Chapter 10
Sawyer
The temperature inside the dome climbed to sixty-eight degrees within twenty
minutes. Sawyer unzipped his soaked yellow shell and draped it over the aluminum
drying rack beside the catalytic heater. He peeled off his heavy canvas bibs,
stepping out of his boots to stand in his thick wool socks, dark grey
compression pants, and fitted black thermal top. Every muscle in his upper back
and core ached from hauling Declan over the cornice, but the physical warmth in
the small steel room was a welcome relief from the sub-zero gale outside.
Declan stripped down to a tight black short-sleeved tactical shirt and
olive-drab pants. The man was built like a tank; his biceps were thick with rope
calluses and old scars, and his broad chest filled out the fabric with dense,
functional muscle. He set a stainless steel kettle filled with clean snow onto
the secondary propane burner, watching the ice melt into clear water with rigid,
unblinking focus.
"You live like a monk on this mountain, Declan," Sawyer said, leaning his hip
against the edge of the electronics workbench. "Bennett told me at the base that
you spent three straight months up here during the last big winter cycle. You
don't take leave. You don't date. You just sleep between the hangar bunkhouse
and this steel dome."
Declan picked up two heavy tin mugs from the shelf, dropping a black tea bag
into each one. "Snow crystals don't play games, Sawyer. You calculate the shear
strength of a slab, you respect the terrain, and the mountain gives you exact
answers. People are complicated and careless. They make promises they break when
the pressure builds."
Sawyer walked across the rubber floor, stopping three feet from Declan by the
stove. "You think I dropped into that closed couloir on Galena because I was
being careless?"
Declan turned, his dark eyes locking onto Sawyer with sharp, heavy intensity.
"You dropped into that chute to chase an adrenaline high for a camera crew,
Brand."
"I dropped into that chute because my best friend died in an avalanche in
Chamonix twelve months ago," Sawyer said, his voice dropping into a flat, steady
tone that carried across the quiet dome. "We were filming an extreme descent on
the north face of the Aiguille du Midi. I scouted the line. I told Liam the snow
was stable. He dropped second, the wind slab sheared at forty centimeters, and
he took a six-hundred-foot cliff drop onto glacial moraine. I dug him out with
my bare hands, but his skull was crushed. I spent the last year pushing every
line to the absolute limit because sitting still in a quiet room makes me hear
that snow tearing loose."
Declan stood completely still, the kettle whistling softly on the burner behind
him. The harsh, judgmental edge in his posture melted away, replaced by a deep,
heavy understanding that rooted him to the metal grating. Declan reached out,
his large, calloused bare hand coming up to cup the side of Sawyer’s neck, his
thick thumb resting against Sawyer’s jawline.
The heat of Declan’s hand was searing against Sawyer’s skin, steady, firm, and
completely grounding. Sawyer let his head tilt into the big man’s palm, feeling
the tension drain out of his neck.
"You didn't kill your friend, Sawyer," Declan said, his voice low, gravelly, and
fierce with conviction. "The mountain took him. It takes people who know what
they are doing and it takes people who don't. You carrying that guilt like a
fifty-pound pack on every run is what will get you killed."
Sawyer looked up into Declan’s dark eyes, his breath shallow in the warm room.
The distance between their faces was less than four inches.
"Then take the pack off me, Declan," Sawyer murmured, his hand coming up to grip
Declan’s muscular forearm. "Hold me down so I don't have to keep running."