abseil down for the same reason. Going higher wouldn’t work either. Above, there was only sheer rock face and the rope she was using wasn’t long enough. If she had more time, she could ask Kirk to send up another rope and join that one to the one she had. But time was a luxury she didn’t have. She had to move now. Staying where she was wasn’t an option.
‘I’m going move sideways and down to the next ledge, Kirk,’ she said into her radio. ‘There’s another casualty—the mother. The helicopter is going to look for her as soon as they drop the boy off.’
‘Be careful, sis,’ Kirk’s voice crackled over the radio. He didn’t need to say any more. He, more than most, would know exactly how dangerous the predicament she found herself in was.
Georgie eased herself over the side of the cliff. Don’t think about what can happen, she told herself. Think about something else. Think about your daughter waiting for you at home.
Looking down, a wave of vertigo washed over her. It had taken her precious minutes to travel less than a couple of feet and the cliff she was reaching for was still some distance away. Another rock tumbled from the ledge above, missing her head by inches. Her heart sank as she realised she still couldn’t risk going down or up. All she could do was to keep on inching her way to the side so she’d be away from the line of the falling rocks. Then she would have to think again. Maybe Kirk would have a bright idea.
Taking a breath to try and quell the rising panic, she continued to move sideways, concentrating on finding footholds and places for her fingers to grip in the sheer rock.
Glancing to her left, she noted with relief that she had moved far enough away from the crumbling cliff and the falling rocks. Good. At the very least, if she could hang on, Kirk would find a way to get her off the damned mountain.
She looked up as the roar of the returning helicopter once again whipped dust into her face. Not that it would do her much good. The wind had picked up, and where she had moved to was under an overhang. There was no way the helicopter could get close enough to the mountainside to lift her off. No, it was down to her and Kirk. Although for the life of her, she couldn’t see an easy way off the mountain.
Kirk came back on the radio. Perhaps he had a plan?
‘Georgie, they’re going to send someone down to get you off. Hold on there. They’ll be with you in a tick.’
Georgie looked up to find the helicopter hovering dangerously close to the mountainside. Didn’t they realise the danger?
‘Tell them it’s too risky,’ she yelled back in to the radio. ‘We’ll have to think of something else.’
But to her astonishment a figure was already being lowered from the body of the aircraft. She held her breath as the figure swung perilously close to the rock face. Then he was beside her, still suspended. Dr Logan Harris. What kind of doctor was he? No other doctor she knew acted as winchman.
He held out a harness. The noise of the helicopter was too loud for her to make out what he was saying but the message was clear and there was no time to argue. The longer the helicopter stayed in the air, the greater the possibility of it crashing. Georgie slipped the harness over her head. Then she was being gripped around her waist by strong legs. She unhitched herself from her rope and seconds later they were swaying in the wind as the helicopter lifted them up and swung them away from the mountain. Looking up, she found brown eyes glinting down at her. Unbelievably, he was grinning. If she hadn’t known it was impossible, she would have swore he was enjoying himself.
A few terrifying minutes later and helping hands were reaching out, pulling them into the safety of the helicopter. For a moment, Georgie lay in a heap, just getting her breath. It wasn’t as bad in the helicopter as she had feared. She couldn’t see outside and she could almost make herself believe that they were on the ground.
‘You okay?’ Logan Harris was searching her face. ‘You looked in real trouble there for a moment.’
Well, that was one way of putting it. If Logan Harris and the crew of the helicopter hadn’t risked their lives to get her off the mountain, God only knew what would have happened. She hugged her legs to her chest as a wave of nausea washed over her. Now she was off the mountain, she couldn’t stop shaking.
‘By the way, this is Toby.’ Logan indicated the man who had helped them on board. Toby flicked his finger at his helmet in a brief salute. ‘We dropped Jack off at the bottom. The ambulance is going to take him to Fort William General. He’ll be there by now.’
‘What about Jack’s mother?’ She managed to force the words past numb lips.
Logan’s radio buzzed and he listened intently. Then he and Toby moved to the open door and scanned the ground.
‘What is it?’ Georgie asked.
‘A call just came in. The hospital’s managed to get some more information from the boy. Apparently his mother’s definitely still out here. No one has reported a woman looking for the boy.’
‘She must be hurt. Probably unconscious. There is no way she wouldn’t have noticed what was happening with her son otherwise. She would have phoned for help at the very least.’
Georgie glanced at her watch. ‘It’s been an hour since we got the call about the boy. That means the mother’s been out there for at least that time.’
She and Logan looked at each other. If the mother had a head injury, time was critical. Georgie didn’t want to think of the alternative.
Suddenly Toby pointed to something. Two figures on the ground were waving their jackets furiously. It could only mean one thing.
‘I see her,’ Logan said.
Georgie crept across to the open side of the helicopter. Once again a wave of vertigo slammed into her as she saw the ground far below. What was going on? This had never happened to her before. The thought of being in a small plane again nauseated her, but she’d hoped it would be different inside a helicopter. But there wasn’t time to think about that now. The crewman was pointing to a flat piece of ground not far from where a body lay in a crumpled heap.
‘We can land there,’ he said, and spoke into his radio.
Mist was already covering the tops of the mountains, snaking ever closer to where the woman lay. Time was of the essence. If the mist got any thicker, visibility would make everyone’s job much more difficult. It was even possible that the helicopter would have to leave and they’d have to attempt to get the victim to hospital on foot.
As soon as the helicopter touched down, Logan jumped out. Georgie ran after him, struggling to keep on her feet in the wind of the slowing rotors.
The climbers, a man and a woman, had stumbled across the inert form a few moments earlier. It was a good thing they had, as Jack’s mother must have fallen some distance and had come to rest almost underneath an enormous boulder. It was unlikely she would have been spotted from the air or that a rescue team on foot would have found her either. The passing climbers had covered her with jackets, but looked relieved to have help.
‘I don’t know what happened. I think she must have slipped on the scree and banged her head, but I can’t be sure. I can see blood underneath her head, but we didn’t want to move her,’ the female climber told Georgie and Logan.
Georgie dropped to her knees beside Logan and the injured
