Chapter 3 #2
“Because Noah’s still healing from a knife wound.
Liam’s distracted with Nimue—and if she has to leave, he’ll be a wreck.
” Teague studied her face, reading the tension around her eyes, the way her hands were clenched into fists.
“Besides. If Marcus is hiding something, I’d rather find out what it is myself than let him put anyone else at risk.
” He looked away and drew a deep breath, then locked eyes with her again.
“You saw it too. Whatever he’s not telling us. ”
“Yes.” Frustration broke through her careful control. “Which is exactly why you shouldn’t go with him. Alone. Into the backcountry. When he’s clearly got a hidden agenda.”
“I can handle myself.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point?”
“The point”—she stepped closer, eyes blazing in the afternoon light—“is that you’re doing it again. Volunteering for the dangerous job because you think your life matters less than everyone else’s.”
Teague’s chest tightened. The accusation landed too close to something he didn’t want to examine. “That’s not why I’m doing this.”
“Isn’t it?” She held his gaze. Unflinching.
“I’m the best qualified.” The words came out with a bite. “I know the terrain. I have the technical skills—whether you believe in me or not. And yeah, I don’t have anyone depending on me right now. That makes me the logical choice.”
“Logical.” Eden’s laugh was bitter. “That’s what you’re calling it?”
“What would you call it?”
“Reckless. Self-destructive. Take your pick.”
“You like to use those words a lot for someone who’s known me less than six months.”
“Long enough to see the pattern.” She stepped close enough that he caught the faint scent of floral shampoo. “You volunteer for every dangerous assignment. You take risks that make everyone else hold their breath. And you act like it doesn’t matter if you come back.”
“I always come back.”
“So far.”
The words hung between them.
“Why does it matter to you?” The frustration he’d been holding for two days finally broke loose.
“You’ve made it pretty clear you don’t want anything to do with me.
That you’re done caring about people who take risks.
” He drew a deep breath but didn’t look away.
“So why are you out here, Eden? Why do you care if I volunteer for this?”
Eden flinched.
“I never said…” She stopped. Started again. “I don’t want to watch another person I…”
She stopped again. Her jaw clenched hard. “I don’t want anyone else getting hurt.”
The almost-confession hung between them, heavy with everything she wasn’t saying.
Another person I—
What? Care about? Love?
Teague’s heart hammered against his ribs. He wanted to push—to make her finish that sentence—but the wall was back up in her eyes.
“I’m not trying to get hurt.” He softened his voice. “I’m trying to end this nightmare so the park can reopen. So everyone can get their jobs back.”
“And if something goes wrong?”
“Then I’ll handle it.”
“Landon said he was careful too.” Her voice dropped to barely above a whisper. “Right before his self-belay failed and he fell three hundred feet.”
The words hit like a gut punch.
“I’m sorry.” The words seemed inadequate. “Eden, I know that—”
“No, you don’t know. You can’t imagine what it was like.”
Yes, I can, he wanted to say. I watched my brother fall. But the words stayed locked behind his teeth.
“So don’t ask me to be okay with you volunteering for something that feels wrong.” Her voice shook. “Don’t ask me to watch you walk into danger with a man who’s clearly hiding something.”
They stood in silence.
“I should go.” Eden wrapped her arms around herself. “Just…” She swallowed. “Be careful, Teague. Please.”
“I’m always careful.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Okay, I’m occasionally careful.”
“Teague—”
“I’m situationally careful. Contextually. When the mood strikes.”
Something flickered across her face. Not quite a smile, but close. “You’re impossible.”
“So I’ve been told.”
She shook her head, but some of the tension had eased from her shoulders. “Come back in one piece. Can you manage that?”
“I’ll try.”
Eden stared at him for a long moment. Then she turned and walked away without looking back. Steps quick across the pavement.
Teague watched her disappear around the corner of the building, his mother’s words from his mom’s call echoing in his head.
Letting yourself get killed won’t bring him back, T.
But that wasn’t what he was doing.
Was it?
He headed to the ranger station.
Marcus and Virgil had spread the maps across the conference table, coffee mugs weighing down the corners. Topographic lines curved across the paper in browns and greens, marked with red circles in over a dozen places. Each circle a potential location. Each location a cliff face at heaven’s edge.
Marcus looked up as Teague entered. “Everything all right?”
“Fine.” Teague’s eyes traced the red circles—isolated spots, all of them. And not a lot of places for a chopper to land if the worst were to happen. “Show me what you’ve got.”
Time to find that gold.
Because somewhere out there—where eagles soared and footsteps had never come before—a chest waited.
And Marcus Roosevelt was going to help him find it.
Teague just had to figure out what the man was really after.
Before they were alone together on a cliff face with nowhere to run.
Eden hadn’t slept.
Well, not really. Maybe an hour around four a.m., when exhaustion had finally dragged her under. But it hadn’t lasted, and now her eyes burned and her head pounded and a second extra-large coffee was absolutely, nonnegotiably, a must.
She pulled the steaming cup from under the ancient dispenser, added two generous pours of vanilla creamer—the good stuff, not the powdered nonsense—and slapped a lid on her liquid salvation.
The first sip burned her tongue.
Perfect.
She walked through the empty dining room toward the main doors of the lodge, boots echoing against hardwood in the unnatural quiet. Morning light kissed the canyon walls through the massive windows—amber bleeding into rust, shadows retreating into ancient crevices carved by ages of wind and water.
Strange for the dining hall to be so empty. No tourists chattering over scrambled eggs. No hikers comparing trail plans. Most of the staff…gone.
The North Rim had become a ghost town. At least she got to keep her job at dispatch. It turned out Betty was happy for a break to visit her grandkids.
Eden pushed through the heavy wooden doors and aimed herself toward the ranger station.
The talk at breakfast—what little she’d managed to catch—mentioned more meetings, more plans taking shape.
If decisions were being made, she wanted to be part of them.
At least she’d heard that Liam had agreed to go.
That gave her more confidence than sending Teague out there with Marcus alone.
The morning air, crisp and pine-scented, carrying the faint mineral tang of the canyon depths, bit at her cheeks. A slight fog had settled overnight, but it would burn off in the next hour.
Eden paused outside the ranger station and drew another long sip of her coffee, letting the bitterness wake her senses and focus her thoughts.
She’d tried to sleep last night. Really tried.
She’d lain in bed staring at the water-stained ceiling, listening to Nimue’s soft breathing from the other room, watching shadows shift as clouds drifted over the moon. But every time she closed her eyes—
Teague.
Standing in the meeting room yesterday, jaw set, green eyes blazing with stubborn determination. Volunteering to go into the backcountry with Marcus Roosevelt. Offering himself up for danger as if it cost him nothing.
I don’t want to watch another person I—
She’d almost said it.
Almost admitted out loud what she’d been trying to deny for months. That somewhere between his reckless rescues and stubborn determination, between the way he looked at her as if she actually mattered and the way he’d traced the calluses on her palm with such gentle reverence—
She’d started to care.
And caring about Teague Hamilton was the absolute last thing she could afford.
Her boots crunched against the gravel parking lot.
Their conversation in her cabin three days ago replayed in her mind.
The way his face had shuttered when she’d told him she was done caring for people who threw themselves at danger.
The hurt that had flickered across his features—quick, raw, real—before he’d locked it down.
Everything in her had wanted to take it back.
To tell him he wasn’t Landon. That maybe—maybe—she’d been wrong to compare them.
But he was like Landon. Reckless and brave and so certain he was invincible.
She couldn’t lose her heart like that again.
She might not survive it a second time.
Voices drifted from the propped-open door. She stepped to the threshold, her hand finding the familiar wooden frame.
Maps covered the conference table inside, weighted down with coffee mugs and scattered carabiners. Red dots marked locations in different parts of the canyon. Some had been crossed out with a black X. Must be narrowing the search even more.
Marcus Roosevelt stood with his back to her, pointing at the nearest map. His dark hair was disheveled, his expensive hiking clothes wrinkled, and everything about his posture screamed barely contained desperation.
Virgil leaned against the desk nearby, arms crossed, exhaustion carved into his weathered face.
And Teague—
Teague stood with his hands braced on the table, studying the topographic lines with that focused intensity she’d learned to recognize.
His auburn curls were noticeably longer than the other two men’s, tumbling over his forehead.
He’d trimmed his beard to heavy scruff—long enough for that rough, rugged edge, short enough to highlight the strong cut of his jaw. Ready for the day.
But shadows carved deep under his eyes, and the rumpled state of his ranger shirt told a different story.
He’d been at this all night.
Something twisted in Eden’s chest. Something she refused to name.