They ended the exercise and were still packing up when Aidan’s phone beeped. Seeing Gray’s name pop up on the screen when he knew where Aidan was and what he was doing made Aidan pick up the call. “What’s wrong?”

“She’s back at it,” Gray said.

Aidan grimaced. “Look, man, I’ve told you, whatever bedroom games you and Penny decide to play, just leave me the hell out of it—”

“Not Penny, you idiot.”

“Kenna?” was Aidan’s next guess. “You gotta give her a job, man, or—”

“I gave her a damn job, I gave her the ski school. Now stop talking and listen to me. It’s Lily. She’s back on the mountain. She just passed out of our range, heading north. Which isn’t exactly the way back.”

No, north from there would take her straight to Dead Man’s Cliff.

“And there’s a hell of a surprise storm brewing,” Gray said. “This morning we had a zero percent chance of precip. Now we’re at one hundred percent, expecting high winds and flash floods in the basin.”

“She’s still trying to get up to where Ashley—”

“She goes up there as often as she can,” Aidan said. “I’m sure she’s fine.”

“The storm—”

“She’ll be okay. She’s strong and more importantly, smart.”

“Your call,” Gray said, and disconnected.

Half an hour later Aidan was back from Heaven’s Peak. He’d decided to call Lily and meet her up on the trail. For company, not because he doubted her abilities. If she wanted to face the cliff, they would do it together.

But before he could, a rescue call came in—a report of a climber stuck on a ledge of Dead Man’s Cliff over the river. That was it, that was all the info they got, no exact location, no ID of the caller or the climber, nothing.

And Aidan’s heart stopped.

What if Lily had gotten to the top, been caught up in the moment, and gone climbing on the face? He called her cell but was sent right to her voice mail. In the meantime, Search and Rescue mobilized and set up an incident command center back at the clearing where Aidan and the others had left their vehicles, doing so in fifty-plus-mile-per-hour winds and an oncoming storm.

There were four places on Dead Man’s Cliff where a ledge overlooked the river, not a single one of them a safe place in a storm. A two-part plan was put into place. First, a Zodiac raft with a two-person crew would attempt to pinpoint exactly which ledge from far below. Second, Aidan, Mitch, and the rest of the team would come in from the park entrance, holing up at Dead Man’s Cliff’s trail-head until they got word from the Zodiac crew on which direction to go.

The wait wasn’t easy.