Chapter 2 - TWELVE MINUTES
The first person to move was Ethan.
"Which team?"
Colonel Shaw looked toward my parents' front door.
"Outside."
Ethan followed him without another word.
I was already halfway into my coat.
Mom caught my wrist.
"Lauren."
I turned.
Her hand was trembling.
"Are you going with them?"
"Yes."
"Right now?"
"Right now."
She looked toward Shaw, then toward Ethan, then back to me.
"You just got here."
It was such a painfully ordinary thing to say that for a second I almost broke.
Parents don't imagine their daughters walking out of an engagement party toward a rescue aircraft.
They imagine them going home.
They imagine leftovers in the refrigerator.
They imagine phone calls the next morning.
I squeezed her hand.
"I will call when I can."
Dad came closer.
He seemed to have aged ten years since Ethan dropped his glass.
"Is this what you do?"
I looked at him.
"Yes."
"You walk out the door and go into storms?"
"Sometimes."
His jaw tightened.
"Stop saying sometimes."
The frustration in his voice surprised me.
"For once, Lauren, tell me the truth."
I wanted to.
God, I wanted to.
But truth in my world came in compartments.
"This is part of what I do."
He nodded slowly.
It was not enough.
It was all I had.
Behind him, Brianna stood beneath the chandelier in the dress she had spent three weeks choosing.
Everyone else had scattered into uncomfortable clusters.
The party decorations suddenly looked ridiculous.
Gold ribbon.
White roses.
Crystal glasses.
All of it built for a night that no longer existed.
Brianna walked toward me.
"Is Ethan leaving too?"
There was fear in her voice now.
Not fear for me.
Not even yet for the missing team.
Fear that the center of attention was moving somewhere she could not follow.
"I don't know."
"But this is our engagement party."
I stared at her.
"Brianna, people may be dying."
"I know that."
She lowered her voice.
"I'm just saying there are fifty people here."
"Then thank them for coming."
Her mouth tightened.
"You don't have to be cruel."
I almost answered.
Then I saw Ethan through the open doorway.
He stood near Shaw's SUV with his phone against his ear.
His face told me everything.
Someone he loved was on that team.
I walked outside.
Cold air hit my bare legs below the dress.
Shaw tossed me a small black duffel from the rear cargo area.
"Your go-bag was transferred from the duty vehicle."
I caught it.
"Status?"
"Civilian charter supporting a joint training movement."
"Aircraft type?"
"Twin-engine utility bird."
"How many aboard?"
"Nine."
"Crew?"
"Two."
"Passengers?"
"Seven."
"Injuries?"
"Unknown."
"Beacon?"
"Intermittent."
That was bad.
Emergency locator beacons were designed to be difficult to kill.
An intermittent signal usually meant damaged equipment, terrain masking, or something worse.
"Weather?"
Shaw looked toward the sky as though Denver's clear night could answer for mountains two hundred miles away.
"Rapidly deteriorating."
Of course it was.
"Avalanche risk?"
"High by midnight."
"Access?"
"Road team can reach the lower basin."
"Air?"
"Maybe one insertion window."
Maybe was a dangerous word in aviation.
I opened the duffel.
Inside were thermal layers, rescue trousers, boots, harness, gloves, shell, radio gear, medical kit, and a compact pouch containing documents I would not open outside.
I looked down at my navy dress.
"I need two minutes."
Shaw nodded toward the house.
"Use one."
I ran back inside.
Everyone watched me cross the living room.
I no longer cared.
I took the stairs two at a time to my childhood bedroom.
The room had barely changed since college.
Mom still kept an old photograph of Brianna and me at sixteen and nineteen on the dresser.
We were standing on a beach with our arms around each other.
She was laughing.
I was squinting into the sun.
There had been a time when neither of us knew how to hurt the other on purpose.
I stripped off the dress.
Thermal base layer.
Rescue trousers.
Boots.
Harness staged around my waist.
Shell over one arm.
Radio clipped high.
Hair twisted and secured.
Watch changed to operational mode.
By the time I came back downstairs, I was no longer dressed like the sister Brianna had been ashamed of.
I was dressed like Whiteout One.
The room reacted before anyone spoke.
My aunt Linda inhaled sharply.
Jason moved out of my way.
Tyler stared at the rescue insignia on my jacket.
Mom looked at me from boots to radio and began crying again.
Brianna looked furious.
Not because I was leaving.
Because now everyone could see what she had failed to see.
"So this is real."
Her voice was almost accusatory.
I stopped beside her.
"Yes."
"All these years?"
"Yes."
"And you never told me?"
"You never asked long enough to hear the answer."
She flinched.
For a second I regretted it.
Then I remembered the hallway.
Low-class.
Between contracts.
Don't embarrass me.
The regret faded.
I turned toward the door.
"Lauren."
Ethan's voice stopped me.
He had come back inside.
The easy warmth he had shown when he arrived was gone.
"It's Delta Two."
I knew the designation.
Every special operations community had teams people outside would never need to know about.
Delta Two was not one of Ethan's direct elements, but the men rotated training cycles together.
"Who?"
He gave me three last names.
The second one hit me.
"Miller?"
Ethan nodded.
Petty Officer First Class Noah Miller.
Three years ago, I had dragged him through a rock channel in a whiteout after a rescue sled line failed.
He had been semiconscious, hypothermic, and bleeding from a fractured leg.
After the mission, I never saw him again.
Apparently the mountain had not finished with us.
"Is he on the aircraft?"
"Yes."
I swore under my breath.
Brianna looked between us.
"Who's Miller?"
Neither of us answered.
Ethan grabbed his coat.
"I'm coming."
Shaw appeared in the doorway.
"No."
Ethan's jaw set.
"Sir, I can be useful."
"You are on leave."
"Recall me."
"Not my authority."
"Then make a call."
Shaw studied him for half a second.
"Already did."
Ethan waited.
"Your command says no."
Ethan's face tightened.
"Why?"
"Because they need you available for coordination, not buried under a slide with the rest of them."
The answer made operational sense.
That did not make it easier to hear.
Ethan looked at me.
"Bring him back."
There are sentences people in our line of work learn never to promise.
That was one of them.
I could not say yes.
I could not say I would.
So I said what I always said.
"We will do everything we can."
He understood.
That made it worse.
Behind him, Brianna started crying.
This time it was real.
She reached for Ethan.
"Stay here."
He stepped into her arms, but his eyes remained on me over her shoulder.
"What do you need from me?"
I thought for a second.
"Anything Miller told you about his current injuries."
"Old right tibia fracture from the blizzard mission."
"Hardware?"
"Removed eighteen months ago."
"Any cold injury?"
"Two toes left foot, mild nerve damage."
"Good."
I caught myself.
"Not good. Useful."
"I know."
"Send everything to Shaw."
"Done."
I turned to leave.
Brianna released Ethan and suddenly stepped in front of me.
"Wait."
I nearly ran into her.
"What?"
Her eyes were wet.
"I need to say something."
Shaw checked his watch.
"Hayes."
"Thirty seconds."
I looked at Brianna.
She swallowed.
For one fragile moment, I thought she was going to apologize.
Instead she whispered.
"Please don't tell Ethan what I said about him."
I stared at her.
"What you said about him?"
Her eyes flicked toward Ethan.
He was talking to Marcus near the front door.
"The things I told you he said."
The room seemed to tilt by one degree.
"What things?"
She lowered her voice further.
"About your car."
"About my job."
"About him not respecting unimpressive people."
I felt something inside me become very still.
"He never said any of that."
It was not a question.
Brianna's silence answered anyway.
"Did he?"
She looked down.
"Not exactly."
I almost laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because sometimes anger hits a point where the body does not know what expression belongs on your face.
"You used your fiance to insult me."
"I was trying to motivate you."
"By lying?"
"By pushing you."
"Into what?"
She looked at my rescue gear.
For the first time all night, she had no answer.
I leaned close enough that only she could hear me.
"When I come back, we are going to finish this conversation."
Her eyes widened.
"Lauren."
"Not tonight."
I stepped around her.
I made it three steps before Ethan's phone rang.
He answered.
"Cole."
His expression changed almost immediately.
"Say again."
Shaw stopped walking.
Ethan turned toward us.
"The beacon just came back."
I waited.
His face told me there was more.
"They got a burst transmission with it."
"Voice?"
"Yes."
"Whose?"
"Unknown."
He swallowed.
"But the message was clear."
I felt the room tighten around us.
Ethan repeated the words exactly.
"Do not send the helicopter."
No one spoke.
I asked the only question that mattered.
"Why?"
Ethan looked at me.
"The transmission ended with two words."
His voice dropped.
"Fuel leak."
Shaw opened the door.
"Move."
I ran.
The last thing I heard before the door slammed behind me was Brianna calling Ethan's name.
The last thing I saw was my sister standing beneath the chandelier in a white dress, surrounded by flowers, champagne, and fifty people who finally understood that the boring sister with the government job had been telling the truth all along.
May you like
None of us knew yet that by sunrise, Brianna would make one decision that put my name on the internet, my unit under scrutiny, and nine trapped people in even greater danger.
