Cowboy Christmas Rescue: Rescuing the Witness / Rescuing the Bride

“No! Brady, be careful!” Even as she shouted the warning, her own foot slipped on the sodden red clay stone. Her foot shot out, and she landed hard on her backside. Stunned for a minute by the jarring fall, her second of the afternoon, she blinked back the rain that dripped in her eyes.

“Kara!” She heard the panic in his voice, and though she’d had the breath knocked from her, she nodded to assure him she was unhurt...mostly.

“Stay there. Let me come to you.” He shifted his position, pushing off the rocks with his feet to swing toward the drooping cottonwood tree branches. Grabbing one of the thick limbs, he used the tree as an anchor so that he could lean farther toward her. “When you take my hand, brace your feet. I’m coming onto the ledge with you.”

She wasn’t sure what his plan was, but she followed his directions. When he was safely to the small shelf of rock where she’d taken refuge, he drew her into a tight embrace.

“My God, Kara! Your skin is ice cold. What were you thinking, riding off into this weather like that?”

She tensed, not wanting to be lectured on her flight from the shooter. She pushed against his chest, struggling to free herself, but his arms were steel bands holding her close. “Obviously, if I’d been th-thinking clearly I w-wouldn’t have ridden out here. The g-guy was shooting at m-me, and I panicked.”

A twitch of surprise rolled through his muscles. “You saw the sniper?”

She nodded weakly, her head pressed against Brady’s chest. His body radiated warmth, and she gave up her attempts to push him away. Instead she tucked herself closer to his heat and strength. “And when he saw me, he tried to kill me. When I rode off, I was in shock and scared. I j-just wanted to get out of there. Away from the shooter and...away from you.”

His fingers dug into her arms, and he shoved her to arms’ length. “Away from me? Why?”

She heaved a weary sigh. “I’d think that was obvious.”

“Not to me, it’s not!” He lowered his black brows and implored her with those damnably expressive eyes. “We were good together, Kara. Great together. What happened?”

Her gut wrenched, and she barked a humorless laugh. “Really? You want to have this discussion here? Now?”

His lips compressed in a scowl, and he swiped water from his face. “No. Not now. But we will have this talk! You owe me that much.”

She shuddered. From the cold. From fatigue. And from dread of dredging up all that heartache.

“Geez, Kara.” He slid out of his tuxedo jacket and put it around her shoulders. “We need to get you back to town before you suffer from hypothermia.”

“T-too late.” She gave him a weak wry grin, trying to lighten the mood, which he answered with another of his dark, scolding glares.

“All right. I’m going to retie the rope into a sling around you.” He stepped back and started unwinding the rope from around his leg and looping it around her. “Then I’ll tie on behind you, and we’ll—”

It happened so fast, Kara had no time to react. Brady was there one minute and gone the next. And so was the front half of the ledge they’d been perched on. The loose shale under the outcropping had washed away, taking the red clay stone—and Brady—with it.

“Brady!” she screamed in terror. She searched the turbulent water, her heart in her throat. The seconds stretched out, miserable eons, before she spied the white of his tuxedo shirt where he was tossed in the powerful current. He bobbed up and swam as best he could in the fast water, but even the strongest swimmer had little chance against the power of swift water. A sob choked her.

Not again!

“Brady!”

* * *

Hitting the frigid water shocked his system, and Brady involuntarily gasped. A mouthful of muddy water rushed into his throat, choking him. He coughed and gagged, even as the turbulent water sucked him under. Adrenaline spiking, he fought to surface, but the pounding current rolled him and grabbed at him. He lost his orientation. Couldn’t breathe. The icy cold stung him. His soaked clothes dragged at him. As his boots filled with water, he toed off the Tony Lamas, freeing his legs of their weighty encumbrance.

When he broke the surface, he sputtered out water and quickly gulped in air. But not enough. His lungs ached. His head throbbed. He moved his arms and legs, trying to paddle, to stay afloat. Something large and heavy crashed into his back. Debris, most likely.

Down he went. Beneath the water, all he saw was a blur of reddish brown. A flash of light. Shadows. Then suddenly he broke the surface, and he caught a snapshot of the terrain. Gray clouds. Rocky towers. A wind-whipped tree...

His pulse jumped, and instinctively he slapped at the water, flailing, grabbing for a branch. His fingers snagged leaves. His drifting slowed, but the foliage ripped free from his grasp. Damn!

Again he grabbed before the tree was gone. And found a small limb. The thin branch bowed and cracked.

No! He groped for another limb. Thicker, more solid. Coughing. Struggling for a breath as the flow of water tugged at him. His hand slipped, scraping his palm, but he clung to the branch of the cottonwood for all he was worth. He hauled himself in, using every ounce of strength in his shivering muscles. When the branch broke free of the trunk, he was washed downstream—all of eighteen inches. Pushed by the current, his body smacked into another thick branch of the tree. The impact slammed his diaphragm, forcing both air and water from his throat.

Pinned against the branch by the current, he blinked hard, fighting to stay conscious. The cold water sapped his strength, and his body ached from the battering of the debris and tree limbs. The struggle to draw air in his lungs left him dizzy. But losing his grip on the tree, giving in to the gray fuzziness at the edges of his vision, was not an option. Failure now meant both his death and Kara’s.

* * *

A bone-deep tremor rocked Kara. She watched helplessly as the muddy water tossed Brady and slammed him against a cottonwood tree growing at a low angle from the arroyo wall. Her breath caught and held as she waited for some movement, some sound that told her he was alive. Please, Brady! Move a hand. Call to me. Anything!

Through her tears, past and present blurred and tangled.

The suicidal jumper. Her father’s pleading with the woman. His heroic jump into the river to save her...and the heartbreaking image of his head disappearing below the water time and again as he tried to pull the woman to safety.

“You should be proud of your father. He died a hero. He gave himself in the line of duty,” well-meaning people had told her.

But for Kara, her father’s death was pointless. He’d cared more about a misplaced sense of duty than he had cared about her. She blamed his job, the inherent danger of law enforcement for stealing the man who’d been her lifeline when she was thirteen.

And now...would she lose Brady because he’d been trying to rescue her?

“Brady!” she shouted, her voice breaking.

She squeezed the rope in her hand, the rope Brady had been tying to her when the overhang gave way. The rope that—

Her pulse slowed...

The rope! With a sob of relief and revelation, she shot a glance to the coil she held. With a sobering breath, she shook herself from her self-pitying fog and panic. She had to act. She had the means to save both herself and Brady.

Giving the rope a hard tug, she reassured herself it was securely anchored at the top of the cliff. Of course it was. Brady would have seen to that.

“Brady, hold on!” she yelled as she knotted the rope around her waist. “I’m coming!”

To be sure she was tied fast, she threaded the rope between her legs to make a diaper sling, then back up under her dress. She prayed the rope was long enough to reach Brady. He’d washed a good way downstream. Once she felt she was lashed in, she faced the thundering water below her, and her stomach swooped.

Oh, dear God! Do I really have to go in that roiling maelstrom, that frigid death trap?

She did, if she was going to help Brady. She turned her gaze to the spot where Brady clung to the cottonwood, and her mind’s eye saw her father’s head sinking below the swirling water. Daddy!

The runoff rushing through the arroyo taunted her, and she sucked in a tremulous breath.

Was she destined to die the same way her father had? Adrenaline kicked her heart rate to a gallop.

Even if she died trying, she had to attempt to save Brady. Her life would be agony if she lost him on top of losing her father. Gathering her courage, she ran through logistics in her head. Not only did she have to swim to the cottonwood on the other side of the ravine, she had to account for the current washing her downstream. Timing was everything. She’d have to leap as far out across the water as she could. And upstream, buying herself a few more precious seconds to paddle to Brady.

As much as she hated losing the tuxedo jacket, she knew it would encumber her when she tried to swim. She shucked off the garment Brady had draped around her and groaned at the cold blast of wind on her arms. Glancing down at the soggy maxi dress stuck to her legs, she knew the yards of material had to go, as well. Its waterlogged weight and the impediment of a long skirt tangling around her legs would prove a liability she couldn’t afford. Grimacing when she remembered how much she’d paid for the dress last week in Amarillo, she pulled at the seam and ripped off the bottom half of the skirt. Goose bumps rose on her bare legs, and her toes were already growing numb from the cold. Haste was of the essence. The temperature would only continue to drop, endangering her and Brady more with each passing minute.

Then steeling her nerves, she faced the rushing water.