Page 16 of Rowan: His Exception

Not good. So not fucking good.

I round a bend and stop. The group slams into my back, someone's elbow catching my ribs. I don't move. Below us, the dry creek bed that cuts across our path is no longer dry. Brown water, fast and mean, churning with broken timber and rocks the size of engine blocks. As I watch, it swallows a boulder I could have sworn was three feet above the waterline.

"Back!" I spin, grabbing the nearest person, shoving them up the trail. "Everyone, back up! Now!"

Chaos. Confusion. People slipping on wet rock, grabbing for handholds, for each other. I move through them like a machine, pulling, pushing, herding them toward higher ground. My training kicks in, that cold place where emotion doesn't exist, survival, and the mission. Nothing else matters.

Get them safe. Get them out. Nothing else matters.

I'm counting heads as we head up a side trail, a steep scramble to a ridge line that should be above the flood zone. Eight. Nine. Ten. Where's…

"Claire!"

I don't think, scanning the trail below, noticing only the chaos of water and rock. She's not with the group. Not anywhere she should be. Fuck! Where is she?

I spin around frantically looking.

There. Fifty yards back, caught on the wrong side of the floodwaters, pressed against a rock with the water rising fast around her feet. Dave is with her, clutching her arm, both of them frozen by the sudden violence of the flood.

"Stay there!" I shout, the wind swallows them. They can't hear me or see me through the rain.

I look at the group, huddled together safely on the ridge. For now. Then, back at Claire, trapped with the water rising and the only thing between us a raging torrent that grows more deadly by the second.

There’s no other choice. Never was.

"Stay here!" I yell at the nearest person, some guy in a yellow jacket who's crying but functional. "Don't move until help comes, or until I get back!"

I take off running.

Down the trail, toward the rising waters, straight toward her. The rational part of my brain is screaming that this is stupid, that I'm going to die, that no one survives a flash flood in a narrow canyon. But the rest of me, the part that admitted I wanted her, that hasn't felt alive in years, doesn't give a shit about being rational.

I reach the edge of the wash, realizing just how fast the water's moving, carrying tree limbs and rocks the size of my head. Claire finally sees me. Her eyes go wide, and I can tell she’s completely terrified, shaking her head. Smart girl. She knows what this is.

“Don't! Don't move, Claire!”

Too bad I'm not smart. Never have been.

I scan upstream, downstream, looking for any type of crossing.

Nothing.

The trail's completely submerged, rocks I would have jumped are underwater. The only way across is through, and through means gambling with my life.

I look at her one more time. Rain plasters her hair to her face, eyes huge and dark, while her hands grip the rock behind her for safety.

It can't. Nothing can save her, except me.

I step into the water.

The cold hits like a punch, taking my breath, my balance. The current grabs my legs, trying to carry me away, and I dig in, fighting for every inch. I've swum in worse. Survived worse. But not with someone waiting, watching, depending on me to make it across.

I make it halfway, where the water's at my waist now, the pressure building, rocks rolling beneath my boots. I can't feel my feet. Only the need to keep moving, to reach her. To…

My foot slips, and the current grabs hold, spinning me. And for a second, I'm airborne, weightless, waiting for the impact that will knock me unconscious and drown me in thirty seconds flat.

I hit something hard, causing a sharp pain to explode in my shoulder, my hip. I grab a hold and haul myself up on a boulder that's barely above the waterline.

Gasping.