Triple Infinity (31 page)

Rafe was already tracking a path from the scene
, when the first fireball screamed across the sky. Rafe was way ahead of them, but they could follow the barking. By the time they caught up to Aiden, the fire had engulfed the mountainside. And then they found out Skye and Shiv were in the middle of the flames. So Aiden took off toward the river, and Triaten and Charlotte scrambled a helicopter from the airfield, praying they could get to them in time.

“We’ve got to get down there
— there’s still this sliver in the middle that isn’t engulfed.” Charlotte was already attaching to the drop cord at the edge of the helicopter opening. She pulled her black gloves on tight.

The pilot’s voice came over their earpieces, interrupting the noise of the helicopter blades. “You need to either drop or not
— we have to get out of here — the copter downdraft is spreading the flames out of control.”

Both Triaten and Charlotte ducked their heads out of the copter again, searching the mess of flames licking upward at them.

“I’ve got to pull up now — there’s only time for one of you to drop.”

“I’m going. Hold it steady.” Charlotte answered the pilot and moved to the edge of the
helicopter, leaning back as she prepared to rappel down.

Triaten grabbed her wrist
.
“You’re not going down, Char — look at the fire — it’s closing in.”

“We have to go now. I need status,” the pilot demanded.

“I’m off.” Charlotte tried to wedge her wrist from Triaten.

He gripped her tighter. “I’m not letting you go down.”

“Tri, Shiv is down there, and I’m the only one that can keep her alive.”

“No. Y
ou can’t go down.”

“If I don’t, and she dies, Tri –”

Triaten grabbed her behind her neck with his other hand and pulled her into him, his face inches from hers. His voice was just below a yell. “And if you do go down? If you do, you could be dead, Char, and I’m not going to lose you. Not again. We’ll figure out another way.”

“She’ll be dead by then. You know that.” Charlotte leaned back away from him, but he still had her left wrist in a death grip. With her right hand, she
reached up and locked onto the drop cord.

With one swift move, she lifted her body up and wedged both feet onto Triaten’s stomach, and kicked hard. He flew back into the
helicopter, slamming against the opposite wall.

Feet
on the edge of the helicopter’s opening, Charlotte leaned way out, almost horizontal. She paused for a second, wrenching apology on her face as she saw the fear in Triaten’s eyes.

“Char
, no. I can’t lose you.”

“Well then, you better save me.
I know you can do this, Tri.
I save her. And you figure out how to save both of us.”

Charlotte
dropped out of sight, disappearing into the flames and smoke before Triaten could even get to the side of the helicopter and look down.

Within moments the line went
slack.

Charlotte hit the ground
hard, not being able to see through the smoke enough to slow down. She felt her left leg shatter up to her knee, taking the brunt of the landing, while her right foot snapped in half.

Flat on her back, she disengaged from the cord, and
choked back a frustrated screech as she bit her lip.

“Bloody, fucking
, dammit-all-to-hell!” she screamed, unable to keep the words in her mind and not in her mouth, pissed, even though she was half-grateful a tree didn’t take her out on the way down.

Her head tilted back into the ground as she closed her eyes
, letting the pain wash over. When it peaked, she shut off any attention to it. She lifted her arm and looked at the tracker on her wrist. The blinking red light was almost right on top of her green light. Just to her left.

Charlotte sat up and looked around her.
Nothing but thick smoke in every direction. And the incessant cracking of the fire wasn’t allowing a thought to form in her mind.

“Skye,” she yelled.

No answer.

She got to her one good knee and began crawling to her left. She went a few yards, seeing nothing. A few yards more, and something
suddenly squished under her hand.

A
body, she knew, even though she couldn’t see down to her own hand. Her fingers quickly followed up over the legs and torso, to the face. Charlotte put her head down, nose-to-nose, and then she could finally verify that it was Skye. She was alive, no bubbling burns that Charlotte could identify, just immobilized. Smoke wasn’t going to kill her, just stop her.

Charlotte slapped her face, trying to get her to open her eyes. Skye refused to cooperate, but she did open her mouth.

“Shiv. Help her. Shiv. Shiv. Help her.” It sounded pitiful. And she kept repeating it.

Charlotte followed Skye’s outstretched arm, pulling herself over Skye’s prone body. She ran into Shiv almost immediately. She could f
eel Shiv was on her stomach, so Charlotte flipped her over.

Dead weight.

Charlotte ran her hands over Shiv’s body, hoping for some sign of life. She didn’t feel any, but she wasn’t giving up. Ripping off her gloves, she rubbed her hands together, and then set them on Shiv’s chest, one over her heart, the other splaying her lungs.

Charlotte’s
hands glowed red — the only thing she could see through the smoke. She’d seen her hands glow tens of thousands of times, but this time they had an eerie glow, almost like a flame, through the smoke.

Time slowed as Charlotte tried to heal Shiv. Tried to get her heart beating, her breath started. Time slowed and the smoke became impossibly thicker, closing in on Charlotte, suffocating her limbs. The heat was intense, and breaking through th
e smoke, the flames were shooting closer and closer. There was no route out, now. They were completely enclosed by the flames.

Charlotte couldn’t judge time, didn’t know how long it took before h
er body gave up, and she collapsed, head hitting the ground, arms and hands still on top of Shiv. Her hands were still aglow, still valiant in their effort to spark Shiv back to life, even if she could no longer hold her own arms up.

Embers were falling rapidly now. Landing on Charlot
te’s cheeks, burning through her skin, only to be extinguished when they reached blood, and were sizzled quiet.

Charlotte fought to keep her eyes open. Fought because she wasn’t going to give up on Shiv. She wasn’t going to give up until her hands were burnt off of Shiv’s body. Until then, there was still hope.

Charlotte focused her eyes on her hands. She had lost all feeling in her limbs, and didn’t trust her own touch — whether it was imaginary or real. Didn’t trust in anything other than the glow of her hands.

So when the drops of rain hit her cheek, she couldn’t feel them. Even though she saw them hitting and bouncing off her hands, she didn’t believe them.

And then she saw Triaten.

Past her glowing-
red hands on Shiv, Triaten burst through the flames, a tornado of wind and rain clearing the smoke and blazes surrounding them. A hell-storm of water and fire engulfed Triaten, but he was solid. Aiden was right behind him. The rain clouded on her lashes, and she tried to blink the thick wet cloak away.

Triaten was soaked —
his dark hair, t-shirt, jeans — and it just made more visible the relief that shook his body when he spotted Charlotte.

Time still crawled
, and Triaten was in slow-motion, even though he was in full run. It was an eternity for him to cover the ground between them, but his eyes never left Charlotte’s, not until he skidded into the pile of them. He grabbed her, ripping her hands away from Shiv.

As Triaten picked her up off the ground,
Charlotte caught glimpses of Aiden gathering up both Skye and Shiv.

Triaten carrying her, Aiden carrying Skye and Shiv, they went back out through the
corridor of rain they had come in. Charlotte closed her eyes against the downpour, and then passed out.

~~~

When Charlotte opened her eyes again, she saw the dark brown ceiling in Triaten’s room at the ranch. It took her a moment to figure out if she could feel her arms and legs, and hands and toes again. Her leg was still shattered, she could feel the pain. But at least she was feeling it again.

She turned her head on the pillow and was greeted by Triaten’s
furious stare. He sat next to the bed, leaning forward, hands clasped under his chin.

She ignored his murderous look and threw her hand out to his face, her thumb on his cheekbone, palm caressing his jaw.

Her words were soft, almost broken. “You walked through fire for us.”

“I walked through fire for
you
.” His hand went over hers.

She smiled. “I knew you would find a way. You always do.”

The anger hadn’t edged. “And if I hadn’t?”

He
cleared his throat as he moved forward and put his hand behind her head, fingers gripping deep into her blond hair. “God, Char. Promise me you’ll never do something as stupid as that again. Promise me.”

“You know I can’t promise that.”

He searched her face, and then his hand dropped from her and he sat back on the chair. His head bowed and silence flooded the room.

His voice was rough when he finally spoke. “I can’t lose yo
u, Char. You put too much trust in me.”

“And you don’t put enough trust in yourself.
”

Charlotte reached out and grabbed his knee. “Tri, look at me.”

His gaze crept up.

“Y
ou have never failed me, Tri. Never.”

His eyebrow crooked. “Except for
Thomas?”

Charlotte gave the slightest shake of her head.
“I didn’t know it then. I didn’t know it for the longest time.” She moved her fingers up to reach his hand, and then pulled it to her chest. “But you brought us to here. To together. You didn’t fail me.”

Triate
n’s fingers moved under her touch, trailing along her chest to land above her heart. His palm flattened, holding hard the steady beat through her skin.

Their eyes locked, and
they both took the moment in time fully, without thought to the next. A moment of heart-shredding, soul-surrendering acknowledgement. There were no more questions about it. They were each other’s hearts.

An
owl called out in the dark, a gentle, but insistent sound that broke into their room, breaking the moment.

Charlotte took a deep breath. She
didn’t want to leave that second in time, but the moment was no longer hers to keep. And she had to know. She didn’t want to say the word, and she fought herself trying to get it out. “Shiv?”

Triaten didn’t answer right away.

“I didn’t save her, did I?”

Triaten shook his head.

Charlotte’s hand left his and went to her face, covering her eyes as her head sank deep into the pillow. She drew several shaky breaths, trying to control the crushing guilt of her own failure.

She was still hiding under her hand when she whispered, “I am so sorry, Tri. I tried and tried.”

“There wasn’t anything you could do.” He grabbed her elbow and gently pried her hand away from her face. When she wouldn’t look at him, he moved from the chair to sit on the side of the bed. He tilted her chin toward him. “I know you weren’t giving up on her. I saw that when we found you.” 

Charlotte shook her head, throat hard.

“No one could have asked for more, Char.”

She buried
her face under her hand once more, steadying her emotions. It took minutes, but eventually her hand came off her eyes.

“How long have I been out?”

“Two hours, tops.”

“And the fire?”

“It’s contained. It’s burning itself to the middle and then dying.”

Charlotte propped herself up to a sitting position, and winced as she moved her leg. Triaten grabbed an extra pillow and put it behind her
back to lean on. She pulled the sheet off her leg to look at it.

Elastic bandaging strapped two long planks of wood around her leg, from shin to ankle.

“I know, it’s crude, but it’s holding the bones in place, I hope, until they heal. It felt like three clean breaks along the bone,” Triaten pointed to the three spots along Charlotte’s shin that were pulsating, “but you should still check the placement to make sure I got it right.”

Charlotte bit her lip and bent forward. She closed her eyes as her fingers traced
their way along the skin. She nodded in relief. She wasn’t up to resetting her own leg at the moment. “They’re in place. Thank you.”

She pulled the sheet back from her other foot. It didn’t hurt nearly as much as her leg,
and was almost healed already. She pulled up her leg to poke at her foot.