He made the first hundred feet before he had to stop, his pulse thundering in his ears.
“What the hell?” he managed to gasp out.
“Altitude,” Jeremy gasped as well. He was glad to see that Jeremy was in no better shape.
“Then how do they climb something like Everest?”
“Again, what makes you think I’d know? Supplemental oxygen above the eight-thousand-meter Death Zone. Most teams do a four- to six-week acclimatization for altitude at Base Camp.”
Typical. Jeremy seemed to know a lot about everything, even if he couldn’t ski. Jon made it another fifty feet up. Reminding himself it was just five stories didn’t help.
Jeremy dropped to sit beside him. Jon didn’t even remember sitting down.
“Why are you…” Jon had to drag in another deep breath, “…giving me such a…hard time?”
“Am I?”
Jon decided that an eye roll would use less oxygen than speech.
Jeremy seemed to be studying the peaks lying to the north for a while. “I didn’t know I was.” It didn’t sound as if he was lying.
“Well, you’ve been grinding on something since the moment I got here. The hammer. Banging the engine. Insisting that every camera angle I used wasn’t optimal. Stuff,” he finished lamely.
“Huh!” Jeremy’s grunt was thoughtful. Or was it another brush-off like Miranda had given him?
They rose to their feet and made it up another seventy-five or so. They should be halfway up the slope and it looked good. He pushed an extra twenty-five and came over a rise. After a short meadow that looked almost level, though he’d bet it wasn’t, the mountain rose up high above them.
“It got taller,” Jeremy gasped out. He pulled out an altimeter, studied it, then turned it to Jon. According to it, they were still over four hundred feet below the main crash.
Jon turned to look back down at the wings. They were smaller, he was sure of it. Just not much. Upslope, the top still looked very, very far away.
They had to work together to get around an outcropping and not be tipped over backward by their heavy packs. When they were sitting atop it, with their legs dangling out into space, Jeremy pulled out his water bottle, offering it to Jon first.
He drank deeply before returning it and felt better for doing so.
“You’re upsetting Miranda.” Jeremy said as if it was simple fact, again studying the horizon.
“I’ll be damned if I know how.”
“You like her?”
“Yes.”
“A lot?”
“Uh-huh.” Jon slowed down on his answer.
“And you’re sleeping with her.”
“Not sure that’s your business, but yes. When our schedules allow.”
Jeremy hadn’t looked away from the distant peaks. And again he stopped talking. But if Jon was judging correctly, he wasn’t angry. His profile looked puzzled.
“Do you wish it was you sleeping with her?”
“What?” That finally had Jeremy facing him. “No! Why?”
Jon finally figured out what was going on. He should have seen it right away. Jeremy worshipped Miranda. Anyone touching her would be just plain wrong in his world. Like watching your parents kiss. Not that his parents ever had.
But he couldn’t just let Jeremy off the hook, even if he hadn’t realized that he’d been chapping Jon’s ass for the last few hours. He pushed to his feet, ready to tackle the next section.
“She’s pretty hot, you know. Wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to.”
“No-o! I— Not with—”
“How about Holly? You like blondes?”
“Holly?” His voice squeaked and Jon didn’t think it was due to the altitude. “She’s…scary.”
Jon had to agree with him there.
“So who are you seeing?” The conversation stretched out in stages. They were no longer stopping after each section, but rather step-step-rest, step-step-rest.
“No one.”
“C’mon, Jeremy. You’re a good-looking kid.” Step-step-rest. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-four.” Over a decade younger than him or Miranda.
“You’re not a virgin, are you?”
“No!” His voice had the defensiveness of someone who’d not had much experience. But then was softer as he continued. “Nancy. Chess club. Graduation night. I was sixteen. I finished MIT at nineteen. Dual masters from Princeton. At twenty-two. I mostly studied.” Even those short sentences were more than Jon could have managed while moving.
Then Jon stopped short and looked at him. He’d known Jeremy was smart, but it hadn’t sunk in that, much like Miranda, he was a genius at what he did. Jon’s main success in high school had been swim team—his SEAL father’s realm as if he could ever compete. For his first eighteen years, he’d never been good enough. Without Uncle Drake, then a colonel in the 75th Army Rangers, calling in a couple favors for him, he’d probably never have made it into the Air Force Academy at all. Once there and away from his father, he’d thrived. But it had been a close thing.
Had Jeremy had a chance to thrive yet? Professionally and intellectually, yes. But the rest of him?
“We need to get you a girl, Jeremy. One as nice as you are.”
Jeremy blushed in response—his coloring lit far more brightly than could be accounted for by the high-altitude workout. Jon’s kid sister was still in her twenties—and hunting for Husband Number Two with all the sensitivity of a battering ram. She would run right over Jeremy and never notice that she’d flattened him. He’d have to give it some more thought. Maybe ask if Holly knew anyone.
He turned back up the slope, too short of breath to speak anymore. They’d moved past step-step-rest. Now they were just in the slow grind of continuous motion that would eventually get them to the top.
But he didn’t dare look up to find out how much longer it would be.
14
Jon felt like Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay atop Mount Everest—without the supplemental oxygen.
Jeremy had ground out the details in broken sentences and scattered phrases. “Fifty feet to the highest peak in the world, they stopped crawling and stood. Past speech, Tenzing waved for Hillary to be the first ever to stand atop the mountain. He figured it was the white climber’s privilege. In reply, Hillary wrapped an arm around Tenzing’s shoulders, then, staggering forward, they took the top together.”
His and Jeremy’s arrival at the top of the Snowmass ski area was far less auspicious, but perhaps equally welcome. Jon had thought he was in pretty good shape. Apparently not.
“Sixty-four percent,” Jeremy grunted from where he knelt on all fours with his head hanging down.
“Huh?” Was all Jon could manage. If not for the char, Jon would have spread-eagled on the ground. Finally reaching the true top past three false peaks had taken his knees right out from under him.
“We only have sixty-four percent of the air up here compared to sea level.”
“How much did they have on Everest?”
“Thirty-three.”
“Shit.” It was all he could say. So much for comparing himself to Hillary. He and Jeremy had barely walked up to an altitude that locals skied at all winter. Of course, skiers didn’t live at Pope Field at two hundred feet year-round and carry full site-investigation packs weighing at least thirty pounds.