CHAPTER ELEVEN
G ET UP. Calm down. Keep moving.
The voices in her head thrummed inside Jenny, even as she bent over, gulping back her tears, her breaths.
Stop. Freaking. Out.
Because the more she unraveled, the more every cell ached to tell Orion, well, all of it. And that would be the worst possible thing to do, really. Because that’s the last thing they needed right now, her telling him that she was responsible for his terror, his friends dying, and of course the fact that he’d spent six months learning to walk again.
Especially since she was now tucked into Orion’s arms, the very man who should probably push her off the cliff. How she longed to just stop the lies. To let him calm her world.
Help her breathe again.
No matter what, she couldn’t let herself spiral out, couldn’t find herself in that place where she had no hold on anything.
Couldn’t go back to that moment when her world shattered before her eyes.
Because she’d been there, on the other side of the horror, listening as Orion and Ham’s team fought—and ran—for their lives. Heard Ham on the radio, calling in the strike.
Wanted to scream at the desperation in his voice.
She practically ran, a full-out sprint, back to her quarters, horrified.
And had woken in Germany herself, probably in the same hospital as Orion. Apparently, someone had found her wandering the camp, disoriented, incoherent.
She had no memory of any of it.
And clearly Orion had no idea that she’d been the cause of all his nightmares.
She pulled in her breath, holding it, fighting to tuck her emotions back inside.
“Jenny, it’s okay. You’re just . . . tired. And scared,” Orion said, still trying to soothe her.
No, she was heartbroken.
Keep moving.
Right. She couldn’t stay here, let it pour over her, pin her down. Trap her.
Push through. Look forward.
Get out of the crevasse.
She made herself push away from him. He released her.
“Jenny?”
She could weep at the worry in his voice. “I’m fine. I’m just . . .” She wiped her face and climbed to her feet, putting her arms through her jacket. “Sorry. I’m just . . . yeah, a little scared, maybe. We need to get out of here.”
She couldn’t look at him, so she looked up. Overhead, the world had turned white. In the distance, thunder rolled, probably more avalanches releasing in the whiteout with the accumulation. The entire mountain shook and tossed down snow.
Another slide might take out their perch, if it found its way into their crevasse. Barring that, however, their crevasse was an icy blue wonderland that could protect them from the elements.
For now.
“Jenny.”
“I think if I use the ice anchors, I can get down the wall to the rope. Then, I know I can climb up. I’ll find Ham and radio—”
“Jenny.”
“Or I could keep hiking out—”
“Jenny, sit down.” He reached out and grabbed her jacket. Tugged.
She looked at him, terribly aware of the wreckage on her face.
“We’re going to get out of here.”
“We’re trapped in a crevasse.”
“We are not doomed.”
She swallowed. Closed her eyes. “No, you’re wrong, Orion. I’ve been doomed my entire life, and I . . . I just have to admit it. I make terrible decisions. And, when I do, people get hurt.”
“It wasn’t your fault you got blown off a mountain—”
“No!” She couldn’t stop herself. “It was my fault . . .” She shook her head, finding the easier truth. “It’s my fault bad things happen.”
“What kinds of bad things—”
“All of them. Like—falling into a crevasse . . . and letting my mother be murdered!”
Oh. She hadn’t meant for that to emerge. For that messy, bloody memory to spill out between them.
He stilled. “What do you mean, murdered?”
Her voice cut low. “She was beaten to death by my stepfather.”
Just like she thought, he looked at her with such horror on his face, she knew she should have just kept her mouth shut. Kept moving. Away from the past, the wreckage, the pain. It did no one any good to dredge up the past.
She drew away from him, out of his reach. “I’m sorry—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—it was a long time ago.” She walked over to the edge. “I’m going after that rope.”
“Jenny. Come back here and sit down.”
“If I anchor in—I can belay myself from screw to screw—”
“Jenny. We’re here. Right here. Right now. And . . . we’re not going anywhere. And yeah, I get not wanting to look back at it, to be there again. Believe me, the last thing I wanted to do was climb Denali again. I swore to myself that nothing would make me set foot on the slope of the High One—not after it betrayed me. And it’s still betraying me. But I did it—I did it for you , Jen. You can trust me.”
She closed her eyes. “You went looking for me.”
“I went looking for the woman I met in Afghanistan. The one who told me she wanted to touch the stars. The one who beat me in one-on-one. The girl who sang to me . . .”
“How do I live without you . . .”
She turned to face him, the memory ripe. The music over the fire one random night, the words from a LeAnn Rimes song easy to sing, emitting from her heart.
She wanted him to love the girl he met overseas. Not the wreck she’d been before. Or was becoming now. “You don’t want to know—”
“I want to know it all. And I’m not going anywhere.” He held out his hand. “Ham will be here. He’s alive, I know it. And he’ll get us.”
Orion was lying to her, she knew it. But she took his hand, sat down next to him. He was shivering, and so was she, the cold settling into her bones. Overhead, a blizzard was sweeping over the ice field.
No, Ham wasn’t coming for them. But she didn’t say that as Orion unzipped his jacket, pulled her against himself, and settled his jacket around her. His body heat radiated right to her core, his arm tight around her.
“How old were you?”
“Thirteen.”
He made a sound, deep in his chest, something of a grunt, as if her words were a punch.
“The worst part is, Billy completely deceived us. Looked me in the eye and told me that my mother and I were the most important people in the world to him. When she met him, he was leading her AA group. I thought he was trustworthy. Kind. He made us both believe in love. And . . . neither of us saw it coming.”
Orion tucked her in, under his chin. Her shivering slowed.
“It was the little things. Like, after he moved in, she wasn’t allowed to use the phone without his permission. He told her how to dress and what music to listen to. He cut her off from her friends—wouldn’t let her go to AA anymore. Said that he could give her all the counsel she needed. And sometimes he’d lose his temper and yell at her. Throw things.”
Orion made a noise, deep in his chest.
“He was so nice, though. Smiled when he told her that she had to stop trying to control everything, that he knew better than she did. Made her quit her job—not that it was a great job. She worked in a Super America as a clerk. But she liked it. And it paid the bills. And she knew people. But he said he would take care of her. Us.”
She could feel his heart thumping hard inside his chest, but outside, he didn’t move.
“My biological father died when I was three, and it had always been just me and my mom, so . . . so I really wanted a dad.”
For a moment, she was back in the tiny two-bedroom townhouse in the middle of Brooklyn Park, lying in bed, listening to her mother laugh with her new stepfather, the Christmas lights from the tree spilling down the hallway and into her room.
Her voice dropped. “I wanted a dad so badly I was willing to keep my mouth shut about . . .”
Orion smelled unfairly good—a hint of his masculine musk on his skin. She had the strangest urge to turn her face to his neck, breathe it in.
She lifted her head. “He never touched me . . . well, beyond lingering hugs and looking at me in a way . . . but it scared me.”
Orion’s jaw tightened.
“I should have said something. But in between the yelling, she seemed happy. I don’t know. Maybe she was miserable, but she wanted so badly to build the family she’d lost, so . . .”
“So she stayed with an emotional abuser because she didn’t know what else to do,” Orion said quietly.
“I know that now. Once I realized my stepfather would never love me, or my mother, I just saw her as weak. And then one day, I came home from school and there were police at my house. He’d . . .” She pressed her hand to her mouth. Shook her head. “They had a fight. It got out of control.”
He kissed the top of her head.
She stilled. Looked up at him. A fierceness had entered his green eyes, and yes, just like before, the whirlwind inside her stopped. Focused. And she heard his words reaching in. “I’ll find you.”
Maybe he had found her—at least the part of her that she’d been running from.
“What happened to him?”
“He went to jail. Manslaughter. And I decided that I would . . . well, for one, that I’d never let anyone fool me again.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Jenny. He was a monster.”
“We fell for his charm. And he betrayed us. Maybe he wouldn’t have if I’d spoken up.”
“You were thirteen. And scared. Who knows if she would have believed you. Abusers make their victims feel powerless and like it’s their fault.”
She did. But sometimes the knowledge didn’t touch her heart.
“That’s why you became an investigative journalist.”
She wanted to retch with the lie. I wasn’t a journalist. I was with the CIA.
He deserved to know. Especially after he’d climbed . . . wait. “Why did Denali betray you? Because your dad died on the mountain?”
“You remember that?”
She leaned back, still under his jacket. Pressed her hand to his chest. “Yeah.”
A beat pulsed between them.
She had to at least tell him something of the truth. “I remember everything about Afghanistan. And, I wish I’d been there in Germany when you woke up.”
He blinked at that. Swallowed. Looked away.
Her voice thickened. “I was . . . well, I was already in trouble, or I would have been there, Ry. Really.”
“It was a long time ago.”
Not long enough by the twitching on his face. His voice dropped. “You know, after I got home from Germany, I did some rehab time in Walter Reed, and then I . . . I didn’t have anywhere else to go, so I came back to Alaska.”
“The shadow of Denali.”
He looked at her, and one side of his mouth tweaked up. “Yeah. Always there, always watching. And I did exactly what my dad did after my mother and brother died.”
She frowned.
“I fell apart.”
Oh. Uh—
“After their deaths, my dad just . . . he lost it. Started drinking. Lost his job on the mountain. Lost himself for a long time. And then, when I turned eighteen, I asked him to teach me to climb Denali. That changed him. We spent the summer climbing it—I actually went up three times. I went away to Anchorage, to the university, and he pulled himself together. Got a job as a guide with an expedition team. When I came back, I spent the summer on the mountain, volunteering at Basin Camp, on the Denali volunteer rescue team. He took up groups.”
“Is that . . .” She drew in her breath.
“Yeah. That’s the summer Denali changed him. Healed him.” He drew in a breath. “And then Denali betrayed him. And me.”
His jaw hardened. “I was so angry when I got back from Afghanistan. At my leg. At the mountain and what it took from me. At the CIA for sending us into an ambush—all of it. Honestly, I’m still angry most of the time. And I didn’t know what to do with it until about a year ago when Logan Thorne showed up.”
Logan— wait . “What? He was one of the two guys who went missing, right?”
He nodded. “We thought for sure no one could have lived through the bombing, but as we were being choppered out, Ham spotted a group of Taliban hiking out with Royal and Thorne.”
She closed her eyes, praying she didn’t betray her relief. They were alive.
“Yeah, I guess Ham and Chief McCord and a handful of SEALs went in and got them, later, but I was in Germany, getting a new knee, and I never knew what happened until Thorne showed up last summer, shot.”
“He’s alive.” She opened her eyes, fighting to keep from crying again, but his words had unwrapped a fist around her heart. Alive.
She hadn’t killed them. But oh, the torture they must have gone through—
“How was he?”
Orion blew out a breath. “Actually, Thorne has a whopper of a story. Black ops, CIA, and a host of other players who have tried to keep Operation Bulldog and his and Royal’s rescue under the hood. And, Royal’s still missing, so in my gut I think his story is true. If it is then Royal could be in big trouble, on the run and in over his head.”
She knew where he was going with this, and it wasn’t going to be good. “You want to find Royal.”
He frowned at her. “How—”
“Because I know you, Ry. You’re a rescuer. You’re the guy who runs toward the bullets to get your friends out of trouble.”
His chest rose. Fell. His heart thumped hard under her hand. He met her eyes, something fierce in them.
Oh my.
“I should have kissed you that night.” His voice dropped, a near whisper, and with it, his gaze, onto her lips. Back to her eyes. “In Afghanistan, before I rolled out. You were so beautiful—still are. And I wanted to kiss you.” He blew out a breath. “I wish I didn’t always have to think about everything. Tear it apart, analyze it. I wish I could just—react and believe and trust and know that—”
“That the mountain won’t betray you with a sudden avalanche?” She didn’t know why she said that, but her voice fell to a whisper and she understood. Oh, she understood.
“Or a fall into a crevasse with the woman I’ve been aching to find?”
Her breath caught.
“Jacie Calhoun, I’ve really missed you.”
She swallowed. “I missed you too,” she said quietly, ignoring the screaming in her head, her brain tapping hard on the door of her heart. Run! “I wish you’d kissed me, too.”
His smile was slow, a hint of fire lit his eyes, and he grabbed her zipper at her neck, using it to tug her toward him. She let herself be moved, and he wound his hand behind her neck.
Then he kissed her. Softly at first, and her heart stopped, savoring the taste of him, salty, a little parched, his lips gentle on her mouth. He stayed there a moment, chaste, sweet, and she closed her eyes.
She pictured him unlocking yet another door inside him, walking through, or perhaps letting her in. He was holding his breath too, because he let her go, leaned his forehead to hers, and his breath shuddered out. He swallowed, licked his lips. “Not enough,” he whispered.
She met those green eyes. Nodded.
Not enough. She could never, really, get enough of this amazing man.
He kissed her again. This time, in his touch emerged the man she’d seen climb aboard the chopper, the fierce warrior, the rescuer who’d scaled the mountain to find her. He kissed her with a hunger that he might have been fighting for three years, a desperation, even a beauty in it for all the pieces of his heart he was giving over.
Orion . He wrapped his other arm around her, holding her to himself and she let it all crash over her. He was an avalanche, a cascade of chaos and white, gathering speed. Deep inside she knew if she didn’t slow them down, her heart might hurtle off the top never to be recovered.
But she couldn’t stop. She grabbed the lapel of his jacket and pulled him closer, surrendering. He was strength and power and fierceness and . . .
Safety.
She wanted to weep with the strange swell of emotions he unleashed in her as he held her cocooned in his jacket, a tiny fortress of hope and courage and . . .
Oh. No.
She trembled even as she pushed away from him. “Orion. I—”
“Jenny, I’ve been wanting to do that for three years.” His gaze found hers and held it fast. “I can’t believe it took me this long to find you.”
Oh. “Me too, PJ. Me too.” She leaned in and pressed her head to his chest, needing his heartbeat.
Because as soon as they got off this mountain, she’d have to keep running.
But this time, she’d leave behind her heart.
The locomotive thunder of the wind against the tent woke Aria.
Or it could have been the coughing that wracked her body. She’d been struggling with the sense of weight in her chest for hours, holding back her coughs.
She wasn’t so stupid to not recognize the early onset of AMS.
She felt the fine hairs on her neck burning as she opened her eyes. Jake sat up on his sleeping bag, one arm folded over his body, the other in a fist over his mouth, as if in thought. His gaze was pinned on Sasha, but tracked over to her as she unzipped her bag and sat up.
“Jake?”
He looked rough. His blond hair fell in tangles out of his wool cap, a thickening golden-brown beard across his chin. He still wore his fleece jacket, but he’d unzipped it at the neck, revealing his thermal shirt.
She’d never seen a man in a tighter knot of worry. “You okay?”
He nodded, sighed. “You’re coughing.”
“I’m fine. But you’re not. You haven’t slept, have you?”
Stress lined his face.
She, however, felt like she’d slept for a year. And her ankle had stopped throbbing. She tried to move it and stopped at the flash of heat. Nope, not yet.
“I’m fine,” Jake growled.
“Have you eaten?”
He made a face. “We’re . . . so, we’re out of soup.”
Oh. Uh. “What time is it?”
He raised a shoulder.
Ho-kay. Yes, his entire posture had her worried. “Jake, what’s going on?”
He said nothing.
“You’re scaring me.”
He met her eyes then, his expression softening. “Sorry. I’m just . . . we’re in another whiteout.”
She shivered, realizing now the drop in temperature.
“I fortified the wind break, but . . . you know Denali. We could be here for a while. And a chopper can’t get in . . .”
Hence the darkness in his expression.
She coughed.
He winced. Looked away. Clenched his fist. She had the sense that if he could, he’d hit something.
“I’m okay.” She pressed her hand to her chest.
“Yeah, whatever.” Jake had vanished. “Please tell me it’s not your heart—”
“No. My heart’s fine.”
“But don’t you have anti-rejection meds—”
“It was a good match, Jake. Trust me.”
He stiffened at her tone. “Okay, Doc.”
And right then she wanted to say it. My heart belonged to my twin sister. But even after a decade those words contained a crippling edge that she couldn’t bear. So, “I’m fine. I just have a little edema. It’ll pass as soon as we get off the mountain.”
His mouth made that tight line again. The tight edge of his jaw was scaring her.
“Okay, really, what’s going on?”
He blew out a breath. “I . . .” He shook his head and when his gaze met hers, a chill brushed through her. “When this whiteout passes, I think . . . I think . . .” He looked away from her. “I gotta get help. Or . . .” He met her eyes again. “Or take you down the mountain.”
“Right. Okay, so we make a sled—”
“You.” His gaze didn’t waver.
His meaning slowly slipped into her. Turned her cold. “Jake—”
“We don’t have a choice here.”
“Yeah, actually, we do. We can trust Ham, like you said—”
“Ham could be dead.” His tone was a knife, cutting through her.
“What?”
“There was a big slide in the ice fields. I heard it while I was packing up the kitchen. About three hours ago, before the wind came up.” He looked stricken. “I don’t know if they were in it, but . . . and there’s been slides all over the mountain today—”
“There are slides on Denali every day, it doesn’t mean anyone is dead.” She didn’t know why she was suddenly reaching for hope, but, well, someone had to.
Kia would.
So, she softened her voice. “Jake. Listen. We don’t have to make any hard choices here.” She glanced at Sasha. “No. You can’t—”
“I can, and I will, Aria, if I have to. I can’t reach anyone on the radio. We’re in this by ourselves.”
He sounded so cold, so far away, and she didn’t know what to do with the grim-faced, dark soldier he’d suddenly morphed into.
She shook her head.
“I’ve made hard choices all my life, Aria.” And something behind his eyes suggested those hard choices had cost him pieces of himself.
Silence moved in, the thunder of the wind bulleting the tent.
And she couldn’t stop herself. “What kind of hard choices?”
He closed his eyes, a sort of wince.
Aw, Jake. All the charm was a mask. She unzipped her sleeping bag.
His eyes opened. “What are you doing?”
She didn’t answer him. Because she didn’t know if it was Kia or Aria inside her, but she did know this man was hurting. And she couldn’t see someone in pain without wanting to fix it.
“Aria?”
She got to her knees, climbed over Sasha, and landed in front of him on his sleeping bag.
“Your ankle.”
“Is fine. You’re not.”
Then she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him to herself.
He froze, his arms still at his sides. “What are you doing?”
“Oh please. You have five sisters. Certainly you can figure it out.”
“You’re hardly my sister.” But his arms moved up around her. She let out a breath when he tugged her close against him.
Lowered his head onto her shoulder. Let his breath shudder out of him.
“Wanna talk about it?”
He just held her, his breaths matching hers.
“Okay, no problem—”
“I had to shoot a kid.” His arms seemed to tighten around her as he said it, maybe to hold on to her as he delivered the news.
Maybe because he, like her, couldn’t get past the knife-edged pain of his own admission.
“Jake.” She didn’t let go either, her voice soft. “When you were a SEAL?”
“Mmmhmm.” He turned his face to her neck, his whiskers against her skin. “It was a judgment call. I thought he was a suicide bomber . . . He was running toward our guys, and . . .” He drew in a breath. His heart hammered against her.
She leaned away and cupped her hands on either side of his face, holding him there. “And you had no choice.”
“He wasn’t wired up. I shot an innocent kid.”
Oh. She pulled him against herself again, this time tighter.
He shuddered against her.
“That’s why you left the SEALs.”
He nodded. “They exonerated me, but . . . yeah, I was no good after that.”
She wanted to weep for him.
“Jake, listen to me. You don’t have to make that choice right now. Right now, we’re safe. And we’re not going anywhere, and . . . please, Jake, don’t do this.”
He said nothing.
She leaned away from him. His jaw was tight. But he nodded.
Right then, a very large part of her wanted to love this amazing man. She wanted to blame the emotion still lingering in his eyes. Part hurt, part desperation, but it reached in and tugged at the healer inside Aria. She barely knew him, but according to Kia, life was risky, and sometimes you had to do something crazy. Something brave and impulsive if you wanted to live large—
Aria kissed him. Just pressed her mouth to his, not caring that they’d been stuck on the mountain for days or that he was rough-edged and fraying. She set aside the voices that called her back and wrapped her arms around his neck, settled over him, and kissed him.
Giving him, for the moment, her heart.
She hadn’t a clue what he might be thinking when he drew in his breath, hesitating for a moment.
Then he wrapped his arms around her, drawing her body against his, and unleashed himself. A full-on, raw unwinding of the turmoil she’d seen in his eyes. He was like the mountain, unpredictable, beautiful, catching her up into its wildness. Especially when he deepened his kiss.
Her hands dropped to his shoulders, those amazing, molded shoulders, and she could feel his heart quickening against hers.
What was she doing ? But she couldn’t seem to stop. Even when he leaned back and searched her eyes, as if, finally, asking.
She met his gaze. Swallowed.
And kissed him again.
This time, he slowed them down, as if fighting to pull himself back in check. Gentled his touch. He wrapped his arms around her waist and rolled her over, laying her back into the sleeping bag, bracing her in the crook of his elbow.
The gesture—smooth, practiced—triggered something deep inside her, but she brushed it away. Hung on to his neck as he left her mouth, moved to her neck, the touch of his whiskers against her skin igniting feelings she’d never before experienced.
In fact, the entire thing felt . . . well, way over her head. Her breathing quickened, and he lifted his head. “Aria, you okay?”
She swallowed. Closed her mouth. Nodded.
He met her eyes, worry again in them. “Um . . . so. I realize that we’re . . . sort of alone, but not, and . . . I’m not sure what’s happening here . . .”
Her either. But she was caught in his blue eyes, too many voices in her head.
“Aria?”
Stop thinking. She grabbed the front of his jacket and tugged him back down.
He shifted, moving closer to her—
“Ah!”
“What?” He jerked back.
“You kicked my ankle.” She closed her eyes, the pain spiking up her leg. Wow, she was some kind of loser. Talk about killing the moment.
Especially when Jake looked stricken and scrambled away from her. “I’m sorry. I . . .” He sat up, putting space between them. “I’m so sorry, Aria.” He blew out a breath, pressed a hand to his forehead. “Probably this isn’t the right time to . . . well—” He frowned, as if bereft of words.
Her heart went out to him, he looked so confused.
But maybe, yeah, she didn’t quite know where to go from here, either. She hardly knew Jake, and . . .
Still, the man was unravelling with each passing minute, and if she climbed back over to her bag he might just sit up all night long watching them.
He needed sleep. And then maybe tomorrow, when the blizzard died, he’d make a sane decision. One that wouldn’t cost her—or Sasha—their lives.
So, “Maybe we just keep each other warm?”
What looked like relief cascaded over him. She didn’t know how to decipher it. But he nodded and lay down beside her. She turned her back to him and cradled her head against his arm. He draped his other arm over her, tucked her against him, and pulled the sleeping bag over them. “Try not to hog the covers,” he said into her ear.
“As long as you don’t snore.”
He said nothing. But it wasn’t long before his breaths lengthened out, his body relaxing.
Well done, Doc , Kia said. Well done.
And outside their tent, the blizzard roared.
Jenny was freezing. Her body emitted tiny trembles as she leaned against Orion, and her breathing had slowed. “Jen, wake up. Stay with me.”
Overhead the sky was still white, the snow piling up around them as it swirled into their pocket in the ice. It dusted her coat, her wool hat, glistened on her nose.
He wanted to kiss it away, to warm her body by pulling it tighter to his.
No, he wanted to get them out of here and back to safety. Then maybe figure out how to stop the whirring in his head, the what-ifs and maybes that kept churning through him.
God is calling you to something, I know it, and so do you.
Ham. In his head. Keeping him alive, like he did before.
“I think Ham is dead.”
Jenny’s words, reading his mind again, jerked him out of his thoughts. “What?”
“He would have come for us.” She raised her head. “It’s been hours. We have to rescue ourselves, or we’re going to freeze to death.”
He wanted to kiss her again, to stop his brain from spinning out the scenarios—the worst one being their frozen bodies entombed forever in the ice. But he had other scenarios, too. Like them being rescued—Ham being alive, not dead—and finding them, also not dead. And getting off this mountain and back to civilization and maybe finding themselves with a fresh start.
“Let’s do good things together. Help people. Bring the lost home.”
Yes, maybe he would have liked to do that again.
“I know you, Ry. You’re a rescuer. You’re the guy who runs toward the bullets to get your friends out of trouble.”
He’d liked himself, right then, the man he’d seen in her eyes.
Yeah, once upon a time, he’d been that guy.
“God isn’t finished with you yet.” “Ham’s not dead. He’s probably—he’s hiking out, right? To get help?”
“Then why didn’t he come to find us?” Her lips moved against his neck, a brush that ignited its own kind of heat through him.
“Maybe . . . it’s a big crevasse, and a big mountain. Maybe he thinks—”
“We’re buried.” She lifted her head. “He thinks we’re dead.”
He stared at her, and his throat dried. Oh. One more scenario to add to his equations. The fact no one knew they were alive.
“We’re on our own, PJ,” she said quietly. “And we need to get out of here.”
He heard her words, and yes, she was probably right, but strangely, he found himself shaking his head.
“What?”
“I . . . I don’t know. It’s something Ham kept saying. That he felt in his gut that God would help us find you. And . . .”
“You did. I don’t suppose Ham’s gut said anything about God getting us off this mountain?”
He had nothing.
She shook her head. “It’s not that I don’t believe in God. I do, actually. But . . .” She sighed. “I have reasons to think he’s probably not interested in helping us.”
“Except, we did find you. Miraculously.” He could hardly believe he was saying this. Ham’s crazy faith was rubbing off. “And yeah, ten hours ago I would have said, ‘No thank you, God, I don’t need your help.’ But I think we do.” He looked up at the whiteout. “They’re not going to find us without a miracle.”
Her lips tightened into a thin line.
“Listen. Here’s the thing. I get it—thinking that maybe God isn’t interested in helping us. Back in Afghanistan, when we were trapped in the cave, Ham prayed. And I . . . I prayed too. I prayed that God would rescue us.”
“And he did.”
“Yeah. And no, it wasn’t the way I hoped—I was angry about my leg, and the fact that Ham had to drag my backside out. But, God did get me out, and as much as I want to rationalize that away, I can’t.”
She was listening. Just breathing in his words.
“The fact is, I’m still angry at . . . well, maybe God. So I get the idea that maybe I’m not his favorite, but, we have nothing else, Jen. We’re not even at the end of our rope—literally, we have no rope.” He tugged her close again. “I’m getting cold without you.”
She lay against him for a long moment, her hand against his beating heart.
He looked up, to the sifting of the white, dropping like stars from the sky. And he couldn’t help it, because yes, he was desperate— God, if you’re for us, please save us.
“Ham might be dead.” She leaned away again, her blue eyes fierce. “Or he might be alive, but I know that Jake and Aria and Sasha will be dead if we don’t get out of here.” She untangled herself from his arms. “You’re like a freakin’ furnace.”
He stared at her, not sure if he should be panicking as she got up. “What are you doing?”
“You told me that today, we save lives. I’m going to get that rope.”
“Jenny—”
“If we stay, we freeze to death. I’d rather die trying.”
He wanted to yell. But she was probably right. He stared at her, his jaw tight. “Okay. If you’re going to go down, please anchor in the entire way.”
She pulled off his webbing sling and looped it over her shoulders. Along with his ice ax, she had a half-dozen anchors, two Prusik lines, and two quick clips. Then she picked up her axe. “Happy?”
“Hardly, but whatever.”
“I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
He wanted to look away, but dread kept his gaze glued.
She walked over to the edge and drove in the first screw. She clipped her quick clip to it, leaving his to dangle, then stepped over the edge.
“I see the rope. It’s about eight feet down.”
He couldn’t help himself—he zipped up his jacket and rolled over, crawling to the edge.
There it was, lying like a coiled snake, on an ice bridge. One of the ends dangled down, as if it might be trying to slither away.
His heart nearly left his body. “Please, Jen, be careful.”
“Yeah.” She drove in another screw at knee level, and clipped his line to it, then detached hers and worked her way down into the deep blue.
He followed her red cap, listened to her tiny grunts, the chipping and clank of the ice screws, her biners against the ice, as she worked her way down, using the screws like a ladder, moving her quick clip down with each one.
He couldn’t breathe until she stepped out on the icy ledge. The bridge thinned as it stretched over the abyss. The edge of the rope lay just out of reach, about four feet out.
“Jenny—”
“I have to unclip.”
He might throw up. “You’re killing me.”
She unclipped. Dug her ice axe into the root of the bridge. Reached out and snagged the end of the rope. “Got it!”
He let out his breath. But his heart didn’t start thumping again until she backed up, re-clipping into the biner.
She stood on the edge and began to pull up the rope, winding it between her neck and her arm to loop it around her body.
Overhead, another rumble, and he tensed as the thunder of a faraway slide shook the mountain.
“Hurry.”
Snow spilled down, careening against the ice, falling.
She looked up.
“Anchor in,” he said.
“I’m secure.” She resumed her coiling.
The ache in his leg had died to a deep burn, but the cold had numbed it, turned it manageable. He was a decent ice-climber. And, given her precision as she climbed down, they could make it to the top.
Into the whiteout.
“Coming up.” She’d tied the rope around her, securing it. Then she unclipped her quick clip and set her ice axe, reaching for the higher screw.
“Clip in—”
But the thunder from above arrested his words and he turned.
He threw his arm up as snow and ice crested down from the lip, ricocheting against the walls. “Get down!”
The wash buffeted him, chunks of ice the size of footballs slamming into the ledge, careening off, a shower of snow pouring over him. Another crack. Above him, ice rocks were bouncing off a thin ice bridge webbing the crevasse at an angle not far above him and hitting his ledge. As he watched, a monster boulder broke free.
“Watch out!” He covered his head.
She screamed. The icy boulders banged through the chamber and a terrible explosion echoed up against the icy blue walls.
It jerked his head up.
The ice bridge had collapsed.
Jenny dangled from her perch, gripping the nub of the ice screw with one mitten, her axe dug into the blue wall with another. Her quick clip dangled from her harness. But she hung out over a ledge, nothing but air beneath her, nothing for her feet to grip.
“I’m coming for you!”
“Stay there!” She looked up, breathing hard. “I got this.”
But she was sweating, her eyes big, and the ice continued to fall.
No way was he going to watch her plummet to her death. He rolled over and grabbed his ice axe, looped the handle over his wrist, and extended it down. “Grab this. Let me pull you up.”
She was trembling, her feet scratching for purchase, breaking free, her arms frozen to the wall. “I can’t.” Her voice emerged thin and raspy. “I can’t—”
“Look at me.”
She shook her head.
“ Look at me , Jacie.”
She moved. Probably forced herself to look up, given the look of terror on her face.
“Don’t look down. You’re anchored in good with your ice axe. Just reach out and grab my axe.”
“No! I’m just going to pull you down. I can do this.”
“You’re too jacked up. Breathe. Grab my axe. Let me help—”
“You’ll fall!”
“Then we’ll fall together!” Okay, all this emotion didn’t help. Orion schooled his voice. “Grab it.”
“No. You’re not falling again. Not because of me!”
“This isn’t your fault! Now grab the axe or I’m coming down there!”
So maybe he’d given up trying to tuck everything back in.
She glared at him. He glared back. “I’m completely serious, Jace.”
“Fine.” She blew out hard, then lunged for his axe. Any purchase her crampons had dislodged and suddenly she was hanging from the two axes. His entire body screamed with the weight of her, but he bit it back. Dug down, and with every ounce he had in him, hauled her up.
“Climb up with your feet!”
She slammed one foot then the other hard into the ice, working with him as he wrestled her to the top.
She lipped the side of their ledge and he grabbed her harness, dragging her the rest of the way. She sprawled on the ice next to him.
“Now breathe.” His words were more for himself than her, but he rolled onto his back, his hand over his chest. Breathe.
“You shouldn’t have done that. You could have gone over.”
But he ignored her. “What’s that?” He pointed to the broken ice bridge above them, where the deadly boulder had originated. And, more importantly, the frozen blue fabric revealed in the broken edge.
“What’s—” She rolled over. “That’s a backpack.” She got up. “I think it’s—a climber. A frozen . . . a dead climber.” She made a face, turned away.
He had sat up and was working his way away from the edge. “Some poor guy fell down in this crevasse and couldn’t get out.”
She sank down next to Orion. Maybe she didn’t even realize she reached out to grab his hand. But he clenched it tight.
“He died here.” Her voice shook.
He jerked her, and she looked at him, her eyes wide.
“But we won’t,” he said, and his words found his bones, his cells. “We won’t, Jenny. Because we have a rope. And ice screws. And . . . we’ll have a pack. If you can get up there to get it. Whatchya say, champ?”
Her mouth lifted into a beautiful smile.