“Good. Then pull yourself up, and anchor yourself into the wall.”
“I’ll try.”
“Then release your pack and let it hang from the pony leash.”
She returned to Sasha, swallowing back the acid in her chest. How had she let this happen twice?
Sasha was groaning. “I don’t feel well.”
The sudden rush of adrenaline hadn’t helped her AMS. Jenny knelt next to her. “Okay, let’s build an anchor—”
A scream echoed from the crevasse and a shock rattled through the line. It ripped Sasha’s anchored axe from the snow, dragging it over.
“No!” Jenny leaped on the axe, on Sasha, now being raked through the snow.
She’d forgotten to unhook Sasha from the line. She grabbed the axe, pinioning her feet in hard next to Sasha, fighting the pull of the axe.
“What happened to the other anchor?” Sasha said, breathing hard.
She searched for it. The jerk on the line, and their scramble, had ripped Jenny’s axe free.
“Aria!”
“I dropped the pack! It jerked me out of the wall!”
Right. Jenny couldn’t move, her face in the snow, her feet planted, her hands gripping the axe.
If she moved, Sasha and Aria would go right over the cliff.
But she couldn’t set another anchor without moving.
Next to her, Sasha started to hyperventilate.
“Sash. Can you unclip your rope?”
“Not and hold on to the axe.”
“I got the axe.”
A pause, then, “If it rips out, and you can’t hold it, Aria dies.”
Jenny closed her eyes, her body shaking.
And shaking.
She couldn’t breathe, her throat tightening, her arms burning with the effort of holding in the axe.
They were going to die out here. All of them. Because she wasn’t going to let Aria and Sasha go over the cliff, but yeah, she couldn’t hold the axe.
Not on her own.
“I know!” She pressed her goggles into the snow, gritted her teeth. “I know. I just need a minute to think. To work it out—” She drew in a breath. “Just give me a minute.”
But she didn’t have a minute. Because the longer they hung here, the more the snow would give way, the more the mountain would eat their strength.
And sooner, rather than later, they’d all fall into the crevasse.
Why had she insisted on this stupid trip? We’re stronger than we think we are?
No, no they weren’t. Or she wasn’t.
“We’re going to die out here, aren’t we?”
Oh, Sash. Jenny couldn’t answer her.
“Don’t let go!”
The male voice trumpeted through her.
“We got you—just stay put.”
Then someone stepped over her, his knees on either side of her, his chest against her back, strong arms enveloping her as he pushed his weight onto the axe. “Don’t move. It’s going to be okay.”
She lifted her head and was just barely able to make out the sight of a man, a climber, dressed in a red jacket, black climbing pants, and a snow-crusted hat pounding in her ice axe and taking an arrest position. The pressure on the rope eased.
But the presence above her didn’t move. “Not yet,” he said.
In moments, a man in a blue jacket pounded in two snow pickets. Then he ran webbing through the two pickets, attached a Prusik to their rope line, and clipped the line into the new anchor.
Around her, her rescuer’s coat crinkled, the snow squeaked beneath his legs, and his breath moved in and out against his face mask as he quietly saved their lives.
How—?
“Okay, you can let go.”
She eased up on her hold just as he too eased up. Leaned back.
The anchors held.
She reached over and unclipped Sasha from the line.
Sasha rolled over on her back, breathing hard.
Jenny wanted to cry. Instead, she turned and found a mittened hand outstretched to help her up.
She took it and stood up.
Her hero wore an orange jacket, goggles, and a lime-green wool hat. His face mask was crusted with snow, his dark goggles pulled down to protect his eyes.
“We’ll haul you up!” Beside her, the man in blue was setting another anchor and clipping himself in. The man in the red jacket joined him, also hooking in.
They added an ascender to the line to use as a hauling tool, then together they began to drag Aria to the lip.
Jenny leaned over the cliff and spotted Aria walking up the edge, her crampons digging in to keep her from being crushed by the lip.
They pulled her up and over the edge.
Aria dropped to her hands and knees, breathing hard. One of her rescuers leaned over and pulled up her pack, still attached to the leash.
Then they both backed away from the edge.
Jenny wanted to collapse, painfully near tears. Aria sat back, her hands shaking.
“You okay?”
She nodded. “Except, I think I’m going to throw up.”
Jenny too. She leaned over, grabbing her knees, just trying not to hyperventilate.
It’s going to be okay.
She leaned into the voice, let it find her bones, soothe her.
“Thank you,” she said softly and turned to look at her rescuer.
The man in orange had crouched in front of her, staring at her, concern in his eyes gleaming through the dark frame of his goggles.
She knew those eyes . . . oh . . .
“Where did you guys come from?” Sasha said.
“The top of the mountain,” said the one with the blue jacket, gray snowpants. “We saw smoke.”
“The tent,” Aria said. “It caught fire.”
But Jenny couldn’t take her eyes off . . . “Ry?”
He smiled.
The jig was up. She wanted to clamp her hand over her mouth, to yank the name back, but it was out there, forced free by relief and not a small amount of shock.
He took off his goggles and unleashed the full power of his gaze, and suddenly, her throat thickened, heat filling her entire chest.
She saw it all, right there in his gaze. Their past, the grief she’d caused him, even that way he had of calming her entire world.
And behind it all, the burning fire that was Orion Starr.
“Hey there, Jacie.”
She didn’t know what to do with the crazy flux of emotions—run, cry, throw her arms around him—so she just sat there, as if frozen, as he said, “It looks like I found you.”
She’d just stared at him.
Clearly Orion had made much, much more out of their epic-in-his-head relationship three years ago than she had because the woman just blinked. Nodded. Emitted a soft, “Thank you.”
Okay, so not the dramatic meeting he’d pictured as he’d glissaded down the glacier.
In fact, if he read her right, he hadn’t meant anything to Jenny—J. C.—Calhoun.
But, she did know him, hello, because he hadn’t dreamed up her utterance of his name. “Ry?” Nor the little catch of her breath.
Yeah, honey, it’s me.
Although maybe that catch had been the wind because she said nothing, just crawled over to Aria.
Which left him baffled, and not a little irked.
He probably needed to let it go, stop letting the fact she seemed unfazed by their unlikely reunion eat into him as he built a wind wall around the two tents they’d erected. Good thing Jake had added the cook tent into their supplies because the women could take shelter inside.