A Boat Made of Bone (The Chthonic Saga) (12 page)

“The air conditioner is something I installed. This model didn’t come with one, but I found a sweet system to retro-fit it and it works better than anything that came from the 70s.”

“I’m impressed. So you fix up cars. What else do you do that I’d never guess?”

“Not too much. In art, I was working on wheel-throwing. I apprenticed with a guy before college. That’s what my scholarship was for. Mostly I just work when I’m not playing.”

“At the climbing gym?”

“There, most of the time. For work and play,” he smiled. “In the winter I also teach snowboard lessons.”

She began to ask where, but the BMW slowed and crossed the left lane to a little dirt pull-out on the shoulder of the road. There were a couple other cars—most of them Subarus covered in Petzl, Black Diamond, and Arc Teryx stickers. That’s when she realized they were joining other people. So much for a little, intimate climbing jaunt. 

***

Other climbers. That was fine. Really, it was. Kate wasn’t totally cynical yet, but the idea of a hike into a remote spot in the mountains with a near-stranger
had
set off warning bells just a tad. Not that she looked at Ty and saw a killer or anything. But she didn’t trust people implicitly. They had to prove themselves.

They got their packs out of the trunk and walked to the trailhead.

“Have you climbed here before?” Ty asked.

“Not this spot, no. But I’ve heard about it,” Kate said, slinging her approach pack onto her back.

“It’s got a load of good routes, but getting there is kind of a bitch,” Ty explained as he led Kate along a path. It stopped at the choppy river. There wasn’t a bridge, just a rope stretching between a nearby tree and one on the other side.

“Don’t tell me— “Kate began.

“Uh, yeah, we have to use the rope.” Ty smiled, his eyes dancing.

“Really? No way. I’m not crossing it like that,” Kate said, envisioning swinging herself across the river hand over hand.

“It’s not
that
hard,” Ty said. “Put your harness on.”

“Why? I usually do that when I’m about to climb.”

“We clip in with some webbing, like a swing, and you pull yourself across. It’s pretty easy,” Ty explained. “Have you really never done this before?” He sounded incredulous. Kate blushed. He’d already removed his pack, pulled out his harness, and was stepping into it.

“Oh, right,” Kate answered, following suit and beating back her embarrassment.

“Trust me, it’s worth this difficult approach.” Ty made a chain with some long webbing, hooked it to his harness and attached some carabiners to the webbing.

Kate continued to imitate his set up and found herself vaguely wondering how the guy from her dreams would feel about the scenery. Small birds zipped out over the water and darted back into the cover of trees. Sunlight broke through the canopy of cottonwoods and sent sparks through the waves that frothed over riverbed stones. Everything smelled fresh, like water and earth and the crisp odor of new leaves.

Wait, what?
Kate almost choked when she caught herself thinking about him.
Really? Him?
A derisive voice that sounded remarkably like Audra came into her head—oh please, it said,
you’d really spoil what you could have with Ty for a figment of your imagination? That’s rich!

That
’s rich?
she repeated. Audra would never say that. Kate must have been watching too many
Happy Days’
reruns at work if she was saying phrases like that to herself. Someone had recently brought in their treasure trove of 1960s and 70s sitcoms and Suga’s bought most of them—a typical move, these days. Customers hoped to cash in on their DVDs and Blu-Rays before everything went totally digital and all value for hard copies vanished.

Crossing the river by dangling from a rope strung between two trees proved to be rather hard. Ty sent her across first and a few times she almost got stuck. It took more upper body strength than she had, but after several extreme pulls accompanied by some impressive grunts, she managed to make it. Unclipping and getting down on the other side turned out to be difficult too. Her feet didn’t reach the mound of earth beneath the rope. If she stretched out, her toes grazed against it. Since she couldn’t get her footing, she kept sliding backwards.

“Fantastic,” she muttered, certain she wasn’t going to impress Ty with her short legs and inept clawing at the supporting rope and the carabiner that she couldn’t release. 

She finally made it down and glanced back the way she’d come. She started. Ty was right there, somehow having zipped across the rope like Tarzan, without even batting an eyelash.

“Wow, that was quick,” she said as he hopped down beside her.

“I’ve done it before,” he answered with a laugh. “Nice job. I thought I was going to have to rescue you, Princess.”

“It was surprisingly hard,” she told him, intending it as a compliment.

“You did great,” he said, flashing her a charming grin and brushing a strand of dark hair off his forehead. She sighed inwardly—the guy was breathtakingly handsome. They left their harnesses on and snapped the end carabiners to one of the equipment loops. He took her hand just for a moment to pull her along the trail after him before letting go. The blood in her fingers bubbled where he’d touched her. She rubbed her thumb against them, thoughtful.

Princess? Seriously?
she mused. Did he think that was cool or was he trying to be rude and sarcastic? Why he would be rude or sarcastic at this point was beyond her. But she hardly knew him. Some guys—she’d noticed, but none she’d ever hang out with . . . except for Ferg, really, but that was just his personality—liked to subtly tease girls. It was like they were in elementary school still. Not only that, Kate had only ever heard the term
princess
used to slam women who spent inordinate amounts of time on fixing themselves up and being high maintenance. Kate was hardly high maintenance.

So it must be a . . . compliment? A good thing? That he was calling her
princess
.

She hoped he’d stop doing it soon.

They left the rushing, clear river behind and ascended a steep slope on switchbacks, which led them up to a wall of limestone cliffs that towered seventy-five feet above them. They hiked around a bend in the line of exposed rock, coming to a cluster of pine trees that hid the low buzz of voices. They stepped around the evergreens and found a group of climbers.

It was a . . . a soiree, a party, the likes of which Kate had only ever seen, but never been a part of. Her biggest climbing ensemble, besides the large population at the climbing gym, was with four others—Audra, Jake, and Cline. Two guys they slightly knew from mutual college friends.

People were hanging out, taking it easy, lying on crash pads—how’d they get those across? Kate wondered, gaping. There were a couple of dogs roaming around, too, and she visualized the dogs in little doggy harnesses being carried across on the rope. She felt like she’d just walked right into a commune or something. She half expected someone to have a butter churn and a little pad for growing weed nearby.

Ty walked around giving the stereotypical bro handshake and shoulder bump, greeting everyone like they were all a bunch of cool dudes and one big happy climbing family.

“What’s up?” a voice at her side said. She turned. It was Malcolm. His shirt was off and his muscles were already pumped, the veins bulging through his tanned skin. He grinned cockily. Kate suppressed the urge to sneer at him—she still couldn’t comprehend what it was about him that brought out that buried, pale, daylight-starved part of her personality.

“Hey Malcolm,” she said with a forced, lighthearted laugh.

“Glad you could make it, Kate.”

“Thanks,” she said, bristling. This was—had been—
her
thing, not his, so it should be
her
telling
him
that she was glad he could make it. And yet, this . . . this huge gala event at the foot of a climbing wall, well it wasn’t what she’d envisioned. Where was the guy (she pictured Fred Willard in the role—he was
perfect
) with the microphone and TV crew, stepping up to her saying, “Congratulations! You’re our seven-hundredth climber!” Where was her prize? This was a major to-do. She should get a prize for agreeing to this. A consolation prize. Because this was an accident and she felt like a complete loser. Out of her element, suddenly, and on display for being the new chick, the new addition to the group. She was going to have performance anxiety when it was her turn to climb. She just knew it.

When Ty planned the jaunt with her at the gym, it’d been just him. And her. And she could have foreseen Malcolm coming because he was that kind of daft guy who would invite himself anywhere without considering the possibility that he wasn’t welcome, but who were all the others?

She laughed at the unexpected nature of the “date.” Yes, she wanted to be safe. Yes, it was good to have the others around. Ty seemed nice and handsome and decent. But serial killers were always charming, weren’t they?

Still. It galled her that Malcolm pulled that one on her. She chuckled and shook her head.

“What?” Malcolm asked, still standing beside her.

“Oh, nothing. There’s just, you know, a lot of people here,” Kate said, not caring to try to pass herself off as a party girl.

“Yeah, this is what always happens. You start planning a little foray and word gets around. The more the merrier, right?”

“For sure,” she said, lying to avoid conflict.

Ty was done making the rounds and he rejoined Kate and Malcolm. “Let’s get you on the rock, Kate,” he said.

A sick feeling blossomed in her gut. “You mean, me go first?”

“Yeah, why not? You tore it up in the gym, you can do these routes, easy,” he said eagerly.

“I know, I know. Yeah. But . . . I’m not a pioneer, you know? And I don’t know these people. I’d love to top-rope the route, get my confidence up, and then maybe lead it,” she explained modestly. No way was Kate going to let Ty push her into leading when she wasn’t ready for it.
But don’t you want to impress him?
a snide little voice in her head asked.

Ty winked, smiled sweetly, and then gave her arm a soft squeeze. Chills covered her. “No problem. That’s cool. I’ll lead it and then you can see how you like it.”

“Come on, Ty, she’s strong enough to lead,” Malcolm said in a pushy voice. Kate fixed a glare on him, keenly aware of how much she didn’t like him. How old was he anyway? Forty? Why was he hanging out with a bunch of college kids?

“Shut up, Mal,” Ty said, flashing him a grin to take the edge off. Kate didn’t say anything despite the grateful warmth welling up in her.

Malcolm shook his head, his black hair swaying back and forth, and then he stalked off muttering under his breath.

“He’ll get over it,” Ty said in a reassuring voice. A yellow lab sauntered over. Ty called it by name and rough-housed with it before getting out the rope and lining his harness with quickdraws. Soon he was on the rock, placing draws, almost dancing up the cliff like some kind of Mikhail Baryshnikov of the climbing world.

Kate belayed him, enjoying his smooth form and entertaining thoughts of how he’d be in bed—really, she couldn’t help it. He was delicious. At one point, he paused, wedged his hand into a crack and pulled his shirt off, then tossed the shirt down to Kate. Before she could lock the belay and catch it, it landed on her face.

“This isn’t the strip joint!” she shouted, peeling his damp top from her cheek and throwing it aside. She loved that his shirt landed on her face. It smelled musky and luscious and she could totally imagine him tearing his clothes off in the bedroom.

Calm down, calm down,
Kate, she coached herself, trying to concentrate so she didn’t mess something up.

“Belay on?” he yelled down, and she responded with, “On belay,” and he continued his ascent.

Malcolm appeared at Kate’s side.

“You really could do this route,” he said, head cocked back, watching his friend.

“Maybe,” she answered, not taking her eyes off of Ty.

“You just have to learn to trust yourself, Kate. And if you miss a hold, you have the rope to break your fall. So, you gotta learn to trust the rope too, and your belayer.”

“I’ve led plenty of climbs, Malcolm. I just don’t feel like doing this one.” She had no desire to tell him that she sometimes suffered from performance anxiety, especially on unfamiliar climbs.

“We all start somewhere, but there’s no confidence builder like completing a lead climb.”

“How long have you been climbing, anyway?” she asked. Ty was at the crux of the climb, which was a barn-door move. His calves bulged, his legs straddled the wall as he maneuvered, toes pointed and balanced against tiny nub-like protrusions. He swung his hips into position and then pushed off with one strong jolt and glided over the ridge. Kate couldn’t see what he was doing now, but knew he caught the hold because he didn’t fall.

“Nice!” Malcolm yelled up at him, before answering, “Like twenty years or something.”

“Cool,” Kate said. She could kind of see that actually, not right now, of course, because she was still focused on managing the rope for Ty. But she’d noticed Malcolm’s hands before—they were weathered and beaten, and more knotty looking than the average forty-year-old, like her oldest cousin, Lawrence, who just turned forty-three.