Chapter 3
Reese
My helicopter is gone. The crumpled airframe just slid off a sheer drop, taking the emergency radio, the rations, and the winter sleeping bags down into the ravine. Snow falls in silent flakes.
A large, incredibly warm hand remains pressed firmly against the side of my head.
Santi Costa stands over me. He applies steady, deliberate pressure to the bleeding gash near my temple. He ignores the sound of the helicopter vanishing into the ravine. His focus stays on my injury.
The man is an imposing figure in a ruined charcoal suit.
His gold watch catches the weak afternoon light. His sheer physical proximity is an anchor when the throbbing in my skull threatens to spin the forest into a blur.
He pulls his hand back a fraction of an inch to inspect the makeshift bandage. The bleeding has slowed.
"We need to move." My voice is raw from the smoke and the screaming wind. "The sun drops behind that ridge in twenty minutes. When it does, the temperature’s going to plummet."
He says nothing.
Panic is a luxury out here. It kills faster than the cold. I learned that a long time ago. Nobody is coming to save you. You save yourself, or you die. I spent the last decade building a life out of cold logic and stubbornness. I don't freeze up. I solve the problem.
Santi is a problem.
Powerful men always panic when the world stops obeying their bank accounts. They yell at the weather. They demand customer service from the wilderness. They throw tantrums. I expected the silver-streaked aristocrat to lose his mind the second the engines choked.
Instead, he is unnervingly composed.
"Did you hear me?" I snap, pushing myself upright.
The world tilts. I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste copper, forcing the dizziness down.
"We have one survival bag, whatever you stuffed in your tactical kit, and the clothes on our backs. If we stay exposed on this rock, we’re going to freeze to death before midnight. "
His hand slides from my temple to my shoulder. The grip is firm. It burns through the torn fabric of my flight suit.
"Point the way, Reese."
His voice is low and calm. He uses my first name. The familiarity is jarring. I ignore it.
I point a gloved finger toward a dense cluster of massive spruce trees about two hundred yards up the incline. "There. The rock face creates a natural windbreak. The tree canopy will keep the snow off us. We need to gather as many dry pine boughs as we can carry before full dark."
He gives a single, sharp nod. He releases my shoulder, leans down, and hoists the canvas survival bag over his shoulder—his own tactical bag already slung across his back. Together they weigh nearly a hundred pounds. He handles them like they weigh nothing.
I take the first step. The snow is thigh-deep. It drags at my boots, heavy and wet. My muscles scream in protest. The adrenaline crash is coming, a wave building just behind my eyes, but I refuse to let it hit. I trudge forward. Lift, step, sink. Lift, step, sink.
Santi walks directly behind me.
He steps into my footprints to save energy. He follows my lead. The realization hits me with unexpected force. Men like him don't follow. The tailoring of his coat, the sheer confidence in his movements—everything about him screams that he owns every room he walks into. He commands. He dictates.
Yet out here, in the middle of a frozen hellscape, he simply hands the reins over to me. He recognizes my competence and steps back. It costs his pride nothing. He is weighing our odds, and he has decided I am the best chance he has.
I don’t find this comforting. I find it unnerving.
"Keep your head down," I call over my shoulder. The wind whips my words away, but he is close enough to catch them. "The windchill is going to drop to negative ten Fahrenheit tonight. Frostbite will take your nose and ears in twenty minutes if you leave them exposed."
"Understood."
We reach the tree line just as the last sliver of gray daylight bleeds out of the sky. The darkness falls fast. The temperature drops instantly. The air turns sharp, stinging my lungs with each breath.
The rock overhang is a shallow indentation in the side of the mountain, shielded by ancient spruce trees. It is more rock than shelter, but it stops the biting wind. The snow is thinner here, blocked by the branches above.
I drop to my knees and start clawing the snow away from the rock base to expose the dry earth underneath.
"Clear a spot. Seven feet long. Then we need branches.
Dead ones snap easily. Green ones are for the base.
We need a barrier between us and the frozen ground, or it will suck the heat right out of our bodies. "
Santi drops the survival bag. He doesn’t complain about his expensive Italian leather boots sinking into the snow or his ruined dark slacks. He simply goes to the nearest tree and begins snapping off green boughs with brutal efficiency.
The branches are dense and frozen solid, but he breaks them with leverage and the sharp snap of his wrists. He moves with a quiet rhythm. Gather. Stack. Break. Return.
I sit back on my heels, breathing hard, watching him work. He isn't fighting the wilderness; he is methodically processing it to serve his purpose.
"You're not terrified." My voice cuts through the snapping of wood.
He stops. He holds a massive branch in his gloved hands. He turns his head slowly. The darkness is nearly total now, but his dark eyes catch the faint reflection of the snow.
"Should I be?" he asks.
"Most people would be screaming." I pull the survival bag toward me, undoing the clasps with stiff, freezing fingers. "Most people would be crying about the helicopter, their luggage, or the fact that nobody knows our exact coordinates. You haven't blinked twice."
He tosses the branches onto the cleared ground. "Screaming burns calories. Panic clouds judgment. We require both to survive until extraction."
Extraction. The word sounds ridiculous out here.
"Nobody is coming tonight, City Boy." I pull the waterproof matches, the space blanket, and the flare gun from the bag. "The storm front is massive. No rescue teams are flying in this weather. The emergency beacon went down with the helicopter. We are a needle in a frozen haystack."
I dig deeper. The crew-issued cold-weather kit is wedged under the supplies—two wool sweaters, two pairs of thermal base layers, and a heavy parka rolled tight.
Standard for crashes in the high country.
Two foil-wrapped protein bars and a thin metal flask of energy gel come out with them.
I toss the parka and one of the sweaters to Santi.
"Put them on, City Boy. Hypothermia is real.
" I toss a protein bar after them. "Eat.
You burn calories like a furnace. I can't drag you out of hypothermia.
" He catches all three without looking. I peel my flight suit down to my waist, pull the second wool sweater over my thermal base layer, and zip the suit back up.
The wool bites at my skin but it's instant warmth.
He steps closer, a silhouette blocking the weak light from the snow.
"I am not relying on a rescue chopper, Reese."
The absolute certainty in his tone makes my stomach tighten.
He isn't hoping for a miracle. He knows something I don't. He has resources he hasn't mentioned.
That target he was tracking, the file he kept reviewing before the engines died, belongs to a world much darker and more efficient than standard search and rescue.
"Good to know," I say, keeping my voice steady. "But until your mysterious backup arrives, my rules keep us breathing. Start laying the green branches down. Thickest ones on the bottom. We need at least eight inches of padding."
He kneels beside me. His shoulders brush against mine as he arranges the pine boughs. The heat radiating off his body is magnetic. I force myself not to lean into it.
I learned to fix my own problems because depending on anyone else is a fatal weakness. The only person who gets Reese Calloway out of a jam is Reese Calloway.
But kneeling next to Santi Costa in the freezing dark, arranging pine needles to stave off hypothermia, that certainty feels suddenly fragile. He doesn’t need me to coddle him. He simply works in tandem with me.
We finish the makeshift bed. It’s narrow. Too narrow.
"Take your coat off," I instruct, unpacking the crinkling silver foil of the space blanket.
He stops. He looks at me, his face an unreadable mask in the dim light.
"If we sweat through the inner layers, that moisture freezes." I explain, keeping my tone strictly professional. "We share body heat, put the space blanket over both of us to reflect the heat back down, then layer our coats over it for insulation. It's basic survival."
He considers this. He remains perfectly stoic. A normal man would have made a comment about getting lucky. Santi just processes the logic.
He strips off his ruined charcoal suit jacket. He tosses it onto the pine bed. He wears a dark, tailored dress shirt underneath. The fabric clings to the muscle of his chest and arms. He is not soft. He is not a desk jockey.
I take off my canvas flight jacket, suppressing a violent shiver as the sub-zero air hits my thin long-sleeved thermal. I lay my jacket next to his.
"Sit," I command.
He sits on the pine branches, his long legs stretched out. He sits stiff and guarded.
I crawl onto the bed beside him. There is no room to be polite. Survival requires abandoning personal space. I sit flush against his side. The immediate transfer of body heat draws a sharp gasp from me before I can stop it.
He shifts. His arm wraps around my shoulders. He pulls me hard against his chest.
"You're shaking," he says. His voice moves low against my spine.