Cold Ridge

Thirty-Four

Nobody could get Manny into a litter. He carried one end of his son's litter and climbed into the National Guard rescue helicopter with him. They took Gary Turner, too. He'd regained consciousness, but was incoherent.

A Cold Ridge police officer, part of the rescue team that arrived on foot after the helo took off, relieved North of Turner's rifle and handgun. He was freed to argue with Carine about getting her ass in a litter and letting the rescue team carry her off the ridge.

He didn't win that one, either.

She was determined to walk. North went with her. The rescue party provided them with warm clothes and warm fluids, but Carine had had a hell of a few hours- so had he. By the time they got back down to the Rancourt house, Gus and Hank had already been transported by ambulance to the hospital. All hell was breaking loose over a United States senator turning up in a hut on a New Hampshire mountain with a madman.

Except Gary Turner was stone-cold sane. North had no doubt about that.

Antonia Winter Callahan, M.D., met them at the hospital. She was in trauma-doctor mode, checking on her husband, her uncle, her sister, the entire Carrera family. Val was in surgery. Eric was responding rapidly to treatment for a severe allergic reaction, asthma attack and mild hypothermia. He'd helped save himself. There was no question about it. He'd conserved his Albuterol as best he could and consciously tried to lower the level of his anxiety. If he hadn't responded the way he had, he'd have been dead before Carine found him on the ridge.

Manny, no surprise to North, wasn't the most cooperative patient, but he finally, reluctantly, agreed to let someone do a CT-scan of his head-just so they'd all leave him alone. He said his head was fine. He was right. The CT-scan was negative.

Antonia shoved a cardboard cup of gray-looking coffee at North in the ER waiting room. "The doctor orders you to drink. You've had a hell of a day, but I see you're as indestructible as ever."

"That piece of rock could have hit me instead of Manny."

She smiled faintly. "The key here is that it didn't."

He sipped the awful coffee. "I can tell you, you wouldn't have seen me kicking over a damn woodstove with my hands and feet tied together-what'd Hank plan to do, slither out of there like a snake?"

"No, he planned for you and Manny to rescue him. He says that's what you guys live for."

But her face was pale, and she looked strained and tired. "I'll bet right now Hank knows exactly why he married an ER doc."

"He won't even be admitted. He'll just need to grow new eyebrows." She teetered suddenly, and North grabbed her. "I think-oh, hell, Tyler, I'm going to be sick."

And she was, right there on the waiting room floor, damn near getting his shoes.

"I know you hate barf," she said, embarrassed.

He got her onto a chair, and a nurse came running, but Antonia waved her off. "I'm all right. I'm-" She smiled through her wooziness. "I'm pregnant."

"Antonia!" It was Carine, coming around the corner into the waiting room, eavesdropping as usual. "That's wonderful. Are you okay? Can I get you anything?"

"Have you told Hank?" Ty asked.

Antonia lifted her head. "It took the cocky pilot right out of him."

North figured the voters of Massachusetts would either get used to their new senator's way of doing things or they'd give him the boot in six years. Kids came first with him. Period. He was the kind of guy who'd kick over a woodstove while he was tied up if it meant giving an asthmatic kid an extra few minutes' lead, to escape his captor.

Nate Winter finally wandered in, pissed off and pacing, in full U.S. marshal mode. He was tall and rangy like his uncle, with about as much patience. He glared at the younger of his two sisters and then at North. "I told you two to go mountain climbing."

Carine ignored him. "How bad a bad guy was Gary Turner?"

"Considering he kidnapped a fourteen-year-old boy and a U.S. senator and planned to kill them and you, Manny Carrera and your ex-fiancé here, I guess he was pretty goddamn bad."

"Yeah, but before that?"

His mouth twitched. "Before that he wasn't so hot, either. He likely committed two murders in Canada. Tony-Louis was a trip, too. Extortion, smuggling, forgery. He was very good at forgery. Smuggle people into a country, they need papers."

"The wife?"

"Turner was devoted to her. They had some weird relationship-looks like he went to pieces when he accidentally killed her. The doctors treating him say it's a wonder he made it out of the mountains last winter. It doesn't look as if he ever sought medical help for his fingers and toes."

"He's talking?" Carine asked.

"Some. He wants credit. Hell-" Nate bit off a sigh. "If he goes downhill or shuts up, investigators can just talk to my baby sister and wrap this one up."

Carine didn't wither under her brother's impatient scrutiny. "Will I get a medal?"

"Pain in the ass," he said.

The Rancourts were talking to the police, but only through their lawyer. They'd stopped ten miles up the notch road to call the police and, according to Nate, acted like victims.

She sipped some of Ty's coffee, made a face and dug money out of one of her endless barn coat pockets for the soda machine. "Antonia, I'll share a Coke with you, provided I don't catch what you've got."

Her sister tried to smile, but she was done in. North winked at her. "Long goddamn night and day for a pregnant lady."

"Long night and day for all of us."

They all went up to Gus's room. He bitched about having his leg in a cast and the prospect of missing even a minute of snowshoeing and cross-country skiing season, but he hadn't incurred any permanent damage. He'd be back on the ridge before the winter was out. He had no sympathy for Carine's brush with hypothermia. Apparently he'd offered to stop at her cabin for her to put on more appropriate clothing, and she'd refused.

"The doctor lectured me on wearing cotton," she told him. "It was an accident. I never wear cotton hiking, not even in the summer."

North smiled. Winters, even when they were being treated for their injuries, never liked being told something they already knew. They were a loving but contentious lot, and as he looked from green-at-the-gills Antonia to rangy Nate to brittle-haired Gus to Carine, blue-eyed and auburn-haired and not nearly as fragile as everyone thought, North knew he could never leave Cold Ridge. Not forever, anyway.

Val figured she was dreaming or maybe dead. She didn't care which, just so long as it didn't end. Manny was there beside her hospital bed, holding her hand and telling her he loved her, that Eric was okay, they were all okay.

He was crying. That part she could do without.

She touched his stubble of beard. She had all kinds of tubes and crap in her, but a doctor had told her she'd be fine, she was lucky. She liked that. Lucky.

Manny kissed her fingertips, and she felt his tears warm on her hand.

"I just didn't know what else to do," she said.

"I know. Neither did I."