his gut to keep from throwing up.

  He'd nearly killed them all.

  Maybe I did.

  They'd crash landed in the middle of nowhere in a freaking blizzard. They'd probably freeze to death before help arrived.

  He leaned sideways to look into the back seat.

  Bravo was strapped in his seat, crying. His nose a snotty mess, like usual. The kid cried more often than Annie, who was a girl.

  JJ got to his knees so he could check on Mystic. He'd die if Mystic was dead. His mother gave her life for that baby. Mom had refused any sort of cancer treatment for fear it would hurt her baby. Mystic River Landry. Mom had the name picked out before the doctor confirmed the baby was a girl.

  If Mystic died so soon after Mom, JJ would be glad to freeze to death. At least he wouldn't have to live with that guilt, too.

  "You okay, buddy?" Hank asked in the pilot's seat beside him. Hank. To the little ones he was Grandpa, but JJ used his given name because that's how Mom always addressed her father.

  JJ swallowed hard to keep from crying. He had to man up.

  Be brave, my love. I'm counting on you to keep it together for the sake of the little ones, Mom said before she got bad.

  "Yeah. I'm okay. But, your bird..." Hank always called the helicopter a bird. The thing even had a name, but JJ couldn't remember it. "I...I'm sorry."

  Hank, who appeared to be concentrating hard on assessing their situation, gave JJ a questioning look. "Sorry for wha...? No," his grandfather said sternly, his deep voice going hard and serious. "This is not your fault, JJ. Something mechanical gave out. I heard a pop right before the rotor went wonky.

  "Could have been from the cold, the snow, structural fatigue, who knows? But whatever the cause, you are not to blame. Are we clear on that?"

  JJ wanted to believe him, but JJ had been the one holding the stick when the popping noise happened. Hank had given him the controls so he could reach behind them to keep Mystic from choking to death. Annie and Bravo had been crying so loudly JJ thought his ears would bleed. He'd held the stick with all his might and tried to pretend the whole thing was a video game.

  But what happened next wasn't pretend. The helicopter lurched and bucked like a living beast. His hold slipped. The bird tilted sideways--only for a second until he got it straightened out again--but that's when the bad sound happened. The helo cried out as if he'd shot it. The moaning and groaning and vibration seemed to move through his body as they fell.

  He'd never been more scared in his entire life. He'd prayed to God, his dead mother and the dead father he barely remembered. He prayed hard. And, it looked like his prayers were answered.

  They were still alive, right?

  A gust of wind hit the helicopter--Betsy, he thought, that was the bird's name--rocking it enough to rele
ase a fine white mist of snow inside their shelter.

  He tried to see into the blackness beyond the frosty plastic window, but there was nothing. Just a black snowy void.

  His prayers might have saved them, but for how long?

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