CHAPTER 26
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The helicopter came out of the thinning storm like a bad decision made expensive.
Rian heard it before he saw it, a hard chopping sound rolling between the ridges, wrong against the old lodge pines and the ragged breath of the weather.
He was on one knee beside the broken firewatch spur, left hand pressed against the cut high on his right shoulder, snow packed beneath his palm to slow the bleeding.
Soren Pike lay twenty yards below him, trapped in a slant of scrub pine and ice crust. Alive. Cursing. No longer holding a rifle.
The mountain had taken care of what Rian had not been willing to finish with Clara still climbing above them.
The repeater hut shook on its post at the top of the ridge.
Clara was inside.
Greer's order still rang through the open channel. Put the helicopter on the ridge and bring me Clara Vance.
Rian pushed to his feet.
Pain lanced from shoulder to spine. For a moment the white slope tipped under him, and the old instinct rose hard and simple: go up, take her, carry her down, lock every door between her and the world.
He killed it before it became motion.
Clara had not crossed this mountain to be carried out as proof of his devotion. She had crossed it to finish her work.
“Clara,” he said into the radio.
Static. Rotor thunder.
“Packet is gone,” she answered, breathless. “Original drive is dead. Copy transmitted.”
Every muscle in him loosened and tightened at once. “You did it.”
“I know.”
There was no apology in her voice. No disbelief. He closed his eyes against a blast of snow and let that pride hit him where fear had been living for four days.
“Helicopter coming in from the south ridge,” he said. “It cannot land on the hut deck in this crosswind.”
“Good. I hate having guests.”
“They may try a hover pickup or set down near the lower road.”
“Can we reach the lodge?”
Rian looked downhill. The firewatch route dropped toward the timber line, then cut west above the lower snowmobile shed before the main lodge approach. The worst of the storm had broken, but breaking did not mean safe.
Ice glazed every exposed rock. Gusts came in violent sheets. The helicopter would make all of it worse.
He listened. The rotor pitch dipped.
“They are circling,” he said. “Leave the hut on my count. Keep low.
“Use the north side drift for cover.”
“Is that an order?”
“He swallowed against the raw edge in his throat. ”No. It's the best route I see.“
A beat of static.
Then Clara said, softer, “Then give me the count.”
Rian's fingers tightened around the radio. “Three. Two.
“One.”
“The hut door banged open above him. Clara came out bent against the wind, laptop bag across her body, one arm guarding her left side. She moved like pain had become another piece of weather: accounted for, hated, not permitted to decide.”
The helicopter broke through cloud behind her.
White fuselage. Dark windows. No medical markings.
No rescue rig.
Greer's money had not even bothered to pretend.
The aircraft tried to nose toward the ridge and bucked sideways in a gust. Its landing skids tilted over open air. Snow burst up from the slope in a blinding sheet.
“Down!” Rian shouted.
Clara dropped. The downdraft flattened her against the drift, and for one brutal second he saw her slide toward the edge.
He moved before thought caught up.
His boots punched through crust. His injured arm screamed uselessly at his side. He flung himself across the slope, got his left hand around the strap of her laptop bag, and drove his heel into a buried root.
She stopped six feet from the drop.
Her face turned toward him, pale under windburn, eyes furious.
“I had it,” she said.
“I know.”
“That sounded like a lie.”
“I have a long history with the form.”
Her mouth kicked up for a heartbeat, wild and unwilling.
Then something sparked against the snow above them.
Not a warning shot. A round striking stone.
Rian rolled over Clara and shoved them both behind a broken outcrop as another impact snapped ice from the rock. The helicopter could not settle, but men in the side door were trying to create a path by force.
“They are shooting from a moving aircraft in crosswind,” Clara said, voice flat with disbelief. “That's not confidence. That's panic.”
“Panic is useful.”
“Only if we are not the target.”
“We use the timber.”
He pointed downhill with his chin. The tree line was forty yards away, then a narrow cut toward the old service track. Beyond that, the lower snowmobile shed sat behind a stack of split cedar and a slumped tin roof.
If they reached it, they could break line of sight and get a second radio relay through the shed antenna.
If they did not, Greer's men would drive them toward the ridge road and wait for the aircraft to herd them.
Clara saw the same route. He knew it by the way her gaze moved: tower, slope, trees, shed, lodge roof beyond.
“Your shoulder?” she asked.
“Working enough.”
“That is also not a medical category.”
“You are bleeding.”
“Usefully,” she said.
He wanted to touch her face. He wanted ten quiet seconds with no aircraft, no blood, no storm, to tell her that he had heard the statement, that her voice had turned the whole mountain into witness.
The helicopter swung wider, fighting for position.
Rian said, “When it passes, move.”
“I can run short.”
“I know.”
She glanced at him, and something changed in her face. Not trust beginning. They were past beginning.
This was trust under load, bending but not breaking.
The rotor wash hit again. Snow blinded the world.
“Now,” Clara said, and moved before he did.
He followed her down the slope.
They did not run cleanly. There was no clean way to move over crusted snow with injuries pulling at them. Clara slid the last few yards into the trees and hit a pine shoulder-first, biting off a cry.
Rian caught the trunk beside her and used his body to shield her from the open ridge, though he left enough space for her to see and breathe and choose her next step.
She noticed. Of course she noticed.
“Don't put yourself between me and my sightline,” she snapped.
He shifted immediately.
“Thank you,” she said, still sharp.
“You're welcome.”
The helicopter banked away, unable to hold the ridge. Men moved below instead, dark shapes cutting from the lower road toward the snowmobile shed.
“They have ground team two,” Clara said.
“Yes.”
“If they reach the shed first, we lose cover.”
“Then we take the east wash.”
“The wash funnels into the lodge approach.”
“Yes.”
“You hate that plan.”
“Yes.”
“But it gets us to the shed?”
“If the ice holds.”
She exhaled, one hard white breath. “I miss hating you for simpler reasons.”
He looked at her then, because the rotor was moving off and the shots had stopped for the moment and the world gave him one dangerous pocket of honesty. “I don't.”
Her expression flickered.
He did not spend it. He touched two fingers to the radio and changed frequency. “Lower relay, manual wake.”
The handset hissed.
No response.
“Again?” Clara asked.
“Battery may be frozen.”
“Or antenna iced.”
“Both.”
She looked toward the shed and narrowed her eyes. “There is a manual crank, isn't there?”
“Inside.”
“Of course inside.”
“Clara.”
“Do not tell me to wait.”
He had been about to. The words sat on his tongue, familiar and useless.
He chose different ones.
“Tell me your plan.”
That landed. He saw it in the quick lift of her chin, the way her shoulders settled even with pain etched around her mouth.
“We draw them uphill enough to make them think we are still trying for the lodge,” she said. “Then we cut behind the cedar stack. You wake the relay.
“I get the laptop onto the shed shelf and push a second broadcast ping so Mara knows we are moving.”
“And if they reach you first?”
“Then I use your keys.”
“She lifted the master ring. The steel flashed in gray light.”
Rian's chest tightened. “For which lock?”
“Whichever one they assume is theirs.”
Before he could answer, the first man from the ground team appeared between the lower pines.
Rian saw the weapon. Saw the man's angle. Saw Clara see both.
He picked up a chunk of ice with his left hand and threw it hard into the trees west of them.
The crack drew the man's head.
Clara went east.
Rian followed, keeping his body low, his right arm clamped against his side. The wash dropped under them in a slick white chute. Clara slid deliberately, boots turned sideways, one hand dragging on brush to control speed.
Rian took the fall harder. His injured shoulder hit a buried rock and the world flashed black at the edges.
He came back to Clara's hand fisted in the front of his coat.
“Stay awake,” she said.
“I am.”
“Convincing.”
“Relay.”
“Shed first.”
They stumbled the last stretch under the lip of the road. The snowmobile shed waited twenty yards ahead, its tin roof rattling, the broad door half iced shut. The cedar stack beside it stood waist high, covered in snow.
Clara shoved the key ring at him. “Your hands are bigger. Door.”
He took the keys and found the shed key by feel. She pressed her back to the cedar and raised the radio, scanning the tree line as if the old handset were a weapon.
“Two men,” she said. “One left of the trail marker. One at the road ditch.”
“Helicopter?”
“Circling wide. Can't set down.”
The lock opened.
Rian hauled the shed door sideways. It gave with a scream of frozen metal.
Inside, the snowmobile sat under a tarp, red paint dull under dust. The manual relay box was bolted to the north wall. A shelf held fuel cans, tow ropes, spare gloves, a cracked helmet.
“In,” he said, then corrected himself before the word could harden. “Please.”
Clara's glance flicked to him, quick and aware even now.
They got inside as the first shot punched through the cedar stack.
Rian slammed the door and dropped the crossbar. Clara was already at the relay box, stripping off one glove with her teeth. Blood had soaked a line at her left side through the coat.
“Clara.”
“Do not use the worried voice. I hate the worried voice.”
“It is the only voice I have left.”
“Then make it useful.”