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over in his mind as images of her body lying alone and abandoned in the frozen darkness tormented him.
    Finally, a measure of calm returned. His breathing slowed. The terror passed, but he knew it wasn’t gone for good. He could feel it lurking nearby, waiting.
    He stood and walked to the window. Snow continued to fall heavily, and the faint light of dawn cast the low, stately clouds with a funereal hue. The view gave out over rolling hills dotted with chalets. A half mile farther on, a forest climbed the flank of the imposing peaks that cradled the town.
    Opening the balcony door, he stepped outside. Cold scrubbed the air clean of scent, and his first breaths burned his throat and lungs. He stood at the railing, studying yesterday’s route. His eyes followed the path deep into the mountains, through cloud and mist to the hooded peak of the Furga. And beyond it, to Roman’s.
    I know this mountain and I didn’t do anything to protect you from it.
    I know this mountain and I left you alone on it.
    I know this mountain and I let it kill you.
    When his shivering grew uncontrollable, Jonathan stepped back inside. He was struck by how neat the room appeared. He knew that it was foolish to think it should look different now that she was gone. Yet he couldn’t help feeling betrayed by its normalcy, when nothing was normal at all.
    He sat down at the desk and opened the drawer. Sunscreen, pocketknife, maps, lip balm, bandana, beacon, and the two-way radio lay scattered inside. He picked up the radio and flicked it on and off. It was dead.
    A wire…a detached wire.
    After coming off the mountain, Jonathan had been taken to the police station where he’d been examined by a doctor, then made to answer a fusillade of questions. Full name: Jonathan Hobart Ransom. Birthplace: Annapolis, Maryland. Occupation: board certified surgeon. Employer: Doctors Without Borders. Nationality: American. Residence: Geneva.
    And then the questions about Emma. Birthplace: Penzance, England. Parents: deceased. Siblings: one sister, Beatrice. Occupation: Nurse. Administrator. Human being with an oversized conscience and a “duty to interfere.” Wife. Best friend. Anchor.
    There were other questions. About his experience as a mountaineer. About how he’d failed to monitor the weather. About Emma’s fall and whether or not she was bleeding when he’d left her, and his failure to spot the radio’s defect prior to climbing. And finally, about his decision to continue climbing when he’d realized the storm was intensifying.
    It wasn’t his decision, he wanted to say. It was hers. Emma never turned back.
    Setting the unit on the desk, he let his eyes wander to the mountains. Jonathan could trace the beginning of his love affair with climbing to a trip to California the Ransom family had taken when he was nine years old. Their goal was to ascend Mount Whitney, the highest point in the lower forty-eight states. The plan was for his older brothers to set out from Whitney Portal, altitude 8,500 feet, at five in the morning, and make the twenty-two-mile round trip to Whitney’s 14,500-foot summit in one day. Jonathan and his father would accompany them the first few miles, then stop to enjoy a picnic lunch and do some fishing until the boys returned.
    But even then Jonathan was showing signs of an independent streak. Like all boys who idolize their older brothers, he had no intention of being left behind. His father, who was forty years old and never missed a chance to have a meal with his cocktail, might stop. But not him. And so, when Ned Ransom pulled up after four miles and suggested they break for an early lunch, Jonathan sprinted ahead, defying all calls for him to come back. He didn’t stop until he reached the peak almost eight miles later. One hundred yards ahead of his brothers.
    The die was cast.
    By the time Jonathan was sixteen, all he cared about was climbing. An equivalency test freed him from high school. College wasn’t a consideration.