Alaskan Courage: Silenced Part 1

Alaskan Courage.

Silenced.

Dani Pettrey.

To Calvin Michael Miner.

Your Grammie loves you silly!.

1.

Kayden scaled the rock face, the addictive burn spreading through her arms, her body. Man, she loved this-hanging on the edge of a seven-hundred-fifty-foot sheer cliff face, knowing one wrong grab meant death.

"You're not going to beat me this time," her younger sister, Piper, hollered, her voice echoing across the twenty-foot-wide crevice separating them. She'd been trying to distract Kayden all morning, but Kayden knew how to ignore her sister. The person who wasn't as easy to ignore was Jake. He was watching from the base nearly seven hundred feet below with her older brother Gage. The men had come along to "enjoy the show," as they put it.

Unfortunately, putting Jake's presence out of her mind was proving to be a lot harder than dismissing Piper's taunts. Knowing his gaze was fastened to her was exhilarating.

Pus.h.i.+ng off with her right foot, she lunged the eighteen inches to the next handhold, knowing the move had Jake holding his breath. She held hers until her fingers grasped the hold, heat searing through her.

Jake Westin-Check that . . . Jake Westin Cavanagh was so much more than she'd realized, and quite frankly, over the past month her deepening feelings for the man had frightened her a whole lot more than the vast leap ahead.

She reached the last overhang-a granite ledge b.u.t.ting out eight feet from the rock face. She'd have to boulder her way along the edge and then make the final leap of faith, praying she'd timed it right and used enough force to land on its leveled surface.

It was the deadliest point of the route-the one that separated the experts from the average.

Granite crunched beneath her nails as she clawed her way across the jagged rock.

The wind, growing in force, howled through the canyon below, echoing through the crevice in a high-pitched whir.

Kayden closed her eyes and stilled her mind. I can do this. She'd mastered it before. She could do it again. Her breath caught in her throat as she pushed off and lunged through the air, stretching her fingers until they burned-reaching, grasping for a safe hold. Her fingers made contact, and she wedged herself along the rock, her hands locked on the overhang's lip.

Her feet found a stable notch. Pus.h.i.+ng up with her legs and arms at the same time, with sheer will and determination, she lifted herself up.

Relief swarmed inside as she crested the ledge, her arms shaking . . . and then horror struck.

A man, his skull bashed in, faced her-his visible eye open and staring directly at her.

She swallowed the vibration churning in her throat, the scream fighting to tear from her lips. Every fiber of her being said Let go, push back, get away, but wrestling instinct, she maintained her hold as she balanced on the edge of the overhang.

Glancing over her shoulder, she a.s.sessed her options. Moving back down the way she'd come at this point in the strenuous climb was suicide. Her arms were burning limbs of Jell-O, and if she didn't make a decision within seconds, they'd give out. She needed to climb onto the ledge with the man, needed to make sure he didn't require help, verify that he was already . . .

She squeezed her eyes shut for the briefest of seconds, trying to drown out everything else and focus. Mustering what strength remained, she hefted herself fully onto the outcrop, her body brus.h.i.+ng against the man's. Swallowing the bile creeping up her throat, she edged around him, scooted toward the rear of the ledge, and took a quick moment to catch her breath before s.h.i.+fting into search-and-rescue mode. She needed to check his vitals, make certain he was beyond help. She prayed she would detect a heartbeat, but her gut said the organ had stopped long ago.

"Woo-hoo!" Piper shouted from overhead. "Beat you."

Fighting the wave of nausea roiling through her, Kayden stretched out her index and middle finger, feeling for a pulse.

Just as she'd suspected. Nothing.

"Kayden?" Piper's voice grew closer, nearly directly overhead.

Kayden glanced up, s.h.i.+elding her eyes from the sun, as Piper leaned over the top of the face, more than fifty feet above. Her infectious smile faded as her big brown eyes fixed on the crumpled form beside Kayden.

Kayden cleared her throat. "We've got a downed climber on the ledge."

"Downed or-"

She swallowed. "Dead."

"I'll tell the guys." Piper pulled the radio from her harness.

Kayden nodded. "I'm coming up. Have Jake call it in."

2.

Kayden had found a dead climber on the ledge. Piper's shaky voice echoed through Jake's ears as he pulled his satellite phone from his pocket. His fingers wrapped around the metal casing, and the phone vibrated in his palm, ringing out at the same time.

"Westin . . ." He blinked. "Cavanagh." How long would it take him to go back to his full name? He'd been Jake Westin for so long, switching back to Jake Westin Cavanagh was proving a lot harder than he'd expected.

"It's Landon."

"Perfect timing, Sheriff."

"Huh?"

With Sheriff Bill Slidell's sudden departure from law enforcement and Yancey, the town council had voted then-deputy Sheriff Landon Grainger into the leaders.h.i.+p role until the fall elections would no doubt make it his permanent position.

"Kayden found a dead climber up on the last ledge of Stoneface's route."

"Dead?"

"I'm afraid so."

"His climbing buddy just called from Ranger Station Four." The closest to them.

"Did he say what happened?"

"The guy missed a handhold and slipped."

That's all it took, one missed handhold. No wonder his heart lodged in his throat every time Kayden climbed. He'd even taken to climbing with her, feeling he'd at least be in a better position to help if something went awry. But he was kidding himself. She was so far above his level of experience, all his being present would accomplish was to give him a front-row view of her fall.

He blocked off the horrific thought. "You heading out here?"

"Yeah, already called Cole and Booth. We'll be there as soon as we can."

"We're going to need to bring retrieval gear up the back side." The vehicles would only be able to make it so far, and then the rest of the rescue team would have to hike in and, when they were finished retrieving, hike the body back out.

"How are the girls?" Landon asked.

"We're headed up to them now."

"Let Piper know I'm on my way," he said, clearly worried about his fiancee.

"Will do." Jake shut the phone and relayed the conversation to Gage as they worked their way around the back face of the mountain. The path-what there was of one-was narrow and winding, overgrown with tree roots and moss still damp from last night's rain.

Maybe that was why the man had slipped. Maybe he'd started climbing too early, before the sun had a chance to completely dry the rock face.

Sweat beaded on Jake's skin as he mounted the last rise, having gone up seven hundred feet in elevation. The air was thinner, but fresh and brisk in his lungs. Piper caught sight of them first, her eyes filled with tears. Kayden stood with her back to them, and he moved for her, yearning to comfort her but knowing she'd never let him.

"Jake," Piper greeted him.

Kayden turned. Just as he suspected, her eyes were dry, but her face was tinged red-she was upset. How could she not be?

"Gage." Piper ran into her brother's arms.

He patted her back. "How ya holding up, kid?"

"I'm okay, but Kayden's-"

"Fine." Her gaze met Jake's, answering his unvoiced question. "I'm fine."

He nodded, knowing it was a lie.

"Landon's on his way," Gage said, and Piper's tension visibly eased.

"Booth coming with him?"

Why was Kayden asking about the ME? "Yeah."

"Good." She rubbed her arms. "Because something doesn't feel right."

Jake sidled up beside her, and she tried to ignore how good his presence felt. How she longed to run into his arms as Piper had into Gage's.

"You said something doesn't feel right?" Concern marred his handsome brow.

"I just have this feeling. Great . . ." She shook her head on a laugh. "Now I sound like Piper." Her sister had great instincts. Kayden's . . . ?

He nudged her arm with his, and peace lingered the moment his skin touched hers. "Don't discount instinct. It can be a great help."

She shrugged. She couldn't put her finger on it, but something was nagging at her.

"They're here," Piper said, jumping up and running for her fiance's arms. Booth appeared, with Cole close behind.

"Booth." Kayden lifted her chin to greet Yancey's medical examiner.

Cole stepped around Booth, moving straight for her. If she'd let anyone comfort her, it would be her big brother, the oldest McKenna sibling and head of the clan since their parents' pa.s.sing.

"How you holding up?" he asked, clamping a rea.s.suring hand on her shoulder, gently forcing her to look him in the eye.

She glanced across at her sister, still a bit green in the gills. "Better than Piper."

A hint of a resigned smile tugged at the corner of Cole's lips. "It's not a compet.i.tion, Kayden."

She stiffened her shoulders and forced a slight smile in return. "Everything's a compet.i.tion."

Cole shook his head. "You're impossible." He bent, looking her in the eye. "You know, there's nothing wrong with admitting something is upsetting."

"Not everyone has to tear up to move past something."

"I know." His green eyes softened. "But I also know when you're shaken."

She exhaled at the deep sincerity reflecting in her brother's eyes. He was just trying to be helpful. "I know, and I appreciate it."

Now she needed to prepare for what lay ahead. Finding the victim had been bad enough, but the grislier task of the day approached-retrieving the body.

It had been hard to tell with the extent of his injuries-and she hadn't been able to get herself to look too closely at his face-but if the man was local, or even regional, chances were she knew him, at least by name. The climbing community along the Alaskan Peninsula was tight. The Alaskan climbing community period was tight.

"Our victim's name is Conrad Humphries," Landon said as Kayden's brothers readied the retrieval gear.

"Conrad?" Piper swallowed.

"You knew him?"

"We both did," Kayden said. "Not well, but he visited Yancey's climbing gym a couple times last winter. I think he lives over on Imnek. How'd you know his name?"

"His climbing buddy provided it."

"He was climbing with someone?" she asked, surprised his buddy had left him.

Landon nodded.

She stepped closer. "What did the buddy report?"

"He said everything was going smoothly. Conrad made it past the overhang and the buddy lost visual. Not long after, he heard Conrad holler and then . . ."