At the front of the room, the song ended and a man got up from a table of rowdies. Of course, Bon Jovi piped into the speakers. She winced at his awful rendition of “Livin’ on a Prayer.”
The words—and the rowdy table singing along—stirred up a memory. A too-handsome-for-his-own-good, brown-haired PJ and his buddies singing at the top of their lungs.
No. She breathed the ghost away and turned her attention to the television screen. They were running more footage from the San Antonio, Texas, arena where a bomber had set off an explosion after a bull-riding event a couple weeks ago. Apparently, they’d caught the man, but it didn’t stop the pundits from speculating on his reasons—something about being out of a job, angry . . .
Yeah, well, anger made people do stupid things. Costly things. That’s why you couldn’t dwell on the past.
The waitress came up just as the song changed and another woman got up, spinning a LeAnn Rimes favorite.
Fate was merciless tonight.
“You want anything?”
She drew in a breath. And then, suddenly, the crisp wind filtered in off the thick cedar forest of the Hindu Kush mountains and caught up the scent of shishkebabs grilling on an open fire. Male laughter lifted from behind her as a group of men fought for a basketball, dribbling it against a dirt court, bouncing it off a pallet-made backboard, a naked hoop. Someone’s iPod plugged into a speaker, blasted country music.
“How do I live without you . . .”
Her chest tightened, her throat thickening.
“Ma’am?”
Jenny stared at the waitress, her mind blank.
“I want to know. . .”
“I . . .” She closed her mouth, shook her head. Pushed out of the booth. “I’m sorry. I’m not feeling well.”
Lucas frowned.
“Jenny?” Aria said.
“Sorry, Aria. I need to go home. Can you . . . are you—”
Aria’s eyes widened, then, “Let’s go.” She looked at Lucas and Sasha. “Next time.”
Jenny headed for the door. Tried not to turn into a fish as she hit the cool air, but—
“You’re having a panic attack.”
“I’m fine.”
“Give me the keys before I need to resuscitate you,” Aria said, coming up beside her to circle her arm around her waist.
Jenny looked at her and Aria gave her a small smile. “I guess some mountains you just can’t quite climb high enough to conquer.”
She slid into the passenger seat. Leaned her head back. Closed her eyes.
Aria’s hand found hers. “Someday we’ll both climb our mountains and come down healed.”
“Yeah,” she said.
But as Aria drove her home, back to their shared apartment complex, Jenny fell hard into the dark, brutal truth.
There was no mountain high enough to overcome her mistakes.
CHAPTER TWO
ORION WAS HOLDING his breath.
A month into the Denali climbing season, and so far, no one had died on the mountain. A few rescues—pulmonary edema, frostbitten fingers and toes, a couple falls that resulted in broken bones—but no major avalanches, no socked-in storms that buried climbers, and especially, no crevasse falls to swallow climbers whole.
And, so far, all the emergencies had been handled by the National Park Service rangers camped at Basin Camp, just past Windy Corner, on a large plateau at 14,200 feet.
Good thing, because Orion’s rescue days were over.
Especially on Denali.
“Have you started to thaw yet?”
The question came from Ham, who wore a red North Face jacket, the collar up, his dark blond hair rucked up by the wind. He stood beside Orion in the middle of the street in the town of Copper Mountain, located just south of the Denali State Park line. Population 800, the town swelled into the thousands during the summer, as the sun hung high above the mountainscape to the north. Although small, the town knew how to host a party. When the ice thawed and the snow retreated, the locals emerged from hibernation and greeted the arriving tourists with an annual country music festival the last weekend of May.
Arts and crafts vendors from Anchorage and Fairbanks set up along the tiny main street, and twangy music from bands as far away as Seattle played nonstop on the stage in the parking lot of the Midnight Sun Saloon and Grill, the one decent eatery in town.
This year, a three-ride carnival had come to town and set up a merry-go-round, a tiny Ferris wheel, and a kiddie coaster. The smell of kettle corn mixed with the smoke from the long grill set up outside the saloon. Patrons ate ribs out of paper baskets, either milling around the crowd or seated at the picnic tables set outside the saloon.
“You’ll be surprised to know it can get into the high seventies in July,” Orion said, in response to Ham’s question.
“Get out the bikinis.” Ham handed him a lemonade from the Midnight Sun. “They tapped a keg, but—”
“I don’t drink before I climb,” Orion said. “And Mount Huntington might be only a twelver, but it’s a harder technical climb than Denali.” He took a sip of the lemonade. “You sure you want to tackle French’s wall on the descent?”
“I’m sure Jake and I need the rappelling practice. I thought we could do some crevasse rescue training. It’s been a while since I did anything with numb fingers.”
“And toes. It can drop to thirty below, and the wind is worse on Huntington. But it is gorgeous.”
“How many times have you climbed it?”
“Twice. Scared myself silly on Idiot’s Wall.” Orion turned to Ham. “By the way, you’re not fooling anyone. I know you climbed K2, and Jake’s no stranger to climbing, so how about you tell me why you decided to disturb my beauty sleep.”
“Sometimes you just gotta climb a mountain to figure out what is important,” Ham said, his mouth tugging up.
“I was happy. Reading a Tom Clancy novel. Watching the ice go out on the lake behind my house. And most importantly . . . staying out of trouble.”
“You thrive on trouble,” Ham said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have become a PJ.”
Once upon a time, yes, it gave Orion a sense of purpose that balmed the wounds. Now, the memory of who he’d been only kept them open, bleeding. “I did that to drag people away from trouble. People like you. And now I’m starting to get a bad feeling about our upcoming excursion.”
“Speaking of trouble.” Ham’s gaze scanned over to Jake Silver, who had made friends with a trio of women.
Jake wore a pair of jeans, hiking boots, and a sweatshirt and had a blue bandanna over his shaggy blond hair, which curled out as if trying to flee. He too drank a lemonade.
Orion knew Jake by reputation only—Jake hadn’t been in the mess in Afghanistan that had brought Orion and Ham together. But he’d been an operator on Team Three, and a good one until he’d had to shoot a kid and it screwed up his head. Or at least that was the rumor.
That and the fact that Jake never lacked for female attention. Even now he made the brunette laugh. Next to him, a petite redhead looked away, although she smirked.
Beside the brunette, a blonde, her hair in long waves under a blue knit cap, stood with her back to them. She shook her head, probably in response to something he said.