“Easton, are you still with me?”

He mumbled something, but she couldn’t hear what he said over the rising cry of the wind. Seated like this on the frozen ground, the cold was quickly settling into her bones, and the weather was only getting worse. Easton was in no shape to climb, but they didn’t have a choice.

Somehow River was going to have to get him off the mountain all on her own.

Chapter 17

   “Ben, it’s River. If you can hear me, please answer.”

She waited with the radio by her ear for a reply, but nothing came. “Ben, I have a big, Easton-sized problem up here.”

Radio silence had a whole new meaning when she was stuck up here with what she guessed was two hundred and a million pounds of semiconscious beard and man bun. She knew the satellite phone was in Easton’s pack, which had taken a beating in the fall. He kept drifting in and out, making conversations about proper rescue attempts impossible.

“Sorry for the breach of privacy, but you’re not available for consultation.” She dug through his pack until she found the sat phone. He’d programmed several numbers in, and among them was his sister’s name. River went straight to that one first.

“Hey, any time you want to get back down here, I won’t mind,” Ash said by way of greeting. “Your clients are both being a pain in the ass.”

“Ash, it’s River. I’ve got a problem. Easton hit his head, and he’s got a bad concussion.”

Ash let out a string of curses so expressive, River was forced to cut her off. “Trust me, I feel the same way. Listen, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I need to talk to Ben. I don’t know what to do.”

“I’m here,” Ben said. He must have taken the phone from Ash. “What happened?” After River explained, she could hear the concern in his voice. “Do you know if he has any other injuries?”

“He’s not bleeding from anywhere but his forehead from what I can tell. His clothes aren’t ripped. I don’t want to take anything off him to look. The weather’s getting cold up here.”

“How cold?”

River checked her watch. “My watch is stuck on negative fifteen, but it feels colder than that.”

Ben inhaled a tight breath. “Easton has a portable temperature sensor in his supplies. Check that. It factors in windchill.”

“Does it matter?” River asked as she dug through his things, looking for the sensor. “There’s nothing we can do about the weather.”

When Ben didn’t answer, River ignored what that silence might mean. Instead, she found the sensor. “Okay, it says negative thirty-four degrees.”

Having never been in temperature anywhere close to that cold, River wondered why she didn’t feel panicked. Ben’s voice stayed calm.

“River. If you can’t wake Easton up, you need to leave him.”

“What?” There was no way she could have heard Ben right.

“Listen to me. He’s too heavy for you, and those temperatures are too dangerous for you to stay outside in. Leave Easton, get to the tent, and then get warmed up as best you can. When you feel strong enough, take him something to wrap around him. But do not stay out with him.”

For a long time, River sat there. “I’m sorry, are you saying I need to let Easton freeze out here?”

“Where are you at?”

When River explained the fall to him, including where they had landed, Ben’s voice grew deeper, gruff with emotion.

“Give yourself an hour for him to snap out of it, and if he doesn’t, leave him. We’ll get up there as quick as we can to help.”

In the background, River could hear a steady stream of curses. Ash was clearly not handling this well.

“River, he loves you,” Ben said quietly. “A man like Easton isn’t going to want the woman he loves to get hurt, not if he can help it. This is a reality for us mountaineers. Take shelter. I’ll meet you as soon as I can safely get to elevation. Ash’s helicopter won’t go that high, so I’ll need to get someone with a bigger bird to help.”

This was her fault. As she looked down at the man in the snow, his beard still, his eyes closed, she knew that if he died, it was 100 percent her fault.

How many nights ago had they stood in the Tourist Trap, with Easton gazing down at her, telling her he wouldn’t be able to leave her up here? River had thought she understood what he meant, but now…now she got it. If you couldn’t leave someone behind…if you had to, but you couldn’t.

Or if you wouldn’t.

Sucking in a shallow lungful of frozen air, River steeled her spine and her shaking hands. “Ben, I’m bringing him down with me. Tell Ash I’m not leaving her brother up here. Either you’ll have two Popsicles or no Popsicles, but I’m not leaving him.”

“River—”

“Don’t even think about it.” Using the voice that made the roughest of roughnecks pause, River added, “Would he leave me?”

Silence, then Ben exhaled a hard breath. “You know he wouldn’t.”

“Exactly. So what’s plan B?”

Ben explained plan B twice to make sure when River hung up the sat phone, she knew what she needed to do. She just didn’t know how in the world she was going to pull it off.

“Remember when you and Ben said it was a bad idea to bivouac up here?” she told the semiconscious Easton, earning a slurred mumble in response. “I completely agree. And if I’m not bivouacking, you definitely aren’t. So try to wake up, because you are not a small man.”

Ben had said if he couldn’t walk and she wouldn’t leave, then the best thing to do was try to drag him. Semiconscious had turned to unconscious, which made tying her climbing rope around his torso and beneath his arms harder. With a determined grunt to get them going, River started to pull.

“You know,” she wheezed as she walked. “There should be a limit on weight up here. No guides over a hundred pounds.”

Dropping down to her knees in the snow, River gasped for breath. “No guides allowed to pass out either.”

Then she stood and started to pull again.

“You are so lucky I’m a cowgirl,” she told him. “You are so, so lucky you’re probably hot beneath the beard. And if you hadn’t had the fluffy white towels, you and I would never have been in this situation.”

Even as she spoke, River knew it wasn’t true. The day she had met Easton Lockett, she’d known instinctively that the man in the truck who wanted to help her was different. What they had was so different from anything she’d experienced, and River wasn’t ready to lose him, not yet.