A Matter of Trust(33)

Which meant that right now, her brother could be flying off a cliff at a lethal rate of speed. Or buried in an avalanche.

Or maybe, hopefully, still on top, having found a smidgen of general good sense.

Probably not.

She followed Brette and Ty into the patrol shack—aka headquarters. The slope at Blackbear had opened an hour ago, and only a couple patrollers’ skis and a snowboard were parked in the rack outside the door.

She opened the door and stepped into an expansive room filled with picnic tables, the smell of coffee and sense of adventure embedded in the wooden walls. Ski equipment—helmets, gloves, snow-crusted neck gaiters—lay scattered on the tables. A couple patrolmen were snapping the buckles of their boots, ready to head back out.

Across the room, Gage bent over a map. He wore black ski pants, his red suspenders up over his thick shoulders, and a gray pullover turtleneck. His long hair was down and tucked behind his ears, and the slightest stubble of whiskers along his chin suggested he hadn’t stopped to shave this morning.

Still every millimeter the freeriding poster boy that she’d made space for on her wall.

She didn’t deserve for him to say yes to what she was about to ask. That part she knew, deep in her gut. She had no business driving down here, marching into the shack with her dangerous request.

But it was Ollie, and . . .

Well, Ollie was all she had of her biological family.

Gage looked up.

She stilled as his beautiful brown eyes fixed on her. His jaw tightened, and he looked back down.

“C’mon,” Brette said and tugged her arm.

Yes. Right. Gage, after all, was a rescuer now. Of course he’d help her.

Her heart gave a little jump of hope when she saw, open on the table, a colored topographical map of Glacier National Park, and most specifically, Heaven’s Peak.

Gage held it open with his wide, strong hands. Didn’t acknowledge her as she came up.

Instead, “There’s a storm rolling in,” he said quietly. He handed her a piece of paper with the weather report, a printed picture of the current storm front still over the far western tip of Montana.

She set it down, hating the look of it.

Ty leaned over one end of the map. “Where are they?”

Gage ran a finger along an area in the middle, clearly indicated by the four ridge points running toward the peak. To the west of the mountain, a lake sat in a groove at about six thousand feet. Tiny circles radiated out from the apex at wider and wider intervals, giving the elevations.

“If they follow my route, they’ll take the northern route. They start by skiing along the spine, then dropping into this nice wide bowl to the north.” He spread his hand over the three-thousand-foot drop filled with gullies and streams and plenty of thick forest. “They’ll camp on the mountain overnight, then they’ll head over to the far eastern ridge and ski down that eastern face to Going-to-the-Sun Road. I camped here, about halfway down the face, then the next day skied through the bowl, then I took the chute on the backside of Heavens Peak down to the base. It’s about forty miles of skiing. But here”—he pointed to a dip between the mountains—“is called Weeping Wall. It’s a waterfall, frozen in the winter, with a fall of about sixty feet. I thought I could jump off it, but once I got there, I deviated from my plan and couldn’t take it head on—there was too much ice accumulation at the bottom to land safely.”

“Would Oliver know that?”

“I don’t know. I talked about it in the video I shot, and there’s a picture, but the plan I posted online included the waterfall jump, so . . . maybe not.” Gage stood up, his jaw tight. “I should have taken that stupid video down.”

She didn’t say anything. But she’d seen his helmet-cam footage dozens of times—maybe more. Could still hear his breathing, his calm voice as he tackled each part of the slope.

Still taste the rush of awe as he sprayed powder in the field he’d dubbed the Great White Throne. And sped down the couloir called Angel’s Wings. She had held her breath through the Cathedral Forest, where he’d cut a trail through thick pine trees, his body quick and lithe, and finally down the last section, a sheer drop into a bowl called Bishop’s Cap. She would have loved to see the entire run from a distance instead of up close, but that would have meant a friend traveling with him.

And back then, just like now probably, Gage skied alone. He could have died on that mountain if he’d fallen into a tree well or landed wrong off a cliff.

At least Oliver had Bradley.

After a moment of silence, Gage picked up the weather report. Studied it.

“Just be honest,” Brette said, speaking Ella’s thoughts. “What chance do they have?”