Page 25 of Bait and Switch
“Shit.” He let himself fall forward onto his knees instead of fighting gravity.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. I’ll feel it tomorrow, but the only thing wounded is my pride.” Casey surged to his feet and started climbing upward again, ignoring the vague pain in his right knee.
It took them about fifteen minutes to reach the spot. They’d had to detour around another hidden crevasse, this one much larger than the one Casey had tripped into. When they reached the general location, they took turns calling Carlos’s name, but they didn’t hear or see a response.
“I sure hope we’re not climbing for nothing.”
“We’re not,” huffed Greta. “He’s here, I can feel it. Let’s go a bit higher.”
Casey knew better than to question Greta’s hunches. More than once she’d proven to be right, and more than one person had survived due to her instincts.
Because of the crevasse, they had to cut across and up the slope. It was hard going due to the frigid cold and rough terrain, and Casey had to work to ignore whatever he’d done to his knee. When he got home that night, he figured he’d ice it and take it easy for a couple of days. No big deal.
If Carloswasup here, why? What could have made the brush worker climb part of a mountain that not even nimble deer or other larger animals crossed? At least, not this time of the year. Maybe, for once, Greta was wrong, and they’d climbed up the treacherous crag for no reason.
He started to suggest that they head back down, that Tor and the rest of the team didn’t need another couple of people trapped overnight on the mountain. But at that moment, Casey glanceda few feet ahead and realized that they were at the top end of the cut in the mountainside.
“Stay here,” he told Greta. “No reason for both of us to fall in this thing.”
Unsurprisingly, Greta did not listen, but hey, he’d tried.
Casey inched across to where he estimated the edge was; it was hard to tell with the tangled overgrown shrubs and woody plants that had found purchase. When he made it without a misstep, Casey flicked on his flashlight and shone it downward.
Wedged inside, about twenty feet down, was a man. A living man, but it was going to be a bitch to get him out.
“Carlos?” he asked.
The man managed a weak nod.
“Can’t move…” he whispered. “Leg.”
Crouching next to the edge with his light, Casey did a quick visual assessment, swallowing as he noted how Carlos’s lower body appeared to be twisted and caught in the fissure. Behind him, he could hear Greta making the call to Tor and the rest of the team. They would need a copter and more bodies to get Carlos out of the cleft in the mountainside and to safety.
Rummaging around in his pack, Casey located the emergency silver space blanket and began to lower himself into the crack in the earth. He was only able to get about ten feet down before it became too narrow. Fuck. Even if he took off his winter gear, it wouldn’t make his shoulders any less wide.
“I’m going to swap places with my partner, Greta. She’ll see what she can do to get you covered up.”
Casey clambered back up so Greta could take his place. He couldn’t imagine how Carlos had gotten so tangled up.
“Carlos.” The man moved his head. Hopefully that meant he’d heard Casey. “What happened, how did you end up here?”
It was always a good sign if Casey could get the injured person talking. But Carlos looked bad. He blinked up atCasey but didn’t reply, and one of his arms was also trapped underneath him. Casey’d seen injuries like this before, and right now the priority was keeping Carlos conscious.
“Are you thirsty? I think we can get you some water.”
Greta had made it down to him and done what she could to tuck the blanket around his body. She glanced back up at Casey, and that one look told him things did not look good. Over Greta’s shoulder, Casey saw Carlos’s head move a bit, and Casey decided he was nodding.
He reached for one of the bottles of water he’d packed in and tied a short piece of twine around it. Then he slowly lowered the bottle down. Greta grabbed it and held it to Carlos’s lips. Some of the liquid spilled out, but it looked to Casey that he at least got some down.
“Can you tell us what happened?” he asked gently as he tried to make himself comfortable on the rocky ledge.
“A wild man, a creature,” Carlos rasped, “chased me.”
Casey didn’t like that it was difficult for Carlos to speak and that he wasn’t shivering regardless of the below freezing temperature—that suggested hypothermia had set in. He dug into Greta’s bag for the chemical heat packs. They could be tucked around Carlos to create a barrier between him and the cold earth, and they just might help his body fight off the chill.
What Carlos had said coalesced into something meaningful. “A wild man?” Casey repeated. Casey had been prepared for Carlos to tell them how he’d ended up stuck in a crevasse, not that he’d been attacked by someone.
