Like she’d loved Kia.
Aria patted her head, giving Jenny all-okay.
Please, let them be near the end of the icefall. Her legs burned, her feet were frozen, and she kept flexing her fingers.
And stay where, Aria? You burned up the tent.
Okay, enough of that. She pressed her axe into the snow, testing, then followed with a step, the soft crunch of snow. “I vote next time we bring men to carry the heavy things.”
So maybe that was a little bit sexist. A lot sexist.
Even if Jake decided to show up, she hadn’t a clue what she’d say to him. She hadn’t exactly spent a lot of time in med school dating, or even talking to men on a social basis.
Then again, she’d been twenty, the youngest in her class, and fixated on getting her specialty.
Besides, Jake Silver was miles over her head. Dark blond hair that twined out under his wool cap, the hint of golden-brown whiskers, pale blue eyes, thick shoulders, and a grin that did dangerous things to her heart.
Or Kia’s heart, technically.
And maybe it was Kia he liked, because Aria could hardly believe her own words when she said, “I see you like to live dangerously, huh, Cowboy Jake?”
Apparently, she was the one living dangerously.
A man like Jake Silver wouldn’t seriously like her. Especially when he discovered that she wasn’t anything like the woman she’d let her mouth betray her as.
She cleared the tiny valley and stepped onto the cornice that Sasha had been standing on earlier. Sasha had descended to the bridge below, and Aria set her ice axe in. Didn’t hurt to be careful.
So she’d flirted a little with Jake. She liked his smile, his laughter, and even the way he’d led on the dance floor, like she could trust him.
But she’d never see him again, so probably she should stop fantasizing about him showing up. Carrying her backpack.
Carrying her.
She grinned. Okay, sometimes she and Kia could agree. Jake was a fine-looking man and she wasn’t sad she danced with him.
Sasha cleared the bridge and climbed up the opposite side. Jenny was out in front, a good thirty feet, descending into another bowl, hopefully near the end of the ice field.
Aria took a step across the cornice, following Sasha’s indentations.
The ice gave not even a hint of warning, not a crack to bite the air so she could throw herself against the ice with her axe. Not even time to alert Jenny and Sasha with a “Falling!”
The cornice simply gave way, dissolving from under her.
She dropped into nothingness.
Debris clogged her mouth, cutting off her screams, ice buffeted her face, her arms windmilling.
Oh God, help—
A jerk around her waist and shoulders wrenched her to a stop. Her breath ripped out of her. Pain rippled through her shoulders, and she dropped her ice axe, flailing in the air.
“Aria!”
She heard Sasha yelling, but she couldn’t respond, still fighting for breath.
More snow fell above her. She grabbed the rope, holding on, realizing that Sasha’s and probably Jenny’s self-arrests were the only thing keeping her from plunging to an icy death.
Stop struggling.
The voice—crisp, demanding—slammed through her.
Calm down.
She obeyed and got a breath into her lungs. She must have crashed through the snow bridge. The cascade of snow slowed to a trickle. The air cleared, the only sound was her hard breathing hitting her mask.
Overhead, snow gusted off the cornice that had just given way. She hung horizontally, the line clipped into her waist and chest biners. The harness burned into her thighs, and the waist belt bruised her hip bones. She didn’t think she’d broken any ribs, and she didn’t want to think about internal injuries.
She couldn’t look down.
“We got you!” Jenny’s voice hovered from the top and Aria tried to grab the words, hold on.
To not let the truth take her heart.
No, she wasn’t dangling from the soft edge of a glacier.
Okay, she was, but no, she shouldn’t think about it.
She guessed herself to be about ten feet down, which meant that Sasha had self-arrested fast. Probably she’d set her anchor on the far side before Aria took her fatal step.
Which meant that Jenny could set an anchor, maybe build a snow bollard, and Aria could use her Prusik line as a foothold to climb up.
The fissure wasn’t that wide—she fixed her crampons to the wall to keep from spinning.
Then, she simply hung from the rope, staring at the blue sky, trying not to panic.
And wishing that her too-brave-for-her-own-good deceased twin sister might get her out of messes as easily as she got her into them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
JENNY SHOULD HAVE LOOKED BACK. Should have checked on Aria, in the anchor position on the line, picking her way through the route she’d cut.
Shouldn’t have assumed that just because Jenny had trodden that route that Sasha and Aria were safe.
She’d been caught by the brilliance of the Muldrow Glacier flowing out before her, bathed in an eerie, deep blush, the low-hanging clouds gathered above almost bruised, in shades of lavender and rose. They might not have a tent, but she’d already worked out how to build a cave, and next on her list was melting snow for water.
Always looking ahead.
Which was why she didn’t see Aria fall, just heard the scream, then Sasha leaping on her already planted ice axe—good girl. Jenny hit her knees, dug in her crampons, and fell on her axe.
Aria reaching the end of her rope had yanked Jenny backward and she knew the force must have also ripped Sasha from her hold. She glanced over her shoulder and Sasha was digging in again, dangerously close to the edge of the crevasse.
Jenny hunkered down and held her breath, her body shaking. Please.
The line stopped moving.
“Sash!”
“I got her!” Sasha said. She hadn’t gotten worse as they trekked down the glacier, but given the way she’d struggled to keep anything down, she had nothing but sheer will holding Aria to the mountain.
“I’m going to put in an anchor!” Jenny said.
“I can’t hold her myself.”
Right. She shoved her axe all the way into the snow, braced herself around it, then clipped her quick clip between the wrist strap and her line. Please—she leaned off the anchor, ready to grab it should it inch out.
It stayed in the snow.
She clipped out of the line, leaving it attached to the axe anchor, dropped her pack, and went to help Sasha. She clipped Sasha’s quick-clip line to her ice axe strap. “Stay there, I’m going to check on Aria.”
She walked over to the edge. Leaned over.
Aria hung over a drop of two hundred feet, maybe five feet wide, but brutal with its icy blue depths. This time, the pack hadn’t ripped her upside down, but it hung from her shoulders and hips as she lay horizontal.
“You okay?”
“Just hanging out.”
“That’s not funny.” She didn’t know how Aria did that—figured out how to lean into the chaos of life without panicking. She seemed to thrive on challenges, from her medical prowess to the adventures that added an edge to life.
Or maybe that was only her living to the beat of her sister’s heart in her chest.
Whatever it was, it made Aria the perfect climbing partner.