Ty washed his hands, then grabbed a towel, turning to her. “It’ll be a long night, I’m guessing. And they’ll probably have to spend the night on the mountain.”
“Why?”
He parked the towel over his shoulder and reached in a nearby bread bin for a half loaf of French bread. Pulled out a knife. “The storm is rolling in. Even if they find Ollie and Bradley, Kacey can’t fly them off the mountain in this weather.”
Brette glanced out the window and noticed the beginning of flurries. The sky had turned a dark pewter. “That was fast.”
“Weather moves in quickly in the valley. It’ll take a little longer once it hits the mountains, but still, my guess is that by late this afternoon, they’ll be battling some winds and snow.”
She pressed a hand to her stomach.
“Worried?”
She sighed. Nodded. “Ella is a good snowboarder, there’s no doubt. She and her family used to come out West every year. They bought a place here at Blackbear just a few years ago, and she’s skied all the big mountain country—even went off Corbet’s Couloir at Jackson Hole. If anybody can keep up with Gage, it’s Ella. But . . .” She looked out the window. “I should call their parents.”
“That’s a good idea,” Ty said.
“Yeah, maybe, except . . . this could go south, fast.”
“They’re going to be okay. Gage is a good skier, and he prepared for a storm.”
“I was more talking about . . .” She sighed. “Well, Gage has a reputation, and if her parents find out she’s with him . . . well, not to mention that Gage and Ella have a past. And then Ella did something that really hurt Gage—”
“I know about their past. They’ll work it out. Gage isn’t going to let his mistakes—or his wounds—stand in the way of saving Ella’s brother.”
She might have given him a dubious look, because he frowned. “What?”
“He won’t let her get physically hurt, if he can, but Ella still holds a little torch for him, and . . . well, I just don’t want her getting her heart broken. She’s my best friend—probably only friend, actually—and she hasn’t exactly dated a plethora of men. None, actually, since Gage, I think. So . . .”
Ty set a glass of water in front of her. She reached for it, touched his fingers. He had nice hands, strong, long fingers. In fact, all of Ty Remington seemed sturdy and solid, from his wry smile and pale green eyes to his wide shoulders, firm torso, and fit legs. She had the sense that there was much more to know about Ty than he suggested.
Backup chopper pilot. From her perspective, the guy seemed more like the hero behind the lines, keeping everything running.
“So, I just hope they all come home in one piece,” she finished softly.
To her surprise, Ty reached over and cupped his hand over hers. Gave a little squeeze.
When he let go, little eddies of warmth sank into her skin.
Yeah, he had nice hands.
“So, you mentioned that billionaire Ian Shaw started PEAK Rescue?”
Ty nodded, wiping the outside of the soup container. He put it back in the fridge. “When his niece went missing in the park, he discovered that Mercy Falls just didn’t have the resources it needed to wage a full-scale search. So he invested in our first chopper and used it to search the park, and then later let the local Mercy Falls EMS department use it for their needs. He funded the entire thing until last summer, when he handed it over to Mercy Falls.”
“Wow, that’s generous.”
“That’s Ian,” said Sierra, who came up beside her and slid onto a stool. “He doesn’t want anyone else to go through what he did, searching for Esme.” She reached for the cookie jar. Pulled out a cookie. “Thankfully, she’s alive, although we still don’t know where she is.”
“Really?” And Brette thought of her editor’s reply text to her suggestion of writing a story of these local heroes. Dig around, work it up. Could be a good human interest piece.
“Yeah,” Sierra was saying, “she called about five months ago and left a message on Ian’s cell phone. Told him to stop looking for her. Which, of course, he can’t.”
“Is it because of his wife and son—and the fact they went missing and died in Katrina?”
The room went silent, and Brette looked at Ty, then back to Sierra.
Sierra had gone a little white. “How did you know that?”
“Uh, because Ian is . . . well, he’s on the board of a charity I did a profile on not long ago. He had a terrible allergic attack last summer that put him in the hospital—”