Total Exposure. Tori Carrington

nearly flattened the pines around the small clearing and blew the rain into thick sheets around them. Dan carefully negotiated the landing and powered down the rotor the instant they touched ground while Natalie yanked at her seat harness. After commanding Spike to stay put, Dan opened his door, then reached over and popped the release on hers. He grabbed the rescue equipment and jumped out. She spared him a grateful look before clambering down herself, following in his wake as the chopper’s blades spun to a stop.

      “Watch your step!” Dan shouted, grabbing hold of her rain slicker with his free hand to keep her from being swept down by a vein of shifting mud. The footing was questionable at best, downright hazardous at worst. He should never have allowed Natalie to come along. But she’d been right that he needed help. Every spare hand he had was busy trying to save those lower on the mountain.

      Natalie stopped abruptly, staring at the sight before them.

      The mud had risen another several feet and was now almost level with the roof of the house.

      “We don’t have much time!” he shouted. “We need to get him out of there now!”

      “I need to check him first.”

      “No time for that! If we don’t move him now, it will be our bodies they’ll be digging out of this mess.”

      Her pretty face went even paler, if that were possible. Dan helped her navigate the roof, then he set the lightweight stretcher next to their patient. If he had to, he could drag the guy out himself.

      “He still has a pulse,” Natalie called, fastening an oxygen mask over the man’s mouth and nose. “Faint but sure.”

      “Get his feet.”

      Natalie grabbed the unconscious man’s ankles.

      “On the count of three. One, two, three…”

      Up and onto the stretcher he went.

      Dan made quick work of strapping the victim onto the stretcher, while Natalie fastened a portable defibrillator to his chest.

      “Let’s go!” he shouted.

      Together they carried the man across the roof and onto the shifting ground. A loud gasp made Dan look back in time to see Natalie lose her footing as mud oozed around the boots she’d found in the back of the chopper. A sea of mud was welling around the roof they’d just left.

      Releasing his grasp on the stretcher, he helped her pull herself free from the sucking mud, then they both ran for the helicopter, lugging the stretcher between them. They slid it into the back of the copter and the metal clamps clicked home.

      “Leave the helmet. Just secure yourself!” Dan shouted, hoisting Natalie into the chopper. He didn’t feel good about this. He didn’t feel good about it at all.

      Quickly he climbed into the cockpit and pressed the ignition, even as Natalie took the seat next to him, fastening the harness.

      He watched as mud rushed over the landing skids of the chopper. Jesus…

      “Hold on!” With a flip of a switch and a jerk on the cylindrical stick between his legs, they were airborne.

      As soon as the helicopter was stable, Dan glanced back to find no sign of the roof, just a relentless river of mud.

      THE CHOPPER SAT ready for liftoff on the Courage Bay Hospital’s helipad. The patient had been stabilized and was now in the hospital staff’s capable hands.

      The rush of adrenaline that had kept Natalie going plummeted, almost making her dizzy as she fastened herself back into her seat. She was soaked to the skin, and the seat belt bit into her shoulders, but she felt an odd sense of euphoria at having rushed into the fray with Dan and saved a man’s life.

      “The attending doc says he’s going to pull through.” Dan’s voice came over the headphones as he powered up the helicopter once more.

      Natalie remembered to tug her mike in front of her mouth as she nodded at him. The chopper gave a lurch and they were again airborne.

      They were going to take the helicopter back to the airport, where they would retrieve Dan’s Jeep. Natalie had been half afraid he would suggest she stay at the hospital and not make the return trip with him, but thankfully, he hadn’t said anything. She suspected he was totally focused on getting back to the mudslide and relieving the squad’s captain he’d left in charge.

      During their flight to the hospital, the storm had let up a bit. Rain was still coming down heavily, but the winds had died down—for the time being, anyway.

      Natalie watched as the white X of the hospital’s landing pad grew farther and farther away beneath them. She’d worked at the hospital for more than ten years, but she’d never seen it from this angle. Through the pounding rain it looked almost surreal.

      Who was she kidding? This entire experience had been surreal. She’d never been up in a helicopter before, yet she had helped Dan rescue an ill man from his roof moments before the mudslide had claimed the entire house.

      A curse filled her ears.

      She turned to look at Dan. His right hand was fused to the stick between his powerful legs, his left to a longer one between their seats, which looked like an oversize emergency brake. His right hand and the stick it held shuddered ominously.

      “What’s wrong?” she asked.

      Deep grooves bracketed his mouth as he flicked his gaze from the instrument panel, with its hundreds of dials and switches, to the windshield. “The winds are picking up and I see thunderheads rolling in. The storm’s switched course and is circling around behind us.”

      Natalie looked back over her shoulder. Ominous black clouds pillowed bright, jagged shafts of lightning. She could no longer make out the hospital in the dimming light.

      “It’s unsafe to try to land back at the hospital,” Dan said through the mike. “My best bet is to try to go around the storm and approach the airport from the northwest.” He spared her a quick glance, his blue eyes lingering for a moment before shifting back to the instrument panel. “Hold on.”

      Natalie grasped her harness for dear life as he made a sharp right turn. The wind pushed at the helicopter relentlessly, making it sway in the air.

      She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Earlier, she’d been so focused on the rescue that she hadn’t really stopped to think how dangerous it was to be flying in these conditions. But when the helicopter hit an air pocket and dropped a few yards, she could have sworn her stomach pitched down, too—somewhere in the vicinity of her icy, boot-clad feet.

      Her feet? She suspected her heart had just hit the ground some thousand feet below. Until it came boomeranging back up with a vengeance and lodged in her throat.

      In the distance, lightning split the dark sky—in front of them this time, making her jump. This couldn’t be safe! Thunder rattled the windshield of the small aircraft as it was buffeted by the storm.

      Natalie leaned closer to the side window, staring down at the darkness below. Another crack of lightning showed her they were above Courage Bay. The high, churning, foam-capped waves revealed that the storm had gone from bad to much, much worse.

      She briefly closed her eyes and counted backward from ten. After what she’d seen of Dan and his amazing capabilities today, she wanted to trust him, longed to believe that he would see them through this okay. But this brutal weather, the suddenly very small helicopter, the countless B disaster movies she rented to help make the lonely nights go by, all combined to make her the most frightened she’d been since—well, in her entire life.

      Another sharp dip jolted them. The whump-whump of the helicopter blades above them, a loud clap of thunder behind, the pounding sound of rain against the windshield and the steady hammering of her heart made her feel as if she was going to be sick.

      Another crack of lightning. Only this time it wasn’t far off in the distance, but directly in front of them. And just before it