Page 2 of One Last Stand

The grip on his soul released.

Breathe.

He focused on his rhythm, keeping his legs together, centering over his skis, letting the swish overtake him. One right move at a time.

He slowed as he neared Boo and Oaken, then stopped, managing not to spray them with snow, and laughed.

Laughed.

Oh, it felt like a betrayal. He swallowed it back, fast.

Boo gave him a tight-lipped smile, nodding.

“Okay, when you said you ‘did some skiing,’ you left out that you were some sort of powder master,” Oaken said. “Seriously—you look like a big-mountain freeriding world champion. Like that guy from Mercy Falls—Gage Watson.”

Shep nodded and let a real grin out. “Yep.”

Never mind that Gage was his cousin and that for a while he’d followed in Gage’s footsteps. Until the accident.

Until responsibility had caught up to him.

“Shep is on ski patrol here in the winter,” Boo said, glancing at Oaken. “He gets to ski for free.”

“In between scraping people off the hill,” Shep said. He didn’t mention that he hadn’t signed up this year.

Or the fact that the only reason he’d tagged along today, like a third wheel, was to give himself something to do while his realtor opened up his house to potential buyers. A private sale for now.

He didn’t want to tell the Air One Rescue team until the purchase agreement was inked and he couldn’t change his mind.

“Okay, that’s enough daredevil for me today,” Boo said. “I’m headed down to the blue runs and maybe all the way to the bottom for some hot cocoa.”

“I think I’ll take a leisurely ride through the trees,” Shep said. “See you at the bottom.”

He pushed off, heading across the lower traverse, crossing the ridge over to the north face and down Picnic Rock toward the Big Dipper, a thinned but wooded black diamond run. He was passing through a narrow chute between the trees called Spider Bite, the heavily wooded off-boundary section of tree-skiing to his left, when he spotted a flash of silver.

He slowed, then skirted to the edge of the run and stopped, peering into the woods.

Oh no.

Skis protruded, just barely, from the bushy branches of a mountain hemlock.

Shep unsnapped his bindings, set his skis upright, then tromped into the forest, grabbing tree limbs as the snow tried to suck him in to his thighs.

“Hey!” he shouted.

No reply. The skier had hit the tree, evidenced by the broken branches, and then tried to break their fall—headfirst—into the well around the tree. They now lay wedged into the space under the branches that formed a well around the tree, only their red jacket and silver ski pants showing.

Slowly suffocating.

He found solid footing, grabbed a couple branches, then dropped to his knees, leaning into the well. “Hey, you okay?”

No sound.Please, God,let him not be too late. He grabbed his walkie even as he started to paw at the snow. “Ski Patrol, this is Shep Watson. I’m just off Spider Bite in the off-boundary area—there’s a skier trapped in an SIS hazard. I’m going to start to dig him out—send help.”

He pocketed the walkie even as he heard the senior patroller confirm, and pulled off the backpack he carried for exactly this reason. Pulling out the small handheld shovel, he dove in, digging out from the side of the well. “I’m coming—just hang on.”

He tunneled in from the side, creating a bigger opening, then dropped his shovel and pulled out the soft snow with his hands, not wanting to take out a chunk of flesh with the edge of his shovel.

“C’mon, stay alive?—”

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