CHAPTER NINE
J ENNY WAS BREAKING every promise to herself by leaving Sasha on the mountain.
She might even be physically ill as she knelt beside her.
Sasha’s eyes were closed, her red hair splayed out on the wadding of her jacket. Her skin seemed nearly white, deathly, as Jenny ran her hand over her forehead.
“Sash. We’re going to get you help. Stay with us.”
A flicker of her eyes, and Jenny caught her breath as Sasha looked at her. “Jens. Tell Lucas—tell him, I’m sorry about the baby.”
Jenny froze, swallowed. Baby? But now wasn’t the time. “Okay. Yes. But you’ll see him real soon, I promise.” She leaned forward and brushed her lips against her forehead.
Then she looked up at Jake, seated next to Aria on her sleeping bag. He gave her a solemn nod.
“Ari—”
“We’ll do everything we can.” Aria was in worse shape than she’d let on, given the cry she’d emitted when Jake brought her into the tent. The man carried her as if she weighed nothing. Solidly built, bulky shoulders, with a hint of blond whiskers that scraped across his jaw. Jake reminded her of the SEAL guys she once knew.
So maybe Sash and Aria were in safe hands.
She grasped Aria’s hand, squeezed, and then climbed out of the tent.
Ham and Orion were waiting for her by her pack. They’d lightened the packs for the hike out, leaving half the food here. Hopefully, they’d get in radio contact with help when they reached Karstens Ridge.
Her gut didn’t like it, though. First, there was the clutter in the sky, a building of cumulus traffic—thick white clouds moving slowly over Mount Huntington. Then there was the wind, dusting snow off the creamy white ridge.
Karstens Ridge might be the most dangerous section of the journey—three thousand feet along a two-foot-wide path with gusting winds and a drop-off over a thousand feet on either side.
The beauty that fell before her, however, could nearly choke out the foreboding in her gut, the one that said this was going to go terribly wrong.
Orion reached for her biner and clipped her into a butterfly knot in the center of the line. “Ham will be behind you. I’ll be in front of you. And Jake has the other radio, so we’ll be in touch.”
She looked up at him, seeing herself reflected in his dark glasses, her image nearly unrecognizable in her face mask, hood, hat, glasses. She’d kitted up, too—carrying her webbing of ice screws, a descender, an extra cordelette. Jake had given her his snowshoes in case they ended up hiking through Muldrow Glacier. She’d shoved a couple pickets into the outside straps of her pack and refreshed her avalanche beacon, now inside her jacket pocket. Ham and Orion wore beacons also.
Orion checked her biners and made sure the rope ran through her chest harness. Ran a hand up her pack tether.
“Good kit,” he said and smiled.
She wanted this day to go right. No more accidents. No falls.
But she’d had that dream—no, nightmare —and whether it was a premonition, a memory, or just an oxygen-deprivation-induced altitude dream, it left a residue that she couldn’t shake.
That and the way Orion had looked at her, desire in his eyes, raking up all the memories she’d been trying to forget. It left a warm hum inside her that she should probably shake away.
If he knew what she’d kept from him, what she hadn’t told him about the dream, he certainly wouldn’t be looking at her with anything warm and cozy—or otherwise—in his thoughts.
How was she supposed to know that a ten-year-old could lie with so much authenticity in his eyes? “Is he telling the truth? Is he reliable? What’s your professional opinion, Dr. Calhoun?”
“Ready?” Orion said.
“Are you sure we shouldn’t be climbing back up?” She’d heard the argument after Jake and Ham had burst into the tent, then powwowed afterward. She should have added her opinion. If they climbed back to the summit, at least they knew they had people waiting on the other side.
The Muldrow Glacier route, while still used, was the road less traveled. If they couldn’t get the signal out, they had days and days of hiking before they came to civilization. And Sasha didn’t have that long.
Ham, in his red jacket, crunched over to her. It wasn’t just his height or the way he carried himself, but his expression, one of confidence, of surety that gave him presence. Now, he looked at her. “Don’t worry. Orion knows this route—”
“So do I. I studied it for over a year before our climb. We were going to take this route up. It takes a little longer, but you get acclimated slower, and . . .” She closed her mouth. The and would have included the fact that maybe Sasha wouldn’t be struggling with fluid in her brain if they’d taken longer to get to the summit.
If they hadn’t taken a different route.
If she’d spoken up in Copper Mountain.
She just couldn’t make a good decision, no matter what she did.
“I . . .” She looked up to the summit. “I just wish I knew where to find help the fastest.”
Ham drew in a breath.
“Let’s go,” Orion said. “I feel a prayer headed our direction.”
“Doesn’t hurt to pray,” Ham said. He turned to Jenny. “God will give us a discerning mind if we ask for it.” He clamped his hand on her shoulder, then on Orion’s.
Something about Ham’s voice, confident, solid, praying to God on the top of the mountain seeded her bones with hope.
“Make our steps safe, and go before us. Finish the task you’ve pressed us to. Amen.”
“Feel better?” Orion said to Ham.
“Always,” Ham said.
Orion turned and headed toward the spine that wound up the backside of Denali.
When Jenny had picked this route—and not only for the acclimation elements—she’d been drawn into the photos of the valley below the ridge. Breathtaking.
She guessed the time might be three in the morning, the low sun turning the Muldrow Glacier at their feet a deep cerulean blue, leaving a lip of deep salmon along the jagged horizon, topped by a layer of pure golden sunlight.
The valley itself looked as if God had filled it in with layers and layers of whipped topping, with dollops and peaks and a line of pure cream down the middle.
Deceptive.
Orion walked in front of her, and she let the rope out enough so that if she fell he had time to self-arrest, and also so it wouldn’t create enough of a pull to yank him off his anchor.
Admittedly, with Ham an equal length behind her, she felt just a smidgen safer. She remembered their quick work on the glacier.
She always loved the strange peace inherent in climbing. The crunch of her feet in the snow, the wind whipping in her ears. The heat working through her body despite the minus-zero temperatures. Out here, it was just her against the mountain, her against herself. Her against the power of gravity to pull her back.
“Make our steps safe, and go before us. Finish the task you’ve pressed us to.”
She could get on board with that.
They climbed past Browne Tower, and the world opened up even wider. If she ever wanted to take a running leap and let the wind catch her, it was here, as she stared out into the valley. An endless rim of spiring peaks, the cloud shapes captured in shadow in the valley as they moved across the sky.
Orion stopped and held his hands out, the signal to stop.
Just a break, apparently, because he pulled out a thermos. Surveyed the view.
She broke out her thermos, drank some tea, capped the thermos, and replaced it.
He held his axe in the air.
Go.
She followed him across the thinning cap of the ridge, her chest thickening with each step. She didn’t dare turn around to check on Ham, not wanting to risk falling.
Orion reached the edge of the ridge and was setting in an ice screw, digging down to the ice to fix it, when she caught up to him.
“We’re going to belay each other down the face.”
She looked over the edge and refused to give in to the flip of her stomach. The pitch felt like a straight slope to death. “Have you tried the radio yet?”
“No reception.”
She turned, spotted Ham coming up behind her. The north and south peaks of the mountain rose behind her, deceiving in their closeness. “Try again.”
He looked up at her and nodded. He clipped in his line to the anchor, then pulled off his mitten to grab the radio. “Clip into the anchor while I—”
His words weren’t out before they heard the shout from behind.
“Falling!”
Ham!
She dropped to her knees, shoved her feet into the snow, and lay on her axe, digging it in hard.
The jerk on her harness didn’t come. She hunkered down with her face in the snow, the wind barreling into her ears, her breath caught in her chest.
Beside her, Orion had dropped to his knees, taking the same position, but after a moment he scampered over to her, again dropping down over the top of her to fortify her position.
Nothing. “Stay here.” He reached under her and clipped her into the ice screw with his quick clip. Then he got up.
“Ham!”
The ropes remained slack.
“Don’t move,” Orion said.
He got up, and she guessed he was searching for Ham.
“He self-arrested,” Orion said as he came back. “You’re good.”
She rolled over and spotted Ham just a few feet off the trail, working his way back up the ridge.
Her breath leaked out in a slow trail of relief.
Okay, so maybe she’d been wrong about their chances.
Or maybe his prayer had actually worked.
“I dropped the radio.”
She looked at Orion, his words stilling her. What—?
He was clawing through the snow. “I can’t believe I dropped the radio!” The panic in his voice raised her own.
She dug in, helping him.
Nothing but thick folds of snow.
“Where is it?” she said, her voice shaky.
No, please—
By the time Ham had joined them, Jenny was nearly in tears.
“What’s going on?”
“When you fell, I dropped the radio,” Orion said, his voice dark.
“It has to be here—” Jenny said.
“Is that it?” Ham pointed to a tiny wedge of black metal in the snow.
Now Jenny really wanted to cry.
Orion scooped it up.
“Call the rescue team,” she said.
Orion picked it up. Toggled the switch. “Denali rescue, come in.”
Static.
“Denali rescue?”
Nothing.
“Maybe they can’t pick up our words, but let me try Morse code.” Ham reached for the radio.
Orion handed it to him and pulled out his GPS. Read off the coordinates.
Ham clicked them out. “I sent an SOS also.”
Jenny collapsed onto the ridge, breathing hard.
Please.
“Jenny, are you okay?”
She nodded but pressed her face into her mittened hands, her shoulders shaking.
Don’t fall apart. Don’t—
Crunching feet. Someone sat beside her. “We’re going to get help, I promise.” Orion.
She looked up, studying the horizon. “If Aria and Sasha die because of my stupid idea—”
“Stop.”
His sharp voice made her look at him.
Snow caked his face mask, and she couldn’t see his eyes through his dark glasses, but she could almost feel his gaze, hard on her. “Your friends aren’t going to die.”
She drew in a breath. “Sometimes I think I’m just . . . I’m doomed.” She didn’t mean to let those words escape, but . . . “I try to do things right and still, terrible things happen.”
He let a beat pass, or maybe he just didn’t know what to say because they sat there, the wind whipping against their clothing, dusting snow into the blue sky. Then, “You’re not doomed today. Today, we save lives.”
Then he got up and reached out a hand.
She took it. And wow, she didn’t deserve this man showing back up in her life. Not after . . .
Not after she’d killed his friends.
“Let’s get down this ridge and keep moving,” Orion said.
She heard Ham’s voice as she let Orion rope her up and began her descent down the wall.
“Make our steps safe, and go before us. Finish the task you’ve pressed us to.”
“Today, we save lives.”
Orion’s words hung in his head, embedded in his chest, and worked into his marrow as they trekked across the relatively level cirque of Muldrow Glacier, on their way to the Great Icefall. The wind had slowed, blue skies overhead. His snowshoes left impressions on the crystalline snow.
“Sometimes I think I’m just . . . I’m doomed . ”
Jenny’s words, uttered after he’d almost lost his mind, after they’d recovered the radio, had reached in and nearly broken his heart.
Especially because he understood.
Oh, he understood.
He’d felt doomed for most of his life.
“I try to do things right and still, terrible things happen.”
He wanted to shrug away her voice, broken, plaintive, as if hoping he might have answers.
None. He had nothing. Because he’d given up trying to find a reason for why terrible things happened to the people who didn’t deserve them.
People like his mother. His brother.
His father.
And, frankly, every single soldier who died at the hands of evil.
“You’re just mad because God didn’t answer your prayer the way you wanted him to.”
Yes. Yes, he was.
He deserved a little better from the Almighty. After all, he’d picked himself back up after God took his entire family, thank you. Went into the family business of saving lives.
So, yeah, he expected God to deliver him from near destruction in one piece. What good was God if, when you took your troubles to him, he didn’t answer?
Worse, he had nowhere to put his anger. Because what did a guy do when he was angry at the Almighty? The God of all creation? It felt a little like spitting into the wind.
Would only come back to mess you up.
Felt safer to blame . . . anyone else, frankly.
Sorry, Ham. He wouldn’t be dropping to his knees anytime soon to put his trust in a God who ignored him.
Even mocked his pain.
Except . . .
He glanced behind him, at Jenny. She followed his tracks, stepping into each one, fighting her way through the snow. What was she doing here?
That felt like a weird sort of answer to an unuttered prayer.
He could almost hear Ham’s voice, thundering forth from the past.
“You okay, man?”
The cave in Afghanistan. Orion had looked over at him, making out his eyes in the darkness, lit only by a couple flashlights. He’d been trying not to retch from the pain, trying not to let the shouts, the occasional pop of gunfire shoot holes into his soul.
They weren’t getting out of this.
“We’re going to get out of here.” Again, Ham’s voice. But sitting in that cave, his knee a mess, his fellow PJs casualties in the dirt on the mountainside, trapped and out of radio contact . . .
“Maybe,” Orion said. “Maybe not. But I’m thinking of all the things I wish I’d done.”
Ham had knelt in front of him, leaned over to look at the dressing around Orion’s knee. “Like what?”
“I should have kissed Jacie.”
Ham raised an eyebrow.
“I know we haven’t been hanging out long, but there’s something about her. And she sort of looked at me like she wanted me to kiss her, but . . . aw, I’m just feeling the morphine.”
Except, he could almost feel her lips against his, whisper soft. Could nearly taste her smile.
He very well might be in love with her.
He’d never been the kind of guy to crack open his heart and let a woman in. Sometimes he felt a little like the mountain his father loved. Cold, foreboding. Not easily conquered.
That thought caught him up now, as he trudged through the snow. Maybe he was tired of being alone on his mountain.
“Ry!”
He slowed, turned, not realizing he’d been walking so fast. Ham was behind him, his arms out. Stop. Jenny turned, too, shading her eyes.
“Stay there!”
Orion surveyed their position as Ham caught up to him. He hadn’t realized they’d breached the Great Icefall, he’d been so consumed in his thoughts, but yes, it was probably a good thing to stop. Below him lay a minefield of glacial traps, crevasses, depressions, and seracs.
Ambushes.
But as long as they were careful . . .
He waited as Ham and Jenny caught up to him. Jenny leaned over, breathing hard.
“’Sup, man?” Orion asked.
Ham pulled down his face mask. “I was looking at the glacier, and it feels like maybe we need to move to the right as we go down this icefall. There’s a linearity through the snow fifty feet down—see the depression?”
Ham pointed to a well that ran a hundred yards, maybe more, horizontally through the field. “I think there’s a giant crack there.”
“Could be the remains of the bergschrund that broke free years ago.”
“We could travel in an echelon—in a V formation,” Jenny said.
“But if one of us falls, there’s only the other one to catch him. Or her,” Orion said. “Better to stay in a line, perpendicular to the crevasse. We’ll find a place to cross over it.”
He ran his gaze over her kit, just to make sure she was secured. But she’d been a pro on Karstens Ridge, working with them as if she knew exactly what she was doing.
Of course she did. Just because they’d had an accident didn’t mean she needed his help the rest of the way down the mountain.
Except, he wanted to help her.
That thought drew in his breath.
What was it about Jenny Calhoun that made him want to step into her life? And invite her back into his?
Hadn’t he learned his lesson?
“I can lead for a while,” Ham said.
Orion considered him. Glanced at Jenny.
Well, this way, if Jenny fell, he could be in a better position to self-arrest. “Maybe we should put on our crampons.”
Ham nodded and they switched out their footwear. Then, he traded places with Ham.
The key to glacier travel wasn’t just the probing and picking routes, but keeping the line taut enough to not let too much slack create a force that would knock you over in a fall. But not tight enough that you might end up face-first down a mountain.
Jenny followed Ham.
He followed Jenny.
She muscled along without complaint, keeping pace. He liked a person who looked at challenges without flinching.
Challenges like him.
“It’s not the morphine. You’ve had your eye on her since we showed up here. And since you met her, you seem less knotted up inside. What is it about this girl?”
Ham, again, bothering him out of his pain in the cave. Thorne and Royal had taken defensive positions at the front of the cave. The other SEAL, North Gunderson, had gone to scout an escape route.
Which left Ham to figure out what to do next.
Apparently, it was to badger Orion about his love life. Or maybe he was trying to keep him alive. Whatever.
“I don’t know. There’s something honest about her. Brave, maybe.”
“There’s brave, and there’s crazy. Embedded in a war zone?” Ham shook his head.
“Crazy like you and me?” Orion said as he heard shouts.
“Crazy because she’s risking her life for a story .”
A couple shots popped off. Ham stood up. Royal, calling back.
More shots.
“Get down!” Ham said.
A crack, and Orion came back to himself, to the mountain and the fact that Ham was waving his arms— danger.
“Icefall!” Ham shouted. He backed up, rerouted, and disappeared behind a tall serac.
Another crack. This time a cornice gave way under the sun and crashed down the glacier to the left. Orion stiffened, but the avalanche careened down the mountain some quarter mile away.
Okay, so he was jumpy.
He came around the ice chunk that had hidden Ham and spotted his friend on the other side of a two-foot-wide gap. He had moved forward and was taking an anchoring position—laying on his ice axe, his feet dug in.
Orion’s heart lodged into his throat when he spotted Jenny’s intentions. “Wait!”
Jenny turned. “It’s only two feet!”
Her voice filled his head. “Sometimes I think I’m just . . . I’m doomed . ”
Not today. “Let me anchor you in.”
He too knelt and anchored himself in, leaving enough slack for her to jump. “Okay, clear.”
He hunkered down, bracing himself for a fall, but none came and in a moment he looked up.
She was on the other side of the crevasse, her axe in the air. “Clear.”
See, keeping terrible things from happening was all about planning ahead. Anticipating trouble. He couldn’t stop every random event from taking him out, but . . .
So maybe it wasn’t about stopping the random events; maybe it was about learning to live with them when life was snatched out of your control.
He leaped over the crevasse, his heart pounding. Held his axe up.
Ham waved. “Let’s take a break while I try the radio!”
Jenny unhooked her pack and dropped it to the ground, and pulled off her climbing gear from around her shoulder. Ahead of them, Ham unroped and walked toward a dome of snow, probably to get higher reception.
Orion shrugged off his pack, letting the weight fall into the soft snow with a crunch. Pulled out his water bottle and took a sip of tea.
See, they weren’t doomed.
And maybe it was time to stop letting the past grind through him. Let go of the anger, the frustration, the lack of closure holding him hostage.
Maybe he should just . . . come down from the mountain.
Grab on to this random second chance with Jenny.
It wasn’t like God would show up and give him any answers about the past anyway.
Another crack split the air behind him, but he didn’t turn, the sound echoing in the distance.
Until—
“Orion, look out!” Jenny looked past him.
Her voice froze in time. Then she picked up her ice axe and fled horizontally across the ice field.
He turned. His breath caught.
The giant serac behind him thundered down in a great torrent of white.
Avalanche.
“We’re going to die up here.”
Aria was sitting up on her sleeping bag, a slight sweat beaded across the brow of her wool cap, her body trembling with a bone-deep shiver.
Jake just about agreed with her. Just about gave in to the knot that had tightened in his gut for the past eight hours as he watched Sasha groan in her sleep, tried to ladle tea and Spam soup into her, tried to fortify the snow wall around their tent.
Outside, the clouds were moving, darkening, kicking up flurries.
Hurry, Ham.
Jake closed the zipper of the tent behind him. “No, we’re not. Help get her up.” He knelt next to Sasha, who lay on her side, breathing deeply. Please be sleeping and not in a coma. “Sasha? It’s time for some dinner.” Or lunch, or breakfast—it was hard to keep track with the endless sunshine. He’d followed Ham, Orion, and Jenny’s progress as they trekked Karstens Ridge but had lost them down the backside. They were probably in the glacier below, but he’d yet to spot them.
“More Spam soup?” Aria said as she leaned over to Sasha, shaking her awake. Sasha stirred, groaned. “Thatta girl. I know it’s not super tasty, but you have to eat something.”
“What, you don’t like my soup?”
Aria glanced up at him, cocked her head. Every time she settled those beautiful brown eyes on him, something forbidden moved deep inside him. “It wouldn’t be my first go-to if we got off this mountain.”
“When. Not if .”
Her mouth tightened. The playful girl he’d met in Copper Mountain had vanished as the wait for help drew out. Now he recognized hints of a no-nonsense bedside manner as she continued to shake Sasha. “Wake up, Sash.”
Sasha’s eyes flickered open.
“We’re out of Spam. This is just broth.” He didn’t mention it was the last of their broth. No one needed to panic here.
“Good girl,” Aria said and pushed Sasha onto her back. “Time to sit up.”
Sasha seemed dazed, at best, and Jake didn’t want to comment on the fact that she’d turned into a zombie. People could die within twenty-four hours after full-onset HACE.
He couldn’t let another person die on his watch.
Sasha’s auburn hair hung in strings, her face sweaty and lined. He helped brace her and handed the soup to Aria.
Sasha’s head rolled back onto his shoulder. “C’mon, Sasha. Wake up. Eat.”
Aria had gotten more forceful. She took Sasha’s mouth and opened it, then poured broth into her mouth, closed her mouth. Sasha’s reflexes took over.
He glanced at her. “Remind me not to hunger strike around you.”
“I’ll keep you alive.” She winked, no smile. She poured another forced spoonful of broth into Sasha’s mouth.
“Did you really graduate from college at eighteen?” He’d been thinking about their conversation, her accomplishments.
And her crazy words about her sister. “I’m not amazing—my sister—she was amazing. She was the real brave one in the family. I climb because of her.”
He knew what losing a sister did to someone, so yeah, he got it. But if he did the math, she’d graduated a year after her sister died. That was some kind of dedication.
Aria took Sasha’s face mask and wiped the dribble on her chin. “I was . . . I was bedridden for a while, so I studied a lot. Online school.” She didn’t meet his eyes. “And, I liked school.”
Bedridden? He frowned, but before he could ask, she said, “I’m such an idiot—Sasha went to Miami right before this trip. I think she might have even gone scuba diving. Maybe she didn’t have enough time to acclimate to the change in altitude.”
She shook her head. “I should have warned her, but she needed to get away after losing the baby.”
Jake didn’t move.
“She found out she was pregnant after Jenny finalized our trip, and didn’t know how to tell her—and then, well, she didn’t have to.” Aria’s face tightened, as if she might be fighting tears. “Except it was her fourth miscarriage. And probably she was in no state to climb a mountain. Lucas took her to the beach, a sort of healing trip, and I should have said something. . .” She fed Sasha another spoonful. “Good job, Sash.”
“Why was this climbing trip so important?”
She lifted a shoulder. “It’s a triumph trip. To show us that we’re stronger than . . . well, the things that want to hold us back.”
He wanted to ask her what things, but she continued.
“Sasha is so much stronger than she looks right now. She’s not only amazingly smart, but she survived a home invasion and a rape. And Jenny—she survived her mother’s death, and . . . well, some terrible things that happened in Afghanistan.”
He couldn’t stop himself. “And you?”
She paused, mid-bite. Her lips tightened. Then, “I survived a heart transplant.”
He stared at her. “A . . . heart transplant?”
“Yeah. I was born with a bum heart, spent most of my childhood in bed. Studying.” She looked up. “Reading about adventures.”
“And now you’re living them.”
“I might go back to reading when we get down.”
When. He’d gotten her to when .
“I think she’s done,” Aria said. “She keeps spitting it out.”
“At least she’s staying hydrated.”
“I wish I’d brought a steroid with us. I was . . . shoot.” She shook her head as Jake lowered Sasha back onto the sleeping bag, zipping her up. The wind rippled the tent. He should probably go outside and check their wind protection. The last thing they needed was for the tent to tear, or even blow away.
With them in it.
He made a mental note to check the stakes too.
She started to hand him back the soup.
“No, you finish it.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll make more.”
She nodded and drank the soup down. “I think I prefer it with Spam.”
He grinned. “Right? I realize that it’s probably not the healthiest thing for everyday life, but each serving contains fifteen grams of fat and seven grams of protein. It’s compact and easy to transport, and an entire can feeds six people—or three guys. And it comes in twelve flavors, including jalapeño and teriyaki.”
She was looking at him, one eyebrow raised. “Your agent get you that sponsorship gig?”
He blinked at her, then grinned. “Yeah. I’m working on a little jingle.”
Her entire face lit up when she smiled, and for a moment, the doc vanished, and in her place returned the flirty woman he’d met in Copper Mountain.
“In all honesty, I’ve considered opening up a little food cart in the Minneapolis skywalk. Spam burgers, Spam on a stick. Deep-fried Spam.”
She laughed, and it fed his bones, something sweet and tasting of hope.
Maybe they would live through this.
“Sounds like state fair food.”
“Right? I could have a booth right between the chocolate-covered bacon and the deep-fried Twinkies.” He reached out for her empty bowl.
“You’d have a line all the way to the midway.” She handed it to him. “I love the state fair. I used to go every year as a kid.”
Me too. The words nearly emerged. But a hand tightened over his chest and suddenly he couldn’t breathe. He’d walked right into the memory without thinking.
“You okay? Jake?”
Calm down. “Yeah.” He swallowed away the voices, the sirens, and forced a smile. “Gotta love the animal barns.”
“Maybe we can go when we get off the mountain.”
His mouth opened.
Silence dropped between them. Uh . . .
“Sorry—I . . .” She held up her hand, looked away. “I . . .”
“I’d love to see you again after we get off this mountain, Aria.” His words emerged without his permission, but once they were out, the balloon in his chest deflated.
“Yeah, well, I work a lot, and you probably do too, running that food cart.” She looked away.
Huh. “Yeah, right.”
“And all your parasailing classes, and—what else do you do?”
He stared at her. “Aria—”
She put her hand to her neck. “You know, it’s funny that I’ve never seen you around GoSports. I mean, I work out there all the time—” Her hand stopped. She pressed her palm to her chest, then searched her neck. “My necklace. It’s gone.”
She patted her body—she wore her fleece jacket, a thermal shirt under it. “I don’t have it.” Her voice wavered. “Oh—please, no—” She began to pat her sleeping bag, lifting up the layers, searching.
“What necklace?” He leaned up, searching for it.
“It’s just a silly little cheap gold necklace. One of those half-heart necklaces you give to a friend—oh . . .” One hand went to her mouth, her breathing quickening.
“Calm down. We’ll find it. Maybe you dropped it when you were helping Sasha.” He began to search around Sasha’s bag, under her jacket and overpants that were bunched under her head, then peeked around Sasha’s sleeping form.
Aria had gotten up, making tiny noises of pain as she jostled her fat ankle.
“Hey—hey. Sit down. I’ll find it.”
He climbed over Sasha and in a second was in front of Aria, kneeling on either side of her legs. He grabbed her shoulders. “Aria. Take a breath. We’ll find it.”
His voice must have arrested her because she looked at him.
Oh wow, tears glistened in her eyes. Her jaw tightened as if she were fighting all-out weeping. “I . . . I can’t lose—”
“It’s right here.” He swept up a tangle of gold chain that lay behind her, just out of her sight. Probably, it had fallen off in her sleep. He held it out to her. “It looks like it might have gotten snagged on something. The chain is broken.”
She picked it up out of his hand, pressed her other hand over it. Closed her eyes.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s nothing.” She opened her eyes, let out a breath.
“It’s something, Houlihan.” He searched for her gaze. Raised an eyebrow.
“It’s just a trinket my sister gave me when we were kids.”
Her sister. Her dead sister.
“Oh. Well then, we’d better keep it safe. I’ve got a tin in my pack that I keep odds and ends in—it’ll be safe there.” He held out his hand.
She nodded and dropped it back into his safekeeping. He ran his thumb over the edges of the broken heart.
He was moving outside to put it in his pack when she stopped him, grabbing his fleece.
“Jake, are we going to get out of here?”
He turned back to her. Settled his gaze in hers. “Yes. And you know why? Because my buddy Ham is out there. And he’s not just a former SEAL, he was a Senior Chief. The leader of Team Three, and the guy has ‘never quit’ inside him.”
He dropped the necklace into his zippered jacket pocket, then knelt next to her sleeping bag. “Let’s get you tucked back in.”
She didn’t give him a snarky comeback, which had him a little worried. “Ham and I served together for about ten years. In all that time, there was one promise he didn’t keep. One mission that he didn’t complete.” He eased her fattened ankle in, trying to ignore the low moan she emitted. Yeah, there was no way she was walking off this mountain.
“We were, um, doing some training in an undisclosed Eastern European country about ten years ago, maybe more, and this guerrilla group took over a local aid hospital. We deployed to rescue the US workers there, and one of them was taken captive. A woman. Problem was, Ham knew her. She vanished . . . She was killed before he could rescue her.”
She was listening. “With the woman.”
He nodded. “Ham wasn’t good for a long time after that. He wasn’t a leader at that time, so he found his way back and eventually took over Team Three, but I don’t think . . . I don’t think it ever really left him. And it certainly put the never quit inside him.” He zipped up her bag. “Ham will get us off this mountain.”
She offered the tiniest of smiles, nodded. “I believe you.”
And with everything inside him he wanted to lean down and press his lips to that smile.
Maybe just to help him believe his words, too.
She closed her eyes, and he swallowed away the urge. “Get some rest, Houlihan.”
He climbed out of the tent, trembling a little.
After finding his pack, parked under the vestibule of their tent, he drew out an old shoe polish tin. He put her necklace next to his military identification tags and capped it. Shoved it back into his pack.
Then he drew in a deep breath as he stared out at the horizon. A lenticular cloud was forming over Mount Hunter, blue skies all around. The wind skimmed up a layer of snow, brushed it over the snowpack. He shivered—the temperature was dropping.
He didn’t have to be a meteorologist to sense the stirring of a storm.
Never quit.
Please, Ham, don’t let me down. Because he didn’t want to have to choose which woman to carry off this mountain.
And which woman would die.