CHAPTER SIX
T HEY HAD TO GET DOWN the mountain.
Today.
While the sun shone, the wind died, and most importantly . . . before Sasha got any worse.
“C’mon, Sasha. Time to get up,” Jenny said. “We need to get your boots on.”
Sasha leaned up in her sleeping bag, grimacing as Aria worked her foot into her boot. After eight more hours in the tent, the storm had finally cleared enough to leave blue skies, a slight wisping of snow, and the reality that no one was coming for them.
Or, if they were, they’d have to rescue them from lower heights. No chopper was going to be able to pluck them off the mountain at nineteen thousand.
More critical, they had to get Sasha down to lower elevation to slow down her advance toward pulmonary edema. Already she was coughing hard, her bones were aching, and she was unable to keep food down. Jenny feared waiting any longer for help would bring them to a point of no return.
The wind buffeted the tent as Jenny stuffed the bags into a compression sack, then into the packs just outside the door. She’d already secured the stove, the food bag, and the rest of their gear, repacking it into mostly her pack.
Aria seemed to think she could walk on her own swollen ankle, but she could move it so maybe it wasn’t broken.
Still, she let out a pained gasp as she pulled on her boot.
Leaned over, blowing out breaths.
Jenny crouched at the edge of the tent, looking at Sasha and Aria. They both seemed exhausted, their eyes edged with pain and not a little fear. Sasha had to be weak, dehydrated, and dizzy, so she planned on short roping her and Aria together.
She’d go out ahead, breaking trail. That way, if they fell, well, maybe she could slow their fall before catastrophe happened.
Not only did they have to cross the glacier, but the snow was thick and slick, the slope ripe for an avalanche. But, once they traversed the glacier, they could camp at Parker Pass and tackle Karstens Ridge tomorrow.
She didn’t want to think about the technical work of Karstens Ridge, the steepness, the fact that she’d need to lower Sasha—and probably Aria—down in pitches.
Breathe.
They just had to get low enough for Sasha’s body to stop working against her. Then maybe Jenny could go for help.
“Listen, we take it slow going down Harper Glacier. We need to traverse carefully, as it’s riddled with crevasses and icefalls, and we need to watch out for snow bridges—flimsy arches over crevasses that are made by the wind. But set your feet, use your ice axe, and follow my trail.”
Please, please let her not be making the biggest mistake of her life.
Okay, another biggest mistake of her life.
It seemed she couldn’t escape threatening the lives of people she loved.
She helped Sasha out of the tent, then clipped her with a butterfly knot onto the line in the middle. Aria attached her figure eight onto the end of the line.
Meanwhile, Jenny took down the tent and stuffed it into her pack. Aria carried a lighter pack, as did Sasha. She tied into the line at the front, the rope coiled around her.
The sky had cleared to a light, wispy blue, the temperature in the minus twenties, but nothing of danger settled in the air.
Last night, she’d talked through their descent with Aria and Sasha.
She’d plotted their line down the glacier, a reverse from the ascent she’d planned for months. She knew the Muldrow Glacier route. At least on paper.
Once, she’d watched a video of someone skiing down Denali, through the West Buttress route. It had turned her hands clammy, her stomach twisting. Now, as she stared down the mountain, the rise of the Alaskan Range towering around her, her stomach twisted again.
Please, God, don’t let us fall.
Maybe she should have been praying a little more over the past two days, but frankly, she wasn’t sure God was even listening to her anymore.
Maybe she’d do better on her own, instead of reminding him of her vast mistakes.
Why she didn’t really deserve help. Again.
Her crampons kicked into the snow, windblown and stiff from three days of assault. Tiny dribbles of snow trickled down the slope.
The wind hummed in her ears, skimmed up snow, but it wasn’t so much as to knock her over. She looked back and spotted Aria and Sasha working their way behind her, traversing the hill, eight feet of rope separating them.
Aria leaned hard on her axe, but she seemed to be moving okay.
Maybe Jenny should be behind them, in case they fell, but so far Sasha was muscling through. And Jenny wasn’t sure she could trust them to spot a crevasse.
Pressing the handle of her axe into the snow, she tested each step before her foot crunched down. Riddled with seracs and icefalls, the field hid a thousand endless crevasses. Her thighs burned as she kicked into each step. She refused to look down at the sheer drop of nearly a thousand feet into the frosted glacial field below.
She glanced back when they reached the pitch through the first icefall. They’d traversed the ridge, leaving behind their serac and the view of the Denali summit. Sinking down into the snow, she waited for Aria and Sasha to catch up, surveying the route.
As if God had emptied his ice-cube tray onto the hillside, the route was riddled with enormous snow-covered boulders, ridges, gigantic seracs, and drifts.
Sasha sank down beside her, drew up her knees, and leaned back with the weight of her pack.
“How are you?”
“I’m not going to tell you,” she said.
Jenny gave her a smile, reached out and touched her mitten. We’re stronger than we think we are. She wanted to say the words but held them back as Aria came up.
“The good news is that I’m so cold, I can’t feel my ankle to know if it hurts.” She didn’t sit down. “But I vote that next year, instead of climbing a mountain, we go to Cancun. That feels like something Kia would have wanted me to do.”
Jenny had pulled out her water bottle and now she nearly spit out the water. “Yeah. Or Hawaii. There’s always Diamond Head.”
“You know what’s wrong with our epic trips?” Sasha said.
Jenny gave her the bottle, but she passed it on to Aria.
“There are no men,” Sasha said. “I vote next time we bring men to carry the heavy things.”
Jenny stared at her. “That’s the point. We don’t need men to carry heavy things.”
“Not need ,” Aria said. “Want. I agree with Sash. I want a man to carry heavy things.”
“Oh my—sexist much?”
“Mmmhmm,” Aria said, wiping her mouth. “What can I say? I like strong men.”
“Like that guy you were dancing with in Copper Mountain?” Sasha asked, now accepting the water.
“Yeah, like Jake.” Aria was grinning then. “I wouldn’t be sad if he showed up right now and said, ‘Aria, let me carry your pack. No—Aria, let me carry you down the mountain.’” She turned to look at the icefall. “Yep. Men. I vote yes to men.”
Jenny shook her head. But okay, she wasn’t horrified by the idea. Maybe by the idea of one man showing up. “When we were in Afghanistan, Orion told me that he’d find me.”
“What?” Sasha handed her the bottle back. “I thought you barely knew him.”
“If you call barely calling out for him in her sleep,” Aria said.
“I did not—”
“Please. I was your roommate. I know your sounds.”
“It wasn’t anything serious. We never even kissed.” Jenny capped the bottle and put it back into her pack. “Although, I sometimes dream that we did.”
“Maybe he’s looking for you right now,” Sasha said.
“How could he be? If I remember, he was going to climb Mount Huntington.” She gestured to the razor-sharp peak below them. “Nope, if we want to get off this mountain, we have to do it by ourselves, ladies.”
She forced herself to her feet, grunting with the weight of her pack.
“You shouldn’t have lightened ours,” Aria said.
“I’m fine. Really. Let’s get past this icefall and have some lunch.”
“Or supper?” Aria said.
“Who knows?” Jenny said as she considered the terrain below her. Like pie meringue. Creamy, ridged, and beautiful, especially with the sky still bright and blue, the tiniest edging of red along the horizon.
“Let’s rope up farther apart,” she said to Sasha and moved her butterfly knot, clipping her thirty feet from Aria. “Stay alert.”
Jenny had already worked up a sweat by the time she hit the ice field. She worked her way through thick snow, testing her route, moving around buttresses as big as three-story buildings, through passes the width of a bus, and around lumps and ridges in the snow. The sky had turned blood red by the time they landed on the next smooth ridge of glacier.
So, it might take them longer than she’d hoped to get to their camping spot for tonight. But so far, no one had fallen.
“Let’s heat up some soup,” she said.
“I need to get warm,” Aria said. “And probably Sasha does too.”
Jenny nodded. The wind wasn’t so gusty that they couldn’t set up the tent, so she pulled it up and, as Aria held the wickets, erected it in moments. She didn’t bother staking it down—they wouldn’t be using it long.
Pulling out the stove, she handed it to Aria along with the water bottle. “Add some of the water to the snow to get it melting.” She grabbed the pot and filled it with water. “I’ll find the soup.”
Aria had taken off her crampons, but moved fully clothed into the tent, carrying the stove with her. Sasha did the same.
Jenny walked over to get a better view of the next icefall. She could almost see the path—a gully that wound around boulders and seracs all the way down to the bottom of the glacier. Then they could camp at the base of Browne Tower before tackling Karstens Ridge tomorrow.
They just might make it.
A scream erupted behind her and she jerked, fearing an avalanche.
She turned—
The tent was in flames. Caught by the wind, the entire thing flashed over in a whoosh.
“Aria!” She leaped toward the tent.
Aria had already fled, dragging Sasha with her. They scrambled back in the snow, Sasha kicking snow onto the inferno, but the thing was gone in a second, the nylon coughing up black.
Jenny fell beside Aria, still pulling her away.
Sasha pressed her hand over her mouth. “It’s my fault. I accidentally kicked the stove.”
“It fell against the side of the tent—”
“Why did you light it inside the tent! That’s what the vestibule is for—” Jenny slapped her hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry. I’m—I’m really sorry.”
Sasha grabbed her hands. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—I was just going to lay down.”
“I was cold,” Aria said, shaking. “I know better . . .”
No tent. The stove blackened, possibly unusable. Jenny fisted her hands into their parkas, drew them close, mostly to stop her shaking.
Think. Just— “Okay, okay. We’re okay. We’ll just . . . we’ll just build a snow cave.” She met their eyes. “Here’s the good news. We still have our shovel. And our packs. And . . .”
“If the stove is toast, we can’t melt snow,” Sasha said. “No tea. No soup . . .”
“We have the lighter,” Aria said and pulled it out from her pocket. Gave Jenny such a desperate look Jenny couldn’t help but nod.
“We have the lighter,” Jenny said.
“And each other,” Sasha said.
“Yeah. Who needs men?” Aria gave a wan smile.
Sasha’s eyes teared up.
Jenny nodded, hating the joke, but needing it. “Yeah, who needs men?”
It was a summit kind of day. The kind of day where the air felt buoyant, crisp, and light, the sunshine hot, the snow sturdy.
Except the rising sun could heat the snowpack that hung over the High Camp like a roof, let loose, and take out climbers in a lethal run of snow and ice.
“Let’s get moving.”
Jake was finishing off a bowl of oatmeal, boiled eggs, and a muffin that had turned to crumbs in his pack. He just glanced up at Orion, then back at his meal. He’d already downed a cup of coffee, maybe two.
“Don’t tell me you’re missing Spam.”
“I’m missing my bed,” Jake growled.
Ham, too, was wolfing down breakfast, lines etched into his windburned face.
Okay, yes, Orion could feel every bone in his body after their climbing stint yesterday and their scant sleep. He probably needed something more fortifying than a power bar if he expected to have enough energy to climb the two thousand feet to Denali Pass. But he felt like he might be able to scale the mountain on adrenaline alone.
Especially after his sit-down with Kit. He and his team had climbed the Headwall in record time. It was the narrow ridge along West Buttress that had slowed them down, the wind turning personal and nasty as it tried to knock them off the mountain. They scrabbled over the icy rocks and finally reached High Camp as the sun was faux-setting on the mountain, pouring blood red into the valley.
While Ham and Jake set up the tent, digging in against the high winds, Orion had tracked down the guide.
She sat alone in her tent, her frostbitten fingers bandaged, heating up soup. He’d knocked, climbed in, and got the lowdown, in quiet, somber tones.
Kit knew, too well, what it felt like to lose someone she cared about on the mountain.
And even if Jenny Calhoun wasn’t Jacie, he was still worried.
Aw, who was he kidding? He was going a little crazy with the idea that Jacie—and Orion knew mostly, definitely it was Jacie—might be frozen at the bottom of Peters Glacier.
Kit poured him a sierra cup of soup. He practically inhaled it, not realizing how famished he’d been. “Boyd roped up with the guys—one of their team got AMS and we sent him down the mountain with another team.”
“Why weren’t you roped up with the girls’ team?” He tried to keep his voice easy, but her head came up and her eyes sparked.
“Because Sasha was getting AMS and Aria insisted on linking arms with her to help her down the mountain. It’s a great way to get everyone killed.”
And he got it. Her husband had been helping one of their clients when he vanished right off the mountain.
“There isn’t enough time to arrest a fall when you’re walking that close,” she said softly, looking away. A beat pulsed between them and she finally looked up. “We were at the fixed ropes at the pass when the mountain just . . . it just shook . A wind came out of the south and tore off the snowpack at the top.”
He remembered that wind too well. Had wondered how it would hit Denali. “Maybe it was a troposphere wind. It nearly knocked us off Huntington, too.”
“I dropped about a hundred feet before I stopped myself. I was still hooked to the fixed line at the top, which might have saved my life because it kept me from careening off the mountain. But I’d lost my bearings and it took me hours to get back to High Camp. That’s when I realized the guys were missing. They must have been lower down, on the fixed rope, and were taken away with the avalanche.” She finished her soup and put her bowl down, filling it with hot water and a cocoa packet. “We still haven’t found them.”
“What about the women?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they’re just stuck up on the pass. Without the fixed ropes, the pass is intimidating. But the wind has been too high for us to ascend.”
“Did they have gear?”
She gave him a look. “Of course. A tent, food, and I made sure they had belay and climbing equipment. Their leader, Jenny, seemed pretty capable.”
He hoped so.
She reached out and caught his parka as he got up to leave. “Find them.” Her eyes wore a haunted expression. “They can’t simply go missing on the mountain. It’s not . . .” She sighed. “Everyone needs an end to their story.”
He squeezed her hand and headed back to the tent. While Ham and Jake slept like the dead, he dreamed of Jenny huddled in her tent on Denali Pass, trying to stay warm.
“I’ll find you.”
He didn’t know why those words had lodged inside him, found a place right under his skin, but they buzzed him awake shortly after the sun peeled back the shadows over the peaks to the east. By the time Ham and Jake rose, he’d made breakfast, packed his gear, and was antsy to go.
The wind had cleared and with it the whiteout. High Camp was populated with a handful of groups waiting to bag the summit, and he wanted to push out before they got started. The last thing he wanted was to wait on a fixed line for a bunch of timid rookies to find their inner climber.
Kit was up, too, and on the radio, her black braids falling from her hat, her red hood pulled up.
He came over to her, and she gave him a sitrep. “A ranger spotted the guys an hour ago. They’re below us, clinging to a spur on West Buttress. We just sent down a ranger team, and I’m calling Clancy to see if he can fly in a basket.”
“How many survivors?”
Her mouth made a tight line. “I don’t know.”
He drew in a breath. “I need a radio. Probably two.”
“Yes. And by the way, all the women were wearing avalanche locaters.” She pulled out hers from her outside pocket. “I changed mine to receive, but . . .”
Maybe they were out of range.
“Hopefully they’re hunkered down in the Football Field above the pass,” he said as he retrieved two radios. He checked the batteries, then tucked one into his jacket. He gave Ham the other one.
Ham checked it. “We’re going to find them, Ry.”
Orion nodded and looked up the mountain. First, they’d have to climb up to Denali Pass and this time of day, the route was shadowed in dim sunlight. Worse, the pass grew steeper with each step. But Orion could trek it with his eyes closed.
No, the climb up wasn’t why his stomach was knotted, his chest tight. “Yeah, sure.”
Ham didn’t move. “Dude. I feel it in my gut. Every time I pray, it’s like God is saying he’ll help us find them.”
Orion looked at him. “And now you’re just ticking me off. God doesn’t make promises like that—and if he does that makes me even madder, so let’s just go, okay?”
Ham grabbed his shoulder as he made to push past him. “Ry. What’s going on?”
Orion stopped, blew out a breath. “I don’t know. Just . . . something about . . .”
“Jenny Calhoun?”
He looked at Ham. “No. Yes. Just . . . everything.”
Ham looked at him. “Wait—is this about your dad? The fact that no one found him?”
“They found him. Broken at the bottom of Peters Glacier. No . . . I just don’t want to hear about any of God’s promises, okay?”
But Ham’s gaze didn’t leave Orion.
“What?”
“I was thinking about your question about Jenny—if she looked familiar.”
Orion stared at him. “From two weeks ago?”
“Lots of thinking. Jenny. Calhoun. J. C.”
Orion’s breath caught. “Aw, I’m an idiot. I can’t believe—” He turned. “I knew it. I knew it.”
“She was a reporter, not a climber. And she looked different, right?”
He’d never forget those eyes. That smile.
“Maybe she didn’t recognize me. Maybe . . . do I look that much different?”
Ham lifted a shoulder. “Guess you didn’t make an impact.”
Orion stared at him.
Ham smiled.
“Let’s get up the mountain, find her, and then you can ask her.” Ham picked up his ice axe and headed toward Jake. He roped in behind Jake and left Orion to clip in ahead.
Didn’t make an impact?
Orion nearly sprinted up the Denali Pass, digging his feet in with relentless momentum, sweat beading his back. He looked back once, saw his footprints in the snow, Jake trudging behind him, the camp below. He couldn’t see West Buttress from here but hoped the rangers had found someone alive.
He refused to believe that thirty-six hours on the top of the mountain meant the worst.
“Keep moving,” Jake shouted, seeing him stop. “If I stop, I’ll never start again.”
Right. Orion kept moving up to the pass, where it turned rocky, and he waited as Jake and Ham caught up.
The shelf on the pass had given way, at least a little, because it revealed more rock than he remembered. But the snowpack on the Football Field, which led up to the final ridge climb, was crystalline white, unblemished.
His breath came hard while he tried not to let his disappointment bite at him.
“Do you see them?” Jake asked as he scrabbled up the rocky outcropping toward him.
He said nothing.
Ham joined them, and they stood a long time before Ham moved ahead of him. “Let’s keep going.”
The wind up here still buffeted him, burning his ears, but he couldn’t move. If they weren’t camped on the Football Field then . . .
He couldn’t take his gaze off the drop-off into Harper Glacier. Beyond, in the valley below, Mount Huntington and Mount Hunter rose like old friends to greet him. But between them lay the Muldrow Glacier.
The first ascent up Denali had been made across the glacier, then up Karstens Ridge, and finally Harper Glacier.
Some people still climbed the High One via the Muldrow Glacier route.
But not Kit. And not Jenny—she wouldn’t have the first clue how to descend the backside of Denali.
He couldn’t get Kit’s words out of his head. “Their leader, Jenny, seemed pretty capable.”
Orion was standing there, staring out into the ragged mountainscape, when Jake said, “What do you make of that?”
He pointed to a wisp of black smoke, rising, dissipating into the blue sky. As if someone had made a campfire. And for a second, Jacie was in his head, her voice quavering, as if unsure. What, should I send up smoke signals?
Yes. Yes, you should.
“We’re going down Harper Glacier,” Orion said.
Ham had come back, frowning. “What?”
Orion turned to him. “Listen, I don’t know why, but . . . I think they’re down there.”
“You think they fell off?” Jake said, his jaw tight.
“No. Maybe. I don’t know. But . . . they’re not here, so . . .” He looked at Ham, then Jake. “We’re going down the glacier.”
“Seriously.”
“And . . . we’re glissading down.”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Jake said, unhooking.
Orion turned to Ham. “It’s safer. Lower center of gravity. And—”
“Fun.” Ham grinned. Okay, he hadn’t expected that, but Orion wasn’t going to argue.
Ham unclipped too, and Orion wound up the line over his shoulder in a kiwi coil, then tacked it down with an overhand on a bight into his locking biner.
Glissading. Sliding down on his backside, the axe driven into the snow to slow him down, guide him.
It might be a little steep.
He walked over to the edge of the glacier and looked down. The Harper Glacier fell like a white river between the north and south peaks, gliding through Karstens Ridge and the Taylor Spur. At around twelve thousand feet, it cut between Karpe Ridge and Pioneer Ridge, spilled out into the Great Icefall, then cascaded to the lower icefall until it merged into Muldrow Glacier.
Nineteen thousand feet of blue ice, powder, ice chunks, and lethal crevasses.
He spied the final trickle of black smoke and pointed it out to Jake and Ham. “There’s our target.”
He estimated maybe three thousand feet down.
He sat on the icy slope and took off his crampons. Then he clipped them onto his pack.
“Remember, don’t dig in too much with your heels or you’ll launch yourself right over. Lean back into your axe.”
“Sheesh, Starr, you think we’d never seen snow before,” Jake said, sitting down beside him, crampons off.
“Yeah, well, maybe you’ve never slid on your backside down a mountain—”
Jake took off. He held his feet out, the snow shearing up in front of him, leaning back into his axe, riding it as he careened down the glacier.
Not too fast!
But Jake seemed to know his technique, and in a second, Ham also pushed off.
Which left Orion to catch up. He leaned back, letting gravity carry him. After nearly three days of wind, the snowpack was slick and icy and he fought to keep his heels dug in, his axe planted enough to keep him from careening down the mountain.
In front of him, he spotted Jake roll over, grab his axe, and slow himself down.
“You okay?” he asked as he skidded by him.
“Nearly supermanned!” Jake said, stopped now and looking over at Orion.
Okay, so the guy would be fine.
Ham had slowed too, the snow flying over his head.
Orion dug in, veering around a wide serac. He skimmed past that and slowed, suddenly spotting a worked trail.
He dug in and came to a stop at the trail.
Ham shot past him, then rolled and self-arrested.
“Is that a trail?” he shouted.
Jake sprayed him with an arc of snow as he stopped, also self-arresting. Orion was climbing to his feet as Jake said, “Hey, is that a depression under that serac?”
Under a serac? Who would be—
Except, yes. Orion followed Jake’s point and made out what looked like a camp under the shadow of the shelf-like serac.
Huh. He turned, scoping the mountain, trying to find the black smoke. It had vanished under the fall of the ice field.
But somewhere down there, Jacie was alive. He felt it in his gut, just like Ham said.
“No matter what it takes, I’ll find you, Jacie.”
Aria needed to stop letting her heart make decisions her body couldn’t deliver. Like buying a motorcycle, taking lessons, and then letting the sleek Honda Rebel 300 gather dust in her storage unit. Or finishing the online scuba diving course only to avoid taking her underwater test.
The only reason she actually made it onto a mountain was because of Jenny, really. Because Jenny didn’t give up. And because Aria had made herself promises.
But really, she blamed Kia for the impulse inside her that looked at a mountain and heard, “Climb me.”
Yeah. No. Next time the words Just Do It pulsed inside her, Aria was going to turn on Vertical Limit and remind herself just why freezing to death on a high peak might be a bad idea.
Mostly because, aside from dying, she really needed her fingers. All of them.
It was hard to operate on tiny hearts without fingers.
Now, she flexed her fingers inside her liners, inside her gloves, hoping the fingertips weren’t as badly frostbitten as they felt. Which was—not at all.
That had the surgeon inside her concerned, if not edging toward panic.
Numb fingers, numb toes, and in truth, a numb heart—frozen over with dread as she followed Sasha and Jenny through the icefall, pressing her axe into the snow with every step. They went before her, and she stepped directly into their footsteps, but Aria couldn’t help but notice the fissures in the ice, the blue-white glacial walls that fell thousands of feet. She took every step deliberately, waiting until Sasha finished her own deliberate steps across snow bridges and thick ridges, until Sasha had anchored in and waited for her to cross.
Just maybe, they wouldn’t die on the mountain.
Except, she’d burned down the tent. The black smudge they’d left in the snow a thousand feet up made her want to scream. It hadn’t been exactly her fault—Sasha had kicked the stove—but she knew better than to light it inside the tent.
Fingers. She’d just wanted to warm her fingers.
She’d wanted to suggest they stop for the day and dig in, right there, maybe figure out how to resurrect the stove. But probably it was toast, and besides, the doctor in her knew they had to get Sasha to a lower elevation. At least her friend had stopped throwing up.
“We’ll camp at the bottom of this icefall,” Jenny had said during their last huddle, right before they entered the chaos of ice debris the size of small buildings.
The wind whipped up into Aria’s face mask and crusted her goggles with sleet.
Cancun. Yes. She’d only been half kidding when she suggested it.
She may or may not have been kidding about the men showing up to carry the heavy things.
Yes, indeed, men like Jake. I wouldn’t be sad if he showed up right now.
Now that had been Kia talking. Frankly, it had been her inner Kia who’d even said yes to Jake’s invitation to dance in the first place.
Kia was always getting her into messes.
Except, for a moment, Aria had let herself enjoy the idea of dancing with a stranger, of seeing the curiosity in his eyes as she flirted—yes, flirted —with him.
Okay, that had been all Kia too, because Aria didn’t possess a flirting cell in her entire body.
“You’re a charmer, aren’t you, Cowboy?”
Oh brother.
In front of her, Sasha was trudging up a tiny rise. The late-afternoon sun crested down, bathing the mountain valley in deep pink, the sky blue, snow scurrying off the icy boulders around her.
I have to go where I feel most alive. Do the things that ignite my soul.
Good grief. Her sister had a way of climbing into her head at the most inopportune times. Yes, yes, of course. We all want to live wild and dangerously, Kia.
But there was danger, and then there was insanity . And then there was sitting on the sofa, under a blanket, watching the insanity on television.
Definitely Cancun next year.
A crack and boom and Aria stilled, her foot pressed into the snow. Except, it wasn’t a fissure under her boot that opened up, but in the distance, off Karstens Ridge, a glacier head cracked and spilled into the bowl of Muldrow Glacier below them. A poof of white billowed up.
“Careful!” Jenny yelled. “The snow’s melting!” She stood on top of a serac, probably to check on Aria’s progress.
Funny. Back home, it was Aria keeping an eye on Jenny. Making sure she rested, didn’t drive herself too hard, didn’t get in over her head with life, with work. Because, like her, Jenny didn’t have anyone else. Aria didn’t have to be a psychologist to figure out why she loved Jenny like a sister.
Like she’d loved Kia.
Aria patted her head, giving Jenny all-okay.
Please, let them be near the end of the icefall. Her legs burned, her feet were frozen, and she kept flexing her fingers.
And stay where, Aria? You burned up the tent.
Okay, enough of that. She pressed her axe into the snow, testing, then followed with a step, the soft crunch of snow. “I vote next time we bring men to carry the heavy things.”
So maybe that was a little bit sexist. A lot sexist.
Even if Jake decided to show up, she hadn’t a clue what she’d say to him. She hadn’t exactly spent a lot of time in med school dating, or even talking to men on a social basis.
Then again, she’d been twenty, the youngest in her class, and fixated on getting her specialty.
Besides, Jake Silver was miles over her head. Dark blond hair that twined out under his wool cap, the hint of golden-brown whiskers, pale blue eyes, thick shoulders, and a grin that did dangerous things to her heart.
Or Kia’s heart, technically.
And maybe it was Kia he liked, because Aria could hardly believe her own words when she said, “I see you like to live dangerously, huh, Cowboy Jake?”
Apparently, she was the one living dangerously.
A man like Jake Silver wouldn’t seriously like her. Especially when he discovered that she wasn’t anything like the woman she’d let her mouth betray her as.
She cleared the tiny valley and stepped onto the cornice that Sasha had been standing on earlier. Sasha had descended to the bridge below, and Aria set her ice axe in. Didn’t hurt to be careful.
So she’d flirted a little with Jake. She liked his smile, his laughter, and even the way he’d led on the dance floor, like she could trust him.
But she’d never see him again, so probably she should stop fantasizing about him showing up. Carrying her backpack.
Carrying her.
She grinned. Okay, sometimes she and Kia could agree. Jake was a fine-looking man and she wasn’t sad she danced with him.
Sasha cleared the bridge and climbed up the opposite side. Jenny was out in front, a good thirty feet, descending into another bowl, hopefully near the end of the ice field.
Aria took a step across the cornice, following Sasha’s indentations.
The ice gave not even a hint of warning, not a crack to bite the air so she could throw herself against the ice with her axe. Not even time to alert Jenny and Sasha with a “Falling!”
The cornice simply gave way, dissolving from under her.
She dropped into nothingness.
Debris clogged her mouth, cutting off her screams, ice buffeted her face, her arms windmilling.
Oh God, help—
A jerk around her waist and shoulders wrenched her to a stop. Her breath ripped out of her. Pain rippled through her shoulders, and she dropped her ice axe, flailing in the air.
“Aria!”
She heard Sasha yelling, but she couldn’t respond, still fighting for breath.
More snow fell above her. She grabbed the rope, holding on, realizing that Sasha’s and probably Jenny’s self-arrests were the only thing keeping her from plunging to an icy death.
Stop struggling.
The voice—crisp, demanding—slammed through her.
Calm down.
She obeyed and got a breath into her lungs. She must have crashed through the snow bridge. The cascade of snow slowed to a trickle. The air cleared, the only sound was her hard breathing hitting her mask.
Overhead, snow gusted off the cornice that had just given way. She hung horizontally, the line clipped into her waist and chest biners. The harness burned into her thighs, and the waist belt bruised her hip bones. She didn’t think she’d broken any ribs, and she didn’t want to think about internal injuries.
She couldn’t look down.
“We got you!” Jenny’s voice hovered from the top and Aria tried to grab the words, hold on.
To not let the truth take her heart.
No, she wasn’t dangling from the soft edge of a glacier.
Okay, she was, but no, she shouldn’t think about it.
She guessed herself to be about ten feet down, which meant that Sasha had self-arrested fast. Probably she’d set her anchor on the far side before Aria took her fatal step.
Which meant that Jenny could set an anchor, maybe build a snow bollard, and Aria could use her Prusik line as a foothold to climb up.
The fissure wasn’t that wide—she fixed her crampons to the wall to keep from spinning.
Then, she simply hung from the rope, staring at the blue sky, trying not to panic.
And wishing that her too-brave-for-her-own-good deceased twin sister might get her out of messes as easily as she got her into them.