Page 39 of One Last Shot
She clamped her mouth shut, folding her arms against the roiling in her stomach.
She just couldn’t replay today’s events without shuddering. Good thing she’d been wearing her helmet visor down, or the camera would have replayed her near scream as stupid Oaken Fox flipped on the line.
“No one anticipated Oaken’s reaction?—”
“Of course not. That’s how accidents happen?—”
“But it was good training. He’ll never make that mistake again.”
She just stared at Moose. “You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s the takeaway? That we all learned a valuable lesson for when Oaken Foxjoins the Air One Rescue team? You can’t think that we’d actually take him on a callout, can you?”
He cocked his head at her. “I think that’s the point, right?”
“Oh. My—no. No, that is not the point. The point is to do a few stunts, offer a show to viewers, and hopefully, please God, no one actuallygets hurt.”
Moose raised an eyebrow.
“It’s not real! None of it is supposed to be real.” She drew in a breath, blew it out, shook her head. “I... I can’t do this.”
“Boo.”
“You do know that if anything happens to Oaken on our watch, we’re done, right? No one will trust us. We won’t be called out to rescue a cat in a tree. Let alone missing hikers or a climber on a cliff or an overturned car in a river—people might actually die, Moose, because?—”
“Okay, okay.” He took a step toward her, put his hands on her shoulders. “It’ll be okay. We’ll be more careful.”
“And no callouts.”
He drew in a breath. “Maybe just as an observer.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Observers get in the way. They get hurt too.”
“Seems to me that Oaken has his wits about him. He scrambled back onto that ledge pretty quickly. If the slack hadn’t been pulled up?—”
“So now you’re blaming me?”
His eyes widened, and okay, maybe that came out too bright, too harsh. “Sorry.”
“Is that what this is about, Boo? You getting blamed for something?”
Her mouth tightened, and her eyes burned. She looked away.
Out in the main area, Axel was setting the table, London pulling lasagna from the oven. Shep had turned on the radio to country music. Brett Young played “In Case You Didn’t Know.”
She loved this stupid song.
“I just... you know... I’ve been burned by the media before and...” She shook her head, then turned and looked at Moose. “I just never thought all of this would follow me to Alaska.”
He just stared at her. Frowned.
He didn’t know. “Never mind.”
“No, Boo—what are you talking about?”
She swallowed, sighed. “You really don’t know?”
She liked Moose. Wasn’t sure where he’d gotten his nickname, but he was anything but a big oaf that might be associated with that name. Tough, yes, and capable, but he had a soft side, evidenced by the fact that he’d taken her on without any questions.
And there was midnight chicken.