CHAPTER FIVE
J ENNY HEARD GEESE.
Which of course couldn’t be right.
Geese, and the smell of fresh-cut grass, and the taste of the ocean on her lips, salty and dry. So dry. She swallowed, and her saliva stuck like lard in the back of her throat.
She couldn’t speak, her voice a common casualty in her dreams, but the world opened and for a moment she recognized the memory. Mount Rainier poking its glorious white dome up from a layer of clouds, the deep blue of Puget Sound rippling out along a rocky shoreline. The occasional breaching of a whale.
Silence and safety, and she sank into it, still hearing the geese.
In her dream, she sat on a bench and wore a blanket, her feet cold in the grass. She shivered against the wind.
“I’ll find you.”
She drew a breath at the voice, deep and husky, and like dreams go, she found herself suddenly in the dirt-packed compound of the FOB in Kunar, the sky overhead a deep indigo, a million lights dusting the night. And beside her, solid and emanating an earthy masculinity, Orion Starr.
More memory than dream now as they lay on their backs on a table, their shoulders against each other, the strength of him radiating through her even as he folded his hands on his taut stomach.
She’d made a comment about the dark Afghani sky, the way the stars fell so close to the earth.
“If you want to see stars that feel so close you can pull them from the sky, you need to come to Alaska. Better yet, if you’re real brave, climb Denali. It’s . . . well, there’s nothing like sitting on the highest peak in North America, in arm’s reach of the universe. Although you have to climb it in summer, when the sun never sets, so it’s hard to see the stars. But they’re still there.”
“Denali?”
“Mount McKinley. My father was a park guide his entire life on the mountain, and I worked rescue on the mountain for two summers before I joined the Air Force. We lived on a homestead on the southern edge of the park.”
“I’ll have to visit sometime. I’d like to meet your father.”
He’d drawn in a breath then, stiffening beside her.
She’d gone too far. Taken their friendship past right now, this place, this snapshot of time.
What was she thinking? That the man she’d been watching since he arrived on base, the quiet one who seemed to be always thinking, would want more than just a friend? This relationship had all the staying power of a shooting star, blazing hard, but dying out fast the moment she was transferred.
She got herself in trouble when she let her heart do the thinking. “Sorry, I—”
“No. I’m sorry. It’s just . . . my dad died a couple years ago.”
Oh. Great, Jacie. “I’m so sorry. Was it an accident?”
“Sorta. Yes. A climbing accident on Denali. He unroped when one of his clients fell, and when he went down to help him, he just . . . slid off the mountain.”
She couldn’t breathe. Silence fell between them.
“Ry . . .”
He rolled over to his side then, looking down at her. His green eyes could stop her world, reach down inside her and make her heart beat.
She was falling for this man, hard.
And it wasn’t just because he listened to her. Talked to her about her love of history, as if it mattered to him.
Wasn’t because he could name every star in the sky, as if he might be Galileo. “My parents named me after the constellation because it was the brightest one in the sky. But I like to think it was because Orion was a hunter.”
And it wasn’t because he had this uncanny way of making her feel like she was the only one in his universe. Or the crazy stories he told her of Alaska, stirring up a world she wanted to see. Or even that he had this amazing ability to compartmentalize his world, to tuck all the danger and fear into a neat pocket and remain calm.
It was the fact that when he looked at her like he was now, everything she’d been running from dropped away, and for a moment, she could catch her breath.
Orion Starr was safe.
No. He was the brightest star in her world. The one she wanted to run to. She’d heard stories about the spec ops guys—thought these men were arrogant and unapproachable. Hard-edged, honed by the demands of their job.
Then Orion had invited her into his world, let her see beyond the body armor, and she felt like she’d discovered a hidden treasure.
Wow, she could love him. If only they’d met at a different place, a different time.
He traced her face with his gaze. She wanted to kiss him. Lose herself in his touch. Nearly looped her arms around his neck and pulled him to herself.
Except, what then? If she got too close?
He might discover the truth about her true reason for being here. And frankly, she had rules.
His breath hovered over her face, the scent of the night, the campfire, the hard-work smell on his body twining through her to awaken every cell in her body.
She bit her lip and turned away.
He must have taken the hint because he rolled onto his back. “We should probably turn in. The SEALs have an op tomorrow and we are spinning up to support them.”
She knew that, of course. But she said nothing as she got up. He walked her back to her Quonset in silence, and she had the craziest feeling that he was trying to unlock something from inside and not quite winning.
Yes, well, maybe he shouldn’t.
Maybe some things should stay locked up.
His hand had knocked against hers, hot, his skin rough and calloused. Work worn.
He twined a pinky through hers, testing.
Oh. She shouldn’t, but she let it linger, a moment of connection that suggested hope. Tomorrows. Even in the dream it seared through her, touched her heart, turned it to fire.
A sudden squeeze in her chest made her gasp, probably the dream combining with her semiconscious mind, and for a moment she tightened her hold on him.
Don’t go.
He didn’t notice her panic, of course, because now the memory made him weave his fingers through hers. “If there’s trouble—”
“Yeah.” She cut him off, nodding. “I know.”
He drew in a breath.
Even in her dream, the pressure to speak the truth built inside her. “I know what you do, PJ.”
And what do you do, Jacie?
He hadn’t asked her, but she felt the question, and swallowed through the thickening of her throat.
He tugged on her then, stopped her and she turned. He met her eyes. “I’ll find you when I get back.”
He wore the finest hint of a beard, his eyes so green she couldn’t breathe, lost in them. “What if I’m gone?” She’d been kidding, but he didn’t smile.
“Then I’ll still find you.”
“What, should I send up smoke signals?” She gave a pitiful laugh.
Her heart caught when he reached up and touched her face. “Whatever it takes, I’ll find you, Jacie.”
“I’ll find you.”
She gasped, still caught in the dream, in his eyes, in the husky smell of him.
Kiss me.
Oh—
And the geese were honking. Louder and louder and suddenly she was back at the sound, surrounded by the birds, black and white and louder and louder and—
“Sasha, breathe. Long, deep breaths—”
She woke to Aria’s voice. Blinked to sort through her surroundings.
Bright orange walls, shivering under the wind still pummeling their shelter. She lay, clothed in her thermal underwear, her booties, and a hat, and was still nearly sweating in her sleeping bag. Her last clear memory was drinking chicken broth that Sasha had heated.
Now, Aria was out of her bag, crawling over her, the wind whipping inside as Aria unzipped the door.
Jenny rolled over onto her back.
Sasha was climbing out of the door, dressed in her thermals, her jacket, and a hat. She collapsed just beyond the vestibule, still packed with their tents, staked down by their harnesses into the snow.
Then, she began to throw up.
Aria had also shed her outer clothing. Now, she pulled on her jacket as she slid out beside Sasha.
Snow billowed into the open doorway as Sasha’s body wracked.
“What’s going on?” Jenny said.
“She’s been hyperventilating. And then suddenly, she had to heave.”
Jenny scrambled out of her sleeping bag just as Sasha scooted back inside. She wiped her face. “I’m okay. I’m just nauseated.” She crawled over to her sleeping bag and lay down. “And dizzy.” Her auburn hair fell over her face and she didn’t even bother to wipe it away.
Aria leaned over her, pressed her fingers to her carotid artery.
“I’m so tired,” Sasha said.
“You were talking in your sleep,” Aria said, glancing at Jenny. “Making funny noises, too.”
“I heard geese,” Jenny said, not sure why.
“Maybe you heard Sasha hyperventilating.”
“I’m fine,” Sasha said. “I just have a headache.”
“Let’s get some fluids in you.” Jenny pulled on her jacket. She unzipped the tent and climbed out. The wind gusted against the vestibule as she took out the camp stove. She wedged it into the snow and lit it, then scooted out of the vestibule to fill the coffeepot with snow for tea.
The tent door unzipped, and Aria stuck her head out. “Hey. So, in my professional medical opinion, I think Sasha is coming down with acute mountain sickness. Her heartbeat is fast, and she’s not breathing well.”
Jenny set the pot on to boil. “How are you doing?”
Aria made a face. “I packed my ankle and I think the swelling is going down, but it still hurts. It might be broken.”
“Oh no.” Wow. Where had she been? “I slept through all that?”
“You were pretty out of it. I was worried—we’ve been in the tent for a good fourteen, maybe eighteen hours.”
She blinked at her.
Sat back, the chill from the vestibule finding her bones.
Eighteen hours. And no one had found them yet. She let that sit for a second.
The avalanche beacon hadn’t worked. Maybe the signal was blocked by the mountains. Or maybe they were just too far away for anyone to find them.
And perhaps because he’d already wandered around in her dreams, Orion’s tirade before their climb flooded back to her.
“You think anyone is going to climb down and get you, even if you survive that fall? Your guide might . . . if he can find you. But you’ll probably freeze to death first.”
Oh. She swallowed again, and the lard filled the back of her throat.
She had to go for help.
She tried to keep her hands from shaking as she dug out the tea bags. While she was at it, she checked their food cache.
A bag of nuts, dried fruit, a couple MRE packets, tea, and four energy bars. She had a protein bar in her bag, some electrolyte mix, and another MRE.
The water began to boil and she took it off. Set in the tea bags to steep, turned off the stove, and climbed back into the tent.
Sasha lay with her eyes closed.
“Sash?”
She moaned.
What had she done? Dragging Sasha out of her safe, ordered life onto a mountain that could kill her. And Aria, her best friend. She was a world-renowned pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon, and Jenny had convinced her to give up a month of her life.
Maybe her entire life.
All because she believed that . . . what? That somehow climbing a mountain might make them stronger?
She couldn’t breathe.
“See if you can get some tea into Sash.” Jenny grabbed her parka and headed back outside.
The wind against the tent’s vestibule turned into a jackhammer, so loud she wanted to press her hands over her ears. But she zipped up her parka, pulled on her mittens, her goggles, and her face mask. Laced up her boots, minus her gaiters. She just needed air, something to keep at bay the scream that threatened to break free. But she took the time to attach her crampons and grab her axe.
Then she unzipped the vestibule and stepped out into the white.
The wind gave the blizzard a false bravado. It scraped off the layers of snow, gusted them into a maelstrom of icy brutality, but beyond that, the sky seemed to be clearing, at least enough for her to get her bearings.
Or not, because nothing looked familiar. She planted her axe and looked up, gaging the distance they might have fallen. She couldn’t see the top from her position and hiked out beyond the serac to get a better angle.
The ragged spire of Denali’s peak rose and disappeared into the clouds, but the angle . . .
She drew in a breath. No . . .
She turned, trying to make out the peaks in the distance through the haze.
The gray spire that looked like a ragged granite tooth might be Mount Huntington. And the flatter humpback next to it . . . Mount Hunter.
Her legs gave out under her, and she sat, hard, her heart a fist slamming into her chest.
She closed her eyes, trying to get a handle on her breathing.
No . . . no.
How could they have fallen northeast—off the backside of the mountain, down the lethal glacier fields of Harper’s icefall?
Her thoughts channeled back to that terrible moment when Kit had vanished.
Except, maybe Kit hadn’t been the one who’d fallen. Maybe the top layer of Harper Glacier on the backside of Denali’s Pass had given way, loosening the footing on the pass.
From her best guess, they’d fallen into the coulee between the north and south peaks and were stuck at nineteen thousand feet.
No wonder Sasha couldn’t breathe. At nineteen thousand feet, they’d all develop AMS, and maybe worse if she didn’t get them down.
And it was up to her. Because while they had a chance of being found on Denali’s West Buttress, they hadn’t a hope of being discovered on Harper Glacier.
“I’ll find you.”
Orion’s voice from her stupid dream. It razed under her skin and slid into her brittle bones.
Right.
She drew up her knees, put her head onto them, and for the first time wished his words might come true.
He didn’t like the look of the mountain. Orion stood in the snow at seven thousand two hundred and stared up at the hazy clouds that stirred snow off the face.
Cold. Unforgiving. Brutal.
And somewhere up there, a group of climbers could be freezing to death.
Larke had flown them to the 7,200-foot Base Camp, fighting the wind as she landed on the snowy runway. Orion was never able to shrug off the deep sense of awe that always found his bones whenever he landed on the wide glacial ice pack that sat in a gully between the imposing Alaskan Range. Along the runway, twenty or more tents of every color grouped in huddles of expedition teams. To protect them from the prevailing winds, climbers had cut out ice blocks like igloos to create castle walls. It reminded him of the small Afghani villages that created their own base camps in the Kunar mountains.
No, he’d never forget those.
“We need to get up there,” he said now, to no one, to everyone. To anyone.
God.
Because maybe Ham was right. God had something more for him, and today it might be pulling three women off the mountain.
One of them he couldn’t seem to forget—especially now that he knew she was in trouble.
What was it about Jenny that he couldn’t get her out of his mind?
“Bringing back memories?”
The question from Ham rocked Orion for a moment, and he looked over at him.
Ham had come out of the Base Camp Quonset to join him and Jake as they loaded up their sleds with gear. Just in case Clancy Hermon, the private chopper pilot tasked with rescues off the mountain, came back with bad news.
Orion wasn’t sitting around to wait for the grim news of Jenny’s death.
Which was exactly how he felt when he’d heard about the ambush of the SEAL team so many years ago. With every tick of the clock, people could be dying.
So, the answer to Ham’s questions was apparently yes . The entire operation—gearing up to fly up the mountain to then trek out to find the lost team—dragged up plenty of memories.
“Except I’m eating snow, not dirt. And, hopefully we won’t have anyone shooting at us.” He glanced at Ham, and meant it as a joke, but it came out flat and not funny at all and Ham’s mouth flattened. He nodded.
None of them were in a joking mood. Not after being briefed at the Talkeetna Ranger station.
Not one, but two teams were missing. And yes, they were both Kit’s teams—one of them the male team. The other, Jenny’s team.
Apparently, the women had taken his advice and not roped up with the men. Which saved them from careening off the Autobahn, the slope just below the pass that led back down to High Camp, when an avalanche hit the fixed rope and ripped the team from the mountain.
The entire group of men, plus their assistant guide, a seasoned climber named Boyd, had fallen and were now lost on the mountain. Only Kit had made it back, arresting herself as she slid down blue ice on the wall back to High Camp at seventeen. She’d made it to High Camp seven hours after her fall, frostbitten and traumatized.
A ranger team had been dispatched to find the men.
No one knew where the women might be. According to the ranger, last time Kit had seen them, they’d been helping Sasha get to the fixed ropes. Orion dearly wanted to know why Kit hadn’t been roped in with them—a question he would ask her the minute he caught up with her. But she’d opted to stay on the mountain and help with the search, and he could give her points for that.
“We’d like to do a flyover—they could be stuck on the Football Field, just above the pass, but the winds are too strong to get a chopper up there,” Clancy said when they met for a powwow shortly after they arrived, lugging their gear—freshly repacked from Mount Huntington.
In fact, back at Orion’s house, Ham had thrown the steaks on the grill while Orion and Jake checked the climbing gear, packed fresh clothing and sleeping bags, and added more rations. With the sun still high, they headed back to town.
Now, around midnight, a blood-red glow lit the gully that housed Base Camp, the sun shadowed by the High One. Higher up, a cloud blanketed the mountain.
“Can you get us to Basin Camp?” Ham had asked Clancy.
Clancy, a lean man with short dark hair, tall and all business, had stared at the mountain and given Ham a dark look.
That’s when Orion stalked out, commandeered a park-issued sled, and began to pack his gear.
He’d climbed three thousand feet in a day. More, even. He could be at Basin Camp in twenty-four hours.
“They are freezing to death up there,” he said now to Ham.
Ham wore dark, ultraviolet glasses as he stared up on the mountain.
Then, abruptly, he went back into the Quonset.
“He has that look,” Jake said, standing up from where he’d been fixing his snowshoes to his pack. “We had a twelve-year-old girl go missing this winter at a ski hill in northern Minnesota, and he refused to give up long after the ski patrol had quit. Finally found her off trail by a mile. She’d found shelter at an unused rental house. He’d skied her trail and followed her into the woods.”
Orion glanced at Jake. “You do that a lot? Look for lost kids?”
“Usually it’s someone who has gone missing, yes. Too many of them are kids.”
“And how often do you find them?”
“Depends on how soon we get involved.” Jake wore his wool cap and, like Orion, had made the mistake of shaving. He ducked his chin into his jacket farther as a gust of wind rolled down the gully and rippled the walls of the nearby tents. “I hate the ones with the kids, though.” He shook his head and looked away.
Orion didn’t have time to follow his comment because Ham emerged.
“Let’s go.”
Orion frowned but shouldered his pack and pulled the sled over to the chopper where Ham waited.
“I told him we didn’t need to be babied. Just get us near the drop site and we’re good to go,” Ham said.
Orion raised an eyebrow but okay, yeah.
He and Ham lifted the sled and shoved it into the belly of the chopper, a Eurocopter AS-350 B3. A little lighter than the Chinooks and Paves Orion was used to flying in, but at least it was a ride. He climbed into the back seat, and Jake joined him.
Ham took the front.
Clancy climbed in, wearing his snow jacket, a baseball hat, and a grim set to his mouth. “We have a tightening window, and this might not be pretty, but I’ll get you up there.”
He strapped in, and Orion looked out the window as the rotors started to spin. In a moment, they lifted off, the world dropping away.
For a second he was flying over the snowy Kunar Valley, the muddy Kunar River flowing through the barren fields, sometimes populated with goat herds.
That others might live. The PJ mantra filtered through his brain. The rumble of the machine, the roar against the wind as it slipped through the valley, ascending, it all stirred up—
They stood in the cool morning of the FOB, right outside the cinder-block hospital. In the back of the building was the TOC—Tactical Operations Center.
He was still buzzing from his late night stargazing with Jacie. Walking her home, winding his fingers through hers. The smell of her as he stopped outside her Quonset.
With everything inside him, he’d wanted to kiss her. Let his gaze roam her face, drop to her lips. “I’ll find you when I get back.”
He wanted to weave his fingers through her short, blonde bob.
“What if I’m gone?”
For some reason, her question hit him squarely in the chest. He swallowed, the strangest rush of panic filling his throat. “Then I’ll still find you.”
He spoke his words softly, with more commitment and husky desire in them than he wanted her to know, but they lingered in the night, the stars overhead blinking as if in surprise.
“What, should I send up smoke signals?” Her voice quavered a little.
He touched her face then. “Whatever it takes, I’ll find you, Jacie.”
“I’ll find you . ” The last thing he’d said to her before he took off, before his life exploded.
And just like she’d suggested, she wasn’t around when he returned.
Well, he hadn’t actually returned, but she’d certainly taken a hike out of his life.
Her absence had hit him in the gut. Clearly he hadn’t thought about the fact that someday their wartime friendship might end. She’d burrowed into his life so fast it felt like she always belonged there, lodged inside. Maybe because she listened, acted like she cared about him. Cared about his life in Alaska, or even his endless list of useless facts.
“I’ll have to visit sometime. I’d like to meet your father.”
He watched now as the mountain rose before him.
“He just . . . slid off the mountain.”
Their conversation now felt painfully prophetic. The thought of her huddled against the wind, injured, maybe even becoming hypothermic put a fist in his gut.
Maybe he’d given away his heart too quickly to a woman who’d made him no promises. But he’d definitely given it away.
I’ll find you, Jenny.
The wind buffeted the chopper, bouncing as snow gusted off the peaks. Snow dusted the gray-blue granite spires that rose around them, the nose of the chopper forcing its way higher. Mount Frances seemed so close he could reach out and touch it, and the surface of the main Kahiltna Glacier was so smooth, it resembled a thick layer of frosting he’d like to drag a finger through.
Orion’s stomach dropped as Clancy used the high wall of Motorcycle Hill to protect them as they rose to eleven thousand.
“Hang on!” The wind off West Buttress’s plateau nearly sent them spiraling back into a snowy wall, but Clancy fought it and they cleared Windy Corner.
Orion looked down upon the creamy snow, a pristine, lethal landscape that hid crevasses and fissures in the ice.
Suddenly, Basin Camp appeared. The most populated site on the mountain. He spotted a clutter of tents, rippling and waving in the winds, some protected by a wall of ice blocks. Others simply staked down.
They sneaked in just below a ring of clouds. Orion located the large orange tent inhabited by the NPS rangers protected in a wide, snow-berthed area. Beyond Basin Camp, the Headwall rose two thousand feet to an icy ridge that led them to High Camp.
A climber would be crazy to attempt the Headwall in this wind, but for a second, he found himself wondering.
If they started now, by midnight they’d be at High Camp.
Or, of course, flung from the mountain by the ruthless wind.
Orion held his breath as Clancy hovered over the snowpack, not eager to land in the soft, blowing snow. “Get out!”
Ham opened his door and tossed his pack out, some ten feet down. It landed in the snow, half-buried.
This would be fun.
Orion opened the door, and he and Jake pushed the sled out onto the snow. It sank into frosting. His pack followed, and then he pushed himself onto the skid, closed the door, and leapt.
The snow was deep, soft, and an easy landing. He worked up a sweat climbing out, however, found his pack, and by the time he’d strapped on his skis, Ham was skiing up with the sled.
The chopper had peeled off, leaving them on the plateau. But the sound of it shook the mountain and Orion listened for avalanches.
Nothing boomed in the distance.
Ham stood in the snow, watching the chopper vanish beyond the peak.
Then, all went quiet, save for the train rumble of the wind.
Jake came up. Looked toward the camp, then the peak. Shivered. “I’m already cold.”
Orion stared at the gusts of snow, the foreboding peak, and wished the mountain would stop calling him.
There was crazy, and then there was crazy.
Jake had always been game for living on the edge, soaring above the jagged peaks, staring down at life from above, and fighting fate to survive. It was how he’d learned to live with himself. Seeking the adrenaline. Living above the clutter of his life, his mistakes. His wounds.
Tempting fate, really.
But even he could recognize crazy .
“How high is this thing?” He shouted the question into the wind, but it carried his voice away into the rest of the blowing snow. The temperature had dropped into the negative thirties, his fingers were starting to numb, and, save for the exertion of climbing up a fifty-degree pitched ice wall, he might be shivering so hard his teeth could rattle out of his head.
Staring up at the mountain from the safety of Basin Camp, Jake put their chances of reaching High Camp in the negative. The snow was drifting off the ridge of the West Buttress, down along the icy Headwall, and through the plateau that made up Basin Camp—the sky bullet gray, clouds obscuring the peak.
“Two thousand feet to the next camp!” Orion yelled. So apparently Orion, in the lead, had heard him, despite the howl of the wind and Orion’s being some thirty feet above him. And that was only because the wind had died enough, the skies clearing enough for them to see each other.
Orion and Ham had huddled inside the orange FOB tent at Basin Camp for over an hour, trying to get a fix on what had happened to the climbers.
It wasn’t hard to figure out.
Given the booms still sounding in the distance, the way the mountain seemed to tremble, the two teams had been swept away in a massive avalanche that dislodged the snowcap on either side of Denali Pass.
The searchers needed a chopper, something like a Pave to search the backside of the mountain. But no one was going any higher with these winds, which meant they’d have to wait.
Or go it on foot.
That’s where the crazy came in.
Ham and Orion had emerged from the tent, Orion’s expression set. Jake didn’t know the guy well, but Ham said he’d been a Pararescue Jumper. Which meant he charged into battle, tracers flying, to save the already injured.
He wasn’t going to be stopped by a little wind.
Besides, Jake had seen Orion’s skills on Mount Huntington. If anyone knew his way around snow and ice, it was Orion Starr.
Ham, too, looked annoyed enough to take on crazy , but then again Ham took rescues personally. That’s what happened when you lost the woman you loved during a rescue op. And he’d had a kid sister who’d been seriously injured when he was serving overseas. It had taken him ten agonizing days to get to her.
Ham and Orion had rescue in their DNA.
Jake possessed enough crazy to want to follow them.
Except, well, he really did understand their grim expressions. He wasn’t the only one who couldn’t get the idea out of his head that three women they knew could be freezing to death on the mountain.
Which was why he’d helped unload the sled, divided the gear between them, and clipped his ascender onto the fixed rope.
“We’re going up to High Camp,” Orion said, just as Jake expected, as they started their hike to the Headwall. “I have the GPS. I’ve been up the mountain a dozen times. Stay on my tail.”
So yes, it was crazy, but he was all in. Because try as he might, he couldn’t get Aria out of his head. Couldn’t peel from his memory the sound of her laughter as he spun her on the packed-earth dance floor under the midnight sun. Maybe it was the long solitude of sitting in their snowy ice hotel on Mount Huntington, trying to think of anything but his next Spam recipe, but he’d let their short conversation play out in his memory way too much.
“So, you’re off to climb the mountain?” He gestured at Denali, off in the distance.
He’d seen her from a distance and had chased her red Solo cup down when the wind took it off a nearby table. He’d returned it to her with a “You dropped this.”
She’d smiled at him, and the first thing he noticed was her dark brown eyes, the color of rich black coffee, something stirring in them. Curiosity, maybe.
It only sparked in him the same.
“That little bump?” She winked and lifted her shoulder. “No, we really just showed up for the ribs.” She finished wiping her fingers with a wet wipe, wadded the wipe up, picked up the basket, and threw it away. “Totally worth the six-hour flight, two-hour drive, and five bucks.”
“Let’s not forget the music.” The band was playing a new song, although he couldn’t place it.
“Love me some Tim McGraw.”
He didn’t know if she might be telling the truth, but just in case—“Wanna dance?”
He knew it was bold—he didn’t even know her. But he lived by the motto of Live now, or you might miss it , so he gave her his best Jake Silver smile and held out his hand.
She took it. “Why not?”
She fit so easily, so smoothly into his arms, sliding into his embrace like she knew him, and they fell into step as if they’d been dancing together all his life.
It sort of rocked him back and he tripped. Which caused her to step on his foot.
She laughed. “Should I lead?”
“I got this,” he said, not sure why she rattled him. He knew how to dance. Had learned from his cousins down in Nashville.
Apparently, women liked to dance.
And he liked the women in his life to be happy—all five of his sisters, his mother, and even his sweet grandma Lou. So, yeah, he’d learned to dance.
He dipped her at the end of the song, and she hung onto his neck as he brought her back up.
“You’re a charmer, aren’t you, Cowboy?” she said, letting him go. Her brown hair had fallen out of her bun, and he resisted the urge to tuck it back behind her ear as the music changed. “What’s your name?”
“Jake. Silver. You?”
“Aria Sinclair.”
The music slowed, and he raised an eyebrow, held out his hands.
She grinned. “I see you like to live dangerously, huh, Cowboy Jake?”
He wanted to frown at that, but in truth, yes, maybe he did.
Unfortunately, because of it, people around him tended to get hurt, caught in the line of fire, or lost.
Which was why he kept things short term, without commitment. Fun.
And this was fun.
They fell into the slower song, something easier to talk through.
We said goodbye on a night like this
Stars shining down, I was waitin’ for a kiss
“Are you climbing Denali also?” she asked.
“Nope. Mount Huntington. It’s only a twelver, but highly technical, so my boss thinks it would be good practice.”
“For what?”
“He runs a private search-and-rescue group—mostly international, but we do all sorts of things, so he wants us to be prepared.” He leaned closer to her. “Actually, we’re on a recruiting trip. He’s trying to talk one of his old military buddies into joining us.”
“Military, huh? Did you serve?”
And this was where it got tricky. Because although he wanted to pull out his SEAL creds, invariably it was followed by questions. Half answers. Or, if he got truthful, probably the night would end right here, right now.
He liked her enough to want another dance, so, “Yeah, I was in the Navy. Got out a year ago and started working for Ham.”
Her eyebrow raised then. “Ham? You don’t mean Hamilton Jones, do you?” She glanced over his shoulder. “Wow, that’s a small world.”
He frowned.
“We train at GoSports fitness. I think he owns it, right? I wondered why he looked so familiar—I’ve seen his picture. He did an ad during last year’s Super Bowl with Adam Thielen, a wide receiver with the Vikings.”
Huh. Yes, small world. “Yeah. They’re good friends. I’m a GoSports coach. Mostly swimming, scuba diving, and parasailing.”
“Are you from Minnesota?”
He nodded. “You?”
“Minnesota Viking, to the core.”
He had a mental picture of her wearing purple, shouting “ skol! ”
“What do you do now?”
“I’m a doctor. So is Jenny, although she has a doctorate in psychology. Sasha is our resident entrepreneur. Runs an essential oils and soap company. Her husband, Lucas, works with me.”
“So what brought you to the mountain?”
He twirled her out, the chorus thrumming inside him.
Turn around, listen to your heart
I need you so much, don’t tear me apart
Even if I knew you’d be the one that got away
I’d still go back and get you.
She came back into his arms. The sun was behind him, shining in her eyes, and touched her face with a tan. “You know—work hard, play hard, right? Jenny and I climb a mountain every year just because we can. It makes us feel alive.” Then she grinned at him.
And in that moment, he felt alive, something stirring inside him, loosening.
Alive.
He’d sort of forgotten what that felt like.
Unfortunately, that was when she glanced past him and frowned. “Uh-oh.”
He followed her look and spied Orion standing at a table, dressing down a group of climbers. The music drowned out his words, so Jake didn’t catch it, but it clearly had Aria’s blonde friend upset. She wore an expression Jake might call horror.
Maybe Orion was spinning one of his catastrophic tales of demise on the mountain. He did that—told stories of his father’s career as a park ranger on the mountain. Apparently Orion had worked as a mountain rescue volunteer for a couple years before he joined the Air Force.
Maybe Orion read the woman, because he walked over to her and said something as the song ended.
“I’d better go find out what’s going on,” Aria said.
Then she looked up at him, smiled, and left her memory lodged in his heart because she gave him a peck on the cheek. “Try to stay alive, Jake Silver.”
“Try to stay alive.”
The words thrummed inside him like a heartbeat as he kicked his crampon into the mountain. The snow was wind-bitten, a crust layering the top, and he broke through, using his ice axe to grip with one hand, the fixed rope sliding through the other.
Orion had nearly reached the top of the eight-hundred-foot Headwall and was waiting for them before they continued up the ridge. The ridge with snow casting off the top, causing a near whiteout. The ridge that dropped a thousand feet on either side.
Below him, Ham was nearly a polar bear with the snow caking his face guard, hat, and hood. Jake searched for a foothold in the snow—but the wind had erased Orion’s steps.
He kicked in another step, aware of his breathing. And the slightest hint of nausea. He needed food.
Sleep.
Heat.
And most of all, maybe just enough crazy luck to not get blown off the mountain.
Stay alive, Jake Silver.