Chapter 9: Everything He Gave Up

Nobody celebrated that night. Preston was in a holding cell. I was free. And Cade Hollis — captain, combat medic, the man who had carried nineteen people off that mountain — had been suspended from the only work he'd ever loved and handed a custody petition, all inside eight hours. He didn't say a word about it. Of course he didn't. I found him in the equipment barn at two in the morning, re-taping a rope bag he wasn't going to use. "Don't," he said, before I opened my mouth. "You don't...