Jonas (Minnesota Marshalls #2)(2)
Author: Susan May Warren

 

While Geena nearly died. So yeah, maybe Jonas should keep his stupid mouth shut.

 

“Water’s boiling,” Nixon said and got up, heading for the makeshift kitchen where their freeze-dried soup sat on the counter. He filled the soup as Jonas retrieved the buns they’d purchased in town, now slightly crushed. Some cheese, hot soup, and crusty bread. Yes, it could be worse.

 

“Tell me again what this grant is about?” Nixon blew on his hot chicken soup.

 

“Lightning. Storm patterns.”

 

“You finally got to use your balloons.” Nixon was back, grinning at him, the Geena specter at least diminished.

 

“Dirigibles, and yes. I’ve upgraded them since the last design. Now they’re controlled by drones, powered by air and sun, and can stay aloft for weeks. They’re programed to fly in a selected area, so we get real data points for specific areas. The black boxes send data down to my app, but it’s sketchy here in the mountains, so I have to constantly check on them.”

 

“Have any accidents?”

 

“One. Came down in a field north of our office in Ljubljana. No one was hurt, but it was a mess.”

 

“How?”

 

“Wind sheer.” He dunked his bread into his soup.

 

“How much longer on your contract?”

 

“Another month or so in country, then a few months in Oklahoma sorting out the data. Then maybe…I don’t know.”

 

“No more storm chasing?” Nixon had finished his soup and picked up his phone, scrolling through the pictures, occasionally showing Jonas.

 

Jonas said nothing, watching the family now taking out a deck of playing cards. Outside, the rain roared, and in the distant, low rolls of thunder.

 

He expected that there might be snow up at the higher elevation.

 

Yeah, he hoped the women had made it off the peak.

 

Eventually Nixon let the question die, showing Jonas pictures of the trek up and yesterday’s walk around Kranjska Gora, and then Nixon’s trip to Venice, Italy just over the border, and then Rome, where he’d finished a gig shooting a commercial for a clothing brand.

 

Probably a good thing Jonas had gotten out of the storm chasing biz. Gave Nixon a chance to spread his wings.

 

And that way, nobody else got hurt because of him.

 

The door blew open, and a man came in, soaking wet, breathing hard. “We’ve got an accident on the mountain.”

 

Everyone stilled. Apparently, he wasn’t the only English speaker in the room.

 

Jonas found his feet. The man shivered, came up to the heater, still breathing hard. “Big winds. Blew a couple women over.”

 

“Who’s hurt?”

 

“I don’t know. I heard them shouting, but it’s raining too hard to get to them.”

 

Jonas looked at Nixon, who blew out a breath. Nodded.

 

“How far up the trail are they?”

 

“About two hundred meters from here.”

 

“Anyone got climbing gear?” Jonas asked the room.

 

Silence again. He shook his head and headed toward the door.

 

The man stopped him. “You go out there, you’ll fall off the mountain too.”

 

Jonas brushed his hand away, feeling Nixon step up behind him. “I know how to live through a storm.”

 

The man held up his hands in surrender and stepped back. “Suit yourself.”

 

Jonas zipped up his jacket, pulled up the hood, and stepped out into the gale. The black sky obscured any hope of reading the clouds, the wind moaning.

 

For a second, his stomach hollowed, and a tremor went through him.

 

Jonas! Don’t let me die!

 

“You sure about this?” Nixon, grabbing his gear up behind him, steady as usual, as Jonas led him into danger.

 

“Never pin a weatherman down on his forecast.”

 

Nixon grinned, white teeth against a dark night. “You got this.”

 

Oh boy. But Jonas put his head down, the wind fighting him as he headed up the path.

 

Yeah, he really needed to get off this mountain.

 

 

 

 

 

The air up here was cold, brittle, and unforgiving.

 

Probably the perfect end to her life.

 

“Oh, you’re so morbid.”

 

“What?” Sibba Kovac looked at her friend Ina through the pelleting rain as they sat pocketed against the steep grade of the mountainside, trapped on a cliff.

 

“This is not how we’re going to die.” Ina sat with one leg pulled against herself, water running down her face and her red Gore-Tex raincoat, the other leg out.

 

“Maybe. Hopefully.” Sibba’s nimble fingers ran over Ina’s ankle. It didn’t feel broken, but she couldn’t know. By the swelling, however, Ina was in no shape to walk. “One cold gust of wind could knock us right off this mountain face.”

 

The wind around them moaned.

 

“Like I said, morbid.” Ina’s voice was tight with the pain darkness hid on her face.

 

“I’m trained to think of all the contingencies. And this is not how I want to end. Randomly, in a freak accident—although, given my alternatives, maybe this isn’t terrible—”

 

“Stop. We’re going to be fine. Besides, I think I can walk on it.” Ina started to rise, then cried out and dropped back down.

 

“Your ankle is the size of a German panzer.”

 

“Oy. Where did that comparison come from?”

 

“You know where. I have Nazis in my head after this summer. And clearly you can’t walk. And it’s dark and I don’t know how to get us out of here, so we’re staying put.”

 

And probably dying on this mountain.

 

So much for picking up the pieces of her life. Or even escaping them.

 

Shoot, she was smarter than this. Think, Sibba!

 

As far as she could tell, they’d only fallen about seven meters from the trail. It had happened so fast—the storm whipping up as they’d headed down from the peak, and even though they’d been latched to the cable, they’d slipped a few times on the slick rock.