"North face of the ridge," I bark over the howling gale. I grab the strap of the survival bag, hauling it over my shoulder. "There is a rock formation. Natural windbreak. We move now."
She nods once. A streak of dried blood mars her left temple. My mouth tightens. The urge to pull her against me is brutal, but we do not have the luxury of stillness.
I forge ahead. The snow is waist-deep now. Every step is a brutal, calculated expenditure of kinetic energy. My thighs burn.My lungs ache with the sub-zero air. None of it matters. My only objective is her survival. I break the trail, stomping down the deep drifts, clearing a path for her boots. She follows right behind me, using my wake to conserve her own heat.
The hike is a grueling descent into pure physical endurance. The forest transforms into a hostile, alien landscape. Twisted branches whip at my face. The snow blinds my vision. I navigate on base instinct and the steady sound of her breathing at my back. She keeps pace without complaint. Every time I glance over my shoulder, she is locked onto me, burning with that same fierce, unsentimental determination.
She survives without me. She chooses to survive with me.
My jaw tightens. By the time I understand the pressure building in me, it has already changed everything.
A sheer granite cliff face looms out of the swirling whiteout. An overhang of rock juts out over a dense grove of dead spruce trees. It is a natural fortress against the wind.
"Here," I announce, dropping the survival bag onto the snowpack under the overhang. The wind is cut to a low moan against the rock wall.
Reese drops to her knees immediately, her breath puffing in ragged white clouds. She does not rest. She grabs a thick, snapped pine bough and starts sweeping the snow away from the base of the rock. Her practicality makes my chest tighten. She is already assessing how to keep us alive.
"We need a windbreak wall," she says, her voice strained but steady. "The overhang stops the snow, but that crosswind will freeze us to death in our sleep. We need to build a barrier."
"I will handle the lifting. You gather the deadfall for insulation."
We work in synchronized, desperate efficiency. I leave the shelter of the rock face, wading back into the howling storm. I find heavy, rotting logs buried under the snow. I haul them backand stack them at the edge of the overhang to form a barricade. My muscles scream in protest.
The bespoke tailoring of my ruined suit pants tears against the rough bark. The gold watch on my wrist catches the dim, gray light. It is a relic of a dead man. The Santi Costa who watched from the margins and cataloged the family’s enemies died in that helicopter crash. The man stacking timber in the frozen wilderness is driven by a single objective.
Reese drags peeling slabs of bark from the dead spruce trees. We wedge the bark slabs between the logs, creating an impenetrable wall against the storm. The makeshift shelter takes shape. A tight, triangular pocket wedged between the granite cliff and the constructed bark wall. It is large enough for two bodies to lie side by side. Just.
Night drops like a guillotine blade. Absolute blackness. The storm rages outside, the wind screaming against our bark barricade.
Inside our tiny shelter, every breath is shared. There is no distance left between us.
I secure the final piece of bark near the entrance. The perimeter is tight. Reese moves behind me in the darkness, arranging the pine boughs into a makeshift mattress over the frozen dirt.
"The wind is shifting," she says, her voice close. Too close. "I need to patch this corner near the back?—"
She steps backward.
My night vision registers the shadows half a second before her boot hits empty air.
The back of the shelter is not a solid rock corner. It is a sheer, hidden drop-off into a ravine, masked by a thin crust of blown snow.
My body moves before my conscious mind can formulate a command.
My stillness shatters.
I grip the fabric of her jacket. I yank her forward with bone-jarring force.
She gasps, her boots slipping on the icy edge.
I do not just pull her to safety. I rip her away from the void. My momentum carries us both violently forward. I slam her backward into the solid bark wall of the shelter we just built.
The impact knocks the breath from her lungs in a sharp hiss.
I crash into her. My frame blankets hers. My hands fist the collar of her jacket, anchoring her to the wall. My chest crushes her breasts. My thighs pin her hips immovably against the wall.
I do not step back.
Adrenaline boils through my veins.
