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The word sounded strange to me. Landon wasn’t one for terms of endearment. For a moment, I thought maybe I was hallucinating. Maybe if I opened my eyes, I’d see the imaginary kid Evan had gone on about. I wanted to find out for sure, so I forced my eyelids to open.
“There you are,” Landon said quietly.
As I looked up into his face, I saw him smile. It looked strange on him. It wasn’t sarcastic or snippy, but a real, genuine smile as if he were really, genuinely happy. I’d never seen him smile like that, and it made me think that I was hallucinating after all.
“Can you talk?” he asked.
I swallowed and opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
“Okay,” he said, “don’t try.”
“Where’s Arden?” another voice called out. “There’s no sign of him.”
I cleared my throat and licked my lips. Pulling air into my lungs, I managed to utter a single word.
“Dead.”
“You sure?” Landon asked.
I nodded.
“Snow,” I croaked. “Avalanche…”
“Yeah, I got that idea.”
“Found his Barrett,” another voice said. I couldn’t tell who was speaking and couldn’t move my head enough to figure it out. “The barrel’s damaged, but I know he’d never leave this particular weapon behind, damaged or not.”
“Are we calling this?” another voice asked.
“Not without a body.”
“You want to dig through all of that?” a woman’s voice snapped. “It’s fucking freezing already, and the temperature is dropping.”
“There has to be proof.”
“If Moretti says Arden wouldn’t leave without his rifle, that’s good enough for me.”
“Fine.”
“Agreed. Get me off this fucking rock.”
“Folks,” I recognized Franks’ voice as he spoke, “we have a winner.”
There was a lot of motion around me, but I couldn’t quite keep up with it. I heard myself scream as I was lifted and placed on a stretcher of some sort. The whirring blades of a helicopter filled my vision as I was maneuvered through the open door and onto the floor. Without the wind rushing over my body, I felt my muscles relax a little as the warm air inside the helicopter seeped into me.
Landon knelt beside me and began to release the fastenings on my parka. As he got it open, I warmed a little more. My stomach lurched as the craft took flight. Landon continued to remove my outer clothing.
“Shit, Sebastian,” he muttered.
I felt his hand against my leg and then a sharp pain. I closed my eyes against the sensation and gritted my teeth as my head swam, and my vision went dark.
I didn’t know how long I was out, just realized how sick I felt as I regained consciousness. I opened my eyes to look around, but everything was blurry. I knew I was inside a helicopter. From the motion, I could tell we were in the air, but I couldn’t really identify anything I saw. There were human shapes moving around me, but I didn’t know who they were.
“Can you focus on my finger?” Landon asked.
The voice came from a nondescript mass in front of me, so I assumed it was him. I tried to focus on his hand where he held it up, but there were at least three of them. I shook my head, but that was a big mistake.
The nausea that had been building inside of me took over, and Landon had to roll me to my side to let me puke all over the inside of the chopper. Once I was done, he rolled me to my back and straightened me out.
