Add this fiasco to last night’s and she figured he’d just as soon let her rot on the side of the cliff as drop her a rope.
With nothing left to do to keep her mind from obsessing over mistakes she couldn’t undo, Cass sat on the narrow ledge high above the canyon floor with her head bent against the rain, watching it fall like the tears she refused to shed.
Frustration fueled her emotions—not fear or loneliness—she ruthlessly insisted to herself. Cass never cried, and she sure as hell wasn’t starting now. She’d gotten herself into this mess. She’d just have to figure a way out.
However, the only plans she could come up with required a little patience and a lot of humility—qualities she didn’t possess in abundance. With nothing to do but hunker down and wait, she finally let her mind wander back to what had brought her to this moment.
The ascent of Fortress Cliff was supposed to be a way to blow off steam after a stressful week and even more horrendous night. Stress of a sort she hadn’t anticipated when she’d flipped her career with the state police months ago and entered the park service.
Who’d have thought a job patrolling a bit of paradise on earth could put kinks in her neck that only a climb up a rock wall could unknot?
Patrolling campgrounds in the late afternoon and evening to ticket park visitors who made illegal fires, arrest underage drinkers, or search for hikers who’d lost their way on the trails was everything the superintendent had promised.
Fielding complaints from one intensely sexy rancher with an uncanny ability to find her when she did her best to evade him had been an unexpected test. One she’d failed miserably.
Thunder rumbled through the darkening clouds, pulling her back to her present predicament. She couldn’t wait out the storm. Her situation was becoming more precarious by the second. She’d have to hope Mavis let the rescue personnel dispatched from the Canyon Volunteer Fire Department know she hadn’t checked back in at the park’s headquarters. Since rescue would have to come from the top of the escarpment, she needed to give them a sign to help them find her quickly.
Closing her eyes, she cursed softly to herself. She’d have to add one more humiliation to the day—this one a deliberate choice. She eased her arms inside her T-shirt, clumsily removed her bra, pulled it from under her shirt, and thrust her arms back through her sleeves.
Then leaning as far from the rock wall as her harness would allow, she drew back her arm and let the bra fly toward the branches of a juniper tree hugging the edge of the cliff.
Sunlight broke through the clouds by midafternoon. Although the rain had stopped an hour before, chaos still reigned in the park as the rivers continued to rise. All the low water crossings were impassible. Climbers and hikers all along the trails had been stranded. When the Canyon Volunteer Fire Department called the ranch, Adam Youngblood bit back a curse.
The last place he wanted to be today was anywhere near the park and one particular little park ranger. But he headed straight for the headquarters building near the entrance of the park where the rangers had organized search parties to rescue stranded campers and hikers.
Mavis Benson who manned the information desk sidled close to him with a clipboard in her hands. “Adam,” she said hesitantly.
“What do you need, sweetheart?”
“We have a situation.”
He glanced at the organized chaos around him and nodded his head. “We certainly do.”
She pulled at his shirtsleeve and tilted her clipboard toward him. “Cass—Fortress Cliff—0800” was in purple ink. “She hasn’t checked back in.”
Adam didn’t want to care. In fact, he hated the way his belly knotted at that piece of news. “Have you sent anyone to check it out?”
“They’re still assigning teams to sections of the park. Thought you might like to take this one yourself,” she whispered, her eyebrows rising.
Adam grimaced, tempted to tell her flat-out she had the wrong man for the job. She didn’t know his interest in Cass McIntyre had been obliterated the night before.
However, he didn’t want to tarnish the trust and respect shining in Mavis’s eyes whenever he entered the building. Mavis was a lifelong resident of the nearby town of Canyon and attended the same church his mother had.
Adam blew out a deep breath and nodded. “I’ll take a look around the cliff.”
She beamed and handed him the note. “If she’s not in any trouble, she’s not gonna be happy I sent someone out to check on her.”
“Woman’s too independent for her own good,” he muttered, settling his cowboy hat on his head.
“It’s what happens when a woman fends too long for herself,” she said with a firm nod. And she should know. The elderly spinster had lived alone for as long as he’d known her, which was all his life.
Forty-five minutes later, after getting his wheels bogged down in mud twice, he made it to the summit and drove slowly along the rim of the bluff. Just as he’d decided he’d have to park and continue the search on foot, a scrap of white gleaming against the dark green branches of a juniper tree caught his eye.
The closer he drew, the item took shape—two distinctive shapes. He hit his brakes, put the truck in park, and cut the engine.
Adam almost smiled at the thought of Cass resorting to flashing her underwear. But his amusement lasted only a second because he realized things must be grim if she’d signaled for help.
He picked up his radio from the seat beside him and called in his location before stepping out of his vehicle and making his way to the cliff’s edge to peer over the side.
His heart skipped a beat when he spotted the top of a blond head, hair pulled into a tight ponytail. Cass sat on a narrow outcropping of rock with her back against the wall and her slim legs dangling in the air.
He drew a deep breath to calm his heart, then satisfied she wasn’t in any imminent danger, he scanned the eroded ledge, the last twenty or so feet of rock to the cliff’s edge, and the thick trunk of the tree clinging to that edge.
His boot crunched in grit as he leaned farther over the rim, sending a spray of pea-sized gravel downward. “Watch out, below,” he called.
Cass jerked her head back, and then turned her face upward. A scowl darkened her features. “Damn. Didn’t think my bad luck could get any worse.”
“Yeah, well I’m all you’ve got. Sit tight until I get back.”
“Like I’m going anywhere?”
Adam shook his head. The woman didn’t possess a lick o’ sense bitching with her rescuer. Hell, she had no business climbing on her own in the first place—or hopping into his brother’s arms.
He squelched that last thought. No use getting riled up again when he had work to do. If she fell, everyone would think he’d dropped her on purpose.
He backed his vehicle up to a spot directly above her position and grabbed a rope, tied it around his trailer hitch, and then fed the coil through his hand, grasping the prusik knot as he approached the edge again.
Bracing
