“Yes.”
“Because he won’t care that I testified against my father, put him in jail.”
He frowned at her. “No, I don’t think he will.”
“Even though his own father died in an accident his brother blamed him for. ”
“Jess, where are you going with this?”
“And it won’t matter at all that he felt betrayed and rejected—”
“Okay, just take a breath.” Ty took her by the shoulders. “It’s not the same thing.”
Her eyes glistened, her breath falling. “I betrayed and rejected my entire family. And, most recently, Pete.”
“You were scared. And trust me, he’ll be so glad we’re not dating he won’t hear anything else, I promise.”
Her mouth lifted up. “I hope so.”
“Trust me, Jess. Everything is going to be fine.”
Please, let everything be fine.
12
ELLA COULD HARDLY BELIEVE that twenty-four hours ago, she’d practically had to chain herself to the chopper to make Gage take her with him.
Now he rode as if he hadn’t a doubt she could keep up.
Across the tufted ridge, down a narrow chute, into open country, dodging a few pine trees, then a stair-step drop down a cliffside that left her stomach somewhere on top.
He stopped at the bottom, and she pulled up beside him, breathing hard.
“Look at what you just did,” he said and pointed behind her.
She didn’t want to look, but . . .
Even from the bottom, it took her breath away. Five ledges, no more than five-feet deep, iced with powder, and she’d skipped down them without doing a header or crashing, mostly in control the entire way.
But she definitely wasn’t in control of her heart when Gage turned back to her and held out his gloved hand for a fist bump, his incredibly brown eyes alight with pride. “Pretty good there, Senator,” he said. “I shouldn’t have been so worried about the Great White Throne. That was just as steep and you handled it no problem.”
She grinned, and her heart gave an extra bang in her chest.
Really, she didn’t know how she’d managed to put herself together after their embrace in the snow.
Gage Watson could still turn her world inside out with his touch.
Not to mention his words. “Being with you just might make me into the guy I actually want to be.”
She liked who he was now. Today. The man he’d become despite her.
Gage studied the terrain below, choosing his path. “We’re going to come around the cave from the back side. It’s easier access to go along the ridge and approach it from the flank than to drop down on top of it and hike back up the way I did before.”
He reached for his water bottle, uncapped it, and took a drink. When he offered it to Ella, she shook her head. He took another drink, then capped it.
“I actually found the cave by accident the first time. I had read about it from a backpacker’s guide to Heaven’s Peak but didn’t know if I’d find it—wasn’t even planning to, really. And then I came over the top of the roof and landed in the field just below the entrance. I was catching my breath when I spotted it, and since I was losing daylight, I climbed up. Couldn’t believe how big it was on the inside—the entrance is barely visible, the way the snow curves over it, but inside it’s dry and out of the wind. I wish we’d made it last night.”
Except then she wouldn’t have had a good reason to curl up next to him. “I hope my brother is there.”
“Me too,” Gage said. “Ready?”
She nodded, and he eased himself forward, down the ridgeline. It seemed like he rode with a new confidence.
Knowing that maybe he could trust her.
She urged her board forward, following him.
Frankly, she was beginning to trust herself. Because with Gage pushing her, challenging her, she saw a side to herself that so rarely emerged. With him, she let go, found herself actually enjoying herself.
It made her believe what she’d said to Gage—the hope that God was on their side. That she didn’t have to prove anything. That she could let the past go.
Except, well, she couldn’t. Not with the last terrible secret remaining between them.
Dylan’s drug usage. It was possible that, had he not been high, he wouldn’t have skied off that cliff.
Would have lived. More, Gage could stop blaming himself.
She needed to tell him.
But what if it made Gage only blame himself more, regretting that he hadn’t seen it? Maybe it would only add to the pile of mistakes that kept him from truly breaking free. Trusting.
Her. Himself. God.
“I had no business praying like I did today.”
His words rattled through her.
She understood Gage better than he thought. Because one look at herself told her that she had some audacity to think God would listen to her, let alone grant her requests.
Gage made some quick cuts down the ridgeline to slow them, his body smooth as liquid.
She fell into the rhythm, nearly on his track but not quite.
Her own words came back to her about God, you messed up, but that doesn’t mean I did. Trust me. She wasn’t sure where they’d come from, but they lingered, hung on.
Maybe that was the key—just because she’d made a mistake with her life didn’t mean that God had, and it hopefully didn’t change the way God saw her.
Still flawed but worth loving anyway.
And if God loved her despite her failures, maybe she could let go of trying to control everything, start trusting him.
Please, God, let my brother be okay.
Gage paused at the top of the chute, the right flank of the cave. “We’ll just slide our way down this—it’s pretty steep at the bottom, and we don’t want to overshoot the cave.”
She had a feeling that if he were alone, he might just ride straight down, but she didn’t argue with him. He angled his board parallel to the fall line and skidded down the nearly vertical chute, following it down to a steep white field at the base.
“Hey! There are tracks down here!”
She followed him down, maybe too fast because she nearly flew by him. Powder flumed as she skidded to a stop.
He raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything about her wild descent. Then he pointed to a thick white line leading out of the cave and down the mountain.
“Is that one track or two?”
“I don’t know.” But he was unbuckling his boots from the bindings. “Let’s check the cave.”
She unclipped her bindings, settled her board in the snow, and hiked up.
Facing eastward, the cave was, indeed, difficult to see, especially from their route. The sun gilded the ice around the edges and cast light into the opening, a small oval that she had to drop to her knees to crawl into.
Gage had already climbed inside and turned on his head lamp, illuminating the cave’s interior. Maybe it had once been filled with water, because the edges were grooved with lines and the floor was a smooth, polished granite.
Dry and tall enough for her to stand, the cave tunneled back into the rock. The main cavern rose around her and dipped into a dry pool before it narrowed into small tunnels in the back.
In the middle of the pool sat an orange two-man tent. A snowboard lay beside the tent, a pair of boots outside the door.
“Ollie!”
Ella scrambled over to the tent, right behind Gage, who’d knelt to open the door.
He grabbed her arm a moment before she barreled inside.
The figure lay on his unrolled sleeping bag, one arm flung up over his eyes. He was dressed in a thermal shirt and fleece pants. Nearby lay the debris of his gear—snow pants, jacket, and a helmet smashed in on one side.
His right leg lay elevated on a rolled-up sleeping bag.
His knee looked the size of a soccer ball. The fleece pants had been ripped open to accommodate the swelling, but judging by the redness and the swelling a
t his ankle, he’d landed wrong, and hard.
Worse, the leg had taken on a dark purple hue.
“Oh my gosh, Ollie!”
With a start, the man moved his arm down. Lifted his head. He had dark hair and was a little taller than Ollie, which her brain had skipped right over.
“Bradley,” Gage said. “What happened?”
She couldn’t move, not sure what she felt. Relief? Horror? Disappointment?
Maybe all of it as she watched Gage move into the tent. “When did this happen?”
Bradley looked dehydrated, and he moaned as he lifted himself up on his elbows. He stared at them as if he didn’t recognize them.
“It’s me, Ella. And you’ve met my friend Gage. He’s an EMT.”
Gage was already slinging down his pack, reaching for the water. He held Bradley’s head, gave him a sip.
Bradley grabbed the water and drank until Gage pulled it away. “Ease up, pal. Not too much, too fast.”
Bradley wiped his mouth, his eyes thick with pain. “I fell coming down the Great White Throne. Bounced all the way down, landed . . . well, you can see. I think my knee might be out of socket. I can’t move it at all. And my ankle is probably busted. I turned it inside my boot.”
Gage was probing, very gently, the mass that was his knee. “How’d you get here?”
“Ollie carried me on his back. Rode most of the way, and then when it got too hard, he made me get on my board and we slid down together.”
“Where is Ollie?” Ella asked. She noticed that Ollie had left Bradley their stove, food supplies, even a bottle of water, now empty. And that gave her the clues she needed, even before Bradley answered.
“He left early this morning to get help. I thought maybe—you haven’t seen him?”
Ella shook her head. She glanced at Gage. “The track outside—it’s his.”
Gage nodded, then scooted out of the tent and touched her arm to urge her away from Bradley.
He pitched his voice low.
“Whatever he did, he’s not getting enough blood flow to his foot. We need to get him out of here, but the mountain is too treacherous to sled him out. We need to call Kacey and ask her to bring in the chopper and airlift him out.”
Ella nodded, but he’d taken off his glove and now found her own ungloved hand.
“We’ll go after Ollie as soon as we get Bradley out, okay?” Gage gave her hand a squeeze.
“You need to go after Ollie now,” came a voice from inside the tent. She frowned and followed Gage back to the tent entrance.
“Why?” Gage said.
“Because I’m not the only one who fell going down the Great White Throne.” He reached over and gripped the destroyed helmet. “This is Ollie’s.”
Brette couldn’t blame her upset stomach on watching Jess and Ty walk out of the barn together—but she wanted to.
That was silly—she barely knew the guy beyond his ability to make eggs and pick a good cowboy movie. But the way he smiled down at Jess, warmth in his eyes, the way he held the door open for her, even the way he stood beside her, almost protectively, as they mapped a route into Heaven’s Peak by snowmobile, made Brette want to know Ty Remington better.
Want to know what it felt like to really wake up in his muscled arms, his low baritone sliding through her as he whispered good morning.
The thought took her up, made her draw in her breath. She hadn’t had a thought like that since—well, since she knew better.
Besides, Ty was probably already taken. Probably by Jess, if she read things correctly. Except, since he’d returned from his excursion, he kept looking over at her, a warm, almost worried smile tipping his mouth, as if checking on her. She sat on the stairs, her hand to her roiling, spasming stomach.
“We could take the snowmobiles in through Haystack Creek, toward Crystal Point, around the backside of Heaven’s Peak, then follow this tributary along the base,” Pete was saying as he and Ty, founder Ian Shaw, and a guy named Miles, who’d come in earlier, studied a map.
Miles had a military look about him, his dark hair shaved short, his body lean and tough. He wore a solemn take-no-prisoners look in his eyes.
“We could catch up with them here, below Bishops Cap,” Pete said, finishing his suggestion.
What a disappointment Pete the so-called epic rescuer had turned out to be. Sure, he’d said the right thing—“I’m not about the limelight—I’m just trying to get the job done”—but it came out surly and a little hard-bitten.
Which left her hoping for an interview with billionaire Ian Shaw.
He’d shown up about a half hour prior, pulling up in a mud-splattered pickup. She might not have even recognized him if Sierra hadn’t greeted him when he came in. He wore a stocking cap, dark hair curling from the back, a down parka, work pants, and snow boots as if he’d been shoveling his own walk like a normal human being.
He shucked off the parka, hung it on the hooks by the door, and stepped out of his boots. “How’s the search going?” he asked as he took the cup of coffee Sierra offered.
Chet, sitting at the computer and watching the radar, gave him an update on the two call-ins from Gage. Ian actually leaned forward, looking at the weather maps, rolling up the sleeves on his flannel shirt as if he might actually dive in, go after Gage and Ella himself.
Interesting. When he wasn’t dressed in a tux and being auctioned off as an eligible bachelor for charity, Moneybags helped run rescue missions.
Apparently, no one here cared about the rumor that suggested he’d left his wife and son behind in Katrina to die. Or that he’d made his billions off the catastrophes that caused the BP Gulf oil spill.
She had just been gathering the fortitude to introduce herself when he came over. “Ian Shaw. I hear you’re a friend of the victim?”
“And Senator Ella Blair, one of the rescuers. I’m her . . . I’m a journalist.”
“Really,” Ian said. His eyebrow quirked up. “And you just happened to be here, at this opportune moment, when a senator’s brother gets lost?”
“I’m her friend. Oliver just happened to pull this stunt while I was here.”
“So, you’re not looking for a good story?” He added a confusing smile to the end of his words.
Which made her bold. “Of course I am. But, actually, I was hoping I could interview you.” She ignored the pain in her side and stood up. “I heard you were the one who started PEAK Rescue, and I thought maybe you could tell me about what led—”
“Nope.” His smile had vanished.
And suddenly, the room went very quiet. She glanced around, saw Sierra standing in the kitchen, making another pot of coffee. Sierra glanced at Ian with a pained expression.
Out of the corner of Brette’s eye, she saw Ty stand up, start to move toward her.
“I’d be happy to talk about the achievements of the team, but the disappearance of my niece is still an open case. I don’t want to discuss it.”
Oh. She winced as the pain in her side convulsed.
Ian’s tone changed. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I just—I ate something yesterday that doesn’t seem to want to get out of my system.”
“Probably the pizza from the Griz,” Ty said now, miraculously beside her. He had her by the arm and led her over to the sofa.
She thought she heard a groan from someone, and then Jess crouched in front of her. “You look a little flushed. Can I take your temperature, maybe get a blood pressure?”
Brette nodded.
Ty handed her a pillow and helped her lie down, put her feet on the sofa. Then he crouched next to her. “Can I get you something to drink?”
She shook her head, and Jess returned with a medical bag. She sheathed a thermometer, and Brette stuck it under her tongue while Jess took her blood pressure.
“It’s a little low,” she said, then removed the thermometer. “And you have a low-grade fever.”
“It’s just food poisoning,” she said.
But Jess stood up
, shaking her head. “I don’t like it.”
“I’ll be okay.”
Jess took a breath, then pursed her lips, as if thinking. She stood there, her arms folded over her chest, her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, and suddenly Brette had another flash of memory.
Jess, or someone who resembled her, standing in front of reporters, her face tight, almost angry as she fielded questions.
In another moment, the image blinked away, and it left Brette staring up at Jess, grasping for it.
Jess Tagg had been someone famous. Someone even influential. Or notorious?
“I’ll keep an eye on her,” Ty said quietly and reached for a chair.
Brette closed her eyes, thinking. Where . . . she knew . . .
Court steps. A throng of press.
She pressed harder, searching—
“Are you sure I can’t get you something? Acetaminophen? Ibuprofen?”
She opened her eyes to see Ty standing over her, his brow furrowed. Sweet. “No, I’m fine. I just need to rest and—”
That was it. “I need to rest and get away . . .”
She could nearly hear her, in echo, part of a sound bite the news played over and over after the sentencing of Damien B. Taggert.
One of the biggest swindlers in history.
A man whose Ponzi scheme had bilked thousands of investors out of billions.
The words had been spoken by his daughter, Selene Taggert.
No. She stared at Ty, then at Jess. “Selene Jessica Taggert,” she said quietly, just under her breath.
She’d found the missing piece to the mystery of the Taggert Investment scandal, the heiress who’d vanished the day her father was sentenced to 150 years in prison.
The woman who’d turned him in and testified against him—or so the rumors went. Because no one had ever landed her side of the story.
Yet. Brette drew in a breath, looked at sweet, kind Ty. “Yeah. Could you get my phone? It’s on the counter in the kitchen.”
He nodded, his frown deepening, and got up.
Poor man. He probably had no idea.
Right?
And that’s when her stomach decided it had had enough. Bile rose in her throat even as she pushed herself to a sitting position. The pain moved from her stomach, down to her right side, as if a fist had punched in, grabbed ahold of her intestines, and squeezed. She cried out, grabbed her side, doubling over.
A Matter of Trust Page 18