Page 34 of Mountain Target

Ren shook her head. “I hurt my ankle.”

He kneeled down beside her. “Can you put any weight on it?”

Ren tried, and got enough of her weight on it to tell Beau at least the bone wasn’t broken, before her face contorted into a pained grimace.

“What happened?”

“I lost my balance. Managed to hold on to the rock, but twisted my ankle.”

He’d done a fair bit of thinking about how the two of them could get down, but he hadn’t planned on her being unable to walk.

But they couldn’t just stand here, either.

Finally, he came to a decision. He uncoiled the rope from his body and looped it around her waist three times.

“What are you doing?”

“This is how people climbed back in the day, before harnesses.”

“How old are you, exactly?”

Beau laughed. “Not that old, you insolent chipmunk,” he said. “But I read about it.”

“Chipmunk?”

He pointed silently at her furry reddish brown shoes.

While Ren was distracted, huffing and puffing at his choice of nickname for her, Beau formed a bight with a half-twist and brought it under and back through the waist coils, then finished with a bowline.

He pulled sharply on the rope, checking for tightness. The setup was not ideal, and Beau knew it could easily end up snapping her ribs in a big fall, but the alternative—her falling off the wall—was unthinkable.

He tied the other end of the rope to his own waist, looping it around once, then once more around the end of Ren’s loop, so the two of them were tied together.

“Okay, Ren. We’re off.” He softened his voice. “You’re going to have to let go of the box now, so you can hold on to me with both hands.”

The girl shook her head. Tears poured down her face.

“You don’t understand. I can’t—“

He never got to the end of that sentence, because at that instant the ground started shaking again.

No.

Not now.

The bigger, most immediate danger, was the two of them tumbling off the cliff. Beau slammed his body against the rock wall, caging Ren between his arms, and held on tight to the rock as the ground beneath them jolted and shook, praying the ledge they were on wouldn’t crumble.

The second danger would come from above. No sooner has the thought crossed his mind, he felt the first few rocks start to fall around them. He curled his body around the girl’s slight shape as the rocks started pelting them.

Below them, Valentina screamed.

Beau felt the blood in his veins turn to ice.

He prayed she’d find shelter from the falling rocks.

A rock the size of a ping-pong ball struck his shoulder. Beau held himself still, tight against the girl. The next rocks were larger. The sharp, jagged edges of something that felt like a boulder slammed onto his head.

Beau grunted.