“I’m fire chief, and I’m with the Team. I’m pretty much always on call.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Now who works too much?”
He shrugged. “When I lose sleep or free time because I’m out saving someone’s life, I feel pretty damn good about it. It’s a good use of a few hours, no?”
Then he remembered. “Can I leave the computer with you?”
“Sure.” She smiled sweetly. “I won’t even read your emails.”
He glared at her. “You’d better not.”
Victoria hurried to the door to see him out. “Good luck. Stay safe! I hope everyone’s okay.”
So did he. “See you tomorrow.”
This time, Eric took the stairs, leaping down two at a time.
* * *
By the timeEric arrived on the scene, the eastbound lane was closed, and emergency response vehicles were parked along the shoulder—squad cars, his station’s rescue apparatus, and Rescue One, one of the Team’s two rescue vehicles.
He grabbed a yellow Team T-shirt out of his back seat and changed into it, then grabbed his headlamp out of his backpack, and climbed out of his truck.
Brandon Silver, his B-shift captain, hurried over to him, dressed in swift-water gear. “Sorry to bust up your evening, chief.”
Eric slipped the headlamp over his head, turned it on. “Find anyone?”
“Not yet.”
“Is Flatirons on the scene?”
“Downstream. They’ve been watching all the snags, bends, and bridges, but haven’t seen anyone yet.”
Eric climbed over the railing and started down the rocky slope toward the vehicle, which lay on its roof in Scarlet Creek, a handful of Team members searching the banks downstream, three others belaying three of his volunteer firefighters, who waded through thigh-deep whitewater looking for submerged bodies. “How’s the water, boys?”
A head turned.
Jenny Miller.
Oops.Not a boy.
“It’s fucking cold, sir,” she shouted to him. “Care to join us?”
“Thanks. I’ll pass.” He walked over to the vehicle, looked inside.
The airbag had deployed, and the windshield was shattered. Water three feet high swirled through the vehicle, but there didn’t seem to be blood that he could see. He leaned down, tried to locate the ignition.
“No one’s home.” Megs came up behind him. “No keys, either.”
Maggie Hill, called Megs by her friends, was a legend in the climbing and rescue communities. One of the first women to break the gender barrier in rock climbing back in the late 1960s, she’d helped launch the Rocky Mountain Search & Rescue Team after a friend of hers had frozen to death as the result of an accident. In her early sixties and still climbing, she now served as the Team’s director.
“Looks to me like the driver took off, unless the car fell from the heavens or jumped into the water all by itself.” Megs had her own unique sense of humor.
“Right.”
Still, they had no choice but to keep up the search. They couldn’t afford to make assumptions. For all they knew, there might have been multiple people in the vehicle, any one of whom could have washed away. Or perhaps the driver had self-rescued and then collapsed of injuries along the embankment somewhere.
“Let’s keep looking.”