Page 30 of Mountain Impact

“It would have been deadly if Kat hadn’t been such a great pilot.”

“It seems this great pilot miscalculated her chances of getting Jens onto that ledge safely.”

“I was the one who told you to do it. It was my call.”

And there was the heart of the problem. Drake felt responsible.

“I should have taken more care with the weather. I should have found another way to get to that climber, that didn’t involve risking yours or Jens’s life.”

Isolde noted Drake said nothing about his own life. She straightened up, about to reply in a calm, professional voice, when Kat took a step forward. Her voice, when she spoke, was shrill.

“You don’t get to do this, Drake. You don’t get to do this to me, and you don’t get to do it to Jens, either. We did our job. We’ve all been trained, and we all understand the risk we take every day. It’s our fucking job―the one we’ve chosen. And we work together, we make all these decisions together. You’re not a lone ranger, Drake. This weight isn’t one you get to take on your thick shoulders. So don’t be stupid.”

Drake stared at Kat, his mouth open in surprise. Isolde noted he wasn’t denying anything Kat had said.

“You going to start on me as well?” Drake asked sullenly, looking at Isolde.

She put her palms up. “No, I think she said everything I could have hoped to say to you right now.” She paused for a moment. “You should both go home and get some sleep. You look dead on your feet.”

Drake squared his shoulders, as if ready for a fight.

“I’m not leaving until we see Jens.”

Kat met Isolde’s gaze held on. The pilot shrugged her slim shoulders.

“Then we stay,” Isolde said, sitting down to wait on one of the hard, plastic chairs.

Chapter 11

Drake

The next morning, Drake paced up and down the hospital corridor, waiting for Jens to be released. Once he’d been sure that was going to happen, Drake had gone home to take a shower and get changed, then come back to the hospital.

He wanted to be the one to pick Jens up and apologize―not for him getting hurt, but for not checking up on him afterwards, the way team members are supposed to do for one another.

Drake looked up. From the annoyed glance the reception area nurse was giving him, she wasn’t taking kindly to his pacing.

In the early morning light, it was easy to see that he’d been wrong the night before―caught in guilt and panic of his own making. He almost chuckled, thinking about how the two women had reamed him a new one, standing right here in this very corridor.

They’d been right, and he’d been wrong. Just like he’d never thought of blaming anybody else in the team when he’d been injured, it was unfair and presumptuous of him to believe that Kat and Jens would feel any different.

Need to keep that failed hero complex in check.

His phone rang. He got another cold look from the nurse―he’d forgotten to turn the ringer off.

“Drake? It’s Hugo.”

“Hugo. How are you?”

“Good. Listen, just wanted to update you on the investigation. We’ve been looking into the possibility of a technical malfunction, but haven’t had any luck so far. It just doesn’t seem to make any sense.

“Sorry to hear that.”

“But at least the two guys are doing okay. One’s been discharged from the hospital already, the other one will probably get out this week. They were lucky you were there.”

“Yeah. That’s good to hear. Thanks for the update, Hugo. Let me know if I can help with anything.”

Drake stood up to see Jens being wheeled out by a pretty brunette nurse. The sight of the wheelchair made him want to throw up.