Chapter 26

The only way to save Jeremy, Kendal realized, was to go back into the gorge.

This time, she took an extra rope with her.

“I’m so cold,” Jeremy said. His lips were blue. His skin was white, emptied of all color.

“We’re going to get you out,” she said.

He closed his eyes again.

“Stay with me,” she said. “You’re a Navy SEAL. You can’t give up. You can’t surrender. You have to keep going.”

Kendal moved him into a sitting position, and as she did so, her headlamp shined over the ledge and caught on something another twenty feet down. She steadied the light and saw that there was another body—a body wrapped in a blue ski jacket.

She nearly fell over the edge, but caught hold of Jeremy’s arm and balanced herself.

“Jeremy,” she said. “I need you to stay here for a second. Don’t move.” She crawled on her belly and looked over the edge again. This time she could clearly see the body below. It was perfectly preserved, frozen. Next to it, there was a snowboard, cracked in two.

There was nothing Kendal could do for the snowboarder—he was already gone. She concentrated instead on Jeremy and getting him out of there alive. She turned his backpack into a harness. Kendal and her father would have to pull him out.

When she had the rope secured around Jeremy, she climbed back out of the crevice again. Then she and her father slowly pulled Jeremy out of the crevice and over the ledge.

Jeremy was shaking. They needed shelter, and they needed it fast.