Page 15 of One Last Shot

She flinched.

And now he was a jerk too. “Sorry. I just... my career is the last thing I care about right now.” He gave a harsh laugh. “Except that was the whole reason my manager sent me out here—to get my creativity flowing again.” He shook his head. “I think we can say goodbye to any fresh music.”

“What happened?”

“Just a jump gone wrong, I guess. He picked me up and we went off the edge of the chopper. My chute opened—and then his. And everything was great, and then, just like that, his ripped and he was falling.”

“Oh no.”

“He was all tangled up in the lines and finally managed to cut them away. Another chute popped out, but he was really close to the ground by then. He landed really hard.”

“But he was alive?”

“Yeah. His face was all swollen, though, and he had blood in his spit.”

“What did you do?” She was glancing out the window, probably looking for the chopper. And maybe trying to keep him from going into shock.

He was painfully way, way past that. Now he was deep inside guilt, maybe some anger, and in the thick of regret. What had he been thinking, leaving Mike out there? To die alone. Good thing his video camera got crushed in his epic cliff fall. Last thing he wanted was the world to see his ugly fight with frustration.

They’d already gotten a glimpse once, and, well?—

He could probably kiss his career goodbye.

“I debated not moving him for a long time. And then I realized that if I left him there, he’d be eaten. Or die of exposure. So I decided to make a backboard. I rolled up some of the parachute and made a sort of a neck brace then found a piece of thick birchbark and rolled him onto that. I used some of the parachute cord to tie him onto it. Then I made a litter with broken branches and the other parachute and secured him to that, inside the sleeping bag. Then I hauled him through the woods.”

She just stared at him. “Seriously? Who are you—Daniel Boone?”

Um. “I mean, I couldn’t leave him there. Until I got to the cliff. But I remembered seeing the river when we flew over it, so I figured it was only a few miles to the road. But then I fell and...” He blew out a breath. “It took longer than I wanted.”

“We’ll find him,” she said. She gave him a tight-lipped smile.

And that only made him feel worse. “Listen, I didn’t want to leave him. It... Trust me. If I could have done anything else, I would have?—”

“Hey,”—she held up her hands—“no judgement here.”

He stared at her. Something about her seemed suddenly, weirdly—“Havewe met before?”

“As in before you showed up on the side of the highway like the Midnight Sun Killer?”

He blinked at her. “What?”

“It’s a... Nothing. There used to be this story of a guy who flagged down women and then, when they stopped to help him, he’d assault them, then chase them down and shoot them like prey in the woods.”

His mouth opened. “Now the gun makes sense.”

“We’re in Alaska. The gun always makes sense.”

He lifted one side of his mouth. “How do you know I’m not him?”

She met his gaze without blinking. “Are you? Because you should probably know that I served with the Marines. You might be stronger than me, but it’ll hurt you to hurt me.”

Oh.“I was... That was a bad joke.”

“Very.”

“I’m... I’m just...” He leaned forward, his face in his hands. “I can’t believe this is happening. I tried to tell my manager this was a bad idea, but she was all, ‘Go to Alaska. Join Mike. Give money to charity. Win back your fans.’” He leaned back. “If Mike dies because I left him out there, my career is over.”

She drew in a breath.