"I can anchor."
He sets the rope, ties a bowline around his harness with hands that don't shake, and rappels down the drainage face with the practiced ease of someone who's done this a thousand times.I brace the rope around a boulder and lean back with my full weight, feeling the vibration of his descent through the line.
When he reaches Audrey, I hear him.Low, steady voice.The same voice he uses with his dogs when they're working well.Calm.Authoritative.Reassuring without being soft.
"I've got you.I'm going to stabilize your leg before we move you.You're gonna be fine."
Ryan's team arrives six minutes later with the litter.They rig a haul system, and together we pull Audrey up the drainage face while Stephen stabilizes her from below, his hands sure and quick on the improvised splint, his body braced against the rock to keep her steady during the lift.
The first fat drops of rain hit as we clear the drainage.By the time we get Audrey onto the main trail, it's pouring, and the temperature has dropped ten degrees.
We move fast.Stephen takes point, cutting trail through the thickening rain.Ryan's team carries the litter.I bring up the rear with Scout and the dogs, my clothes soaked through in minutes, rain running down my braid and into my collar.
We reach the staging area at four-forty-seven p.m.Boone's team loads Audrey into the ambulance.Ryan clasps Stephen's shoulder, says something I can't hear over the rain, and heads for his truck.
And then it's just us.
Standing in the parking area in the pouring rain, three dogs between us, breathing hard, drenched, and buzzing with the fading voltage of a successful rescue.
Stephen's hair is plastered to his forehead.His shirt clings to his chest and shoulders, transparent with water, and the outline of his body underneath is the kind of thing I should not be noticing right now.Broad chest.Flat stomach.The thick ridge of muscle running down both sides of his spine.
He loads the dogs into the truck.Ranger and Duke into their crates, Scout into the back seat.Methodical.Efficient.Not looking at me.
But his hands are shaking.
I notice because I notice everything about animals and the people bonded to them.His hands are steady when he works.Steady on the rope, steady on the splint, steady on the harness clips.But now that the rescue is over and the adrenaline has nowhere left to go, his fingers tremble as he latches Duke's crate.
"Stephen."
He stops moving.Stands with his back to me, both hands on the truck bed, rain hammering his shoulders.
"You're shaking," I say.
"Adrenaline dump."
"That's not just adrenaline."
He turns around.The rain has turned his eyes the color of a storm at sea, deep gray-green with something wild underneath.Something cracked open.
"There was water in that drainage," he says.Low.Rough.Like the words are being pulled out of him against his will."Runoff.Maybe six inches.When I went down and my boots hit it, I..."He stops.Swallows.His jaw works."I heard it.The ocean.Just for a second.I heard the ocean, and I saw them.Thomas and Caleb.Going under."
My chest aches.Deep and low and full.
"But you went down anyway," I say.
He wipes rain from his face with one hand."Because that girl needed help and it's six inches of creek water, not the Pacific Ocean, and I don't get to fall apart because a little water makes me remember things I can't change."
I take a step toward him.He watches me close the distance.Doesn't back up.Doesn't look away.His chest rises and falls in a rhythm that's too fast for a man standing still, and his hands are still shaking, and I want to touch him so badly my palms burn.
"You don't have to control everything," I say."You don't have to be fine all the time.The shaking is your body processing what happened.Let it."
"I don't know how to let it."
"I know you don't."One more step.I'm close enough to feel the heat of his body through the cold rain.Close enough to count the drops on his eyelashes."That's why you train dogs the way you do.Maximum pressure, maximum control, no room for anything to slip through.Because if something slips through for the dog, it might slip through for you, and you can't afford that."
His eyes burn into mine.Green and gray and something desperate.
"You read people like you read dogs," he says.
