Page 130 of Love Me Reckless

Once we’re in Carson’s truck, he doesn’t waste any time. “Sheldon’s quite the character.”

“Yep.”

“You guys going to spend some time together before he ships off?”

“Yeah.”

“Sounds like he’s been through a lot.”

I stuff my hands between my thighs to warm them. “Yep.”

Finally, Carson seems to read that I’m not in a sharing mood, and the silence stretches between us. I watch the snowy landscape whizz by, my thoughts just as hazy.

At the gate, I brace for the guard to raise some kind of alarm when he registers my badge, but we’re waved in and Carson cruises to the employee lot. I join the dozen or so mechanics filing up the heated walkway to the maintenance building. Dawn is just a hint of steely blue in the eastern sky, outlining the jagged silhouette of the Bitterroots.

At muster, I was correct in my pre-dawn assessment. After teaming up in threes, we’re sent to manually inspect each tower for ice. The wind picks up as the sun rises over the mountains, making it feel even colder.

The first order of business each day is to start the lifts and check the stop times. The machinery is capable of withstanding severe temperatures, but the cables and sheave wheels that stabilize them can build up ice overnight in conditions like this.

And to make matters worse, because we’ll need to closely monitor each tower as the wind rises, as soon as the lifts are running, we’ll need to be on skis.

Conditions aren’t exactly awesome for skiing today. The wind has turned the slopes to hard, unforgiving ice.

At least the howling wind makes it impossible to carry on a conversation. After an hour of climbing up and down towers and zooming over icy slopes, we finally get all three lifts running.

Will anyone evenwantto ski today in these abysmal conditions?

Back at base, I park my sled outside the quad’s lift shack and tromp inside. The lift operator, a young woman with jet-black hair and quiet eyes gives me a nod as I pass through to the storage room behind her. With dread, I step into my ski boots.

I hiss in pain as my toes cramp against the front of the boots. After huffing several deep breaths, I rock step out of the lift shack with my skis to the lift line.

“Men in Black!” someone calls. It’s two guys scissoring forward in the lift line.

I give them a salute and force a smile. When I try to let them go ahead of me, they insist I join them.

Great.

The searing pain in my toes steals my concentration, plus the two guests are super curious, asking all kinds of questions—how do the lifts run, what powers them, how do the detachable grips work, what happens to the chairs in the summer, are we ever going to expand the terrain, etc. Add in that I’m supposed to be observing the sheave assemblies as the chair passes through them without also freezing my face off, by the time I bid the two guests farewell my eyes are burning and my toes are on fire.

I’m about to ski down Powerline beneath the quad when my radio crackles. The Glory Basin chair has stopped, likely due to the higher winds in the upper basin. Up there, with only minimal tree cover, the lift is much more exposed.

“Where’s Reed?” McTavish barks over the radio.

I key my mike. “I just got off the basin quad.”

In the background, I hear only the wind, which means neither motor up there is working.

Shit.

“Hurry, bro,” Brody says over the radio.

I push off with my poles and race down the wide cat track, whizzing past thick forest and the occasional ski run that drops off to my right, into the abyss. After rounding a long curve that might as well tear my toes to shreds, the base of Glory Basin chair comes intoview. It’s not as windy down here in the pocket, but a quick glance at the barren bowls and steep ridges above confirms that it’s howling up top.

At the base, about twenty skiers huddle in the cold, waiting in line for the lift, which isn’t moving, while descending skiers trickle in from the slopes above. All the way up the line, the chairs cradling our guests are swaying in the wind, skis and snowboards dangling into space.

I power wedge to a stop at the back of the loading zone and pop off both skis, then slip through the Ski Patrol gate and clomp to the stairs.

“Yasss, more help,” I overhear one of the guests say. “I’m freezing.”

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