Page 22 of Nothing But Air

“I’m not trying to get hurt.” He softened his voice. “I’m trying to end this nightmare so the park can reopen. So everyone can get their jobs back.”

“And if something goes wrong?”

“Then I’ll handle it.”

“Landon said he was careful too.” Her voice dropped to barely above a whisper. “Right before his self-belay failed and he fell three hundred feet.”

The words hit like a gut punch.

“I’m sorry.” The words seemed inadequate. “Eden, I know that?—”

“No, you don’t know. You can’t imagine what it was like.”

Yes, I can, he wanted to say. I watched my brother fall. But the words stayed locked behind his teeth.

“So don’t ask me to be okay with you volunteering for something that feels wrong.” Her voice shook. “Don’t ask me to watch you walk into danger with a man who’s clearly hiding something.”

They stood in silence.

“I should go.” Eden wrapped her arms around herself. “Just…” She swallowed. “Be careful, Teague. Please.”

“I’m always careful.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Okay, I’m occasionally careful.”

“Teague—”

“I’m situationally careful. Contextually. When the mood strikes.”

Something flickered across her face. Not quite a smile, but close. “You’re impossible.”

“So I’ve been told.”

She shook her head, but some of the tension had eased from her shoulders. “Come back in one piece. Can you manage that?”

“I’ll try.”

Eden stared at him for a long moment. Then she turned and walked away without looking back. Steps quick across the pavement.

Teague watched her disappear around the corner of the building, his mother’s words from his mom’s call echoing in his head.

Letting yourself get killed won’t bring him back, T.

But that wasn’t what he was doing.

Was it?

He headed to the ranger station.

Marcus and Virgil had spread the maps across the conference table, coffee mugs weighing down the corners. Topographic lines curved across the paper in browns and greens, marked with red circles in over a dozen places. Each circle a potential location. Each location a cliff face at heaven’s edge.

Marcus looked up as Teague entered. “Everything all right?”

“Fine.” Teague’s eyes traced the red circles—isolated spots, all of them. And not a lot of places for a chopper to land if the worst were to happen. “Show me what you’ve got.”

Time to find that gold.