Page 3 of One Last Promise

Talk about being buried in his job.

Okay, that wasn’t funny, but Moose had nothing else as the roar subsided and silence filled in between the gasps. He lifted his head and looked around.

“Everybody alive?”

He heard crying, so hopefully. As it was, blue ice chunks and dirty silt and grimy, crusty snow had all tumbled together to form a wall, sealing them in. A hard, musty odor raked up from the debris, a chill shivered through him, and an echoing drumbeat of silence filled his soul as their predicament settled into his bones.

And it occurred to him then, weirdly, that this might have been how Jonah had felt, running from a God he loved, swept into the belly of a whale.

Except Moose wasn’t running. Just . . .

Certainly, there were things he didn’t want to face, butreally?

And that’s when he got giddy. Or morose. But either way, he wasn’t quite himself when he turned to the huddled, terrified tourists, along with a wide-eyed London, and said, “Hope nobody is claustrophobic.”

One of the women just looked at him. Midtwenties, brown hair that trailed out under a felt cap, her eyes a hazel blue, and now she blinked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Seriously?”

“He’s just in shock,” saidLondon and got up.

The dog barked as if agreeing with her, and the woman held out her arms. “C’mere, Rome.”

The dog obeyed, crouched, and started whining.

Yep, exactly how Moose felt.

Cool-headed London pulled out her walkie.

The other woman started to cry, and the brother put his arms around her. Moose thought his name might be . . .Ridge?See, this was why he wasn’t good at the tourist game. But desperation had clouded his vision after taking a look at his cash flow.

Or lack thereof.

He stood up to examine the ice wall.

The woman with the dog—Rome—stood up and came over to Moose. “How could you let this happen?”

“Sorry. My epic powers of avalanche control are clearly on the fritz.”

She closed her eyes, pinched the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. “Sorry—no, I mean . . . isn’t there a weather forecast or something you should have checked before we flew up here?”

“I did. Clear skies. No sign of lethal glacier avalanches.” Although, if he were honest, he might have paid better attention to the heatwave that had descended upon Alaska this summer, and especially the past few weeks. He’d lived in a small town under the shadow of Denali long enough to know heat caused ice to groan and shift.

Again, too much clutter in his head. Him trying to do it all. But if he didn’t, who would?

He turned to survey the group. “Anyone hurt?”

The man shook his head. “Aspen, you okay?” He addressed his sister, tucked into his embrace, and she lifted her head, nodded.

“How about you, Stormi?”

The woman standing in front of him alsonodded, then sighed, her voice softer now as she addressed Moose. “Please tell me that you have a plan.”

He drew in a breath, looked around the cave. “Not yet. But I’m working on it.”

Sort of what he’d said every morning since Tillie had disappeared from the Skyport Diner. He shouldn’t be so undone by the absence of his favorite waitress, but she was more, oh so much more, than that.

So far, he’d unearthed a big fat nothing about her disappearance. Which only dragged up the earlier conversation with London as they’d been wandering around the glacier.“Have you heard from Tillie?”

Certainly, she hadn’t meant for it to hit him like a blow to his chest, nearly whuffing the breath from him. As if she could read his mind.

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