“You really are a genius.” She set the wheel lock down. “Have you ever thought of leaving your job and just making climbing gear?”
“I have thought about that.” He’d thought about it a lot. “I’m not sure I could make a living at it, and I’m afraid that turning something I enjoy into a job would take all the fun out of it. This is where I come to relax—when I’m not climbing.”
“Have you patented any of your designs?”
He shook his head. “I want other rescue teams to be able to use these and to improve on them. Remember when I said that part of life is finding out what your gift is and sharing it? This and the Team is how I share it. No patents.”
She reached up, put her palm against his chest. “You have a big heart, Chaska Belcourt.”
He bent down to kiss her, when his pager went off, making her jump. He drew it out of his back jeans pocket, scrolled through the message.
MAN SET TO JUMP OFF 1stFLATIRON. HAS A FIREARM.
Shit.
“A rescue?” Naomi asked.
“Yeah. Looks like some poor person has lost it.”
Naomi followed him out of the workshop. “I’ll come with you.”
“Not this time.” He locked the door, explained. “The guy is threatening to jump off the First Flatiron—and he has a firearm.”
“What are you supposed to do—climb up to him and get shot?”
“I have no idea.” Chaska hurried toward the house, Naomi following as fast as she could on crutches. “We’ve never been toned out on something like this before. Usually, we get called about suicides after the fact. Body recovery.”
“How terrible.”
He opened the back door for her. “You can stay in the ops room at The Cave and listen on the radio. Or maybe you’d be happier staying home or spending the afternoon with Win at the clinic. Regardless, you need to decide now.”
“He’s standingon the edge with a pistol in his mouth now.”
Naomi sat in the ops room beside Megs, barely able to breathe, listening to a tactical channel on the radio as a man’s life fell completely apart, the drama punctuated by bursts of static and long stretches of silence.
“Flatiron Command, have we made contact?”
“Negative. We’re still waiting for that bullhorn. I’m not putting anyone in the line of fire here.”
Megs had explained to Naomi what was going on. Naomi wouldn’t have been able to understand most of it otherwise. Right now, Chaska and the other Team members were in a staging area, out of range of the man’s pistol, wearing their gear plus body armor, and waiting for the green light to move in and bring the man down. But first, the man had to put down his weapon and agree to be saved.
“What happens if he jumps?”
Megs pulled up an image of the First Flatiron on her computer screen. It was a massive slab of red rock that jutted out of the mountainside. “If he jumps, we’ll pick up the pieces. It’s a thousand feet down, and he’d be bouncing on rock the entire way.”
The thought made Naomi’s stomach knot.
Long minutes ticked by, until, finally, the bullhorn arrived.
“Flatiron Command, he says his name is Lucas Graham. He says he’ll shoot anyone who comes near him.”
Naomi’s stomach knotted. She knew that Chaska and the other Team members had been issued body armor, but that didn’t cover their entire bodies, did it?
Then the radio fell silent while the hostage negotiator began speaking with the man. Every once in a while, someone gave an update over the radio, keeping everyone in the staging area informed.
“I’ve spent my life around men, especially young men—climbers, like Chaska. I’ve watched dozens upon dozens, maybe hundreds, of guys try to hook up with women, go from one girlfriend to the next. I’ve watched all the mating ritual bullshit. You name it, I’ve seen it, been the target of it. But I’ve never seen Belcourt with any woman—until you. He’s one of the good ones. Hold onto him.”
Naomi stared at her, touched that Megs, who seemed so flippant most of the time, had shared this with her. “I’ll do my best.”