Maverick

  I’m sitting in my truck now, just outside the house. The lights are on and I can see Fox’s shadow pass by the large windows but I don’t want to go inside yet because he’ll grill me. I think it’s his favorite hobby, pestering me about the women I date just so he doesn’t have to think about his own romantic shortcomings.

  But eventually I have to go inside, so I get out of the truck and the door is almost immediately slammed back against me. A burst of wind has come out of nowhere, rising hard and fast from the direction of Ravenswood and Cherry Peak to the north.

  It’s a cold wind too, immediately chilling me to the bone. After the near balmy temperatures, I wonder if this is the storm I’ve been suspecting. The wind dies down almost immediately but that one burst has me on edge.

  When I wake up the next morning, it’s four a.m., a long time before my alarm goes off. I get up and look out the window. The wind is howling now but there’s no snow, just the high, eerie whine as it whips through the trees.

  I wonder if Riley is up, listening to the storm. I have a feeling she is.

  I text her, Hey, you awake?

  I then wait, wishing I hadn’t done that. She’ll probably assume it’s a call to go out and I’ll wake her up for nothing.

  But she texts back, Yes. Can’t sleep.

  Want company? I text back and I know, I know, I’m pushing things here. But fuck, she was pushing it for so long, I figure it’s time I return the favor.

  Don’t you have to be at work in the morning?

  I text back. Don’t you?

  But I take that to mean she wants company because she didn’t exactly say no, so I get ready and head out the door. It’s funny, to feel so comfortable with someone but we’re still in that stage where we’re really not sure about what we are and how every text or word or look can be too much or too little.

  Soon she’s letting me in her suite and I’m kissing her and we’re falling backward onto her bed and I’m taking off her tank top, sucking on her breasts, her neck. I push inside of her and I know I’ve found that peace I crave, that balance to all the chaos.

  It doesn’t just stop there.

  Like the day before, we keep touching each other, sinking into easy, constant sex, our bodies constantly entangled. I swear we fuck for hours, this slow, drowsy, descent into this world we’ve created for just ourselves.

  I’ve just pulled out of her, my back stinging from her nail marks, my muscles cramping from the night of effort, when my phone buzzes.

  I glance at the glowing clock radio—seven a.m. now, I’m not supposed to be in for another hour—and fish my phone out of my jeans.

  There are a shit ton of missed calls.

  “Oh fuck,” I mutter.

  “What is it?” she asks.

  I shake my head, looking them over. “How did I not hear these come in?”

  “Because we were having all the sex.”

  I glance at her. “Why didn’t your phone go off?”

  She looks put out. “It died after you texted me. I figured any call would go to you. What is it?”

  I sigh and sit down on the bed, scrolling through them. “It’s nothing. Well, a climber fell at the Kokanee Glacier. Six-hundred-foot drop. His partner came back in the middle of the night. It’s pretty much a body recovery now.”

  “Who went?”

  “I don’t know.” I text back Tony and wait for his reply.

  To his credit, he doesn’t ask where I was. Or where Riley was. He says that Tim and Jace went out. I relay this to Riley.

  “Don’t they need us?” she asks, bringing her knees to her chest and tucking her covers over them. In the hazy morning light, she looks so young, fresh, innocent, her blonde bedhead spilling all around her.

  I shake my head. “No. To recover a body…you can do it alone. Usually I’m doing it.”

  She swallows and looks down at the pattern on the bedspread. “I’ve only seen one dead body. I don’t know how you do it.”

  “It’s part of the job,” I tell her, leaning against her knees. “And someone has to do it. We aren’t always about the rescue. Sometimes the searching is more important. People deserve to be buried properly. Loved ones want to know what happened. So I go out there and I retrieve the bodies and maybe they aren’t alive but they’re safe. You know?”

  She blinks, staring at nothing. “But…how do you do it? Face death? Doesn’t that…affect you? I mean, you’re so normal.”

  I laugh softly. “Am I? I believe I told you the other night that there are two people in me, John and Maverick.”

  “You know what I mean.” Her eyes are grave. She’s serious.

  So I’m serious too. “Look. It’s not easy but you do get used to it. But for me, I’ve maybe recovered fifteen bodies or so, it’s a balance of being respectful while keeping your distance. There have been climbers who have fallen. Backcountry skiers buried in an avalanche. I’ve helped recover bodies in a plane crash, a Cessna where a father and daughter died together. Most of the time though, someone has taken their own life. Sometimes it’s a shotgun in the mouth in the middle of the forest and I don’t find them until after the wolves have. Other times, they jump over the waterfalls, like Bridal, or hurl themselves off of Cherry Lookout. It’s…so stark and raw and intimate, you know, to be the one to pick these people up after they’ve decided to end their lives. You’re seeing some part of their life that no one else ever will.”

  “But your mother…” she says and then clamps her mouth shut.

  I know what she means. “Maybe that’s why I do this,” I tell her. “Because my mother drowned herself and had there been someone in SAR around at that time, maybe they could have gone into that river and saved her. Maybe they would have given her the help she needed. Maybe…she would still be here today and I would still have a mother.”

  It’s hard to swallow and I’m getting choked up. I close my eyes and inhale deeply through my nose.

  “Mav,” Riley says softly, getting to her knees. She wraps her arms around me and holds me close, resting her cheek on my shoulder. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

  Are you? I think but I don’t think too much. My emotions are running high lately and I can’t stop the few tears that fall from my eyes.

  But this isn’t how I want to start this day. I need to get it together. Riley is unraveling me with every second we’re together, like when you’re climbing and there’s too much slack in the ropes and you know it. Eventually there will be nothing to hold you up. Eventually you’ll fall.

  I get up and shake it off. “Let’s go in to work,” I tell her.

  Thirty minutes later, the two of us are coming into the office together.

  Tony is at his desk and looks up with a smile. At least this guy is always smiling.

  “You’re here.”

  “In the flesh,” I tell him. “Where’s Neil?”

  “He went out for donuts,” Tony says. “Need to keep that boy busy.”

  “Any word from Tim or Jace?” Riley asks as she takes off her coat and hangs it on the rack. I love how no-nonsense she can be sometimes, how easily she goes from sex kitten to vulnerable to a goof and back to one serious ass-kicking SAR.

  “Tim has the body,” Tony says. “Jace is relaying. Police are with the climber by the road. Should take them about three hours to get down though.”

  “Why so long?” I ask. From what I understood, the ice walls that the climbers were using were quite close to the trailhead, maybe an hour’s hike.

  “This wind,” Tony says, gestures to the trees wavering outside the windows, “it’s coming from the glacier and beyond. It’s a fucking mess up there. I can barely get them on the radio.”

  A cold knot forms inside my stomach. “I think we should go for backup.” I look at Riley. “You in?”

  “Always,” she says, grabbing her coat and putting it back on.

  I look at Tony. “Stay here and be base. And don’t let Neil eat all the donuts.”

  “I’ll save you a maple
glazed.”

  Riley and I get our gear in the truck and head out. It’s about an hour drive to the glacier and she’s lapsed into silence, staring out the window at the weather. The wind is still howling and now light flakes are starting to appear. As long as they stay light, it shouldn’t be a problem, but if they get any heavier, then the avalanche risks rise. The glacier can be notorious for that, another reason why I think we need to be there.

  But her silence is telling after a while.

  And I have questions.

  “You never talk about Levi,” I say to her.

  She stiffens slightly but keeps her eyes focused outside.

  “There isn’t much to say,” she says after a few beats. Her words are careful.

  “He was your friend, wasn’t he?”

  She nods. “Only friend.”

  “Just a friend?”

  Now she looks at me. “What makes you say that?”

  I give her a quick smile. “I don’t know. I just feel it. The closer someone is to you when you lose them, the less you want to talk about it.”

  She watches me for a few beats, thinking, then sighs, leaning her head back against the seat. “Yeah. Well, I was in love with him. Ever since high school. He didn’t know it though.”

  “I’m sure he did. There’s no way you can love someone and not have them know it.”

  A line forms between her brows. “You’ve obviously never pined for someone before.”

  I think I might be pining right now.

  “What I mean is, you, Riley. Your heart and soul just beam out of you, like a sunburst. You’ve got all this joy and life in you that you can’t possibly contain. There is no way in hell that Levi didn’t know how you felt. He knew, believe me, he knew.”

  She watches me for a few moments, confusion and fear washing over her features, until she says, “If that’s true, he never addressed it.”

  “Sometimes it’s difficult with friends. You don’t want to ruin a good thing. Take Fox and Del for example.”

  “Yeah. What is their deal?”

  “It’s what I said. They’re like sister and brother. Good friends to the end. But there’s something else there that neither of them are facing, because if they do, it means that everything they are to each other is at risk.”

  “That’s sweet that you care.”

  “Sweet? No. I’m not a matchmaker and I don’t necessarily believe in their romance. But Fox is a short-tempered grump. Just like our father. But worse, because he’s sexually frustrated over Del and doesn’t even know it. Love would calm him down, bring him peace.”

  “Love is chaos.”

  I give her an odd look. But she’s right. Love is chaos.

  I think I might be falling in love with Riley and I’ve never felt more turbulent in all my life.

  I clear my throat, trying to push those feelings away. “Anyway, the reason I’m asking about Levi is that –”

  “You want to know if I’m capable of loving someone.”

  I blink at her in shock. “What? That is not what I was going to say.”

  She shrugs. “Sometimes I wonder myself.”

  What I was going to say had to do with the dead body. I know she found Levi’s and I don’t want her to be traumatized all over again if it turns out we have to help take the climber out. I’m not sure if Tim has a body bag packed with him or not.

  But I let it go because, really, it’s dumb of me to ask. Riley is more than tough and she can handle everything that gets thrown at her. Even if she’s crumbling on the inside, she has enough bravado to do the job properly and I suppose that’s all that matters in this line of work.

  When we finally get to the trailhead, we have a quick meeting with the RCMP officer and the distraught climbing partner. The police always have to be called in when someone dies, especially to make sure foul play isn’t suspected. It never turns out that way either, but there are also special precautions that we have to take when we’re investigating the scene.

  Then we head up. Our packs are extra heavy today because we’re both carrying 600 feet of rope in case we need it, plus ice axes, helmets, and crampons. It’s almost all vertical, so there’s no skiing in and the snow is too wet for snowshoes, so we’re hiking in our boots. Thankfully it’s a popular trail for ice climbers or people wanting to see the glacier so the snow is hard packed and we’re not sinking in too much.

  The weather, however, is like one big fucking hand in our faces, trying to hold us back. We push through, but it’s hard. I keep looking over my shoulder at Riley, just her eyes visible through the balaclava that covers her face, frost and ice building up on the fabric.

  Finally, we break through the treeline and head up a couple of ridges before we come to the glacier. I’d been trying to radio with Jace on our way but things aren’t coming in clearly. All I got is that they had to take a higher route along one of the saddles before cutting down the glacier at an angle.

  We can see them now, halfway across, tiny dots on endless white. Tim leads, holding the body bag on the litter, Jace keeps up the rear.

  “This isn’t good,” Riley says.

  I look over at Riley. She’s pulled down her mask, staring at the ice field with trepidation. Her pallor is white as snow. She looks at me. “I don’t like this.”

  I put my attention back on the team. They seem fine. Slow, but more than capable as they cross. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. The storm, the way the snow is sitting at the top there, those cornices are overloaded. All of this is fresh powder, it’s been dumping here for hours, probably since yesterday, after those weeks of snow melt? No. I don’t like it.”

  “Why don’t you wait here,” I tell her. Granted it’s not the best spot where we’ve stopped. We’ve just come up the spine and while the slope into the glacier is easy and gentle, the slope behind us is four hundred feet of pure ice that eventually drops off into the abyss.

  “Why don’t we wait for them to come to us,” she says. “No point putting extra weight out there.”

  “I wouldn’t be much of a leader if I didn’t go out there and help,” I tell her. “I should have been the one to take the call this morning. I should be there.”

  A wash of shame comes over her eyes and she diverts them, looking to the glacier. I didn’t mean for it to sound the way it did, that I was angry that I was having sex with her this morning instead of being where I needed to be.

  “Okay but…” she trails off just as a whumpf sound echoes down the glacier. Instinctively we both look up at the top and see a massive cornice of snow break away and fall onto the slope below.

  The trigger for an avalanche.

  “Run!” I yell across the glacier but it’s pointless because Tim and Jace have both heard it too and have stopped, staring up at the giant sheet of snow – two football fields worth – that’s barreling toward them faster than anything they can outrun.

  I’ve seen plenty of avalanches before. Despite how destructive and deadly they are, they’re also awe-inspiring. It’s probably why so many die in them. Not only are they hard to predict but when you see them, you can’t look away. It’s supernatural, ravishing and horrifically beautiful. A heard of ice horses stampeding toward you on white crested waves.

  I’m powerless. I can’t yell, I can’t move, though moving won’t help anyone right now. I can just watch as the snow comes down in a relentless blast, the powder clouds rising high into the sky. In seconds Tim, Jace and the climber have vanished, disappeared under the cover of snow and then the wall starts moving up the edges of the bowl, coming for us.

  It should stop just below us, the momentum already slowing, but it’s still rising, crawling up the ridge to where we are, reaching for us with icy fingers.

  Instinctively I move in front of Riley to shield her, even though I know the worst we’ll get hit with is a face full of powder.

  But she screams.

  I turn around in time for the powder cloud to hit my back and to see her stumble backward aw
ay from me, arms wheeling around trying to keep her balance on the thin line of the ridge.

  “Riley!” I cry out, lunging for her.

  But it’s too late.

  She falls backward, ten feet down onto the slope of ice and starts sliding down, fast, first on her back and then flipping over, trying wildly to grab hold of the ice as she slides.

  I don’t think.

  I just move.

  I leap off the ridge and land on my stomach, arms out, sliding down right after her, head first.

  The slope is pure ice, fifty degrees slant, and I’m hurtling down faster than a car, my hands stretched out in front of me, trying to be as aerodynamic as possible to catch up. I have no idea how I’m going to stop, I just know that I have to reach her before she goes over the edge.

  She’s trying to dig her fingers in but at this speed and with her gravitational pull, it’s pointless. Then she flips back over, trying to get her pack off. With one hand on the straps, it rises above her in an attempt to slow down.

  It doesn’t slow her down much but it does close the distance between us. Snow, ice flies in my face and I keep my eyes focused on hers. They’re wild, they’re panicked, they’re a vessel of fear.

  I catch up to the pack, grabbing the strap and reach for her ice axes. I grab one and with my free hand start trying to jab it into the ice but it’s impossible to get a good stick.

  “Hold on!” I scream at her and my eyes fly over her head and at what lays beyond her.

  Fifty feet until she’s over the edge.

  Forty feet.

  Thirty feet.

  Frantically, I try again, jabbing again and again with the axe as we slide toward our death.

  Twenty feet.

  Holy fuck.

  We’re not going to make it.

  This is it.

  We’re going over the edge.

  We’re going to die.

  Ten feet.

  God, please…

  Thwack.

  My axe penetrates the ice, sinking in to the hilt, and a cry is ripped from my throat as it stops me, causing me to swing around one eighty, still holding onto the pack, both of us spinning as we’re whipped around on the ice face, her body swinging up higher than me, the edge just six feet below my legs.