ONE
Piper McAdams took a deep breath, did her best to relax against the cold Alaskan rock cliff, centered her weight in her legs. She released her hold with her left arm, shook it out. She was getting worn out—pumped, in climbing lingo—from the route up the rock face. It wasn’t the most difficult wall she’d scaled. Maybe a 5.9 rating, she’d guess. But as far as she knew, no one had climbed to the top of it, because access was difficult. That was probably what the man she was here to rescue had been doing, trying to put up a first ascent, be the first one to climb the route and get to name it. He’d wanted to finish it—send it, in climber-speak.
Instead he’d fallen, about fifteen feet from the top of the seventy-foot rock face. It shouldn’t have been a major fall, but the rope hadn’t caught him. Instead, he’d landed on a ledge below, according to his call to her search and rescue team for help, making his fall distance much shorter.
And Piper was the one who was trying to rescue him. In her search and rescue group, she had the most climbing experience. Also, the rock face towered over Fourteen-Mile River and just to get there she’d had to use all the white water–navigating skills she possessed. And when it came to swift water rescue, no one in the group was more skilled than she was.
She’d taken their team leader, Jake Stone, with her, to belay her, and Officer Judah Wicks. He and Jake had been having coffee when the call came in, so Jake had brought him along even though this case didn’t appear to call for law enforcement presence.
She finished shaking out her left arm, then grabbed the hold again, released her grip on the tiny hold on her right and shook that hand out, too. Her forearms were burning already and she couldn’t afford to get so sore she couldn’t climb well. She hoped her team wasn’t getting nervous watching her. She hadn’t understood when she’d first started learning a few years ago that most of a climber’s weight was balanced on their legs. You weren’t supposed to muscle your way up a wall with sheer upper body strength. Once her climbing partner had told her that, it had been so much easier.
The thought of Judah, her old climbing partner, almost had her slipping off the wall. Piper made herself focus. This wasn’t the time for strolling down memory lane or thinking about the one who’d gotten away all those years ago. Even though they still saw each other now and then in town and acted like they’d never met.
Ten more feet to the ledge.
Piper looked down.
Big mistake. She’d managed to corral her fear of heights well enough when she climbed, but the sensation of height mixed with the rushing of the river below her. Her vision blurred for a second, and swirled. She closed her eyes, reminded herself she was on belay and her team leader was holding the other end of the rope. Jake was responsibility personified. She trusted him to secure her well; she didn’t need to panic.
Still, coming up here to rescue someone who’d been injured climbing...felt eerie and reminded her a little too well of the ever-present dangers of the sport.
Piper took a deep breath, moved her right foot up the wall to the next foothold she’d identified, and pressed the sole of that shoe against the rock, counting on the friction to help hold her up. She took back her rating for this route. Possibly 5.10. As she reached for another handhold, she thought about climbing tradition and how the person with the first ascent got to name the route. If she made it to the top of this cliff she’d call it Fate Worse Than Death.
Piper took another deep breath and willed herself to stay focused. She concentrated on the cold breeze whipping her ponytail, the sound of the water flowing below her. She felt the roughness of the rock on her hands, the tiny details and texture that made climbing a rock face like this possible. She took a deep breath in. Back out. And finally, finally, she reached for the ledge, moved her feet higher and pressed down on the rock to mantle up.
The ledge was empty. The sounds felt different to Piper than they had only minutes before. They were somehow more ominous now, weighty with significance. Where was the climber? Uneasy, she felt a chill go down her spine as she looked around. Someone had made the call, described the place perfectly and insisted they were injured, so... She stood up on the ledge, spun in a slow circle, looking. Then she leaned over the edge, spotted the group at the bottom and shook her head. “No one up here!” she yelled, though she suspected her words would be snatched by the volume of the rushing water.
She started to turn back around, unsure of what to do other than climb to the top of the wall, but as she spun, movement caught her eye, and then she felt someone shove her. Piper felt her legs slip over the ledge and screamed, grasping for her life. Rock scraped her fingertips and she tensed the muscles in her fingers to try to grab hold of something. Anything.
Finally, her hands found a large hold, a good grip in the rock, and she caught herself. Pain exploded through her right arm as her body weight landed on it, and Piper cried out as she looked above her. She’d been pushed! Someone had pushed her off the ledge.
Her mind scrambled to make sense of what was going on even as she thought she understood. The call had been false. No one was currently in danger except Piper.
She looked down, back up at the ledge. Right? Even if the call was fake, she couldn’t risk it; she couldn’t leave someone there if there was a possibility they were injured or otherwise in danger. She’d gone into search and rescue work because she knew what having expert help meant to people whose lives were in danger, having been in a situation like that once herself. She cared too much about what she did to give up easily.
Still, there was no reasonable explanation for falling off the ledge like that. She’d been lucky to grab the rock. The last carabiner she’d clipped into was more than ten feet below her, which meant her total fall would have been over twenty feet. A whipper—an intense, swinging fall—like that against a rough rock face such as this one could be just as disastrous as a fall from a greater height.
Piper looked down one more time, then started climbing up. She wasn’t willing to live with the possibility that someone had accidentally pushed her, a panicked climber injured from his own fall, maybe. Once again, she used her muscles and finesse to ease her way up the rock, feeling her mind focus in like it always did when she was above the ground like this.
She mantled up onto the outcropping again, this time seeing someone back against the rock face, about six feet away from her. It was a wide ledge, with plenty of room to maneuver. Probably even big enough to camp on.
“Are you okay?” she asked the person, her desire to help someone who needed rescue warring against her sense of self-preservation. This could be the person who’d pushed her...but what if it wasn’t and he needed help? Piper didn’t know what to think. But she was still surprised when the person came at her in a rush, grabbed her elbow and fought her to the ground.
The figure looked like a man, or at least she thought so. He was wearing a ski mask, so she couldn’t see his face, and he outweighed her by well over fifty pounds. His hands went for her neck. Was he trying to kill her? Subdue her? Did it matter?
Piper screamed and fought back with everything she had. And prayed someone below would hear her.
Judah was already halfway up the rock ledge when he heard Piper’s sharp cry. Jake had thought he was overreacting, but thankfully for Judah, Jake was only his friend, not his boss. He’d rigged up his self-belay system and started up the rock face as soon as he started to feel uncomfortable, which was when it had looked like she’d shouted something down. There was no reason for her to have done that, when she knew the river would snatch her words away. Her holler told Judah she must be panicked. He’d climbed with her enough in the past to know that Piper didn’t easily panic. Something was wrong.
Then she’d fallen. And while Judah didn’t know why, he also knew Piper well enough to know there was no way she’d have dropped off that ledge without help. Something wasn’t right here.
So he was going up. If he was wrong and she was fine, she wouldn’t be happy to see him and he couldn’t blame her. The time they’d almost dated and then he’d backed off... Judah had handled that awkwardly and made it impossible for them to stay friends. Since then, he’d been acting like nothing had happened, keeping himself at an even greater distance from her than he normally kept from people.
Which was a pretty big distance anyway. No one had accused Judah of being the most social of men. Or the easiest to get to know. He’d always been someone who preferred to be alone, but it was getting worse the older he got. He’d seen friends...his brother in particular, get hurt, and Judah had figured out a surefire way to avoid that.
Don’t have relationships.
He heard another yell, this one muffled, and climbed faster. His heart pumped and his arms were starting to shake. Too fast, he was climbing too fast, and he knew it, could feel it in every muscle, but he didn’t have a choice right now. Taking a deep breath, he willed his muscles to calm and they listened well enough that he was able to climb onto the ledge—just in time to see Piper kick at a man, who then grabbed her by both shoulders and shoved her toward the rock wall. She hit it hard, and keeled.
“Freeze!” Judah unholstered his weapon and pointed it at the attacker. “Raven Pass PD. Stop what you’re doing.”
The man looked at Judah, then grabbed a rope Judah hadn’t noticed, up against the rocks, and started climbing.
Judah hesitated. He couldn’t shoot a man who was retreating; it wasn’t right. And Piper wasn’t moving—what if she was hurt? But he hated to let the assailant get away.
“Stop. Police!” he yelled again and followed him up the rope. He glanced down at Piper, but her eyes were closed. She might need attention, but...
He kept climbing, then felt himself hesitate again. The man above gained ground.
But if he didn’t go back and help Piper, who would? Jake was left with no one to belay him and, as far as Judah know, didn’t have the necessary setup to self-belay.
He was Piper’s only possible source of help. And given the fact that she was unconscious...
Judah dropped back down to the ledge, pulled out his phone and called his brother, Levi, a fellow Raven Pass Police Department officer.
“Listen, the short version is I went with the search and rescue team and I think it was a setup. Piper McAdams is unconscious and I need an ambulance. The suspect assaulted her and then fled.” He knelt down by Piper, felt for a pulse. Good. Steady.
He felt his shoulders relax. “How’re you doing, Judah?” Levi joked. That was Levi, always joking, never taking things seriously.
Accusing Judah of being too serious. They were two halves of a coin.
“Levi...”
“Sorry, I get it. I’ll call it in. Is Piper going to be okay?”
“I don’t know. I need to go.”
Levi hung up and Judah pocketed the phone again as he went through the motions of checking on Piper more thoroughly. Heart rate was good. Her breathing was good.
His chest felt tight. Having to check over Piper like this, like she was just anyone when she’d never been just anyone to him, was physically painful.
Piper moaned, struggled to sit up.
“Easy, hold on...” He put his hands on her shoulders and tried for a reassuring squeeze, but she fought him. Judah guessed that with all she’d just been through, she might not realize she was safe now. Something else that felt like a stab to his chest. He let go of her, but was careful to keep his hands close so he could catch her if she fell. While she was obviously struggling to regain consciousness, she wasn’t there yet...
Another moan. This time she stopped thrashing. Lay there for long enough that he thought she’d gone back under, and then she slowly moved to sit up against the rock wall.
“Where did he go?” she asked.
“The guy who attacked you?”
Her eyes widened a little, like she’d known what had happened but his way of putting it still surprised her. “He got away?”
Judah hated the disappointment he heard in her voice. “I couldn’t be in two places at once.”
She looked away, nodded slowly, and he felt bad that she understood what he meant. She probably worked harder than half the men in her search and rescue team, proving to herself and everyone else that she could carry more than her own share of the weight. So she must feel frustrated she hadn’t been able to stop the fleeing attacker.
Judah shook his head, like it might clear his head. He wasn’t much of a people person and wasn’t really used to figuring out what others thought. Somehow Piper was different.
He’d suspected that for a while, which was part of the reason he hadn’t let things develop between them any more than they had. Right around the time he met her, he’d had a front-row seat to the destruction of his brother’s first marriage. He had watched a whole list of other friends go through the same kind of heartbreak. Judah knew himself well enough to know that he was probably difficult to get along with. Used to being alone. Maybe on the gruff side. Better not to get involved with someone like Piper and risk breaking her heart, and his. He’d be terrible at a relationship. She deserved better.
“Hey,” he said softly.
She looked at him, blinked. Her gaze seemed clear and coherent. She was beautiful.
He pushed the thoroughly inappropriate-for-the-moment thought away.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get him. And that this happened.”
“What did happen?” she asked as she exhaled. ...
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