LITMIR.BIZ

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and decided to become a pararescueman, Ty had only a limited understanding of what it entailed. For starters, two years of training and instruction—the “pipeline.” It began with ten weeks of PJ indoctrination at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. Running, swimming, calisthenics, drownproofing. Serious sleep deprivation, or at least so it seemed at the time. Of the hundred guys who showed up for indoc with him, twenty-four were still there after four weeks. He was one of them.

      Then it was on to a series of specialized schools. He went through the Army Special Forces Underwater Operations Course and Navy Underwater Egress Training—navigation swims, ditching and donning of equipment underwater, underwater search patterns, getting out of a sinking aircraft. He made it through the Army Airborne School, where he had to make five static-line jumps before he could move on to freefall school, which took him through jumps at high altitude, with oxygen, at night, during the day, with and without equipment.

      Fun stuff, he thought, remembering how he’d steel himself into not quitting, just sticking with it, one day—sometimes one minute—at a time.

      At Air Force Survival School he learned basic survival skills, evasion-and-escape techniques, what to do if he was captured by the enemy. Then it was on to the Special Operations Combat Medic Course and, finally, to the Pararescue Recovery Specialist Course, where, over a year or more, all the previous training got put together and more was added—advance EMT-paramedic training, advance parachute skills, tactical maneuvers, weapons handling, mountain climbing and aircrew recovery procedures. They worked through various scenarios that tied in all the different skills they’d learned, seeing their practical application for the job that lay ahead.

      Then came graduation, the PJ’s distinctive maroon beret, assignment to a team—then Ty thought, the real training began.

      PJs had been called SEALs with stethoscopes, ninja brain surgeons, superman paramedics—if people knew what they did at all, since so many of their missions had to be done quietly. It wasn’t a job for someone looking for money and glory. Ty cringed at all the nicknames. He thought of himself as an average guy who did a job he was trained to do to the best of his ability. He’d become a PJ because he wanted an action-oriented career where he could save lives, a chance to “search and rescue” instead of “search and destroy.”

      But he could “destroy” if he had to. PJs were direct combatants, and, as such, pararescue was a career field that remained closed to women.

      Ty was currently assigned to the 16th Special Operations Wing out of Hurlburt Field in the Florida panhandle. As the leader of a special tactics team, he had performed a full range of combat search-and-rescue missions in recent years, but it was seeing Carine Winter under fire last fall that had all but done him in.

      The “incident” was still under investigation.

      The only positive outcome of the whole mess was that Hank Callahan and Antonia Winter had met and fallen in love. Ty had missed their wedding a month ago. Antonia was too damn polite not to invite him. His behavior toward her younger sister had put a crimp in the budding romance between his friend the ER doctor and his friend the helicopter-pilot-turned-senate-candidate—fortunately, they’d worked it out.

      Senator Hank Callahan.

      Ty shook his head, grinning to himself. He and Hank had damn near become brothers-in-law. They would have, if Ty had gone ahead and married Carine in February. Instead, he’d cut and run.

      It was the only time in his life he’d ever cut and run.

      “Have you decided whether or not you’re selling the house?” Gus asked him.

      Ty pulled himself from his darkening thoughts. “No. I haven’t decided, I mean.”

      He’d been on assignment overseas when his mother took a walk in the meadow and died of a massive stroke. Carine had found her and tracked him down to make sure he got the news, to tell him his mother had painted that morning and died in the lupine she’d so loved. But Saskia North had never really fit in with the locals, and few in Cold Ridge knew much about her, beyond her skills as a painter and a weaver—and her failings as a mother.

      “You should sell it,” Gus said. “There’s nothing for you here, not anymore. What do you want with this place? You’re never here long enough to fix it up. Basic maintenance isn’t enough. It’ll fall down around your ears before too long.”

      Now that Ty had broken Carine’s heart, Gus wanted him to clear out of Cold Ridge altogether. The man made no secret of it. It hadn’t always been that way, but Ty knew that was before and this was now. To Gus, Carine was still the little girl he’d loved and protected since she was three years old—the little girl whose parents he’d helped carry off Cold Ridge.

      People make mistakes.

      It was the way life was. You make mistakes, you try to correct them.

      North frowned at a strange ringing sound, then watched Gus grimace and pull a cell phone out of his back pocket. He pointed the cell phone at North. “Just shut the hell up. I’ve never used it to call for someone to come rescue me.” Then he clicked the receive button and said, “Yeah, Gus here.” His face lost color, and he got to his feet. “Slow down, honey. Slow down. What—” He listened some more, pacing, obviously trying to stay calm. “Do you want me to come down there? Are you okay? Carine—” He all but threw the phone into the fire. “Goddamn it!”

      Ty fell back on his training and experience to stay calm. “Service kick out on you?” He kept his voice neutral, careful not to say anything that would further provoke Gus, further upset him. “It does that. The mountains.”

      Gus raked a hand through his gray, brittle hair. “That was Carine.”

      Ty felt a tightening in his throat. “I thought so.”

      “She—” He sucked in a sharp, angry breath. “Damn it, North, I hate it that she’s in Boston. With Antonia and Hank married, she’s alone there now for the most part. And, goddamn it, she doesn’t belong there.”

      North didn’t argue. “You’re right, Gus. What happened?”

      Tears rose in the older man’s eyes, a reminder of the years he’d invested in his brother’s three children. His own parents couldn’t take them on—they were shattered by the untimely deaths of their older son and daughter-in-law and had chronic health problems. It was Gus who’d made the emotional commitment at age twenty to raise his nieces and nephew. Ty thought of the sacrifices, the physical toll, it all had taken. For thirty years, Gus Winter had put the needs of Nate, Antonia and Carine ahead of his own. He was the only one who didn’t know it.

      “Gus?”

      “There was a shooting. A murder. She found the body. Christ, after last fall—”

      “Where was she?”

      “At work. She’s photographing the renovations on that old house the Rancourts bought on Commonwealth Avenue. She went out for a latte—Christ. That’s what she just said. Gus, I went out for a latte. When she got back, she found a man dead on the library floor.” Gus snatched up his beer bottle and dumped the balance out in the sink. “She didn’t want me to hear about it on the news.”

      “Did she say who the victim was?”

      He shook his head. “She didn’t have a chance. I’ll go home and call her.” He grabbed his coat off the back of the chair, and when North started to his feet, Gus, refusing to look at him, added abruptly, “It’s not your problem.”

      “All right. Sure, Gus. If you need me for anything—”

      “I won’t.”

      Ty didn’t follow him out, but he was tempted. He pulled his chair over to the fire and let the hot flames warm his feet. He still had on his hiking socks. It felt good to get out of his boots. One of the prep-school boys needed to be carried off the ridge in a litter. The other two responded to on-site treatment, warm duds and warm liquids, and were able to walk down on their own. Gus didn’t think they were contrite enough. But

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