Chapter 3

3: 3

Aaron leaned against the wall, shaking all over.

He lowered his head and dug mechanically at the scar on his palm until blood welled up.

He frowned, and kept going.

I hovered in the air, watching him.

Aaron had always been a stubborn man.

Not just about the mountain kidnapping case, but about every other case he'd worked.

The first time we met, he was there to sketch a victim found at the foot of a cliff on the mountain.

I was the mountain guide the major crimes unit had brought in.

The wind and snow were brutal, and he'd fallen behind, lost in his drawing.

I doubled back to find him and found him still crouched under the cliff.

Shivering, and drawing, reconstructing the face from the bones.

"Stay while I finish."

"The case closes next week. Every minute this face isn't done is a minute the victim might miss the family still looking for him."

I set up the tent and boiled water.

He pushed his sketchbook into my hands and said, without a flicker on his face, "Take a look. Does it look right?"

I only found out later.

For the sake of that one moment alone with me, he'd handed everyone on the team an envelope and asked them to head down first.

He'd checked the forecast too, timing it for a stunning sunrise the next morning.

I'd seen sunrises on that mountain hundreds of times.

But only that once did my heart pound like a drum.

He sat beside me, head bent, sketching the line of my face, my hair.

Every detail alive on the page.

Once we were back down, though, I turned him down.

He was a city man, polished from head to toe.

If it weren't for a case, he'd never have set foot on the mountain in his life, his feet blistered with cold, his breath coming short.

But I had made up my mind to be a mountain guide for the rest of mine.

Climbing peak after peak, crossing the snowfields, taking in the whole world of ice and snow.

We came from two different worlds.

He didn't say anything at the time.

The next day, I spotted him again among a group of climbers.

Then the third day, the fourth, the fifth.

For two whole months, he went from the frail bookish type who had to be hauled up the slope,

to a seasoned climber who could reach the summit in one push.

He even caught my arm when I nearly slid down an icy slope while taking photos for a tourist.

I felt the fresh calluses on his hands, the dry, cracked splits in the skin.

But he pulled his hand back and laughed.

"The mountain's already taken me in. I'm waiting for the day you do too."

The day he proposed was on the mountain as well.

Wind and snow beat against our faces, and neither of us felt the cold.

Gripping each other's hands, I felt the blood boiling through me.

That was the kind of man Aaron was.

When he loved me, he threw himself in without a second thought, ready to break his own head open for it.

When he hated me, he did it without hesitation, cold and distant, as if we'd never met.

The happy curve at my mouth slowly turned into something bitter at myself.

The memories were so beautiful.

But even the sweetest candy, held in the mouth long enough, leaves a sour, bitter aftertaste.

The third year we were together.

My twin sister, Leona Delgado, came to me for shelter.

She showed up at my door soaked through, clutching a suitcase, sobbing that she had no home anymore.

Back when our parents divorced.

She chose our wealthy mother, and I was left with our ordinary father.

But Mom went bankrupt, while Dad's business only grew year after year.

Leona had also been left with both legs paralyzed after a car accident.

Sitting in her wheelchair, she called out to Aaron in a timid little voice,

"Aaron."

"Thank you for taking me in."

"I hear you're a forensic sketch artist. That's amazing. I'd love to learn too."

Her gaze slid past me and landed on Aaron.

That look wasn't admiration. It was a certainty that she would have him.

It was a thief eyeing someone else's treasure, greed rising up, ready to destroy what she couldn't take.

From that day on, she stopped being grateful to me.

Instead she voiced her envy without hiding a thing. "Sis, you're so lucky."

"You got the rich dad, so you can do whatever you want, even waste your life playing mountain guide."

"Not like me. Aaron's the only one who thinks I'm worth anything. I've got nothing else."

At the time I only thought she had a strange, prickly temper.

Until the day of the dress fitting, when she deliberately put on a gown and walked out of the fitting room beside me.

Wheedling, she asked Aaron,

"Between me and my sister, which one looks more like your bride?"

A clerk who didn't know us flattered her. "The bride's got fairer skin. She's prettier than the bridesmaid."

She turned to look at me, her eyes full of the satisfaction of getting what she wanted.