On a Dark Wing Page 8

  “Gone?” He grimaced as he unzipped his sleeping bag. “What are you talking about?”

  “I swear, we thought we heard Nate shout something, but in the storm, we might have imagined that. By the time Joe and I went to check on the boys, they were gone. We can’t be sure when that happened.”

  “Did you check the latrine?” Bob tried to keep his voice steady while his mind grappled with worse scenarios. “Maybe they only…”

  “We checked. They’re not there. I tell ya, Bob. They’re both gone. And with the snow like it is, we can’t see tracks. We have no idea which direction they went…or when they took off.”

  Without hesitation, Bob shoved his boots on and shrugged into his jacket. He bolted out of his tent, shoving Childers aside. In the metal gray of morning, he peered through the blowing snow to search in every direction.

  “Nate! Where are you?” He yelled with cupped hands at his mouth. “Josh!”

  With Mike Childers and Joe Givens on his heels, he raced for Nate’s tent and searched it. Their sleeping bags were cold, but given the temps at this altitude, the warmth would have been gone in a hurry. When he noticed Nate’s ice ax, harness rigging, tracking beacon and flashlight were missing, he knew something was wrong. His son knew better than to wander off in whiteout conditions, especially after he’d warned him to stay put.

  Backing out of the tent, he searched for tracks outside, but didn’t see any. The snow had covered everything. Bob stared into the blizzard, feeling a deep chill to his bones. Nate and Josh were gone and without tracks to follow—or even a time frame—he had no idea where to begin looking.

  “He took his ice ax and some gear, including a tracker,” he told the men waiting outside the tent. Stan Edwards, the Chicago stockbroker, had joined Mike and Joe. All eyes were on Bob as the men waited for his orders.

  “What do you want us to do? Call the ranger station?” Mike said. “When the storm clears, they can deploy a high-altitude helicopter.”

  “I can’t wait that long,” he mumbled.

  As he stared into the bleak horizon, filled with endless drifts of white, Bob Holden knew he had no right to ask these men to risk their lives to search for Nate and Josh. But he couldn’t wait for a search-and-rescue helicopter, either.

  He had to move now, even if he went alone.

  Abbey

  Dawn—near Healy, Alaska

  Uncomfortable silence. That’s what Dad and I had after our argument yesterday. We went through the motions of existing together. Mainly because both of us found excuses to be alone, outside the four walls that had closed in on us. I went for walks to think and skip stones on the water, always keeping my eye in the sky for that strange raven. Dad did his man stuff, chopping wood that we didn’t need. I watched him from a distance through the trees. It felt like I saw a stranger, not the man who had raised me.

  At dinnertime, I went to my room and told him I wasn’t hungry. It was a relief that he didn’t press for round two. Silence worked for both of us. By dawn, I’d tossed and turned enough. When sleep wasn’t an option anymore, I slipped out of the cabin as the sun rose and worked my way up the ridge. Maybe the crisp morning air and the scent of pine would give me an idea what to do, besides saying, “I’m sorry.”

  I’d been a jerk, but I wasn’t sure that I actually felt sorry. After Dad finally blurted out the truth, that he pushed Mom’s memorial every year at our cabin for my sake, guess we both had a lot to think about. What I’d said about us needing to let her go—and finding our own way to do that—had a ring of cold truth to it. So, yeah, I should’ve broken the ice and apologized for my blowup, but the way I saw it, Dad had a solid reason to apologize, too. Stubborn was a trait we both knew something about.

  But as I neared the clearing on the ridge—the special spot I had shared with my mother—I saw the shadow of a man. If he hadn’t moved, I never would’ve seen him standing in the trees.

  “Oh, my God,” I gasped.

  The shock of seeing someone that early in the morning, it made me want to run, but something stopped me. When the man turned, I got a look at his face.

  “You scared me, Dad. What are you doing up here? I thought you were asleep. I never heard you get up.”

  He wiped a hand over his cheeks, but not before I saw the glistening streaks on his face.

  “Couldn’t sleep.” He avoided my eyes and cleared his throat. “What you said the other day, it got me thinking.”

  He had a low-key way of making me hurt all over, but maybe that was my conscience jabbing me in the gut.

  “Dad, look…I’m sorry.” Sorry was the one thing I didn’t want to say, but it came out first. “I didn’t mean to…”

  “No, you were right. Guess I didn’t realize how much I pushed you.” Dad shrugged. “Maybe I was doin’ it more for me. I don’t know. I just…miss her.”

  I could tell he’d been crying, even though he acted like a tough guy now. I hadn’t seen him lose it since the funeral. I stepped closer, unsure of what to do. That’s when he surprised me again.

  “Did you know that I proposed to your mother here?”

  The shock on my face gave Dad my answer. The cabin had been in his family for a long time, long before he met my mother. I’d heard that he got down on one knee while they were here, but I’d never known exactly where…until now. It took me a moment to realize why Mom had never told me, even after I’d brought her to the private hideaway that I thought had been all mine to share.

  “I don’t think you ever knew, but I invited her up here once. This was my secret spot. We roasted marshmallows at that fire pit.” After he shook his head, I realized that Mom never shared our secret with him. Finding that out about her made me smile. “Guess she didn’t want to spoil the fun for me. She let me think I’d discovered this place.”

  I looked across the valley, fighting a chunk of regret jammed in my throat for not inviting him here, too. A part of me wondered if my mother’s laughter—and the hopes she had for the love she shared with my father—still echoed in the trees that were rooted on this solitary ridge. It made me happy to think that was possible.

  But from the corner of my eye, I saw Dad shift his gaze toward me. When I turned, he crooked his lip into a smile, like it took effort.

  “Yeah, that sounds like her. She had a real subtle way of making us both feel special.” He heaved a sigh. “God I miss her.”

  Long silences with my dad were familiar. He wasn’t that guy, the one who filled the void with noise, but his grief felt like an even bigger wall between us. His connection to her made me feel left out and alone. He talked, but what he said sounded like words meant for her, not me.

  “I still feel married. I go through the motions of living, but it hurts, you know?” He stared across the valley, not expecting an answer. “She was the only person who knew the real me. And God bless her, she still married me.”

  Dad was in his own world—one that he had shared with her—and because they had a history longer than I’d been alive, I felt like an outsider.

  “Man, I loved her…still love her.” He shook his head and glanced at me over his shoulder. “And boy, did she love you. I just wish that I could be more like her, especially with you. I know it hasn’t been easy, growing up without a mom. I wanna fix it, but to tell you the truth, I don’t know how.”

  Dad was right. Mom had a way of making us both feel loved in a very special way, but I guess we never picked up on how she did that. I felt clueless on what to say to him, but it was my turn to make an effort.

  “Being here at the cabin means different things for you and me. I see that now. I’m not saying we should stop coming, but I don’t need a ceremony to remember her, Dad. Not a day goes by that I don’t…” When I felt my eyes water, I let gravity do its thing. “Maybe I’ll never get over losing her, b
ut that’s my choice. You don’t have to fix it for me. You can’t.”

  After a long awkward moment of Dad staring at me, like he saw me in a different way, and me not wiping tears off my face, he finally said, “You look like your mom, you know. You even sound like her.”

  I couldn’t help it. I laughed.

  “You’re delusional.”

  What Dad said shocked me. I’d never be as pretty as Mom, or as smart, but he made me feel like I could be in some alternative universe.

  “Maybe so, but not about that.” He smiled for real this time and opened his arms.

  For the first time in a long while, I collapsed into my father’s arms. He pulled me to his chest and hugged me like he needed it, too. I’d come to the ridge to see if the weird raven would be there, to hook me up with its magic and connect me to bittersweet memories of my mother.

  But at that moment, that raven had nothing on my dad.

  On Denali at dawn -55 degrees

  Blowing snow distorted everything and played tricks on Nate’s eyes. When he thought he’d made progress, getting closer to Josh, the winds made him slow to a crawl as if he stood still. Fighting the blizzard felt like he had slugged through bone-chilling quicksand.

  “Josh! Stop!” he yelled at the shadow stumbling in front of him and flashed a light in his direction.

  He stood close enough to recognize his friend’s jacket, but something felt terribly wrong. Josh had to hear him, yet he wouldn’t turn around. He staggered as if he were drunk. Although Nate hadn’t seen a case of mountain sickness or cerebral edema before, he suspected Josh suffered from something much more than fatigue or jitters over the climb.

  Brain swells happened suddenly. If Josh had one, it would explain his awkward walk and disoriented attention span, his memory loss and why he’d wandered off alone in a whiteout, against his father’s repeated warnings. What had started out looking like a bad case of nerves had masked a worsening condition after Josh got to a higher altitude. He needed medical attention and a lower elevation, fast.

  Nate struggled to pick up his pace, but when he got within a short distance from Josh, he noticed something. His friend had stopped. Even in the wind, Nate heard a sound that forced him to slow, too. The noise twisted his belly into a knot, even before he recognized it. A foreboding rumble from above them erupted into a deafening roar. When the ground shook under Nate’s boots, he heard a loud crack echo from where Josh stood and he knew what would happen.

  He couldn’t warn his friend.

  The ear-shattering noise made that impossible. With his feet pulled out from under him, Josh got sucked into a rush of collapsing snow. Ice cracked under his boots and opened a gaping wound deep into the mountain. A wall of snow had broken loose and engulfed him, heading straight for Nate.

  Avalanche. Josh had been there one minute—and gone the next.

  All Nate could do was brace for a punishing fall. A crevasse swallowed them both, dragging Nate into a deep chasm. On pure reflex, he braced his arms over his head as he fell and he gripped his ice ax and flashlight tight. Tumbling in with the fresh snow, he struggled for every gasp of air. Walls of ice pounded him as he twisted and careened on a free fall. The ice cut and scraped his hands as he dug in with his ice ax to break his plunge.

  When he finally came to a stop, his head pounded. He had no idea if he was upright or head down and with the crushing weight of snow against his chest, he couldn’t breathe. He needed a pocket of air or he’d suffocate in seconds. Even though it hurt to move, Nate forced his arms to work. With his ice ax still in his grip, he pushed through the snow before it hardened and shoved it away from his face.

  But when his legs heaved against the packed snow that pinned his lower body, he felt the ice give way. He’d broken through the only barrier that held him. In an agonizing nosedive, he plummeted another ten or fifteen feet and hit hard.

  “Ahh.”

  Slammed against icy boulders, he felt his last breath rush from his lungs. Heavy wet snow caved in after him and pummeled his back. He’d been thrust into murky darkness at the bottom of a cavern.

  When everything stopped moving, a deathlike stillness closed in.

  Nate lay sprawled on his belly, wedged between rocks and ice. He blinked and stared into the inky black until his eyes adjusted to the dark and faint glimmers of light came into focus. He could breathe, but his whole body ached. The only light came from the one he’d brought with him. Even though his flashlight had been partly covered in snow, it was within reach if he could move.

  “Josh…” he whispered with a wince.

  Nate wasn’t sure he’d spoken at all. When he lifted his head, a jarring pain stabbed the back of his eyes and raced down his spine. Everything drifted in and out of focus. He felt dizzy as hell and wanted to puke.

  “Josh,” he called out again.

  Not far from where he was, Nate saw a boot move under a mound of snow and he thought he heard a faint moan. Bad luck had sucked him into a crevasse with Josh, but at least they were together. Nate shoved the snow off and made sure he could move before he dug out his flashlight and crawled to Josh.

  “I’m…h-here.” He braced himself on an elbow to brush snow off his friend’s face. “Can you hear me, Josh?”

  To be able to work with both hands, Nate laid the flashlight on Josh’s chest, shining the beam toward his head. The glow at that angle cast shadows on his face, making him look dead. That thought gripped Nate hard, but at least his friend was breathing. He did his best to clear the rest of the snow off and check him for injuries. Unconscious, Josh had broken an arm, but when Nate found blood on the snow near his leg, he knew the guy had worse problems.

  “Oh, man.”

  His friend had a compound fracture below the knee. A jagged bone had broken through the skin. Although he had to stop the bleeding and get Josh stable, he had nothing with him for mountain sickness. And they had to deal with a bigger adversary—hypothermia. It could kill them both.

  After Nate got his first murky glimpse of their predicament, he realized that falling into a crevasse had saved their lives. If they’d been caught in the avalanche, they’d already be dead. The crushing weight of snow would have suffocated them. Trapped in a cavern of ice with air to breathe had prolonged their lives—or delayed the inevitable.

  It was too soon to tell if their stroke of good fortune would turn out to be a bad thing.

  “H-hang in there, b-buddy.” Nate’s teeth chattered, making it hard to talk. “I gotta g-get h-help.”

  Nate rolled onto his back to shine his flashlight into the cavern. The avalanche had plugged the crevasse and caved in after them. The fresh wet snow was everywhere, leaving him no source for fresh air or sign of daylight. Without a clue where the surface was, he’d have no way to signal his dad, except for his tracking beacon if they got within range.

  If he tried digging out, he could bring more snow down on them, robbing them of the only pocket of air they had, but not doing anything could be a death sentence. Being encased in ice below ground, the cold would get worse. All he had was his ice ax, his rope, and the flashlight in his hand, nothing that would keep them warm except the layered gear on their backs.

  “Gotta…f-find a way.” His voice sounded far off. It muffled in the emptiness of the snow and ice that entombed them.

  With his forehead throbbing, Nate struggled to keep his eyes open. He thought of his dad and wondered if he even knew they were missing yet. His eyes watered when he imagined the worried faces of his mom and little sister. Thinking of Zoey, he tugged at his glove and looked down at his wrist, the one that had the good-luck bracelet she’d tied on him.

  It was missing. Gone. And a pervasive sadness hit him hard. It felt like his connection to his family had been severed—taken from him. The hopelessness of his situation closed in.


  “N-no. Stay f-focused.”

  Nate tried to sit up, but when he moved, he got dizzy. Blinding pinpricks of light spun in front of his eyes. He dropped the flashlight and collapsed back, staring into the frigid abyss with Josh unconscious beside him. Nate fought hard to stay awake, but eventually the cold won.

  And everything went black.

  Chapter 6

  On Denali

  With howling winds gusting to 65 miles per hour, Bob Holden stared into the worsening blizzard surrounded by his team. His second-in-charge, Mike Childers, had already contacted the ranger station. As expected, the storm would hamper rescue attempts. The weather had to clear before any help arrived.

  His team assembled in front of him with each man wearing full expedition gear under their climbing harnesses, ready to rope up. Even though they were prepared to search for Nate and Josh, Bob wanted them to know what they were up against and give them one last chance to back out—something he prayed they wouldn’t do.

  “I can’t ask you men to help. Going out in this weather will be risky. If you decide to stick at camp, I understand. Nate and Josh are my responsibility. I have to do this, but you don’t.” Bob had to stop. To stem the emotion that threatened every time he thought about his son, he cleared his throat before he went on.

  “We’ll have a radio transceiver with us, but in case we get separated, there’ll be another one here at camp, for emergencies.”

  Bob didn’t have to say it. Everyone knew what he meant about getting separated. If he got into trouble, the rest of the team would have a way off the mountain.

  “I’m going with you, Bob,” Mike said. “I’ve packed the first-aid kit. And I think it’s a good idea to take two sleds. The boys may need ’em.”

  “I’m coming, too,” Joe Givens chimed in.