On a Dark Wing Read online

  An hour later

  Jackie Holden had a habit of making the rounds through the house before she went to bed—but her ritual had never been as important as it would be tonight. After she turned out the lights downstairs, she headed up the steps to Nate’s and Zoey’s bedrooms. Tomorrow morning would come too soon for her—the day her husband, Bob, would take their only son on his first climb up Denali.

  Her first stop was Zoey’s room. Although the room was dark, the light from the hallway shone on bright pink walls and the girly eyelet lace of her daughter’s comforter. But when she poked her head into the room, Jackie saw that Zoey’s bed was empty and her favorite stuffed toy was gone.

  It didn’t take Jackie long to figure out what happened and when she got to Nate’s bedroom, her suspicions had been right. Amidst sports trophies, babe posters and one large framed print of Denali in Nate’s room, she found both her children asleep. Zoey had crawled into bed with her big brother. Her son had his arm around his sister with his chin resting on blond curls.

  Jackie couldn’t help it. Her eyes filled with tears and her throat clamped tight.

  Nate looked like his father, especially after he’d gained the extra muscle weight in preparation for his climb. His broader shoulders and muscular arms helped her visualize the man she always hoped he’d grow to be. If she ever stared at him when he was awake, Nate would be red-faced and would poke fun at her for being a mom, but when he slept, Jackie loved looking at her handsome son.

  While she stood in the doorway, she realized she was praying. If she could stand there all night—every night—watching both her children sleep, she would have done it, freezing those memories in her mind forever.

  But as she turned to leave, something made her stop.

  A large bird looked to be perched on a branch outside Nate’s window. Its silhouette eclipsed the moonlight shining through the drapes, making an ominous shadow. The bird flapped its wings and made a loud cry, shrieking into the night. The abrasive sound made Jackie jump. She rushed to the window to scare it away, so it wouldn’t wake Nate and Zoey.

  By the time she got there, the bird had gone, as if it had never been there at all.

  What was that?

  Although she didn’t consider herself superstitious, when she replayed that moment over in her head, she couldn’t shake the bad feeling. She knew what her husband would say, that she was an anxious mom worried for her son.

  But as Jackie pressed her face to the window and looked for any sign of that bird, she could have sworn it felt like more than that.

  Chapter 3

  Alaska Range—circling over Denali Next day

  Nate Holden stared out the window of the small aircraft, gazing over a vast field of ice and frozen peaks covered in snow that looked close enough to touch. If a guy were prone to intimidation, the sight could play real head games. Huge, gaping holes in the snowfield were visible, open crevasses waiting to swallow unwary climbers. His stomach lurched as they made their descent to the glacier near the base of Denali and a shiver of realization ran down his spine. He was about to embark on a feat few climbers had an opportunity to attempt.

  Every man on his dad’s team turned quiet now. They all peered out the windows of the noisy aircraft, together yet alone. The engine was too loud to have any real conversation, which was for the best. At a time like this, no words were necessary. Every man looked rapt in his own thoughts, mentally preparing for what would come. When his father thought he wasn’t looking, Nate caught him watching over him. In charge of the expedition, his dad was all business. Even though his father was his rock, Nate wasn’t as confident and strong. Doubt crept into his thoughts as the plane prepared to land.

  His stomach churned with a strange mix of emotions. On the plus side, Nate had never felt so alive. On Denali, he’d cross a threshold into being a man, not some high-school kid. He’d leave his childhood behind forever. But on the negative side, he had to admit that the uncertainty he could no longer deny had been an epic buzz kill. What the hell was he doing here? In truth, he still felt like a kid. Until now, he had ignored the anxiety that was never far from the surface. He’d laughed it off with his buddies at school and had downplayed it with his mom so she wouldn’t worry, but here on the plane, he couldn’t go back even if he wanted to. Although he’d never admit it to Josh or his dad, Nate had more than the expected jitters about the climb—and it had a lot to do with what had happened last night.

  Last night his usual dream of hitting the summit had turned dark, like a bad omen. Instead of walking the ridge toward the sunny peak, he dreamed of high winds that forced him to use fixed lines to cling to or else he would have been blown off the mountain. The nightmare had him battling huge black birds that pecked and clawed at his skin, making him bleed. At that altitude, he’d never given much thought to birds flying that high, but he’d read about it online after he got up that morning. He’d learned that ravens had been seen flying above the summit of Denali and that they’d been spotted at 20,000 feet on Everest, too.

  But why would he have dreamt about something he didn’t really know about until that morning?

  For the first time, as if he’d been jinxed, he had dreamed that he never made the summit—and something far worse. Fighting off the birds, he’d lost hold of the tie line and fell off a steep cliff. His body plummeted to the ground, spinning end over end. As he fell, ice clamped over his mouth. When he called for help, no one heard him. The frozen rocks below careened toward his face. Before he hit, Nate braced his arms over his head.

  He woke up before he struck the jagged boulders. Eyes wide, he’d leapt off his pillow with a gasp, panting. With his body covered in sweat, he shook all over. It seemed very real.

  His sister, Zoey, never woke up. When she put her hand on his chest again, Nate felt like she’d brought him back from the nightmare of that dream, reminding him that he was at home and safe. Holding her tiny fingers in his hand, he closed his eyes, but never went back to sleep. Although the black birds felt like a bad omen, he chalked the whole thing up to nerves before the trip.

  At least, he hoped that’s what it was.

  To get his mind off last night’s nightmare, Nate nudged Josh without saying a word and pointed below, on his side of the plane. When his best friend leaned closer to check it out, he smiled and nodded. Other teams were making preparations for their first carry up the mountain to camp one. From the plane, they were mere specks on the ground, roped together in teams. The colorful gear on the white snow and all the activity on the glacier at base camp got him excited again. More than likely, these were international groups, from what his father had told him. Nate would have been intimidated if his father hadn’t overseen his training.

  Over the past four months, he and Josh had packed on twenty pounds of muscle weight, done cardio workouts, and taken on other winter climbs to ensure they were skilled enough to make this attempt. With his father’s help, it had taken months of logistics planning to acquire the food, supplies, gear and make the other arrangements needed to support their team.

  Denali was a seriously impressive and formidable mountain. In 1980, the State of Alaska had changed its name from Mount McKinley to Denali, but the federal government hadn’t embraced that change. The name in Native Athabascan meant “the Great One.” Nate didn’t see how anyone could argue with that. At 20,320 feet above sea level, it was the tallest free-standing peak in the whole world. Although Everest was higher elevation wise, from base to summit Denali had it beat. Temps at the higher elevations had been recorded at 75 degrees below zero with wind chills documented at 118 below. The blistering winds could give them a fierce spanking if they weren’t ready.

  Nate squinted toward the ridge that led to the top until the mountain’s jagged spine disappeared into the clouds that hovered like a crown around the summit. Tomorrow, they’d have to be up before dawn
in order to cook and break camp by 6:00 a.m. Since the first leg of the trip after base camp would be the most dangerous—filled with many hidden crevasses covered over by ice bridges—it made sense to traverse the ice when it was the hardest in the early hours of the morning. That would give them the best shot at supporting the weight they’d carry in their backpacks and trailing sleds.

  Because Denali was near the Arctic Circle, his dad had told him that the area would be plagued by a phenomenon called the Coriolis effect. That meant fierce storms, high winds, extremely heavy snowfalls and frigid temps were part of the equation. If a freak storm hit fast, climbers waited them out on the mountain. Teams had to be prepared. Their packs and sleds were heavier, filled with extra provisions.

  Storms worried his dad the most.

  Getting stuck on Denali in freezing storm conditions, without rescuers able to help, was beyond bad. That could mean a life-or-death struggle for survival. His father had tried to prepare him, but enduring the real thing would be the only way to gain experience. A tough lesson.

  When the plane set down its skis onto the bumpy ice field of Kahiltna Glacier, Nate looked at Josh on the first jolt as a wake of snow and ice sprayed behind them and glistened in the dying sunlight. His friend smiled, but the gesture left in a flash. Turbulence in the small plane had made for a rough ride. He looked pale. Maybe nerves had gotten a grip on him, too.

  Nate knew exactly how he felt.

  Abbey

  Near Healy, Alaska

  After the first night at the cabin when I’d heard the call of a raven, I’d been on the lookout for any sign of the flock of birds that was stalking me. But just because I hadn’t seen them, didn’t mean they weren’t there. I’d spent the day on the water, fishing with my dad. Actually, my father had done all the fishing. I only got my line wet, pretending to be interested. To go fishing, I must have been desperate for something to do. Staying at the cabin alone would be out of the question.

  Since the ice had just broken off the surface of the lake, when Dad had paddled out in our aluminum canoe that morning, I heard the soft chink of ice colliding with the side of our boat. It sounded cool like we were in a mega bowl of punch with ice floating around us, but I guess the folks on the Titanic might have thought the same thing.

  I didn’t see anyone on the lake that morning. They didn’t come out until later, at a more civilized hour. But I had to admit that Dad might have been right about the early morning. The lake looked fresh and new, as still as glass with a fine mist rising off it. The surface mirrored the morning sky—a pale bluish gray with wisps of clouds across it—and made the water look like an upside-down painting. The quiet of the morning made me glad I was there with Dad, even if he fished.

  He’d told me that today would be a good time to go with the ice breaking apart, because the fish would be hungry coming off their winter hibernation. That might have been Dad’s strategy, but I had no interest in actually catching a fish. Hooking one meant I’d have to clean it. Gross. Yeah, I knew how, but wanting to gut a fish was a totally different thing. So I slid down into the belly of the canoe and made myself comfortable in the bow as it rocked on the water. Listening to the soft splash of Dad’s oar, I dozed off as he paddled the J-stroke across the lake to his lucky fishing hole.

  “Did you sleep okay last night?” he asked. “I thought I heard you crying, but when I went to check, you had the door locked. Did you have a bad dream?”

  I wasn’t sure if he was making a point about me locking the door or was really asking about me crying. As a kid, I felt comforted when he woke me from one of my nightmares and held me, but not anymore. I only felt weak. My dark dreams reminded Dad that I wasn’t normal. So answering his question, without frills, was safer than assuming he had picked an argument about locked doors.

  “I don’t know.” I trailed my hand along the water and stared dead ahead, not looking back at him. “I don’t remember my dreams.”

  Another lie. The last thing I wanted to do was talk about my strange dreams with my father. Normally I loved sleeping. If I could make a career of it, I’d have my college degree by now. Sleeping meant I’d be in my room—by myself—with no one expecting me to do anything. I didn’t have to answer to anyone. But over the past few nights, my dreams had been more like nightmares.

  Even that morning, right before my dad came knocking on my bedroom door, I remembered that feeling of twilight sleep—the kind where I felt half awake and half asleep and didn’t really care which had been more real. I had my eyes closed. The half-awake side had me dreaming about what I really wanted in my head—Nate—but it didn’t take me long to screw that up.

  My half-awake dream shifted into something dark.

  While I lay in my bed that morning, I felt someone in the room with me, watching as I slept. My heart throttled my chest, and even though I fought it, my breathing got faster, too. I couldn’t fake being asleep anymore, not if someone stood looking at me, but I couldn’t make my eyes open, either. I lay there like a scared lump. My eyes were shut tight and I couldn’t move. In that panic-stricken moment, I remembered feeling my mattress press down, like someone sat on the edge of my bed. If that wasn’t creepy enough, a hand stroked my hair, but I still couldn’t make my eyes open—not even to see if it was Nate.

  The whole thing lasted only a few minutes, even though it felt like forever.

  When my dad knocked on my door, I jumped and gasped for air like I’d been drowning. I sat up with a jolt and stared into every corner of my darkened bedroom, but I saw nothing out of the ordinary. The laundry fairies hadn’t picked up my dirty clothes during the night to wash them. My room looked like a junk heap, exactly as I’d left it. Nothing had changed, but the weird feeling of being watched stuck with me.

  Even now as I drifted across the lake in my dad’s canoe, I felt eyes on me.

  So the last thing I wanted was to talk about spooky stuff with a father who prepared the dead for their big send-off. He’d think I was crazy and needed more therapy. No way I’d tell him about the birds, or the invisible watcher, or Nate, or the incredibly cruel stuff happening to me and Tanner online with those cyber-bullies.

  Maybe all of these things were somehow connected, but I didn’t want to think about that, at least not until I went to bed tonight and got forced into dreaming again. I had a terrible feeling that my bad dreams were really a message—meant for just me—only I was too stupid to figure it out.

  Anchorage, Alaska

  After Tanner Lange rang the doorbell of a house off Seward Highway near the Chugach foothills, he sat in his wheelchair, waiting. He heard a guy’s voice yell inside, “I got it, Mom.”

  Clenching his jaw, Tanner thought about all the reasons he’d forced himself to make contact with Jason Cheevers, a so-called friend who dropped off his radar after the accident that paralyzed him. He didn’t think he’d ever have a reason to see Jason again, until now. Desperate times called for desperate measures. Jason was the one guy he knew who had the computer skills to pull off what Tanner wanted to do.

  He’d been thankful Abbey left town and didn’t have to deal with the jerks at school on her last day. She would’ve hated it. He tried not to dwell on what happened, but he couldn’t help it. Some bastards vandalized his locker with the word FAGGOT painted in red. Anyone who hadn’t known about the online photos got clued in after they saw his locker. And every time he turned his back, some asshole puckered his lips and made a loud kiss. Yeah, everyone thought that was funny.

  The guys had been bad enough, but the sideways glances, whispers and pity-filled stares from the girls really put him over the top. Even though he could have let things die over the summer, hoping the online abusers lost interest, one thing made him mad enough to force his hand with Jason.

  Abbey. She had been the reason why he’d lied to his mother.

  He hated being the one
to show Abbey that website. Seeing her cry had torn him up inside. When she ran from him, refusing to even come back and talk about it, he felt lower than dog shit. He didn’t have a choice. She had to know before she got hit with it cold, but he still hated seeing her so hurt.

  To make matters worse, she’d seen him cry. What a complete tool! With her beside him, looking at those damned photos, he had let everything out. The minute he did, he regretted it. Tanner wanted to fix things for her, not make her feel sorry for him. Now things were all screwed up.

  That left him with few options. He could crawl in a hole and roll over like a wimpy asshole, or he could fight back—for both of them. It didn’t take him long to decide what to do. For Abbey’s sake, he had to try.

  He told his mom that one of his buddies from his old elementary school needed his help in Anchorage. It had something to do with retrieving data off his crashed hard drive. With school over for the summer, his mother didn’t make a fuss about accompanying him on a forty-five minute drive to Anchorage for his sudden weekend trip. She trusted him and even let him clock drive time behind the wheel, using his beginner’s driving permit. His dad had modified hand controls and a ramp on the family van for him to use. Eventually he’d get the vehicle when he was old enough.

  He hated deceiving his mother about his trip to Anchorage, but telling her what had happened and the real reason why he needed to see his old friend was too embarrassing. Even if it meant he’d miss Nate Holden’s departure to Denali, Tanner felt sure that Abbey would understand. He’d been too distracted dealing with cyber-bullies that he hadn’t even turned on the radio he had to track Nate’s climb. He’d only be gone a few days.

  With her engine idling, his mother had switched seats and was now behind the wheel and parked in the driveway, waiting to make sure someone was home. When the door opened, Jason stood there and looked down at Tanner. His red hair looked seriously messed up, like he’d slept on it wrong, and his blue eyes were bloodshot. He must have pulled an all-nighter.