Chapter 4 - THE CUT-OFF RIDGE AND THE MOUNTAIN RESCUE“Hold on!” Ethan roared.
He slammed both feet into the pedals, throwing the steering opposite the skid. The anti-lock brakes pulsated violently under his boots with a sound like tearing sheet metal. The rear bumper clipped a fallen pine with an explosive thud, spraying bark through the headlights, before the vehicle slammed to a dead halt, tilted at a twenty-degree angle in a drainage ditch.
Silence fell inside the cabin, save for the furious slap of the rain on the roof and the hiss of steam rising from the cracked wheel well.
Rachel’s heart was hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” Ethan said, his breathing ragged. He immediately hit the door release, throwing himself out into the freezing mud.
Rachel followed him into the torrential downpour. The cold air struck her face like a wet towel. She scrambled around the front fender, illuminating the front axle with her phone’s flashlight.
The tie rod was intact, but a thick branch of oak had jammed itself directly between the brake caliper and the suspension coil, tearing the high-pressure tire valve. The tire was completely flat, pinned against the muddy bank.
“We have a full-size spare on the rear gate,” Ethan said, wiping water from his eyes. His fine overcoat was already ruined, caked in thick, yellow clay. He hauled the heavy hydraulic jack from the rear cargo bed. “The problem is the ditch. There’s no solid ground to seat the jack plate.”
Rachel looked around the narrow logging road. Water was running down the incline in an ankle-deep river, turning the clay into soup.
“The oak branch,” Rachel said, pointing the flashlight. “It’s five inches thick. If we wedge it under the suspension arm and use the winch cable around that hemlock tree across the road, the vehicle’s own electric motor can pull itself out of the ditch while we change the tire!”
Ethan looked at her, his eyes flashing with surprise. “Where did an ICU nurse learn winch recovery?”
“My father had a nineteen-eighty-four Chevy pickup that spent more time in ditches than on the road,” she yelled back over the storm. “Get the remote for the winch!”
For fifteen grueling minutes, they worked in the freezing dark. Ethan hauled the eighty-pound steel cable across the slick road, looping the heavy forged hook around the base of an ancient hemlock, while Rachel cleared the debris from the jammed wheel with the tire iron.
Ethan’s hands were scraped raw, bleeding from the coarse wire strands of the winch cable, but he didn't stop. His chest heaved as he operated the handheld remote. The electric winch whined, a high-pitched mechanical shriek that echoed off the rocks, slowly dragging the four-ton SUV out of the mud and onto the firmer gravel shoulder.
Rachel grabbed the cross-wrench, kneeling directly in the mud, throwing her entire body weight onto the lug nuts until they cracked loose with sharp, metallic pings. Together, they hoisted the ninety-pound spare tire onto the hub, spinning the nuts on by hand before Ethan torqued them down with the iron.
When the last nut was secured, Ethan dropped the wrench into the gravel. He stood there, soaked to the bone, rain pouring off his jaw, his face smeared with black grease and mountain mud.
He looked down at his ruined clothes, then across at Rachel, who looked equally drenched, her scrubs plastered to her frame, her hair wild.
A sudden, sharp laugh tore out of Ethan’s throat—the first real sound of relief he had made in eleven years.
“You’re terrifying, Mercer,” he said, his breath pluming white.
May you like
“I have an appointment in Beckley,” she replied, her eyes burning with fierce, unyielding determination. “Get in the truck, Caldwell.”
Ten minutes later, the Land Rover crest the summit of the ridge, leaving the unpaved timber track behind. Below them, through a momentary tear in the cloud cover, the gleaming ribbon of Interstate 81 unfolded, heading north toward the Virginia state line.
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