Hiking for Danger (4 page)

Sahara was amazed with the atmosphere around her. They were in beautiful surroundings; everybody, for the most part, seemed to be getting along and breakfast was peaceful—albeit a bit scarce for her. She dug around in her bag and found her Slim Fast drink, but after taking one look at it and remembering how far they had to go still she decided to save it for later. She still had a little trail mix left.

Cody dug around in his bag and pulled an energy bar out. “Take this,” he said.

“I’m okay,” she shook her head. She was already taking over the man’s camping bag she wouldn’t take his food too.”

“I guess you mistook my words for a question. I wasn’t asking you, Sahara. Take this,” he jabbed it toward her again. She wanted to tell him off and refuse again except she really was hungry. She stuffed her trail mix back in her bag and took the bar from him.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he nodded. “Next time don’t be so obstinate.”

She looked at the upward turn of his lips and realized while he was serious he didn’t mean any disrespect. She ate breakfast with him and shared a couple laughs over something he had told her about nature, or some joke he knew. He was really a nice guy, but he was also a guy who stuck to schedule and it was time to move on. He went about making sure everybody was ready to go after telling her to be sure she had everything in her pack. She hadn’t taken much out. She had taken out a change of panties, which he so graciously left her to the sleeping bag alone so she could change them before anybody else got up. She knew she had everything, but she looked around again just in case. If anything could go wrong it was nearly guaranteed it would happen to her so she figured a look around her area just to be sure she didn’t accidently lose something out her bag wasn’t such a bad thing.

Sahara had just stood up when she felt the rope cinch her waist and jerk just enough to pull her around.

“And this is how you rope a pig,” Stacey had said. Sahara wasn’t sure if she were referring to her as being a pig or not, but she was getting pissed at the twenty-one year old for all the hell she had been putting her through. “Then you step back and pull it in,” she laughed and started walking backwards.

Sahara plastered on a fake smile and tried to remove the rope from her waist. Logic dictated that she just swivel it over her hips and step out, but she hadn’t had time to process logic before another sharp jerk had her on the ground and speeding toward the rotting tree trunk.

She felt the panic and heard the screams, but she reacted with all the placidity that she could. God forbid she panic too because if she did they would all be in trouble because right now she didn’t see Stacey. What she saw was the tree trunk and a rope dangling down what was probably a long drop. She tried to keep her body from twisting. Hitting the trunk with her back would be bad—very bad. She curled her knees up just enough to brace her feet for impact. The preparation had been to no avail because when she hit the sack of wood she felt every tendon in her leg spasm in pain.

She let out a loud yell, but she held on. She held on to the rope that was cutting into her lower back, and kept her feet planted on the trunk for support.

Cody was by her side first yelling orders to Parker to support her weight. She felt his arms go underneath her armpits and tuck up firmly on her shoulders. Cody pulled at the rope, slowly pulling Stacey further up. She had the nerve to start screaming and twisting which made Sahara’s pain worse. She took in a sharp breath and then it seemed that all of her breaths were sharp and quick. This was proof positive that Sahara and adventure just didn’t mesh. If she survived this trip she would never forget again that her place was in the lab, not off on some adventure trek.

Chapter Three

“S
top moving!” Cody
hollered and after a few seconds Stacey complied. Cody pulled her up with a ferocity that only a sheer rush of adrenaline could provide. Once he got her up he took his knife from his boot and cut the rope from around Sahara’s waist. “Get her back to that rock. I don’t want to move you, but I have to,” he looked at her as if he were trying to make her understand why he had to cause her more pain by moving her. She would have put his mind at ease if she could have focused through the pain. She would assure him that every ounce of pain she was feeling was going to be there even if he didn’t move her. She wasn’t sure anybody was paying attention to Stacey because everybody seemed to be hovering near her. She wasn’t sure that Cody cared at that moment whether Stacey was or wasn’t okay.

Cody bent in front of her, pulling her up into his arms and examining her back. She would have had some snappy dialogue like “thought you were supposed to help me up not feel me up” if she could speak. Parker’s weight was gone from behind her. “You,” Cody squared his eyes on Riley. “Come sit behind her, support the weight and hold her hand. Keep reminding her to breathe.”

Breathe, that’s all she needed to do was breathe—and focus, but she couldn’t focus and breathing wasn’t really helping ease her pain right now. She was in so much pain she felt disconnected and with every breath she felt that disconnected feeling even more. It was almost as if she weren’t within her own body—but she was. The pain she was feeling was a sure indication that she was still very much in her own body, not floating above it, not disconnected from it, but right there within it—feeling every ounce of pain and feeling as if she were going to die because of it.

Riley complied without hesitation. Tucking himself between Sahara and the rock and gently easing her back. “Dude you act like she’s in labor.”

“First Aid kit now!” Cody hadn’t needed to holler because Parker was already kneeling beside him with the kit. “She’s going to feel like she’s in labor when I try to get this boot off.” He knew there was a huge risk he would get it off and not be able to get it back on when he needed to, but he needed to ascertain if there were any breaks. “Water,” he growled again. Parker reached back for the water as Cody ripped open packets of Advil. “Are you allergic to anything?” She hadn’t responded. She sat staring straight ahead as if the moment was merely a dream and she was powerless to control it.

“Focus,” he said a bit more harshly than intended. “Are you allergic to anything?”

She wheezed out a barely audible
no.
He pushed the pills in her mouth one by one and then gradually helped her sip the water. “This should help with the pain,” he said.

By this point, Stacey was well aware that all attention had gone straight to Sahara—a situation she clearly wasn’t used to. “My wrist hurts,” she complained. Cody uttered a curse barely audible before non-verbally telling Parker to check her out. His attention fell back on Sahara. She looked pale.

“What the hell are you doing?” He kept his voice as even as possible.

“You said to…”

“Support her weight kid, not feel her up.” He managed to say with some measure of civility. He wanted to beat the snot out of the kid for stroking her arm and occasionally letting his fingers move over her breast. He would have asked the Baker boy to sit behind her, but for a sixteen year old kid he was a big guy. Too big to easily fit behind her.

Cody slowly unlaced her boot and started to pull. She sucked in a sharp breath and let out a loud scream. He wanted to stop, but his training told him going slower would be more painful so he pulled the boot off with as much force as he thought she could bear without going into shock from the pain.

He gently felt her ankle noticing that nothing looked broken from first glance and no bones appeared to be protruding beneath the skin—a miracle he thought. It was swelling rapidly which meant she could have fractured it or severely sprained it. He had no way of telling except waiting a couple days to see if the swelling went down. But if she had damaged a nerve, if there were a fracture, if the swelling didn’t go down then she would need expert medical attention stat.

“We have to at least get to our third stop and then we can get a chopper in there to get her to a hospital.” Cody calculated the timing. Parker agreed. He called in using the emergency radio and got Lula.

“One injured—which one?” She asked and he remembered she was like a computer. She could probably spurt the names of every hiker that went on a tour since she had been there. Lula was a joy to work with and good at her job. She was also motherly; no matter who came before her if there was a problem she felt the need to fix it.

“Sahara Daniels. The ankle’s pretty bad and we’re going to have to make our third clearing before a chopper can land. We’ll be slow getting there because she’s not going to be able to put much—if any—weight on it.”

“That poor child.” Anybody younger than fifty and she always called them a child. “She was so nice when she came through the waiting room yesterday morning. You keep her safe and make sure she doesn’t go into shock,” Lula spurted off directions as if she were talking to an inexperienced hiker instead of one of the guides, but this was Lula she was always the worried mother hen until the last one came home.

“And tell Ranger Cody to go easy on her,” she assumed it was her fault until Parker confessed that it was actually one of the other members fault. She swore a curse and wanted to know which one, but he assured her it wasn’t necessary for her to know right now.

Cody saw the quizzical look on Sahara’s face. “I’m a park ranger, I do this on my days off,” he smiled. She tried to force one but her lips wouldn’t move completely upward. He knew she was in pain and he wished he could help her, but all he could do was give her painkillers and wrap her ankle to try to keep her from moving it around too much, or jarring it relentlessly as they tried to get to the third ridge.

“Well it’s a good half day hike still before we reach the second stop and that’s with everybody at full strength. Then we have to get to the third stop before we can even think of getting a chopper in here,” Parker had said when Lula asked when he wanted the chopper there. They had already wasted some daylight hours and with Sahara’s injury they would be moving slower. They would have to stop because none of their hikers could make that climb in the dark. Cody could, but if he were still thinking straight he would realize it wasn’t a good idea for any of them to try to continue after sunset.

Parker rattled off the approximate date for pickup before looking to him for confirmation. The hike down to the third clearing was going to be a lot steeper, there wasn’t much choice because the only other trail was going back the way they came and that would have been longer than the other option. Cody shook his head and Parker confirmed. They both knew the timing wasn’t exactly accurate, but if they all pulled together they could do it. It was steep and on her ankle, he wondered if she would make it. Parker told Lula he would call again to let her know for sure what time they would need pickup and to give her an update on their progress, how they were all doing, and if they needed any additional hikers to come up to get anybody else. His eyes had cut to Stacey because she was the one still complaining about her wrist—a wrist that seemed fine to him, as opposed to Sahara the Romanian-Dutch-American goddess currently withering in pain.

As if she had read his mind, she rasped out, “I’ll make it.” Her voice was weak from pain and chillingly close to giving out.

“It’s downhill in some places,” he said. “Steep,” not that she had much of a choice, but he wanted her to know what she would be in for. She blinked to let him know she understood. Steep and downhill meant they would be fighting gravity, doing an almost run downward more than a walk.

“Do you have any back pain?”

Sahara tried to focus in on Cody’s question. Once it registered that he was trying to find out if she had pain in her back she couldn’t really answer him with certainty. “Right…now…I can’t…tell what…hurts.” She drew in a sharp breath. “It…hurts all…over,” she finally managed to say. She felt every nerve tingling from her ankle up through her leg and it felt as if bolts of pain were shooting clear out the top of her head. She closed her eyes and her head lolled backwards. How did she get in this mess? Good question, except she remembered exactly how she got in this mess. She had gone on a dare. Kallie and Jeff—her infamous and adventurous sister and brother had said she didn’t have an adventurous bone in her body. That she couldn’t make a day hike if God lowered the mountain into a plane. In her haste she had booked the trip and hadn’t realized that the day hike she thought she was booking was actually a camping and hiking adventure. So much for proving them wrong, she thought.