Chapter 21 #2
Ahead, maybe fifteen feet away down the sloping roof, I can just make out where the satellite dish should be... a suspicious mound of snow that’s taller than the rest. It’s dangerously close to the edge.
I turn around and grip the top of the ladder with both hands, using my weight to anchor it.
“Your turn,” I call down to her, biting back a shiver. “I’ve got the ladder. Slow and steady.”
She starts climbing.
I watch her mittened hands grip each rung, and for a second I’m seized by the fear that the thermal gloves I forced her to wear underneath the mittens will make her grip unwieldy and clumsy. But she moves with careful confidence, testing each hold before fully committing.
Still, my jaw clenches so hard I can feel my teeth grinding.
Every placement of her boot, every shift of her smaller body on that ladder makes my chest constrict.
You got this, Sorrel.
You got this.
One boot.
The other.
One mitten.
The other.
Every rung she climbs feels like an eternity.
Finally, when she’s close enough, I reach down and grab her wrist, hauling her up the last few feet onto the roof beside me. I can’t help but shudder from the cold, but she doesn’t notice thankfully.
“Okay?” I ask, checking her face.
“Okay,” she breathes. She surveys the roof. “Jesus, this is deep. You weren’t kidding.”
“No,” I agree, doing my best to prevent my teeth from chattering. “Let’s get to work.”
I wade forward, heading toward the closest shovel. Each step requires effort to push through the heavy snow. When I arrive, I grab the shovel with a gloved hand and toss it to her. Then I wade to the next one.
“It’s this way,” I call to her. We wade the fifteen feet down the roof toward the hump of snow harboring the Starlink dish. It’s too close to the edge for comfort, so I purposely position myself between Sorrel and the drop.
Once we’re in place, we start clearing. With both of us working, the snow comes away much faster than if it were just me alone, and I finally stop shivering as the exertion heats my core.
We have to dig down through the layers... the top powder from the final day, the heavier packed snow beneath, and finally the ice layer that formed during temperature fluctuations.
It’s like excavating a goddamn archaeological site.
I chip at the packed ice with my blade while she scoops away the loose snow. We move in synchronized rhythm, neither speaking, just focused on the task.
We’re maybe ten minutes into clearing when Sorrel goes completely still beside me.
“Gregory,” she says, and something in her tone makes my blood freeze.
I look up from the dish. Follow her gaze down to the base of the ladder.
The mountain lion is there. Just standing there. Watching us with predatory focus.
“Shit,” I breathe.
“How long has it been there?” Sorrel whispers.
“Don’t know. Doesn’t matter.” I’m already assessing options and they’re all bad. “Keep working. Fast as you can. We get this clear and get down before it decides to climb.”
But even as I say it, the cougar moves closer to the ladder. Testing it with one massive paw.
“Gregory, they can climb,” Sorrel says, her voice shaking.
“I know. We’re almost done. Just keep going.” I start wading back through the snow toward the ladder, fifteen feet away. Each step is a battle against the deep accumulation and the eight-twelve pitch.
Even following my earlier path doesn’t help much. The snow has already shifted, so that my boots sink deep with every step. I glance down. The cougar hasn’t moved from the base.
My thighs burn. The angle wants to pitch me forward, face-first into the drift. Still holding the shovel, I stay low, keeping my center of gravity back.
Behind me I can hear Sorrel still scraping frantically around the dish. The metallic sound of her shovel against ice seems impossibly loud, and I don’t know if that’s good or bad.
Maybe the noise will scare the cat off.
Or maybe it’ll piss it off.
I glance down.
Below, the cougar has started climbing the ladder.
“Fuck,” I hiss, because this is worse than I imagined.
So much worse.
I still have my shovel.
It’s the only weapon I have.
I hurl it down at the cougar, the metal spinning end over end.
It clatters past the cat, missing by inches but making a huge racket as it bounces off rungs and hits the ground.
The sudden noise startles the animal.
It jumps, loses its grip and falls back, landing in the snow with a hiss of fury.
But it’s already circling, looking for another approach.
“The ladder!” Sorrel gasps behind me. “Pull it up.”
Fuck yes.
I lean down, gripping the top of the extension ladder, and haul it onto the roof using every ounce of strength I have. The aluminum is heavy as hell and awkward at this angle, but fear makes me stronger.
I drag it up and lay it flat on the slope beside us.
Now the cougar can’t reach us.
But now we’re also trapped.
Stuck on a steep, snow-covered roof with limited supplies and subzero temperatures.
“How long can it stay?” I ask Sorrel over my shoulder.
“I don’t know,” she replies. She’s stopped shoveling. “All day, I suppose. If it’s hungry.”
“We’re not going down until it’s gone,” I tell her.
“No,” she agrees.
I return to the dish. It’s nearly clear. Just a bit more ice around the edges.
I give her a hug, then take the shovel from her and finish the job.
“Has it moved?” I ask when the dish is completely clear.
“No,” she replies. “It’s waiting.”
So we wait, too.
Minute pass, feeling like hours. Meanwhile the cougar paces below, occasionally looking up at us.
When I start to shiver, Sorrel takes off my jacket. “Wear it.”
“Sorrel...”
“I’m serious,” she says. Then her face softens. “Look, if I get cold, I’ll ask for it, okay? This coat, your hoodie, the thermals, it’s enough. At least for now.”
I sigh, and shrug on the jacket. I’m grateful for the heat. I wrap my arms around her, and just hold her light that, exchanging even more heat.
We make noise periodically, shouting and banging on the roof, anything to convince the mountain lion we’re not worth the effort.
After some time of this, Sorrel shifts beside me.
“What if we repositioned the ladder on the other side? Near the food storage. Then climb down, grab some of the frozen meat, and throw it at the lion. You know, create a decoy. While it’s distracted, we lower the ladder back here on this side and climb down fast.”
For a second I actually consider it. The tactical part of my brain that built a mining empire, anyway.
But then the other part, the part that’s been terrified for her safety ever since the moment she insisted on coming up here, takes over.
“No,” I say flatly.
“Gregory--”
“No.” I turn to face her. “We’d have to wade back across this roof through four feet of snow, lower a ladder we can barely control, climb down while that thing is still out there. And what happens when it realizes the decoy meat is still frozen? We’re halfway down a ladder, completely exposed.”
She’s quiet for a moment. Then, reluctantly, “You’re right. That was stupid.”
“Not stupid,” I say, softening slightly. “Desperate. But we’re not desperate yet.” I pull her closer against my side. “We wait it out. Eventually it’ll leave.”
Finally, after what seems like an eternity, it loses interest. The mountain lion simply turns and lopes back toward the tree line, and disappears into the forest.
We wait another ten minutes to be sure. Neither of us speaks. We just breathe and hold each other and try to stop shaking.
“I think it’s gone,” Sorrel finally whispers.
“Yeah.” I glance at the satellite dish. A small cleared pocket in an otherwise snow-buried roof. “We did it.”
“We did it together,” she says quietly, and there’s something in her voice. Pride maybe. Or relief. “But doesn’t mean I wasn’t terrified the whole time.”
“Me too,” I admit.
I throw her shovel down so it joins mine in the snow below. Then I carefully lower the ladder back to the ground, and once it’s in place, I test it three times before I commit.
“I’m going first,” I tell Sorrel. “If it’s stable for me, it’s stable for you.”
And if the lion attacks, it attacks me, not you.
But I don’t tell her that.
She nods, too scared to argue.
The descent is terrifying. Every step feels like it might be the one where the ladder shifts or my frozen hands lose their grip. Or the one where the cougar decides to run out from the trees and pounce.
My boot finds the next rung. And the next. And then... the following rung just fucking slides out from under me.
Snow and ice. Must have accumulated on the ladder when I pulled it onto the roof.
My hands grip the rails reflexively, but my gloves are slick and my fingers are half-numb. For one heart-stopping second I’m swinging out from the ladder, one boot in the air, the other scrabbling for purchase on the icy metal.
My shoulder wrenches. Above me I hear Sorrel gasp.
My flailing boot finally catches the rung below and I slam back against the ladder hard enough to rattle my teeth. I lay there a moment, chest heaving, heart racing.
“Gregory!” Sorrel’s voice cracks with fear.
“I’m okay,” I manage, though my voice sounds raw. “Just... slipped.”
Just slipped. Like that’s not a big fucking deal when you’re twelve feet up and your heart is still somewhere in your throat.
I force myself to keep moving. Slower now. Testing each rung more thoroughly before committing weight.
Finally, blessedly, my boots hit snow.
But I feel no relief.
“Your turn,” I call up nervously. “Slow and steady. I’ve got the ladder.”
She climbs down more carefully than she went up, and I watch her every movement, ready to catch her if she falls. I tear my gaze away only to cast the occasional fleeting glimpse at the tree line.
When she’s close enough I reach up and grip her hips, guiding her down the last few feet.
The second her boots hit the ground I pull her against me, crushing her in a hug that’s probably too tight but I can’t help it.
“You’re okay,” I breathe into her hair. “We’re okay.” I keep my eyes on the trees behind her.
She’s shaking in my arms, her face buried in my neck. “I thought you were going to fall. When you slipped. I thought I’d watch you die.”
“I didn’t fall.” I pull back enough to cup her face, forcing her to look at me. “I’m right here. We’re both right here.”
I kiss her cheeks, tasting salt from tears I didn’t realize she was crying.
I let her go, well aware that the mountain lion is still out there somewhere. “Come on. Let’s get inside before that fucking cat returns.”
I scoop up the ladder, and she grabs the two shovels.
We make it to the mudroom door, stumbling inside.
I drop the ladder to the floor and lock the deadbolt behind us. She tosses the shovels aside.
We pull off our gloves and boots, then hurry into the great room, where we collapse in front of the fireplace, still in our outdoor gear, too shaken to do anything but hold each other and absorb the fire’s warmth.
“We did it,” Sorrel says after a while. “The dish is clear.”
“We did it,” I agree.
But I’m not thinking about the dish or the rescue or my near fall from the ladder.
I’m thinking about how close I came to losing her. How she could have fallen or the cougar could have reached her or a hundred other things that could have gone wrong.
A world without Sorrel Silva in it is not a good world.
The very thought makes my heart feel like it’s being crushed.
I’m not going to lose you.
I can’t.
But I know just how easy it is to lose someone.
How easy it is to let work and greed take over your life.
How easy...
I shake my head.
I need to focus on the rescue call, for now.
Everything else can come later.