Her eyes shine the way snow does right before it blinds you. “Text me the time.”
Lightning under my skin. “Seventeen hundred.”
“Bossy,” she says, but there’s no bite in it. “I’ll think about it.”
She pushes off the jamb and goes, and I stay where I am until my heart stops trying to climb out of my throat.
Torres drifts by, catches my expression, keeps going with a low whistle that sounds likeGod help you both.
He’s late.
God’s been busy with us for years.
I pick up the clipboard I abandoned, write notes I won’t remember, and look out past the bay at the mountains watching us like witnesses. The sun glances off new snow and pretends everything’s clean.
It’s not.
But for the first time in a decade, I want to live inside the snow globe anyway. Even if the ground shifts under my feet. Even if we crack the glass.
Especially then.
Chapter Eight
Savannah
The call hits midafternoon, a clipped burst over the radio that slices the station’s lull clean in two.
“Search and rescue activation. Solo hiker overdue on Phantom Ridge. Last ping near switchback seven, elevation ninety-two hundred. Hypothermia risk. Units respond.”
Phantom Ridge is never just pretty. It’s gorgeous and unforgiving—a spine of granite the mountain keeps sharpening. I zip my jacket, grab the rescue pack, and meet Axel at the end of the bay before either of us says a word. The crew swarms around us in choreographed chaos: ropes, sled, blankets, the orange box with the stuff that buys you minutes when the body wants to shut down.
Cole takes one look at my face and nods. “You two lead with point. We’ll stagger behind. Radio check every ten.”
“Copy,” Axel answers, low and steady.
We pile into the truck. The road climbs fast, switchbacking through pines that drip with yesterday’s storm, each branch heavy with white. Clouds sit on the peaks like the sky forgot how to finish a thought. The temperature drops in measurabledegrees with every mile, the kind of cold that knifes through anything you wear.
Neither of us talks on the drive. The silence isn’t empty; it’s a loaded chamber. I watch the map on my phone, watching the last-known ping blink like a heartbeat. It’s too far. It’s never where you want it to be.
Axel parks at the trailhead. The lot is empty; we shoulder packs and go. The trail is a white ribbon. Our boots bite into it with a crunch that feels obscene. Cold rides up through the soles, into my calves, knifing along bone. I dial the radio to Search frequency, get static, then the brittle voice of the coordinator at base.
“Winds shifting east. Snow flurries in twenty. Copy when you clear switchback four.”
“Copy,” I say.
Axel adjusts the sled strap across his chest and glances down at me. “You warm enough?”
“Define warm.”
His mouth twitches. He slows half a step, matching my stride. The trail steepens; the pines thin; the ground falls away to our left in a clean, merciless drop. I check the waypoint again and tuck the phone into my chest pocket.
We pass switchback three. Four. Wind hisses through the branches with a sound that makes me want to pick up the pace. I force my breath to stay even. Hypothermia changes people fast; panic is the first thief.
“You ever miss this?” I ask, meaning the misery, the beautiful brutality of mountain rescue.
Axel’s breath fogs thick. “I miss when it didn’t feel like penance.”
Something tightens under my ribs. I don’t poke it. Not now.
