I still looked out into the trees, a darkness threatening to take over. The first hint of acid churned in my throat when her hand rested on my shoulder.
“Hey, Colonel?”
When I turned to meet her, I found her smiling shyly at me.
“Busy tomorrow?” she asked.
“Tomorrow?” My thoughts scrambled to catch up. “Sunday? No. Wide open. Free as a bird.”
“Good,” she said. “Let’s hang out.”
“Hang out. Yup. Sounds good.”
She bit back a grin and walked away.
I looked to the sky again. This time I grinned.
Chapter 19
Roxy
The forest floor was easily thirty feet down. The only thing that stood between me and certain bone breaks was the flimsy harness wrapped around my hips like an oversized diaper.
“I don’t think this is what Vincent had in mind when he told me to trust people,” I said.
“Sure it is.” Sanders smiled at me.
It was Sunday afternoon and the sun sparkled through the canopy of the tall pines. Though I preferred to enjoy trees much closer to the ground. Man wasn’t meant to be this close to heaven.
In preparation for MooreTek’s arrival tomorrow, Sanders suggested we go explore a local zip-lining company and discuss the logistics of liability. Sanders also insisted that experiencing the adventure firsthand would help me understand the process and a little trust never hurt anyone. Sanders was an idiot. And I was just as bad for going along with it.
Now that there was thirty feet between me and the earth, I decided that somebody could most definitely get hurt. Somebody being me. I double-checked the clips—he called them carabiners—that attached me to the rope in two spots.
“Thought it might be best to show you the ropes.” He raised an expectant eyebrow at me. “Little zip-lining pun? Never fails to get a chuckle.”
“Har. Har.”
My palms wouldn’t stop sweating. How was I supposed to hold on for dear life when my palms couldn’t grip anything? This seemed like a major design flaw in humans. Like putting our only air pipe next to the place where we swallow food.
“Are you okay? You’ve gone quiet.” He nudged my arm lightly until I looked at him.
“This is safe, right? Board certified? The government approved this? What sort of safety requirements did this pass? Where can I read up on the regulations? I should have checked all this before we left.”
He studied me closely enough that I started to wonder if there was something on my face. A smile tugged at the side of his mouth.
“It’s totally safe. No accidents to date,” he said, then added, “The worst thing that has ever happened was the guy who drank too much the night before and lost his lunch.”
“You deal with a lot of vomit in your job?”
He shrugged. “I weirdly do. Preparing me for fatherhood I guess.”
My brain instantly imagined him gently bouncing a baby on his shoulder with one of his giant grins on his face. It did weird things to me. I shoved those thoughts way down. I’m on to you, Mother Nature. Calm yourselves, ovaries, we ain’t the breeding type.
Sanders gestured to the zip line that stretched from the platform we stood on to one about twenty meters away. “This is just a small example of what Outside the Box has in Denver,” he explained. “We have basic zip lines like this, longer and shorter distances and different heights off the ground. But we also have obstacle course-type experiences, like rope bridges and free falls.”
“Good Lord,” I muttered. I smoothed my ponytail, my damp palms pulling on the loose strands. I took a quiet deep breath in.
“Hey, trust me. I won’t let anything happen to you.” He held my gaze and I found there complete and open honesty. I believed him. He’d already explained how everything worked, how to hold on and place my hands. I knew, in theory, what to do, but that was very different than in practice.
