Breaking Free: A Colorado High Country Crossover Novel by Pamela Clare (well read books .TXT) 📗

a nickname.” She turned on the heater. “The scary thing is that we never know what we’ll find. In the winter and fall, when the water is low, most people survive, though someone who is severely intoxicated could pass out and drown in six inches of water. In the spring and summer, when the water is high, it’s a swift-water rescue, which is a lot more dangerous. People have drowned in their vehicles or been swept away, even little children.”

Jason caught a glimpse of the creek twenty feet below to his right. “I’m surprised they survive the crash.”

“They don’t always, and then we get toned out to help with body recovery.”

Jason knew how hard that job was. “We just passed mile marker twenty-four.”

Around the next bend, they saw flares and flashing red-and-blue lights. Just ahead, a sheriff’s deputy directed traffic. The deputy saw Winona and waved her through. She slowed, pulled to the shoulder, and parked behind a row of vehicles, including several sheriff’s vehicles, a fire truck, a rescue vehicle, and a big tow truck.

Jason instinctively assessed the situation from a law-enforcement standpoint. The dark. The narrow highway. The steep, rocky drop-off to his right. The sheer rock wall to their left. Yeah, he could see how this kind of rescue might be dangerous.

If another drunk driver came along at high speeds…

He climbed out and met Winona at her liftgate.

She pulled out her backpack and a helmet, put her radio on her belt, clipped the hand mic to her jacket, and slipped the earpiece into her ear. “Just stand off to the side until Megs calls for you.”

He took her helmet, settled it onto her head, fastened the strap. “You got it.”

Below them in the water was a battered, orange Ford Pinto lying on its roof in several inches of water, both doors open. Around him, Team members worked with efficiency. Jason recognized the anchor, as they called it, its ropes leading down to the water so Team members wouldn’t risk falling on the steep jumble of rocks. Uniformed officers and Team members in reflective vests moved downstream through the water, looking for any sign of the vehicle’s occupant.

It was going to take them forever to find the driver that way.

Megs walked up to him. “What would you do in this situation?”

“I’d head down with a flashlight, walk along the banks in both directions on either side of the creek, expanding my search until I found sign. Then I’d follow the sign until I found the driver.”

“Let’s get you down there.”

Five minutes later, with some expert help, he was wearing a climbing harness and a helmet and was roped in.

“I’m on belay,” Sasha called to him. “Go ahead and climb down.”

It struck Jason as strange that he, a guy from Sells, Arizona, was being belayed into a creek in the Colorado mountains by the world’s top women’s sports climber.

He reached the water safely, where Nicole freed him from the rope.

“You’re set,” she said. “Thanks for coming out with us tonight.”

“My pleasure.” He took his flashlight and got to work, Megs and the fire chief, Eric Hawke, walking along behind him. The Pinto’s driver’s side door faced the highway, so he started on that side.

“I appreciate your help.” Hawke stepped carefully, and Jason remembered that he’d been severely burned just a couple of months ago. “We called in the plates, so we should have the driver’s name soon.”

Already, the movement of law enforcement and Team members had compromised the scene. But a little further on, Jason found what he was looking for—sign. An overturned rock lay on the embankment, a thread of denim caught on a shrub beside it.

Jason plucked up the thread, held it up. “He tried to climb out here, but he was too drunk. Or maybe it was too steep.”

“How the hell…?” Hawke muttered.

“I told you he was good,” Megs said.

“See the stone? Someone stepped on it, turned it over. The moss is on the bottom, and the muddy side is facing up.”

Hawke nodded. “It seems obvious when you put it like that.”

Jason kept the grin off his face and walked a little farther upstream. “He tried again here—and threw up on the sand. Most of it washed away.”

Water lapped at a small pile of vomit, peas, carrots, and mucus swirling in an eddy nearby.

Megs bent to look. “Gross.”

When he found nothing more upstream, he went back to the spot where he’d found the vomit and crossed over. Almost immediately, he saw—unevenly spaced footprints rambling up the embankment, a palm print, and a slight indentation where someone had fallen onto one knee.

“Here.” He climbed up, moving his flashlight back and forth.

Two eyes stared back at him from the cover of a large bush ten feet uphill.

“Hank!” Eric shook his head. “Man, I thought you were beyond this now. You went to rehab, got clean. You’ve been driving to Boulder so that we won’t know you’re off the wagon, haven’t you?”

“I’m a weak man, Hawke.” Hank stood, stumbled out of his bush. He was a small, wiry man, his long, thinning hair pulled into a scraggly ponytail, a mustache on his face, his shirt stained with vomit. “I didn’t think you’d find me.”

“That’s because you’re drunk, Hank. Do you think you can run away from your vehicle without us knowing it was you? Did you forget you have license plates? You’re in serious trouble now.”

“Worse than when I blew up my house?”

“I think so.”

“Damn, Hawke. That kind of news would drive any man to drink.”

Megs called the news into dispatch, and a cheer went up around them.

Then Jason saw. “He’s bleeding from his temple.”

Jason climbed the embankment and helped Hank, who was unsteady on his feet, make his way down to the creek.

Hawke took hold of Hank’s arm. “Come on, buddy. Let’s get you checked out by medical before they take you to the pokey.”

Megs turned to Jason. “What do I have to do to get you on the Team?”

Didn’t Jason wish? “You’re welcome.”

Chapter 18

It was just