Cold Pursuit - Carla Neggers [65]
It wasn’t that hard to do.
The falls trail started closer to the lodge, which allowed guests to get to it on foot without a long trek along the ridge road. The lane where Devin had parked was farther down the road, but the trail up to the falls was shorter. Also more difficult, though Elijah didn’t mind that part.
The chickadees danced off into the wilderness as he came to the falls trail. He followed it around a level curve, hearing the water rushing down off the mountain.
The air wasn’t that cold. He was warm enough in his fleece without resorting to the extra layers in his pack.
He ducked under the low branches of a red oak and made his way to a ledge above the falls. Water swirled below him in an endless cascade that smoothed and shaped the wall of gray granite.
He remembered holding hands with Jo under this same oak as she told him she wanted to marry him at the falls. It was just like her not to wait to be asked. She’d been so full of dreams, so eager to leave Vermont and their small hometown. He’d been clueless about anything beyond his desire to get Jo Harper into bed.
“Some things don’t change,” he muttered, and warned himself to focus on the task at hand.
Find Devin, find Nora. Go from there.
In his winter-camping class, Nora Asher had been dedicated and self-conscious—a perfectionist who didn’t want to be the yahoo Ivy Leaguer who got lost in the woods and had to be rescued. She hated, she’d said during their afternoon break, the idea of a bunch of Vermonters searching for her and thinking here was another dumb-assed flatlander in a self-inflicted mess.
Not that anyone would think that, but that was how Nora saw the world.
She’d also wanted to prove she was tough. In Elijah’s experience, that was as sure a way into trouble as being an idiot was. But it didn’t matter.
“Forget your pride if you get in a jam and ask for help,” he’d told her. “Just get home alive.”
She’d given him the sort of look that he’d become accustomed to—the one that said she knew she couldn’t imagine the brushes with death he’d had and wasn’t sure she wanted to.
As he turned back toward the trail, he caught a movement just below him, on the other side of the falls. Devin emerged from a cluster of hemlocks and stared up at Elijah, then spun back around on his heels.
Seeing the danger, Elijah called to him. “Devin—don’t run.”
But he paid no attention and bolted toward the cover of the evergreens, losing his footing on the wet ground and going down hard on one knee. Unable to get himself back under control, he slid, flailing, yelling, down the slippery rock outcropping, finally stopping just short of a deep coppery pool.
Elijah was already moving. He ran up through the trees to the stream that fed the falls and leaped onto a dry boulder in the middle of the shallow, sparkling water, then jumped to the opposite bank. The ground was soft, covered with freshly fallen maple and birch leaves. Avoiding slippery rocks, he ducked among the hemlocks and made his way quickly down the steep hill to Devin. As he got closer to the falls, Elijah could hear the whoosh of the tumbling water and Devin’s uninhibited swearing.
“Hang on,” Elijah said. “Don’t move.”
“I can’t move. I’m stuck.” He sounded more frustrated than panicked.
Elijah eased out from behind a hemlock. “Hit your head?”
Devin grimaced. “No—I just slid under this damn rock.”
“Ribs?”
“I’m okay.” He gulped in a breath and sank back against the steep rock incline. He had on a canvas vest over a hooded sweatshirt. And jeans. But he didn’t look cold. He squeezed his eyes shut in pain. “Just go on. I don’t need you to rescue me.”
“It’d be easier on you if I did.”
Devin swore at him, but Elijah squatted in the muck to get a better look at the situation. Devin’s momentum had shoved his lower right leg down into the muck and under a basketball-size boulder, dislodging the boulder and trapping