He’d lost his pack. And his phone. And maybe his sanity when he’d thrown out that snow grenade. Yeah, so maybe not a super brilliant idea, but then again, he had nothin’ else.
Except impulse. Or panic.
And maybe, yes, for a second, he understood that feeling that drove Harley to ... justdo.
Somewhere above, Marla would be wondering why he wasn’t answering. Probably she would have noticed something was wrong by now, would have the dogs working search patterns. But they’d be looking in the wrong place, checking the avalanche debris field, not knowing he was trapped here, that the mountain itself had become his prison. His tomb, if help didn’t come soon.
The irony wasn’t lost on him. He’d wanted to protect Harley. Instead, he’d been the stupid one.
And now Mars was out in the wild, and he couldn’t do a thing about it.
The darkness pressed closer, filled his lungs like water.
And somewhere in that darkness, the old timbers groaned under the weight of too much snow.
Weirdly, the conversation with Hudson yesterday, before the argument with Harley, returned to him.
“What if I stick around and helpyou.”
“And Harley?”
“I’m hoping she’ll figure outthat she can stay too.”
Yeah. So much forthathappy ending.
He would die in here and she would never know that ... Oh, he loved her. The fact of it pulsed inside him, hot, bitter.
Yeah, he was a fool for leaving her, again.
He needed to get out of here.
He sat up, leaned against the mine wall. “Orlando?” The black ate his voice.
He closed his eyes.Please,God. He wanted to see Harley again. Tell her that he shouldn’t have walked away. Shouldn’t have...
Well, maybe it was arrogant, just like Hudson, or Sully, or whoever had said, to think he could protect her. Orshouldprotect her.
Frankly, he couldn’t even protect his dog. Or himself.
The cold seeped through his jacket, numbing everything but the ache in his chest. Okay, if Deke had gotten his GPS signal, at least they’d know he was here.
Still, they couldn’t know if he was alive.
“Lead me to the rock that ishigher than I.”The words from yesterday’s sermon whispered through his mind, and he stifled a brutal laugh.
He’d die under the earth, in darkness. No mountaintop for him.
And wow, he was turning dark.
He sighed, and the quiet words of his father’s journal settled in his mind.
“I know he longs for his ownlife ... help him not lose himself.”
In all his striving, all his longing, Jericho hadn’t found the life he’d wanted.
“You are their refuge and their strengthand you go with them. Help them to trust youin all things,with their lives,their hearts,their futures.”
He’d done exactlynoneof that, and as he sat there, hearing only the thump of his heart and the occasional creak of the mine, he stirred the words around his heart.
