only half as high. CPR wouldn’t help, not when he didn’t have any blood to circulate.
“Me, too,” I told him, kissing his forehead.
“Tell Mom and Maisie I love them.” His words were slower, punctuated by partial breaths.
“I will. They love you so much. You have a mom, and a dad, and a sister who would do anything for you.”
“I love you, Dad,” he whispered.
“I love you, Colt.”
His chest rattled once more, and then his hand fell from my face as he faded.
“Colt?” I felt for the pulse that wasn’t there. “Colt! No!” I slid under him and sat up, cradling him in front of me, my arms wrapped around him as his head rolled back against my chest.
A primal scream ripped from my throat. Then another, until my body shook with sobs. Beside me, Havoc sat up and started to howl, the sound low and keening.
Take care of him, Ryan.
“Beckett,” Mark said softly. When I looked up, he was kneeling next to me, his eyes full of unshed tears. My eyes rhythmically blurred, then cleared.
“He’s gone.” My arms tightened around his little body.
“I know. You did everything you could.”
“I made him pinwheels this morning,” I said, running my hand over his soft hair. “He wanted extra cheese, and I gave it to him. I made him pinwheels.”
That was hours ago.
Hours.
And now he was gone.
“What do you want to do?” Mark asked.
I realized there were half a dozen guys standing around us. Jenkins kneeled down and did the same checks I had, only to press his mouth in a tight line and stand again.
Want? What did I want to do? I wanted to scream again, to rip everything in this forest to shreds. I wanted to pound the mountain down to rubble with my fists. I wanted to look at my little boy and hear him laugh, see him run on the deck of his tree house. I wanted him to grow up, wanted to meet the man he was supposed to become. But he was beyond my reach.
Want didn’t matter when nothing was in your control.
“I need to take him to his mother.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Ella
The helicopter landed in the small clearing about thirty yards in front of me, and my heart sank. There were only two reasons they would land. Either they hadn’t found Colt, or…
“Breathe,” Ada told me. Larry had taken Maisie home. I didn’t want her here, didn’t want her on the front lines of a tragedy.
A group from County stood behind us, all watching. Waiting.
“If they found him, they would have airlifted him to Montrose,” I said. Trying so hard to push down the fear that held my stomach in a vise.
“Beckett will find him. You know he will.”
I’d seen the map, knew how far that fall was.
The door opened on the helicopter, and Mark got down first, then Beckett. He was wearing a long-sleeve shirt but no blue fleece.
He looked at me, and I didn’t need to see his face from the distance. His posture said it all. “No.” The sound was barely a whisper. No. No. No.
This wasn’t happening. This was impossible.
Beckett turned as other members of Telluride Search and Rescue climbed down and then slid out a backboard, carrying it like pallbearers.
Then I saw Beckett’s fleece.
It covered Colt’s face.
My knees gave out, and the world went black.
…
The world came into focus as I blinked. Bright lights hovered above me, and I caught the sterile smell of hospital. Turning my head, I saw Beckett in a chair next to me, his eyes swollen and red.
Havoc slept under his chair.
“Hey,” he said, leaning forward to take my hand.
“What happened?”
“You passed out. We’re at Telluride Medical, and you’re okay.”
It came roaring back to me, the helicopter. The fleece.
“Colt?”
“Ella, I’m so sorry. He’s gone.” Beckett’s face crumpled.
“No, no, no,” I chanted. “Colt.” The tears started in a deluge, coming hard and fast as I let out a sound between a cry and a scream that didn’t seem to stop. Maybe it paused while I took a breath, but that was it.
My baby. My beautiful, strong little guy. My Colt.
Warm arms surrounded me as Beckett crawled into bed next to me, and I buried my head in his chest and wailed. Pain wasn’t strong enough of a word. There was no scale. No ten to be medicated. This agony wasn’t measurable; it was unfathomable.
My little boy had died alone and cold at the base of a mountain he’d grown up under.