9

ELLA’S SCREAM AS SHE WENT OVER THE EDGE found Gage’s bones and turned them to liquid. He stood at the edge of the cliff as she disappeared, and couldn’t move.

For a second he was caught inside the memory of watching Dylan simply miss the turn and fly off the cliff, soaring over the jagged edge of the mountain. Then falling more than two hundred feet below into a catastrophe of broken bones and crushed vertebrae.

“Ella!” Gage bounced himself forward and went straight over the edge, dropping fast and landing in a poof of snow. If he’d had more momentum going over the cliff, he might have remained aloft, but his body weight implanted him in the powder and he found himself stuck, having to wiggle himself free. He rolled out of the hole his body made in the deep powder, unbuckled his boots from his board, and scrambled to Ella’s crash site, a tumult of snow and fine dust still caught in the wind. “Ella!”

She lay in the hole, her board just peeking out of the crevasse, with just the orange arms of her jacket and her gray helmet showing. She waved at him, trying to wiggle out of the hole.

He dropped to his knees beside her. “Are you okay?”

“Not much of a graceful landing, but—yeah.” She even smiled at him, as if her scream hadn’t ripped him open, baring something he’d been trying to ignore for the past two days.

He missed her. Missed the straight-shooter, no-nonsense way she didn’t dance around her words, said the truth as she saw it.

Or, he hoped it was the truth.

“You’re a good guy, Gage. I’ve always known that.” Her words had stuck around, latching on, growing inside him, casting forth too many memories. Like the way she could keep up with him on a mountain. And that time, after their first night of skiing, she’d talked him into singing karaoke with her. I got you, babe. He could still hear her pitiful impression of Cher. Feel his chest expanding with unnamed emotion, a little off balance with the sense that he didn’t have to impress her.

But he’d wanted to. And as he knelt down beside her now, unsnapping her boots from her board to free her, he realized he still wanted to.

And that gnawed at him. Because he couldn’t get past the fact that she’d destroyed his life and still she’d managed to crawl under his skin. Seeing her again had awakened him to the fact that no, he’d never forgotten Ella Blair. He should have been furious with her. Instead, he could barely catch his breath with the relief that she’d survived.

She’d never been nothing or just a date.

He’d loved her. Or wanted to.

He put his arms around her and tugged, pulling her free of her landing hole. She tumbled over into his arms, her helmet bumping against his.

It wasn’t hard to remember how perfectly she’d fit into his arms.

To make it worse, she held on, her gloves fisted into his jacket.

He’d never forgotten, either, how pretty she was. The kind of pretty that slid into a man, that deepened more inside him a little each day. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, the way her blue-gray eyes shone, the way her deep copper hair curled from the back of her helmet.

He held on to her just a second longer than necessary, perhaps, until she pushed herself off him and rolled onto her back.

Only then did he realize, with a painful start, that he was in very real danger of Ella Blair carving her way into his life again.

She was staring at the sky. “I thought I left my stomach up on that ridge.”

“You pretty much scared the life out of me when you screamed.”

“Sorry I screamed—it was just a reflex. But wow, that was fun.”

“It is fun. I feel like screaming sometimes too.” He looked over at her, gave her a smile.

But she must have related his comment to something in their past because she sat up, pulled her goggles up, and looked at him with so much raw pain in her eyes that he longed to grab back his words.

“I know it must tear you apart. You had so much, and then . . . but you’ve become a rescue skier. That’s so . . . heroic.”

He lifted an eyebrow.

“I’m trying too hard, aren’t I?” She made a face. “I just can’t stop talking, can’t stop trying to figure out how to . . . I don’t know, maybe make things better.”

He sat up. “Why don’t we just forget the past and ride? Dropping off a cliff into chin-deep powder is amazing and worthy of a scream.”

Slowly she smiled, and for a moment all the anger, all the hurt he’d stewed in for the last three years drained away, leaving only one brilliant thought.

He was on a mountain again with beautiful Ella Blair. Surrounded by champagne powder and the delicious smile of a girl who once thought he hung the moon.

Maybe she still did.

“We’re going to find your brother, Ella. I promise.”

She nodded, as if blinking back tears, and he had the urge to reach up, touch her cheek.

“Oh!” she said. “Did you see—I wasn’t the only one who made a dent in the hill.” She pointed to two more landing zones, disturbances in the snow not far away. And from them led tracks, now half-swept with snow. “Ollie and Bradley were here.”

If they’d taken his way, they would have missed the trail.

“Good job, Ella,” Gage said, a little chagrined. “But we’d better hurry.” He pointed to the swell of dark storm clouds closing in on the park. More, the wind had whipped up, stirring the snow into whirlwinds of crystalline white. Overhead, too, the cloud cover had thickened, stretching long shadows over the mountain.

He could smell storm in the air, the makings of a blizzard.

“We need to find them before this storm hits and get us all off the mountain,” he said. “You promise that you really didn’t hurt anything?”

“I’m fine.”

“Good—so I promise, no more taking the slow route. But no more going off cliffs before I do, okay?”

She nodded and reached for her board.

He hiked back to his, strapped it on, and slid back to her. It seemed that Oliver knew his trail well, which meant he’d continue down this bowl for the rest of the day, hopefully stopping tonight above Angel’s Wings and Cathedral Canyon.

“Stay right in my path. If they’re below us, we don’t want to set off an avalanche.”

“I’m right behind you.”

He didn’t know why her words filled him up with heat, but it charged through him as he leaned into the slope.

It could be that it wasn’t only Oliver and Bradley who were in over their heads.

Brette had landed in the middle of a journalist’s jackpot. Pure gold surrounded her; every one of the members of the PEAK team was heroic to the bone, evidenced by the team’s current conversation about heading into Glacier National Park to look for missing Oliver, Bradley, and now Gage and Ella.

No one had been able to rouse them on the radio, and apparently that had chopper pilot Kacey Fairing and her boss, Chet King, worried.

The two stood in front of a computer, watching the weather map refresh every few seconds as the low pressure front from the west closed in on the mountains. Kacey, tall, lean, and pretty with her long auburn hair, looked every inch the former military pilot Ty had described on their drive over.

Chet, maybe in his early sixties, leaned on a cane, his body still strong despite what Ty said were two new hips after a chopper accident. She made a mental note to add Chet to her list of heroes. The boss greeted her with a firm handshake and a crooked smile. Reminded her a little of Harrison Ford.

Kacey and the chopper hadn’t returned by the time Ty pulled up to the PEAK ranch, an actual former ranch with the old house reconstructed for their headquarters, including bunk rooms, a kitchen, an office, and a main meeting area. It didn’t take long, however, for Kacey to arrive and land the blue and white rescue chopper on the pad outside, in front of a two-story white barn that had the words PEAK Rescue written in red on the front.

Ty had given Brette a quick tour of that too, in his explanation of the PEAK resources and activities. “We do everything from search and rescue in the park, including climbing rescues and swift water rescues, to emergency medical evacuations, and we even help with avalanche control for the nearby ski areas, as well as the backcountry.”

He’d pointed out their wilderness ambulance, a Land Rover converted into a medivac unit. “We have a 4Runner and a couple Polaris snowmobiles for off-road needs. And of course, the dual-engine Bell 429 chopper.” He’d said it with such warmth in his voice she couldn’t help but remember his words.

“I’m the backup chopper pilot. I was the main pilot before Kacey got here.”

Interesting.

Ty had brought her in the house then, and introduced her to the team, at least the ones at the base. Chet, of course, then Sierra Rose, the team administrator. Petite, with short dark hair and hazel-green eyes, she greeted Brette by inviting her to grab a piece of leftover pizza, some soup, or one of the cookies in the jar in the kitchen. What had Ty said—the big sister of the team?

Sierra had assembled an hour-by-hour weather forecast for Heaven’s Peak, as well as satellite images of the area, and spread them out on a massive table in front of a map of the park affixed to the wall. A flat-screen against the back wall played the local weather and news.

Brette nearly fell over when country singer Ben King appeared from some back office and greeted Kacey Fairing with a quick kiss. She must have been staring because Ben turned to her, held out his hand. “Ben King.”

His album covers and posters didn’t do him justice. With blue eyes that she could lose herself in, just like his songs, he wore a baseball cap backward, faded jeans, and cowboy boots.

And, here he was, a bona fide hero, working on a rescue team. Blow her socks off.

“Brette Arnold. I’m a friend of Senator Ella Blair. She’s out with Gage on Heaven’s Peak, trying to track down her brother and his friend.”

“Right,” Ben said and glanced at Kacey.

And now she felt a little silly, because he probably knew all that.

“It’s an honor to meet you. I have all your albums . . .” Please, now she must sound like a rabid fan.

Which she was—at least a mildly rabid fan. Not the kind to stalk him to Montana.

“Thanks,” he said, a warmth in his smile that made her disbelieve everything his former bandmate Holly Montgomery had said about him in her interview about their breakup. Cold and difficult to work with.

That’s what bad journalism did—showed only the one-sided perspective. She liked to dig inside a person’s life, find the truth, show the world the full person, good and bad.

Let the public decide.

“I’m sure Gage will find them,” Ben said. “If anyone knows how to handle a mountain, it’s Gage. He’ll get them all down safely.”

Brette nodded, believing every word that came from his golden, mountain-twangy voice.

“The weather is closing in fast,” Kacey had said, giving her a smile, then headed over to Chet, where she huddled up, strategizing.

Meanwhile, Brette helped herself to a cookie. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Now, her stomach was starting to curl into a fist over the emptiness. She actually felt a little nauseated.

Ty must have noticed, because he pulled out a container of vegetable soup, ladled some into a bowl, and heated it in the microwave.

“Sit,” he said, putting the bowl on the counter and setting a spoon next to it.

She slid onto a high-top stool. “Thanks.”

Ty washed his hands, then grabbed a towel, turning to her. “It’ll be a long night, I’m guessing. And they’ll probably have to spend the night on the mountain.”

“Why?”

He parked the towel over his shoulder and reached in a nearby bread bin for a half loaf of French bread. Pulled out a knife. “The storm is rolling in. Even if they find Ollie and Bradley, Kacey can’t fly them off the mountain in this weather.”

Brette glanced out the window and noticed the beginning of flurries. The sky had turned a dark pewter. “That was fast.”

“Weather moves in quickly in the valley. It’ll take a little longer once it hits the mountains, but still, my guess is that by late this afternoon, they’ll be battling some winds and snow.”

She pressed a hand to her stomach.

“Worried?”

She sighed. Nodded. “Ella is a good snowboarder, there’s no doubt. She and her family used to come out West every year. They bought a place here at Blackbear just a few years ago, and she’s skied all the big mountain country—even went off Corbet’s Couloir at Jackson Hole. If anybody can keep up with Gage, it’s Ella. But . . .” She looked out the window. “I should call their parents.”

“That’s a good idea,” Ty said.

“Yeah, maybe, except . . . this could go south, fast.”

“They’re going to be okay. Gage is a good skier, and he prepared for a storm.”

“I was more talking about . . .” She sighed. “Well, Gage has a reputation, and if her parents find out she’s with him . . . well, not to mention that Gage and Ella have a past. And then Ella did something that really hurt Gage—”

“I know about their past. They’ll work it out. Gage isn’t going to let his mistakes—or his wounds—stand in the way of saving Ella’s brother.”

She might have given him a dubious look, because he frowned. “What?”

“He won’t let her get physically hurt, if he can, but Ella still holds a little torch for him, and . . . well, I just don’t want her getting her heart broken. She’s my best friend—probably only friend, actually—and she hasn’t exactly dated a plethora of men. None, actually, since Gage, I think. So . . .”

Ty set a glass of water in front of her. She reached for it, touched his fingers. He had nice hands, strong, long fingers. In fact, all of Ty Remington seemed sturdy and solid, from his wry smile and pale green eyes to his wide shoulders, firm torso, and fit legs. She had the sense that there was much more to know about Ty than he suggested.

Backup chopper pilot. From her perspective, the guy seemed more like the hero behind the lines, keeping everything running.

“So, I just hope they all come home in one piece,” she finished softly.

To her surprise, Ty reached over and cupped his hand over hers. Gave a little squeeze.

When he let go, little eddies of warmth sank into her skin.

Yeah, he had nice hands.

“So, you mentioned that billionaire Ian Shaw started PEAK Rescue?”

Ty nodded, wiping the outside of the soup container. He put it back in the fridge. “When his niece went missing in the park, he discovered that Mercy Falls just didn’t have the resources it needed to wage a full-scale search. So he invested in our first chopper and used it to search the park, and then later let the local Mercy Falls EMS department use it for their needs. He funded the entire thing until last summer, when he handed it over to Mercy Falls.”

“Wow, that’s generous.”

“That’s Ian,” said Sierra, who came up beside her and slid onto a stool. “He doesn’t want anyone else to go through what he did, searching for Esme.” She reached for the cookie jar. Pulled out a cookie. “Thankfully, she’s alive, although we still don’t know where she is.”

“Really?” And Brette thought of her editor’s reply text to her suggestion of writing a story of these local heroes. Dig around, work it up. Could be a good human interest piece.

“Yeah,” Sierra was saying, “she called about five months ago and left a message on Ian’s cell phone. Told him to stop looking for her. Which, of course, he can’t.”

“Is it because of his wife and son—and the fact they went missing and died in Katrina?”

The room went silent, and Brette looked at Ty, then back to Sierra.

Sierra had gone a little white. “How did you know that?”

“Uh, because Ian is . . . well, he’s on the board of a charity I did a profile on not long ago. He had a terrible allergic attack last summer that put him in the hospital—”

“I know,” Sierra said. She slid off the stool. “I was there.”

She didn’t offer more, just walked away, and Brette looked at Ty. He pursed his lips, then leaned down, pitching his voice low. “Sierra used to be his personal assistant.”

Oh. Interesting. Brette turned back to her soup. “So, besides the flood rescue, the grizzly attacks, and the search for lost kids in the park, what other epic adventures has this team had?”

Ty just kept wiping the counter and didn’t answer her.

“Ty?”

He glanced over at her, shook his head. “I can’t think of any more.”

She frowned. His tone was just . . . off.

And that’s when the door opened, sweeping the weather into the room along with a wide-shouldered blond, his hair in strings around his face. He wore a gray jacket, a pair of snow-crusted pants.

“Hey, guys. I just got a call from Jess. We have a family whose Caravan went off the road. She was driving by when she saw it and is wondering if we can get them out of the ditch. Jess is already there—it’s not far from the ski hill.”

He stood in the doorway, just a little larger than life. Thor, in the flesh. And he had the grim, one-sided smile to go with it.

“That’s Pete Brooks,” Ty said quietly.

Pete Brooks. The guy who had rescued the kids from a grizzly bear—she remembered Ty mentioning that.

Here, maybe, was a man with a story.

“I’ll go. We can take my truck,” Ben offered and got up and pushed past Pete, heading outside.

“You need more help?” Ty asked.

“We got this,” Pete said, glancing at him. Something in his expression . . . Brette couldn’t read it, but it was definitely there. A chill, perhaps. A glancing blow of dismissal.

“Stay here and wait to hear from Gage,” Kacey said to Ty. She got up and followed Ben out.

Ty nodded, glanced away. And something in his expression definitely said he’d been benched.

“I was the main pilot before Kacey got here.”

She couldn’t erase the sense that the greatest story of all had something to do with handsome yet quiet Ty Remington. The only question was . . . how to get him to tell it.

The sky had turned pewter gray, and the clouds were low and oppressive as icy snow flew from the sky and whirled into the back of Ella’s jacket and down her neck as she fought to stay in Gage’s line.

Two hard hours of skiing and she wanted to weep with the pain in her legs, the way they trembled. Sweat lined her helmet, and when she spied Gage waiting for her in the alcove of a wall of granite, she wanted to cry out in relief.

Collapse in a heap.

She’d never skied so hard in her entire life. She couldn’t bear to ask if Gage was pulling back or going easy on her.

She pulled up to him, breathing hard, the snow falling so thick around him that it accumulated on his jacket collar, turning his dark whiskers into a fine film of ice.

“The tracks are disappearing and it’s starting to get dangerous,” he said as he pulled off his goggles. Snowflakes caught in his lashes. “Even if I flick on my head lamp, I can’t find a good line. I need to see farther down the hill. I think we need to stop.”

“But we’re not at the cave.”

“I know. We’re still a good hour away, probably. And between us and the cave is the Weeping Wall. We can’t take that in the dead of night. The day is dropping away fast—I need to set up camp.”

She looked at him, then around. “Where, here?”

“We’re on a little ledge, protected from the wind. This is a good place.”

“Did you bring a tent?”

“I have a two-man bivvy. It’ll be cozy, but it’s an expedition tent, made for high-altitude camping. And I’ll anchor us into the rock.”

She’d promised to trust him, but oh, how she’d hoped to spend the night in a cozy cave instead of anchored to the side of a cliff. “What do you want me to do?”

“Hold my pack while I pitch camp.” Gage took it off as she clicked out of her bindings, set up her board, and hunkered down to hold his pack. He put on a headlamp and shined light on his progress as he used her shovel to dig out a foundation for them. Then he pulled out the tent contained in a tiny five-pound pack. It snapped open as he released it, and he set it in to the area, tacking down the snow stakes deep into the pack. Then he zipped open the door.

“I’ll secure our boards and the tent, you get inside, unpack, and get some snow melting. There’s a stove in my pack.”

She threw his pack in, then sat at the edge of the tent and pulled off her boots, bringing them inside with her. Her feet ached, and she rubbed them as he closed the door.

The wind shook the tent, and she tried not to think of where they were perched, the flimsy fabric and thin Kevlar wires that anchored them to the rock and ice. She found a Maglite and held it in her mouth between her teeth as she unlatched his sleeping bag, then rolled it out. She did the same with hers.

For a long moment she considered just what her mother would say about sharing her tent with Gage. But they’d sleep fully clothed, and, well . . .

Gage Watson was so angry at her, he was probably the last person who would entertain thoughts of romance.

Although, today, for a moment after she’d dropped off the cliff, he’d almost seemed . . . well, had seemed actually friendly. “Why don’t we just forget the past and ride?”

Wouldn’t that be nice? To just start over, meet each other anew? Discover the people they’d been before the accident, the civil suit, the betrayal.

Before her secrets.

Ella unzipped her jacket and pulled off her helmet. Then she slid into her sleeping bag as she rooted around in his pack for the stove. She found the attachable mug and unzipped the tent and packed the mug with snow. Gage had secured the snowboards to the rock and brought them up under the vestibule that he’d attached to the entrance. He then followed her into the tent and closed the door behind him, leaving on his headlamp for illumination.

“The sun is dropping like a rock—it’s getting black out there. And the snow is really coming down,” he said. He’d taken off his gloves and now blew on his reddened hands. “Must be twenty below out there.”

“And in here,” she said, lighting the stove.

“Not for long. The tent will warm up with our body heat.”

She didn’t look at him, not sure exactly what he meant. But she shouldn’t have worried, because Gage took off his boots, then climbed into his sleeping bag fully clothed. He worked off his helmet and his wet gaiter and clipped them to a hanging loft loop. Then he pulled out his walkie and stored it in a pocket on the wall.

The snow began to melt.

“I think Jess packed a dehydrated meal or two in there,” he said.

Ella dug through the pack and unearthed two meals.

“Beef stroganoff or chili mac?”

“Stroganoff. Hopefully we’ll get back before we have to dig into the chili mac. It’s more like chili paste.” He unzipped his jacket, pulled it off, and wadded it behind him for a pillow.

Underneath he wore a gray fleece pullover that shaped to his wide shoulders, his thick arms. He’d captured his trademark shoulder-length brown hair back into a low bun and now freed it, ran his fingers fast through it to untangle the snarls.

Then he pulled out his walkie and tried to call in to base. “Watson to PEAK, come back.”

He’d placed a call earlier today, shortly after they’d tracked Ollie’s trail off the cliff. Ella couldn’t help but wonder how Brette was faring with his PEAK friends. She had no doubt that within twenty-four hours, she’d have some brilliant story dug up about a daring rescue.

Brette did that—found the stories hidden inside people, dragged them out into the light.

Static answered Gage, and he tried a few more times to no avail.

“Probably the weather.”

“They’ll be worried,” Ella said as the water came to a boil. She poured it into the open pouch of stroganoff. Then she stirred the meal with a plastic spoon she’d found in a bag of essentials—salt, pepper, wipes. Thoughtful, that Jess.

“Maybe. We’ll get ahold of them first thing in the morning.”

“I hope Ollie’s found the cave.” She glanced at Gage, hoping for some reassurance.

“From his tracks, he’s handling the mountain better than I thought. If he’s following my line, he’ll be in the cave. He had a five-hour start on us. My guess is that they’re already hunkered down, asleep.”

Ella nodded, wishing she had his confidence. “I can’t help but feel like this is my fault. I came out here hoping to talk him into going back to school. Maybe he’s trying to prove something to me.” She handed the pouch to Gage. “There’s no plates.”

He took the pouch and the proffered spoon and dug in. “It’s good.”

“That’s my specialty—adding water to food. You should taste my hot cocoa.”

“Yes, please,” he said and grinned at her.

Yeah, he was right. The temperature in the tent had warmed.

She opened the door again, retrieved more snow in the mug, and set it on the stove to melt.

He passed the pouch over to her, keeping his spoon, and she dug in with a fresh utensil. “Thanks.”

“You did well today. I . . . I’d forgotten how well you handle the powder, Ella.”

She couldn’t look at him. “I’m pretty sore.”

“Well, me too. I haven’t been freeriding . . . well, not since Outlaw, really.”

Oh. She didn’t know where to go with that. “You came home, though, and started working on the rescue team?”

“No. I came home and my dad wanted me to go to college. I think he thought that snowboarding was a well-funded hobby. But I never wanted what he saw for me—medicine. Becoming a doctor. It was his fault—he started me snowboarding when I was three. I was never meant for college.” He shook his head, reached for the pack, and rummaged around.

“I hooked up with PEAK Rescue about two years ago because of Ty. He was flying the chopper for them at the time and told me they needed an EMT. I went to classes at the local community college, got my basic EMT, and started working rescues. The ski patrol was an easy jump from there.”

He’d found the cocoa and now poured two packets into the hot water, stirred it with a knife. “Sorry, only one mug.” He turned off the stove.

“It’s fine,” she said and handed him back the pouch, now empty. The stroganoff had heated her core, and when she chased it with the hot cocoa, yeah, she might live.

Especially with her and Gage finding new footing. Maybe he was right—they should put the past behind them, just stay focused on their goal.

“How about you? Still working at your law firm?”

She shook her head. “No. I resigned, nearly right after . . .”

He looked up at her, frowned. “Why?”

He had such pretty eyes, the kind that could hold her fast, drag truths from her. She looked away. “Uh, well, my mom got sick.”

“Oh, Ella, I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks. Breast cancer. She’s doing okay now, but she was a state senator, in our Vermont congress.”

“I remember that.” He took the cocoa she offered and took a sip. “Mmm.”

“I know, right?” She folded up the garbage, put it in the plastic bag. “Anyway, Mom suggested I fill her shoes, so I stepped in, got elected by a special call election, and served out her term. It ends this year.”

“Seriously? You’re a state senator?”

“It’s not that exciting. I mostly give speeches and sit in meetings.” She made a face. “Actually, I’m trying to decide if I want to run for reelection. I don’t know.”

“But you always wanted to do something to help people—I remember that part. You were going to defend the weak and save the world.”

“Yeah. Well, the world doesn’t want to be saved, I don’t think. I recently tried to filibuster to block a bill vote on the recreational use of marijuana, but it didn’t work.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sometimes I feel like I’m spinning my wheels, working hard for something that doesn’t matter. No one is listening, no one cares.”

He handed her the cocoa. “Finish it.”

She took it, and felt the heat of his hand lingering on the container.

“Sort of like your brother?” Gage said softly.

She looked up at him. “Yeah. I can’t believe he would do this—risk lives. Ours, his, Bradley’s. But now I’m wondering if I worried for nothing—he’s clearly fine. I shouldn’t have dragged you out here.”

“You were worried. I get that—we panic when we’re worried. And that emotion clouds our judgment.” He dismantled the stove. “Like when I saw Dylan go off that cliff—I couldn’t think of anything but getting to him. I’d seen other people live, despite the fall, landing in thirty feet of spongy powder. So I cleared the cliff as fast as I could, saw where Dylan landed, and then . . . that’s when I heard it. The thunder of the avalanche that Dylan had dragged from the cornice when he went off. It unlatched and then . . .”

“I know. I watched it on live feed,” she said quietly.

He looked up, met her eyes, and for a second, silence fell between them.

“Yeah. Right, well . . .” He shoved the stove into his pack.

“I watched you try to out-ski it, and you were amazing. The way you kept riding it, even when it caught you . . . and then you vanished.” She pressed her hand to her mouth.

“It was pretty terrifying,” he said, drawing in a breath. “It just swept me up like a wave, and I was just . . . helpless. The snow washed over me, and I couldn’t breathe. And then, just like that, it stopped. Everything went eerily quiet. And that’s when I realized I was stuck. Entombed.”

She held her breath. Entombed.

He wasn’t looking at her now; he was someplace distant even as he spoke. “I’ve never been so alone as I was then. Truly buried alive.” He drew in a shuddered breath. “Even though I wore an avalanche detector, I had to tell myself not to panic, to slow my breathing. Had to believe that they would find me.”

He glanced over at her, offered a wry smile. “Sorry, I’m not sure where that came from.”

But she wasn’t going to let him go, this glimpse of the Gage she’d known. “I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe until they found you.”

He met her eyes, nodded, his mouth a tight line. “That’s pretty much how I felt, except my world was black and frozen. And brutally quiet. I tried yelling but it just bounced back at me.” He blew out a breath. “And the cold . . . I’ve been cold before, but this cold—there was no escape. At least it helped mask my dislocated shoulder.”

“I remember the rescue team pulling you out. I wanted to go to the hospital, but . . .”

“Dylan.” He was quiet for so long she wasn’t sure he wasn’t done. Then . . . “I had something, you know? A life I loved, respect, a future. And you took that away—or at least I blamed you. I’ve spent the last three years, however, taking it apart. Replaying what people said in the hearing. Thinking about that night when Dylan and I fought. The fact is, I did tell Ramon that Dylan wasn’t good enough. And I realize that to you, it looked like I’d been reckless with Dylan’s life. But Dylan had already paid the chopper pilot, and he was going to ride Terminator Wall. I thought I could keep him from killing himself, and maybe that was arrogant, but the truth is, I was trying to help.”

“I know that now.”

His mouth tightened. “But I do know that I screwed everything up. I thought by doing the right thing, it would protect me, and him. But life doesn’t work that way. Doing what’s right comes at a cost. I just wasn’t ready for it.”

He looked at her then, and she had the unsettled feeling that he didn’t just mean his career.

As if he could read her mind, he swallowed, kept his gaze in hers. “Sometimes I go back to that night and think, what if I hadn’t gotten into that fight with Dylan? What if when I came back you were still there, and we had talked . . . I don’t know. Maybe it would have turned out differently.”

Huh? She stared at him in the light of his head lamp. “What are you talking about?”

He was sitting there, not looking at her, closing up his pack. “I’m not blaming anyone but myself, but I was a mess that night, and I thought we were friends.”

She couldn’t move. Hardly breathe. “Gage—I waited for you, but you’re the one who didn’t come back. We were friends,” she said softly. We could be again. Please.

His chest rose and fell. “Well, anyway. Just so you know, I didn’t leave you at the restaurant. I went back for you. I’m sorry it was too late.”

It’s not too late. The thought rose, filled her head, her chest. But it didn’t matter. It wasn’t up to her anymore.

“Get some sleep. Tomorrow we have to take Weeping Wall, then the Great White Throne. If we get up early enough—”

A great screech tore through the tent as the wind sheared down from the peak. It caught their enclave, shuddering the walls with gale-force winds. Ella screamed and hit the floor of the tent.

It began to slide.

She only barely sensed Gage rolling over, on top of her, pinning her down, his sleeping bag covering hers as he dug his knees into the snow foundation alongside of her. The wind roared, but his head came close to hers, his voice in her ear. “Shh. We’re fine. The tent will hold. Trust me.”

She did trust him. It was the world outside that had her coming unglued. She closed her eyes and didn’t even hesitate as she reached out and wrapped her hands around his wrists, burying her face in her jacket as the tent shuddered around them.