part0010

Jenny’s legs shook with the effort of arresting their fall, her body a fist over her ice axe. The tension on the rope clipped into her harness had lessened.

Which meant that maybe Sasha had self-arrested also.

Now they—well, she —clung to the side of a mountain by three very thin points.

In a whiteout.

With the temperatures dropping fast.

Jenny could barely see beyond her face, the wind howling in her ears. She knew Denali weather changed quickly, but the wind shear that had toppled them off the mountain had come out of nowhere, like the breath of God.

“Sasha!” She glanced over her shoulder, careful not to ease up on her hold, and barely made out Sasha’s red climbing helmet six feet away.

She hadn’t a clue where Aria might have landed, her rope nearly forty feet long between her and Sasha.

She could be dangling over a crevasse, for all Jenny knew.

“Sasha!”

The red helmet moved. “I’m okay!”

Jenny wanted to weep with the rush of emotion. But she didn’t have time to let the what-ifs turn her weak. “Dig in, I’m going to set an anchor.”

Step one, arrest.

Step two, set the anchor, secure the team to the wall.

Step three, make sure Aria was still alive.

Step four, find a place to bivouac until the storm died.

Then, get down the mountain and don’t look back.

Jenny pivoted back on the pins of her crampons, testing them. Then, feeling secure, she unseated her axe and chopped away the loose, junk layer of snow and ice to the blue two feet down. Taking an ice picket off her pack, she worked it into the mountain and clipped on her quickdraw—two carabiners connected by a nylon cord. She clipped it into the rope, then, leaning on her ice axe, slowly transferred the load onto the ice screw.

It held.

She let out a shuddered breath. Now to get down to Sash.

She added a Prusik—an external rope knotted onto the main rope that acted as a brake—onto the rope below the connection and transferred herself to the Prusik. “How you doin’, Sasha?”

“Hurry up!”

She wasn’t unaware that Sasha held all of Aria’s hanging weight, if Aria hadn’t self-arrested. “Just going to set up another anchor!”

She uncoiled the rope to give herself room, then chopped out another hole not far from the first ice picket and pounded in her second picket. She attached the rope to it. Now the weight was on two anchors.

“I’m coming down to you!” She used her Prusik on the line to self-belay down to Sasha, digging her axe and crampons into the snow.

Sasha was crying, her face in the snow.

“I’ll anchor you in, just hold on.”

Jenny dug out and screwed in another anchor, then she clipped Sasha into the anchor with a quickdraw. Finally, she screwed in another trio of anchors, moved the rope to the anchors, and freed Sasha.

Jenny was trembling by the time she finished, the wind abating some but still stinging her face with snow and ice.

“I need to check on Aria,” Jenny said. Sasha had stopped crying, and now looked at her, clearly trying to be brave.

“Stay here.” She maneuvered down the main rope, chopping into the snowy layer.

Her exertion dampened her face mask, just her breathing and the crunch of the snow evidence of life.

She followed the rope until the mountain seemed to flatten out, and as she saw Aria’s position, her heart nearly stopped. Aria had slid over an icy overhang the length and width of a bus. The rope cut right down the middle.

Jenny probed the area with the shaft of her ice axe, then crawled over to the side.

Aria hung upside down, her pack pulling her down. She’d forgotten to clip her chest harness to the rope. And she wasn’t moving.

“Aria!”

Nothing.

The wind had lifted enough for Jenny to study their predicament, and she nearly went weak with relief.

Aria hung off the serac, over a lesser grade of frothy snow. Maybe, if she lowered her down, they could take refuge under the serac—and this felt like a terrible idea, but what choice did she have?

She worked off her heavy pack and dropped it into the snow, digging it into a hole to anchor it. Crawling to the edge, she leaned over again. “Aria!”

No movement.

She blew out a breath, debating.

But Aria might be suffocating, the pack cutting off her air supply, or maybe worse, suffering from a broken back or internal bleeding. Jenny had to get down to her.

She pulled her last picket from her pack and secured it into the snow, then she unlooped her kiwi coils, threw in a double figure eight, and attached the knot to the anchor with her last biner. From her utility harness, she unclipped her self-braking descender, attached the descender to the rope, then clipped herself in.

“I’m going down to Aria!” she shouted to Sasha, before testing the edge.

She leaned back, letting the rope bear most of her weight, stabilizing herself with her crampons against the ice as she lowered herself beside Aria.

Her friend hung, arms over her head, her ice axe dangling from her wrist, the pack clipped on at her waist.

“Aria.” She grabbed her by the pack harness, bringing her closer. Drew her face next to hers.

Breath, but barely. And then a groan.

“Hang on.” She reached over and grabbed the pack’s haul loop, then unclipped the pack’s waist harness, holding on as the pack dropped away. She managed to not let it jerk, but lowered it by its tether to dangle off Aria’s harness.

“Aria.” She took off her mitten, tucked it into her jacket, and reached over to wiggle her hand into the collar of Aria’s jacket. She found Aria’s neck and pressed against her carotid artery.

A steady beat there. So maybe Aria was just woozy from so much blood to her head.

She needed to hurry and get her down.

She secured Aria’s harness to her rope so she could create a lowering system. Then she grabbed Aria’s axe, removing it from her wrist. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

She climbed back up, breathing hard.

Sasha shouted something, but she couldn’t make it out.

Besides, she was too out of breath to answer.

The snow had turned blinding again, and she had to wipe out her goggles before she headed back up to Sasha.

Her friend was shivering. Maybe going into shock. “Breathe, Sasha. Just stay calm. We’re going to be okay. Aria is alive. She’s hanging upside down, and I’m not sure how hurt she is.” She didn’t suggest anything beyond that.

“We’ll lower her to the snowpack below, and then we’ll hunker down and ride this out.”

Sasha’s eyes were huge in hers, and she nodded.

Yes, they were going to be okay. Jenny would set up their tent, dig in, make some soup, get everyone warm . . .

Maybe pray, although this sort of felt like some divine retribution.

Apparently, a woman with her mistakes didn’t get to feel free.

“Good girl. I’ll be right back.”

Since the load line was clipped to Sasha’s anchor, she climbed up to unhook her line, retrieved her ice screws, and returned to Sasha.

“I’ll belay you down to the serac, and then I want you to clip into the anchor and wait for me. Do you think you can do that?”

Sasha nodded.

She hooked Sasha back into the main line with the descender, then anchored herself to the ice pros and set herself into the snow, seating her crampons and herself into the snowpack. Then she secured Sasha on belay with the final length of the rope. “On belay. Descend when ready.”

“Descending,” Sasha said, her voice thin. But she bravely chipped her way down to the head of the serac and clipped into the anchor.

Using her Prusik to self-belay, Jenny worked her way down to Sasha.

Her breath had created an icy layer in her mask and she needed to rest, her heartbeat dangerously high. She blamed the lack of oxygen and the fact that she wasn’t sure just how terrible her idea was.

What if the serac collapsed and dragged them down the mountain?

Not now. That was thinking too far ahead, maybe. She just needed to figure out right now.

“I’m going to lower you down so you can catch Aria, okay?”

Sasha nodded.

“But I need to set the lip.” She worked her way down to the edge of the serac, then set Aria’s ice axe in horizontally over the edge. “When you go over the edge, let the rope drag over the axe handle. Set an anchor with your axe at the bottom and clip the rope in.” That would at least keep her and Aria from screaming down the mountain if one of her anchors budged.

She returned to her anchor and reset the descender onto the free line to lower Sasha down. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Sasha said.

“Lowering,” Jenny said, and Sasha stepped backward as Jenny took the descender off auto-stop. The rope slipped through her mittened hands, held to friction by the descender as Sasha worked her way over the edge.

The weights pulled against her—her harness, uphill, and Sasha’s body, downhill. Her legs began to shake.

Please, help us get off this mountain. A chill had sunk into her bones despite her exertion. But it wasn’t long before she felt the slack in the rope. Sasha, at the bottom. Hopefully she anchored in separately with her ice axe.

Now to lower Aria.

She added more anchors, reworked the ropes, and created a lowering system, finally clipping Aria’s line into it.

“Ready?” Jenny shouted.

“Lower her!” Sasha said.

Please don’t let her drop Aria on her head.

“I got her,” Sasha finally yelled.

Jenny wanted to weep. But she unclipped the ropes, tied herself back in to the main rope, coiled the excess back into a kiwi loop, and retrieved her anchors. She hoisted her pack back on, retrieved Aria’s axe, then took the long way around the serac.

Sasha had unclipped the pack from Aria, and it sat not far away, an orange beacon in the whiteout.

Aria lay in Sasha’s arms under the unlikely protection of the serac. Some of her dark hair had escaped her hat, turning to ice against her face. Jenny dropped to her knees beside her. “Aria. Wake up.”

Aria’s eyes were already starting to flutter. She woke hard, with a start and a scream.

Jenny put her hand on Aria’s chest. “Shh. Stop. We’re okay.” But Aria was starting to hyperventilate, her eyes wide.

“Listen, we got blown off the mountain. But we’re okay. We’re going to be okay.”

Except now Jenny was shaking hard—needing her words as much as Aria did.

She didn’t want to consider the truth.

They’d tumbled into a whiteout, and for all everyone else knew, they’d fallen to their crumpled, frozen deaths. She didn’t want to think about Kit and what had happened to her, but she had a feeling that perhaps the icy cap had broken away, just as it did on Everest so many years ago. Who knew if High Camp had even survived the inevitable avalanche?

Everyone else could be dead.

No—no. She couldn’t go there.

“I need to get the tent up.”

She took off her pack, reevaluating her crazy thought about camping under the serac. But it gave them protection from driving snow, and with the falling temperatures, it wouldn’t be in danger of melting, breaking off, and careening downhill.

In theory.

Besides, it wasn’t a gnarled-toothed overhang, but more of a jutting, almost-protective shelf.

Okay, her gut said never camp under a serac, but she couldn’t even see the rest of the mountain. They could be ten feet from a sheer drop-off.

And Aria just might be going into shock.

Jenny pulled out her shovel and dug out a well, building up walls in a circle and packing the sides against the wind as high as she guesstimated the tent to be.

Then she pulled out the tent and pitched it in a few quick moves. Sasha helped, holding it down as Jenny assembled the rods and secured the metal stakes into the ice and snow.

She would have liked a snow saw to build actual bricks, but she didn’t have time.

“Let’s get inside,” she said. She helped Sasha bring Aria into the tent, pulling off her crampons. Sasha did the same. Jenny retrieved their sleeping bags and pulled the packs under the tent’s vestibule.

The wind was howling now, a whine in the sky that burned into her ears and bulleted her face. She was so cold her teeth rattled, her toes were numb, her bones brittle.

As she took off her crampons and shoved her ice axe next to the door, she stood for a moment, her mind snapshotting onto the moment before her world turned deadly.

Staring at Kit, her eyes in hers, offering her hope.

Except hope was deadly. Just when you reached for it, it slipped out of your hands.

Jenny climbed into the flimsy, shaking tent.

Sasha had gotten Aria into a sleeping bag and tucked herself into her own.

“I’ll get tea going,” Jenny said through her teeth.

“No. I will in a minute. Let’s get warm.” Sasha had unfurled her sleeping bag. “Get in, now.”

Jenny acquiesced, climbing in fully clothed. Then she turned onto her side, wanting, really, to curl into the fetal position.

Aria too lay on her side, looking at her, breathing easier.

“You okay?”

“I think I broke my ankle trying to self-arrest. And I wrenched my shoulder pretty good.”

Jenny nodded but closed her eyes, her body still shaking. “They’ll find us. We still have our avalanche beacons.”

Aria lifted her gloved hand and put it on Jenny’s cheek. “This isn’t your fault.”

Jenny drew in a hiccupped breath.

Then Sasha nudged up behind her in her sleeping bag and set her head against her neck. “We’re stronger than we think we are.”

Maybe. Maybe not.

Because right now, all Jenny could hear were her own screams, still dying in the howl of the wind.

After eighteen hours clinging to the side of a cliff, working his way down the most harrowing wall of jagged ice in a near-whiteout, the winds fighting to tear him from his scrabbled perch, Orion just wanted to sleep like the dead.

But the dead refused to leave him alone. Oh no, they shouted at him from across the expanse of his nightmares, Nickles and Dirk, fellow PJs, and SEAL operator Royal Benjamin. Except Royal had been captured along with Logan Thorne, and according to Thorne, rescued. Still, his buddies showed up with their sunburned faces, their wide grins, and called his name from where they shot hoops.

He blamed Jacie. Or at least the woman he’d met three weeks ago. She dragged up the ghosts to prowl his sleep. It had to be the wind, the howling he heard behind the tenor of their laughter, but it left a hole in the center of his gut.

Or maybe it was all from the Spam soup Jake had made when they returned to camp. Whatever the case, Orion woke up nauseated, his head pounding, and just barely made it out of the snow cave before his supper dumped onto the snow.

He wore his long johns, his snow booties, and a thermal shirt, and had the unfortunate timing of landing on his knees just as a beautiful white Cessna buzzed over them.

He leaned back, grabbing a mouthful of snow, then spit it back out.

“You okay, Ry?” Ham sat on one of their gear boxes, holding a radio.

“Sure. I’m just in serious need of real meat.” He pressed his hand to his gut. Or maybe he should leave it empty, because given the way the wind scurried over the glacier, it would be a bumpy ride back to Copper Mountain.

“And a shower.” Ham made a face. But he was one to talk. The man wore a haze of amber and gold whiskers on his chin and looked like he’d walked out of the woods of some horror flick, his face sunburned, his lips chapped. Under his wool hat, his hair was surely matted.

Probably, Orion looked the same—he felt like it.

“Get packed up. Larke Kingston is heading in to pick us up.”

Larke, Barry Kingston’s daughter. Former army medic and wilderness doc. He knew her three brothers, now deployed in three different branches across the world.

The wind scurried through his thermals. Orion judged the temps to be in the low teens, the sky overhead somber and gray. But the blizzard had died to mere wisps, the snow no longer pelleting him. He could even spot the faintest outline of Denali in the distance, although the peak was still shrouded in a layer of haze. He had no doubt everyone at High Camp, and maybe even below, had hunkered down in their tents—although sometimes the storms that hit the lower mountains like Huntington and Hunter bypassed the High One.

And sometimes the lower mountains received a glancing blow of what hurtled itself against the great peak.

The drone of the returning Cessna alerted him, and he scooted into the cave.

Jake was packing the kitchen. He wore his shell pants and suspenders over a thermal shirt. “I have some leftover Spam—”

“Stay away from me,” Orion said. He pulled on his shell, leaving his thicker pants off for the ride home, and stuffed his sleeping bag into a compression sack. He’d already packed most of his gear—his harness, ropes, crampons, ice axes—and now he grabbed his jacket and hat, his gaiters, mittens, and gloves, and rolled up his sleeping pad.

By the time he dragged his pack outside, Jake and Ham were already loading up the plane with the kitchen and camp gear. “Sorry, guys,” he said, not meaning to leave all the work to them. “I guess I overslept.”

“You were shouting in your sleep last night. We didn’t want to go near that,” Jake said. “Thought you might punch me if I woke you up.”

“I might anyway,” Orion said.

Larke was grinning, her blonde hair in braids under her wool hat. “Hey, Ry.”

“How’s that boyfriend of yours?” He’d met Riley McCord during a big fire a couple summers back.

“He just earned his trident and is waiting to get assigned to a team.”

“Your boyfriend is a SEAL?” Ham asked as he climbed out of the back of the Cessna.

“Fiancé. He proposed on the beach in Pensacola.” She was walking around her plane, giving it a quick assessment. “As soon as he gets his assignment, I’ll join him.”

“What does your dad say about that?” Orion loaded his pack into the back. Ham added his and closed the door.

“Dodge’s tour of duty is over next summer, and he says he’s coming home, so he can slog you mountain rats around.” She had landed in a perfect swath, throttling around so that her skis faced back along the track she’d made landing. Now she opened up her door.

Orion got in on the passenger side, with Ham and Jake climbing in the back.

He stared out the window, back at the snow shelter that he’d made into a strange palace. Then his gaze slid back up the grizzled edge of the mountain, with its gnarly granite walls, thick seracs like dollops of frosting rising hundreds of feet, the layers of cream sliding down the sides, the skim of snow swirling off the top.

Not today.

Funny, in his youth he would have made promises to himself to return.

Now, he just strapped himself into the plane and held on as Larke throttled up and moved off the glacier, dropping into the pocket then rising fast above the tundra.

The world of ice and snow dropped away as she flew over ice floes and glaciers and finally the muddy bogs and greening alps that littered the mountain.

The world turned green and lush, the boreal forest adding color—purple and gold, orange along an aquiline blue lake. Outside the mire of the mountains, the sky turned a deep blue, tufted with thick clouds.

Orion had donned headphones and now glanced at Larke. “Is your dad flying the chopper?”

Her father also ran a chopper service, sometimes bringing in supplies to Denali Base Camp. He even rigged it as a water bomber during fire season.

“Yeah. There was an accident on Denali last night. High winds on the pass and apparently an entire roped team fell. They think they’re in Peters Glacier, but they’re still looking for them. Dad brought in an NPS team from Anchorage to help.”

Orion had stilled on her words, spoken with sadness, but with the cool-edged solemnity of a seasoned Alaskan.

“What team? Do you know if it was Kit’s group?”

She glanced at him. “I don’t know.”

He drew in a breath and glanced at the range. He’d experienced those high winds, had barely hung on to the mountain, and he’d been anchored in. So much of the time roped teams didn’t carry the gear to the summit they needed for self-rescue—ice screws, descenders, belay systems—preferring a light run up the mountain to preparing for the worst.

Kit, however, wasn’t that kind of guide. She would have made her crew at least take provisions to spend the night trapped in weather.

Or, looked at the skies and not gone at all.

He settled back in his seat. That’s what the NPS rescue team was for—it wasn’t his problem.

He pressed his hands over his gurgling stomach.

Larke set them down at the Copper Mountain FBO where Ham had left his rental car. They unloaded the gear into Orion’s Ford Ranger, also parked in the lot.

“I’m headed to the motel to shower up. How about I pick up a couple steaks and we meet at your place?” Ham said to Orion. Jake lingered by the rental car.

“Still not finished trying to convince me to join your little SAR group?” Orion tossed his keys in his hands.

“C’mon, Ry. That thing inside you that you can’t keep dodging, that pull to do something more with your life? You think it’s about Royal, but it’s not. It’s about the fact that God isn’t finished with you yet. He’s calling you to something—I know it, and so do you. And I think it’s Jones, Inc. Join me, Ry. Let’s do good things together. Help people. Bring the lost home.”

Orion glanced out toward the hazy, gray peaks to the north. “God doesn’t want a bitter, angry guy like me, Ham.” He looked at him. “And neither do you.”

“Yes, I do. And yeah, you’re right about God—he doesn’t want the darkness inside you to win. But maybe helping others is the first step to letting it go. To healing.”

Orion shook his head. “It’s not something I can let go. I’m not even sure I want to.” And maybe it was because he’d nearly died with the guy, but Orion let the truth spiral out, even as he looked away, across the tarmac, watching Larke tie down her plane.

“Thing is, right now I’m like this guy holding on to a tree in the middle of a tsunami. There’s dark, lethal water all around me, and at least as long as I hold on to the tree, as desperate as that is, I’m safe.” He squeezed his keys in his palm, letting them bite. “I let go into that mess of betrayal and grief and who knows where I’ll end up.” He opened his car door. “Trust me, this is safer for everyone. Me, alone with my darkness.”

Ham’s mouth tightened. “Warm up the grill. I’ll be over with the steaks.”

Orion lifted a hand to Jake and climbed into his truck. He took the highway north, back toward the park where his family had homesteaded over a hundred acres of pristine pine forest, running dogsleds and snowmobiles as his father worked the park.

His father had rescued so many people off Denali, it was practically in Orion’s gene mix to think about where the climbers might have gotten lost. Maybe an avalanche had ripped out the fixed ropes to the pass, taken them all down. Or, like Larke had said, maybe they’d all blown off, careening into Peters Glacier.

He turned onto the dirt road that led back to his place, built on the edge of their property. Originally a hand-crafted two-room cabin, the house had been upgraded by two generations of Starrs to include timber framing, a grand wraparound porch, and a two-story great room that faced the park.

Denali, of course.

He got out and headed inside, toeing off his boots by the door before he went upstairs to the lofted bedroom—once his parents’, now his—and right into the shower.

He took off a layer of grime so thick he thought he might be de-scaling. But when he emerged, he felt human again, his smell no longer offensive. He shaved too, just because, and changed into a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt before he padded barefoot down the stairs.

The timber framing and the shadow of the looming pines that surrounded the property sent a chill into the house. He built a fire in the soaring rock fireplace, let it crackle its warmth into the house, and went into the kitchen to scrounge up some food.

He hoped Ham would keep his word, because he had nothing but an old piece of cheese and some spoiled milk in the fridge.

Orion scrounged up a half bag of stale chips from the pantry and walked out to the picture window. Stared at Denali, at the gray hood that hovered over the peak.

His words found him, and he drew a breath, but not fast enough to press Ham out of his head, too. “That thing inside you that you can’t keep dodging, that pull to do something more with your life? God isn’t finished with you yet. He’s calling you to something—”

A knock came at the door and he turned, seeing Ham pulling open the screen to step inside. He was carrying a paper bag in one hand, his cell phone in the other.

Jake was on his tail, holding a six-pack of dark bottles. Maybe craft root beer, because he knew Jake didn’t drink alcohol.

He set the bottles on the counter. They’d both showered and shaved, dressed in clean clothes.

Ham put the paper bag—groceries, Orion hoped—on the rough-hewn table in the kitchen. Then he put his phone down and looked at Orion.

“Okay, what’s going on?” Orion asked.

“It’s time to join the team, bro,” Jake said.

“We need you,” Ham added. He walked over to the picture window. “I just got off the phone with my buddy Lucas McGuire.” He pointed to the mountain. “His wife went to the summit yesterday. And she didn’t come back down.”

Orion looked at him.

“Her guide had access to a sat phone and was supposed to call him from High Camp after their ascent. And when she didn’t, he started to worry.”

Orion’s gut was grinding again. “Don’t tell me—”

“Sorry, but she was on that team of all women. Jenny Calhoun and Aria Sinclair. They’re all three missing.”

Orion turned back to the window, to the gray cap hovering over Denali.

“We’re going back on the mountain,” Ham said softly as Jake came to stand beside them.