Page 1 of Blazing Mountain Man

1

ELYSE

All day long, I send people somewhere else.

That’s the job. The board in front of me is a grid of green lights and departure times, the last runs of the day sliding toward the bottom of the screen, and my voice is the thing that moves them—up to the base and back down to the lots, out to the trailheads where the real mountain starts. Everyone who walks through that door is on their way to something. I’m the one who tells them when it’s time to go.

Outside, the snow’s started.

It’s the first real one of the year—fat and fast, already softening the edge between the street and the sidewalk. Prospect Street’s gone quiet with it. Leaf season packed up a couple weeks ago, the lifts haven’t started turning, and Copper Peak sits in the narrow gap between—half the shops dark, the other half waiting on the first skiers.

The shuttle keeps a skeleton schedule this time of year. Three runs left on the board, and the weather’s chewing at all of them.

I key the radio. “Marco, you’re going to want to bring the 4:15 down early. It’s coming in hard up top.”

“Copy that,” he crackles back. “Roads are getting slick.”

“Take it slow. I’ll hold the last pickup until you’re clear.”

I set the mic down and look at the wall over the filing cabinet, which is what I do when there’s a lull. Postcards. Forty, fifty of them, pinned edge to edge—Lisbon, Reykjavík, a beach in Thailand somebody’s cousin sent, the northern lights over a fjord I can’t pronounce and never will. Drivers bring them. Passengers mail them. Everybody who moves through here on the way to the rest of the world drops one in my lap. I pin them up and stay exactly where I am.

The door opens, and a man enters. The cold comes in with him.

He’s big enough that the doorframe gives him a second of trouble, snow melting on the shoulders of a shell jacket that’s seen a lot of mountains. Stubble. A pack slung off one shoulder. When he pushes his sleeves back to shake the snow off his forearms, I catch ink—flame, dark and clean, curling up from both wrists.

My heart rate shifts into double-time.

“Tell me the last run down hasn’t left,” he says.

His voice is low and unbothered, a man used to being told no by weather and not much else. I make myself look back at the board instead of at him.

“You’re in luck. Sort of.” I tap the screen he can’t see. “Last one’s holding at the base until my driver’s clear of the pass. Could be twenty minutes, could be an hour, depending on how fast this comes down.”

“An hour.” He doesn’t sigh, but he’s definitely holding one in. “I’ve got a truck in the lower lot I’d rather not sleep in.”

“Then you picked a bad night to be up on the mountain.”

“The mountain didn’t ask for my permission.” He sets the pack down by the door, the hour already decided, and crosses to the counter. Up close, I see weather in his face—sun lines at the corners of his eyes that don’t match the cold. “You always run the whole thing by yourself down here?”

“Somebody has to be the one who stays put.” It comes out lighter than it is. I’ve had years to sand it smooth. “Everybody else gets to be the one who goes.”

Something shifts in his expression. Not pity—I’d have shut that down—but attention, sudden and total. I’ve surprised him, and he isn’t bothering to hide it.

“My name’s Cash,” he says, and holds out a hand.

I should not shake a stranger’s hand across my own counter. I do it anyway. His palm is rough and warm, big enough to swallow mine, and the contact goes up my arm in a bright line that lands nowhere good. I pull back a half-second too late to pretend I didn’t feel it.

“Elyse.”

“Elyse.” He tries the name out, and it sounds better in his mouth than it should. “You dispatch every soul on this mountain, and nobody’s told you to go anywhere yourself?”

“Where would I go?” I tip my head at the wall behind me. “The whole world’s pinned up right there.”

“That’s the saddest postcard collection I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s the most-traveled wall in Copper Peak.”

“That’s what makes it sad.”