turning sluggishly, like the futilely waving legs of an overturned turtle. She could see Eve, too, now, a few yards downstream from the wreckage of the Jeep, caught in the white-water current. As Alex watched, she saw an arm reach out…and then another, as Eve struggled to swim, to keep her head above water…and then, miraculously, grab hold of a boulder. She was holding on…somehow, but how long she’d be able to was impossible to guess. And how badly was she injured? Alex had no way of knowing that, either.
“There should be a rope in the back of the SUV,” she yelled back to Sam as she went over the side and began to slip-slide her way down the steep embankment. “When you get it, throw me a line. I’ll try to hold her…”
“Got it, Alex-coming to you. Heads up!”
She looked up and saw Matt grinning down at her, his chair perilously close to the edge of the drop as he swung the end of the rope around his head like a cowboy preparing to lasso a steer. For the first time since the yellow Jeep had gone flying past her on the highway, Alex felt her heart climb out of her stomach. She even managed to grin back at him as she reached up to snag the snaking end of the rope out of the air and loop it around her waist. She knotted it firmly, then looked up and yelled, “Okay-you got me?”
“You bet,” he yelled back. “Always!”
She felt giddy, absurdly happy-crazy, given the circumstances-but there was no other way to describe the feelings that swamped her then. She felt like a super-hero-she could do anything! With the rope around her waist and Matt holding on to the other end, she felt safe and strong and able to swim rivers and climb mountains-or move them, if need be.
She all but flew down that bank, and in moments was waist-deep in rapids, scrambling over slippery rocks to reach the boulder where Eve was barely hanging on against the powerful current.
Eve could see her coming now, and she was staring up at Alex, staring with desperate eyes that seemed to cling to her as tenaciously as her arms and hands and fingers clung to the granite boulder. Blood poured down her face and was instantly carried away by the turbulent water that surged and splashed into her face. Her lips were stretched wide in a desperate parody of a smile as she screamed words Alex couldn’t hear.
“Hang on, Eve, I’m coming,” Alex yelled. And then she was there, and Eve was sobbing, clutching at her, and dangerously near to losing her hold on the rock in the process. “Wait-Don’t try to grab me, just let me-I’ve got you, okay? I’ve got you!”
Too panic-stricken to listen, Eve relinquished her hold on the boulder and wrapped her arms in a stranglehold around Alex’s neck. And now Alex could hear what the other woman was saying, in panting words all mixed up with sobs. What she heard made every muscle in her body go slack with shock.
“Why did you do it? Why did you take him back? You lied-you said you wouldn’t. You said-Oh, why didn’t he die? He was supposed to
“Wait, Eve-” Alex couldn’t breathe. She wrenched the other woman’s arms from around her neck and held her away from her, stared at her, the roaring in her ears louder than the river. “Eve-” she gasped the words, shrieked them without sound “-what are you telling me?”
Eve’s eyes stared back at her, swimming with anguished tears…tears of impotent rage, mixed with water and blood. “He wasn’t supposed to come back. Alex-why did you let him come back? We don’t need him-you and me-we don’t need him, Alex. He’s not what you need-don’t you see that? I had to make him go…for good, this time. Don’t you see?”
Alex’s hands had lost all sensation. If she could have moved them, she might have flung the woman from her, flung her back into the rapids-she wanted to. Revulsion and horror filled her head-she couldn’t think, couldn’t feel. “It was you?” She said the words, not caring whether anyone heard. “Matt’s accident-it was
“He was supposed to die,” Eve wailed.
“She’s got her, I think,” Sam said.
“Yeah,” said Matt, “but what’s she waiting for? What’s she doing?”
He had the rope looped around his shoulders and had taken a good firm grip on it, ready to begin pulling when Alex gave the word. But now she seemed to be holding Eve off, and saying something to her-yelling at her. It almost looked like…some kind of struggle?
Behind him he could hear cars pulling up alongside the road and stopping, people getting out of their cars, calling 9-1-1 on their cell phones, coming with offers to help. Offering to take the rope.
“I’ve got this, but you can hold on to my chair,” he told them all when they asked. No way he was giving up that rope. That was Alex down there, depending on him to bring her back. They’d have to cut his arms off before he’d let go.
Then at last, he saw Alex lift her head and look up at him. She’d shifted Eve, got her on her back, piggyback style, and the rope looped around them both. And now she raised her arm to signal him she was ready. Matt waved back, then flexed his hands in the leather gloves all people in wheelchairs wore to protect their hands from blisters and calluses, thinking what a good thing they were to have at a time like this. And was aware even then of the irony in that.
He turned his head to address the two hefty guys standing behind his chair. “You guys got me?” They both affirmed they were ready, took hold of his wheels and braced themselves. “Okay, here we go.”
He began to pull on the rope, not taking his eyes off Alex as he eased up the slack, then began to pull the weight of the two women slowly up the bank. Watching, gauging the obstacles Alex had to navigate over and around, careful not to hurry, careful not to jolt her, letting her find the best way up through the brush and boulders, wrapping the rope around his bent arm to take up the slack. His muscles burned and sweat poured down his face and soaked into his T-shirt. Not since his early days in rehab, when he was first learning to bear the full weight of his body with just his arms, had he worked so hard. Or felt such triumph in it.
All the while he was pulling on that rope, pulling the woman he loved more than his own life up that hill, all he could think about was that she was
She was here, where she’d no earthly reason to be, except for one: she’d followed him. She’d come after him. For Alex, that pretty much constituted a miracle.
And it told him all he needed to know. For Alex Penny to let go of her pride and come chasing after him, she had to have some powerful feelings. He wasn’t foolish enough to think they didn’t still have things to work out between them, but he wasn’t ever going to ask her the question he’d asked her once before. He’d never ask her again if she loved him. She didn’t have to say the words.
He knew.
He could hear sirens far down the canyon, coming fast. Moments later the rope went slack in his hands as people rushed to help Alex with her burden. He bowed his head, breathing in hungry gulps, and didn’t see them bring her up the last few feet, over the edge and onto the hard-packed earth.
When he looked up again, Eve was sobbing and struggling against the restraints of the Good Samaritans trying to give her aid, while Alex sat motionless a few feet away. He tossed away the rope, gave his wheels a shove and rolled over to her. When he said her name, she turned her head slowly to look at him, and the look on her face scared him. She was pale, deathly so, and her eyes looked blank, like windows in a deserted house.
Shock, he thought, and reached out with a shaking hand to touch her cheek. Where in the hell were the paramedics?
So naturally, at just that moment, a paramedic came and dropped his kit on the ground beside her, then bent over to ask if she was all right.
She seemed to jerk herself back from whatever hell she’d been in and waved him away impatiently. “Go away- I’m fine.”
The EMT glanced at Matt, then turned his attention back to Alex. “Ma’am, you need to let me look at you. Unless your ancestors came from another planet and blue-green is your natural color, I don’t think you’re fine. Okay?”
“Alex,” Matt said gently, “let the man do his job.”
“I am not injured,” she said, speaking slowly and carefully, as if to a mentally deficient child. “I wasn’t involved in the…accident. I just hauled that woman’s sorry ass out of the river, and I’m a little
The EMT gave Matt another look, shrugged, then straightened up and picked up his gear. Matt turned with him
