“My dad wanted to summit so badly. My mom used to say that Everest was the other woman in his life. All he could do was think of her.”
“What did your dad say?”
“He said that when he was with Everest, all he could do was think about my mom.”
River sighed playfully. “That sounds like a man. Never knowing what he wants.”
“I think he wanted them both.” Easton focused on her foot. “Your pinky toe is cold. Can you feel this?” He squeezed her toe.
“Yeah, but not quite as much as the other ones. Am I getting frostbite?”
“Not necessarily, but we’ll need to keep an eye on it.”
“Are you going to check everyone’s feet?” she asked, unable to keep the flirtation out of her voice. “Or only mine?”
“I’m checking everyone but Ben,” Easton murmured. “But I probably won’t like theirs as much as yours.”
“You said probably.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I heard a probably.”
Wrapping his hand around her toes, Easton began to rub her feet in a brisk motion to warm them. “Anyhow, I’ve been dreaming about Everest since before I was old enough to understand what I was dreaming of,” he admitted.
“What does your dad say?”
“I’ve never brought it up. Didn’t seem right to remind him, knowing he can’t go with me.”
Leaning forward, River gave Easton an impulsive hug. His hug in return was strong and warm and very easy to get lost in. Eventually, he pulled away, if only to tap a finger to her foot.
“How’s the toe feel?”
“Nice and toasty. You should charge for your services.”
“I thought I already was.” Rolling her sock back up her foot, Easton gave her a heated look that she was starting to recognize.
River nudged his forearm with her sock-covered toes, then playfully pressed against his stomach with her heel. Wrapping his hands around her calves, Easton gently tugged her closer until her knees were hooked over his own and their faces were only a few inches apart.
“If you’re charging for extra,” River said, “I should warn you that this excursion is on a very tight budget.”
Sliding his fingers through her hair, Easton shook his head. “Trust me, you couldn’t afford this even if you were a big budget film.”
“Oh, really? Someone has a high opinion of themselves.” River enjoyed it immensely when he drew her in for a long, slow kiss.
“I have a very strong sense of my own self-worth.”
There was something about kissing someone on top of a mountain that made it more fun than normal. And since it was Easton she was kissing, by the time she pulled away, River could barely catch her breath.
“Your beard is frosty.” She touched a miniature piece of ice clinging beneath his chin. “You have icicles.”
“It’s a sign of my mountaineering ability. The more icicles, the better guide I am.”
“You’re such a goofball. No one knows that, do they? They all think you’re big and strong and scary. You’re actually a total dork.”
“And don’t you forget it,” Easton breathed against her ear, a far better way of tickling her.
A hand slapping against the outside of their tent ended whatever might have happened next. At least this time, Ben didn’t stick his head in.
“Hey, sorry to interrupt, but it’s that time. The Veil won’t climb itself.”
Easton climbed to his feet. “It’s all right. I need to go check everyone before we leave camp anyway.”
“Remember you said probably.” As he left her tent, River called after him, “Don’t think I won’t put your foot fetish in the movie, Easton.”
• • •
The excitement in the air was palpable. They were going through the Veil today.
For once, Easton didn’t ask them to break camp. Instead, they were going to climb up to the Veil, go through, then come back down again, retracing their steps. They were high enough on the mountain that pauses to acclimate were necessary. Easton had said if the Veil went well, he’d decide if they would summit. The way to the top was through the Veil, and if they failed to successfully pull it off when more rested, no one was summiting, then coming back down through the Veil when exhausted.
Today was the day to prove to him that River’s team had what it took.
Knowing she was getting close to the summit helped River push through the increasingly difficult task of navigating through dangerous terrain. Even with the distraction of Easton in front of her, River found herself looking more and more to the highest point of the peak above them.
Summiting wasn’t a hope. Summiting would happen.
As they climbed, Easton would turn to check on the progress of the team. Each time his attention turned to her, a sexy smile would curve his lips. A dangerously distracting one that was literally capable of causing a woman to fall to her death.
“You shouldn’t do that,” she told him once. “It’s highly irresponsible. I could report you to your superiors.”
“I don’t have superiors,” Easton reminded her.
“I’ve met your sister. You definitely have superiors.”
“That’s still being decided. What am I doing?”
River snorted. “Oh, you know what you’re doing.”
Considering his low, sexy chuckle, Easton did know. Instead of arguing his innocence, he turned back to the climb. When they finally crested the ridge they’d been ascending for the past hour, River stood back to catch her breath.
It didn’t work. Not when what was in front of her took her breath away all over again.
“You wanted to know what the Veil was.” Easton stopped, gazing above them. “That is the Veil.”
Even from several hundred feet below, they could all see the billow of snow across the mountainside, funneling out of a steeply sloped canyon cutting through the landscape. The result was an undulating cloud of swirling snow covering the side of the mountain, like a bride’s wedding veil blowing in the wind. At first, River didn’t understand what she was looking at until she realized the walls of the canyon were made of deep-blue glacier ice. As if someone had stuck a knife in the glacier and dragged it through, the jagged wound had only cut deeper with every year of unceasing winds.
“River,” Bree murmured, catching her attention. They were filming her. Of course they were; that was their job. “Tell us what this feels like.”
Jaw dropped, River tried and failed to verbalize what she felt upon seeing the Veil for the first time. But she couldn’t find the words.
Ben stepped up next to her. “No one has figured out for sure how it formed, but they think it’s a matter of aerodynamics. The temperature of the ice inside the canyon is warmer than on the surface of the glacier. Pressure changes, wind speed. All that science crap turned it into a wind tunnel.”
“What he’s saying is it’s a tough climb to get through,” Easton added. “The wind’s always in your face, and it’s ridiculously strong.”
“That’s why so many people don’t try to summit Mount Veil. The safest way to the top is through the passage.” A low whistle escaped between Ben’s teeth. “You can’t see your hand in front of your face, and it cuts like a son of a bitch. I’ve been through more than most, but she always makes me pause and think: How bad do I really want this?”
Glancing over, River saw Easton watching her. “This is usually where people turn back,” he told her. “No judgment, no shame in changing your mind.”
“I can’t make a documentary about not climbing a mountain.” River turned back to watch the billows of snow gusting down the mountainside below them.
“It’s not always about work,” Easton reminded her.
“Says the man being paid to go through there.”
“I don’t have to be paid to
climb. I’m lucky enough to get to work my dream job.”
Clapping a hand on Easton’s shoulder, Ben barked out a laugh. “Buddy, I’ve seen you stuck on the ground for a climbing season, and you’re a nightmare. You should be paying us to let you take us up here.”
They approached the Veil at an angle to avoid the worst of the swirling snow. As they reached the opening of the ice canyon, the shrieking of the wind had grown so loud that River couldn’t tell she had earplugs in. Easton turned to them, yelling to be heard.
“We’re going to have to tether off to this part. We’ve got a fixed line running through the entire Veil. Clip on and triple-check it. One person on each section of the fixed line. The last thing we want is too much weight on a single section. The stakes could pull free, and it’s steep in there.”
“Wait.” Like Easton, Bree had to raise her voice to be heard. “We should film this.”
“No, it’s too dangerous.” Easton shook his head. “The weather’s not going to get any better. Come on. We’re going.”
Maybe he’d waited until they reached the Veil to give them instructions on how to get through on purpose. Not that River tended to ignore his directions, but she had to admit she listened a lot closer now the ice canyon was in front of them.
The line they’d secured through the Veil started just above where they were gathered. Per Easton’s directions, they clipped onto the rope, then headed forward in single file. A properly fixed rope would hold them all, as long as an anchor was set between climbers. A simple enough rule to follow in normal visibility but one that would be more difficult in bad visibility. The climb was not without risk…one of which was an anchor pulling loose from too much weight and everyone on the line falling.
At this steep of an incline, one wrong step could start a fall with little hope of stopping. The idea of a pile of them plummeting down the mountainside made the hair on the back of River’s neck stand up.
Easton led them, with River behind, then Jessie and Bree. As usual, Ben took the last position, to make sure someone could help if one of them fell behind.
“Jessie,” Bree said when Easton’s back was turned. “Give me the handheld.”
“No, give it to me.” River beckoned him with a quick curl of her fingertips. “I’ll have the better shot. Only Easton will be in front of me.”
“Here,” Jessie muttered to River before he clipped onto the line, pushing the handheld camera into her hands.
River stepped into the path of the headwind. Almost instantly, the visibility went down to next to nothing. Ben hadn’t been lying when he called the Veil a wind tunnel. River felt like she was trying to walk into a hurricane, bent over to keep from being blown off her feet.
For the first few steps, she could almost make out Easton’s jacket, but despite the reflection off the ice canyon’s walls, the flurries of snow spinning through the Veil blocked him from view. Holding the camera up in one hand, River could barely see her fingers.
Turning it on, she fought her way forward a step, trying to keep the handheld secure against her chest with one arm and using the other hand to brace herself on the line. Every time she let go, the swirling snow immediately ruined her sense of direction.
The tug of the carabiner was her only sense of where the fixed line was. For the first time since the climb had started, River’s heart started to race, fear pumping adrenaline through her veins. And yes, the few moments of footage she’d gotten were probably going to be amazing. One didn’t need clear, bright footage to make a movie. Sometimes the raw, blurry, shakiness of a camera in a terrifying situation was perfect. But the deeper they went into the Veil, the steeper the climb. River needed both of her hands on this: one for the line and one for her ice ax.
Trying to juggle the handheld had been a mistake.
Falling behind put them all at risk, so River kept going, fumbling with the camera. Thick gloves and cold hands didn’t mix. All she had to do was turn off the handheld and put it in a side pocket of her now lighter pack.
A simple task…up until she dropped it.
Horrified, River froze in place. So much was on that camera. So many important shots. So much of her documentary they’d never recover. Yes, some had been backed up, but not what was on the memory card inside. They had the other camera, but the handheld couldn’t be gone.
“Easton, I dropped my camera!” River yelled, trying to get someone’s attention. There was no answer. “Jessie!”
From behind her, there was nothing. It was as if the Veil had swallowed her team whole, and there was no one left but her. Hunkering down, River scraped her glove along the ground, trying to find the handheld. Her fingers met ice and gravel but no camera.
“Okay, River,” she said to herself. “Don’t freak out. Think through this.”
She wanted the camera, and she needed to get it before Jessie reached her section of the line. The ground beneath her was steeply sloped, and the camera had been in her left hand when she dropped it. If it wasn’t at her feet, then the most logical explanation was it was on the ground behind her, or it had fallen to her left.
If she left her spot on the line and went backward, River doubted she’d be able to find it again. So she dug into her pocket for the foil wrapper her lunchtime protein bar had come in. Her gloves were too bulky to allow her to twist the wrapper into a knot around the line, so River pulled them off.
Wrapper tied—giving her something to find on her way back—River jerked her gloves back on. Praying the few seconds of exposure to the elements hadn’t caused lasting damage to her extremities, River went backward on the rope, counting each step before hunkering down and feeling for the camera. Nothing.
“Okay, stay calm. Go back to where you started.” The beating of the wind in her face was getting to her, and she couldn’t hear her own voice, the canyon was so loud. Following the line back to the wrapper, River stretched her arm out farther as she searched. Small movements on the rope told her Jessie had clipped onto her section. She was running out of time to find the handheld because everyone else would soon be there.
Ben wasn’t as stern as Easton, but she doubted he’d wave and merrily continue on the path with her stuck like a rock in the same place.
“Where are you, where are you?” River muttered, going as far as her tether would let her. Abruptly, her boot nudged something. Not as substantial as a rock but hard enough to feel it, even with limbs numb from the bitter cold. Unfortunately, her boot had knocked the thing out of reach.
There. The camera was right there, but no matter how hard she stretched, River couldn’t reach it. If she pulled too hard, she’d risk destabilizing the anchors for the line, leaving everyone behind her at risk.
But it was so close.
With a noise of frustration, she stretched out one last time, knowing the effort was pointless. Then River took a breath, took a chance, and unclipped her tether from the fixed line.
Freed from her restraint, River took two steps away from the line, memorizing the degrees she would have to turn to get back as she bent down. The camera found her hands, hard plastic filling her gloves. Before moving out of place, River tucked it safely in the pack on her back. Filled with relief, River turned to step back to the line when her foot slipped.
Sometimes a slip was only a slip. Sometimes a slip was the start of a fall.
When River fell, she kept falling.
Crying out in alarm as she slid faster, she reached for her ice ax, pulling it free of her belt. Rolling onto her stomach, she brought the ax down as hard as she could into the ground beneath her. The resultant catch of metal into ice wrenched her arm so badly, she almost let go, her whole body jerking to a sudden stop.
She lay still as a stone, hand clutching the ax, lost somewhere in the icy whiteout that was the Veil. “At least I found the camera,” she told herself, trying not to panic. “This is going to be a great story to add.
Especially if Easton doesn’t kill me.”
River shifted her foot, and instantly, the snow beneath her boot gave, crumbling away. Then the snow beneath her calf and knee. She was over a crevasse, one of the carefully avoided pits that Easton had set the lines to circumvent, with half of her dangling and the other half about to fall too.
This time when River froze, the last thing she was worried about was a documentary.
• • •
Emerging from the Veil was always like coming out of the water, half drowned and desperate for that first deep breath of fresh air.
Even after these many trips through, Easton still hadn’t gotten used to the way the ice canyon could mess with his senses. Without his father’s expertise during Easton’s younger years, he would never have developed the skills to navigate the Veil. Now, when he set lines, it was a combination of experience and instinct that guided him.
No one could ever be truly certain what they were standing on in there.
Low, shallow breaths didn’t bring the oxygen he needed to his lungs. For the first few minutes, Easton simply stood there, letting his body recover as best it could. Then he unclipped from the line and stepped aside. River was a fast climber, almost as fast as he was. Factoring in her standard pace plus whatever disorientation she must be experiencing, she was going to clip onto his section soon.
For a moment, Easton allowed himself to remember what it was like to kiss her that morning, to rest in his tent with her curled into his side. Easton hadn’t ever considered himself a lonely person. Loneliness was impossible when one always had Ash or Graham around. But it had been a long time—too long—since he’d wanted someone else to share his time with. Someone who loved something he loved too. Who lit up at the challenge of a tough ascent and who stuffed her cold nose against his throat, falling asleep without asking if he minded if she joined him.
With every word, sound, or soft pressure from her lips, River continued to blow him away.
Impatient to see her step out of the Veil, to see her reaction when one of the hardest parts of the climb was conquered, Easton shifted on his feet, arms braced over his chest.
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