Summer by Summer (19 page)

Terror-filled eyes found me and pleaded.

“I’m not going to let you go.”

The words seemed to work. She stopped fighting against gravity and hung there, unmoving.

“In the water, I told you I’d never let go. Remember?” The ligaments or tendons or muscles in my arm started tearing. Maybe all three. With each slow movement, I could feel something ripping. “I swear I won’t. Never, okay?”

She nodded and pressed her face to the rock as if able to hold on vertically.

“Find the spot for your hand.” Without looking, her fingers, bloody now from raking against the rock, began to feel along the
cliff. When they touched a spot she could grip, she clamped on it. “Good job.”

The rope still rode on my shoulder, but without two hands, I wasn’t sure what good it would do. Then, I remembered the slip knots. With my free hand I shook the loops from the rope and arranged it so one end was wound around my waist. Pain seared my arm at the extra movement, but I tried to ignore it. The other end of the rope I tossed over the side. “Summer, I’m going to need you to let go of the rock for a few seconds and slide your hand into the rope. Then, use your mouth to tighten the knot. Can you do that?”

She nodded, but still hadn’t said anything.

My grip was slipping, so I tried to hold tighter as I dangled the knot against her hand. “I’ve got you. Go ahead.” She’d found a tiny crevice with her left foot and tried to jam her toes inside. It looked like this took just enough of the weight off for her to release her hand from the rock, and she slid the rope over until it rested against her wrist. Summer drew it to her mouth, caught the dangling end of the rope, and jerked it tight around her.

I released a tension-filled gust of air. “Okay, we’re connected now. I can pull you up.” Really, our situation hadn’t improved that much — I still lay prone at the cave opening, and she was still dangling below me — but panic was gone and the fight to survive settled over me. “When I let go, I want you to grab the rope with your other hand. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said softly. The sound crawled over me. I wouldn’t let her fall.

I glanced behind me. There was a spiked boulder just beyond my reach. Slowly, my hand slid free from Summer’s. She tried not to jump, but I felt the jolt on the other end of the rope. One tiny knot was all that kept her from falling. I forced that from my mind and shimmied around the edge of the boulder. Placing my feet against it, I hollered, “Hang on.”

My feet planted, I pushed with every ounce of force inside me. Though already tired from the climb, somehow I managed to draw the rope. Summer’s face appeared at the ledge, fueling me. I repositioned and pushed against the boulder again. This time, her shoulders appeared. Her free hand released the rope and she scrambled to grab the ground. One more pull and she was close enough to throw a dirt-covered leg onto the ledge. I reached forward, grabbing her with one hand while holding the rope tight with the other. Another grunt and she was beside me.

My mind screamed to hold Summer, but we were both too exhausted to move. I lay on my back, staring up at the sky. Summer was lying on her stomach, both of us breathing hard. I worried about the damage I may have done to her wrist. My forearm was screaming like someone had slit it open and poured hot acid inside my veins. And if mine was that bad, I could only imagine what her wrist must feel like.

And that led me to another question. How in the world were we going to get down?

CHAPTER 11

Summer

Several thoughts occurred to me at once, fighting for dominance inside my head. But the biggest of all was, “How are you going to get the supplies?”

“I’ll make it,” he said, and smiled. “Down is always easier than up.”

My arm felt like someone had held it in a washing machine and turned on the spin cycle. Bray inspected it, his hands working in smooth motions over my fingers, palm, wrist, then up my forearm and settling on my shoulder. “All this okay?”

I nodded, bent my wrist back and forth. “Seems so. I mean, it hurts.”

His index finger traced the red lines left by the rope. “I don’t think it’s out of place. You did a good job holding some of your weight with your free hand.”

But I was concerned for Bray. He kept holding one of his arms to his ribcage, like someone would do if their arm was broken and in a sling. “What about you?”

“I’m good.” Such a liar.

“What if I wasn’t telling you the truth?” I said.

His gaze narrowed, concern knitting his brows together. There were dirt smudges on his cheeks and forehead.

“What if I really was hurt but I didn’t want you to know?”

“That wouldn’t be okay, Summer.” He moved closer so that I couldn’t escape his inspection. “We’re alone out here. We have to depend on each other. It would be
really
unsafe for you to be hurt and not tell me.”

I grinned victoriously.

When he scanned my face for an explanation, I nodded to his arm.

It only took him a second to understand my meaning. His eyes rolled. “It’s hurting.”

I took his arm and turned it palm-side up. Red snaked from his wrist up to the bend of his elbow. “Oh, Bray.” I placed my hand flat against it gently. “It’s hot. Like it’s on fire.”

We stared down at the bright-red skin. “I scraped it climbing. Some of that might even be inflammation. My dad has arthritis in his knees, and when we play tennis, they look about like this.”

“Inflammation?”

“Yeah. And I felt something tearing while I tried to lift you over the side. It wouldn’t have been difficult — you hardly weigh anything — but I couldn’t really use my stomach muscles because my ribs are still sore. Guess whatever I did was the wrong thing.” Then he switched tactics. “Come on. Let’s check out the cave.”

That stole my focus. I couldn’t believe I had climbed a mountain to do something I never,
ever
wanted to do. But Bray felt we were unsafe as long as those men were around, and I had to agree. They had killed a man.

I stood at the mouth of the cave — and that’s exactly what it looked like: an open, hungry mouth fitted with tiny, jagged teeth, smiling sadistically, inviting us inside where the gums would clamp down around us and crush us into powder.

“You gonna be able to do this?”

My head shook back and forth. “Yes.”

There were a few hanging vines blocking the entrance. Bray pulled his dive knife from its sheath. He cut some near the bottom, but folded them back rather than cutting them from the top too. “Camo.”

“Good thinking.” I tried to be supportive. But my heart was beating so fast, it felt like a steady hum instead of individual beats.

As Bray finished folding the vines back, light flooded the cave. “Listen.” He put his hand out to quiet me, but I wasn’t making any sound.

Then I heard it. The white noise of distant running water. Before I could answer, he grabbed my hand and led me inside.

We had to bend at the waist to keep from scraping our heads on the roof of the cave. “Wow,” I said. “It’s about twenty degrees cooler in here.”

“Right?” Bray turned and smiled at me. We both raised our arms to allow the cooler air to dry the sweat we’d accumulated on the treacherous climb. I watched as he stopped at the first wall. He placed his hand against it. “Cold. And wet. Look at this, Summer.”

I moved over to him and peered down into a small puddle of water.

As he took a step to get closer, his foot clinked against something on the ground. He knelt and picked up the empty Coke bottle.

“Someone’s been up here before?” I asked him.

“Probably when they were going to do the eco-resort here. I’m sure they explored the whole island. We can use this to get a drink, if you’re game.”

“Is it fresh water?”

Bray spread his hand across the wet rock, moistening it then bringing it to his mouth. “Yeah. And it’s cold.” He disappeared from beside me and returned with a small piece of bamboo he’d cut with his dive knife. Bamboo of different lengths and widths dotted the
whole island, but I hadn’t thought of using the hollow branch as a straw. The small piece of round wood rolled between his fingertips. “Still game?”

We took turns kneeling down to drink from the tiny pool. It tasted slightly different from the lake water we’d been living on. Somehow, this water was more alive, earthier. “This tastes like the well water I drink when I visit my cousins in Missouri,” I told him.

Bray nodded. “I think it might be mineral water. It’s probably better for us. Tastes good, that’s for sure.”

We still hadn’t inspected the deeper part of the cave. It looked like it went back a ways, but our eyes hadn’t adjusted to the dim light enough to tell.

“Let’s drink as much as we can. I think it will improve our energy.”

It was hard to imagine water as any kind of miracle cure, but I had to admit, I was feeling better, less lethargic. Bray’s lips were bright red from the cold drink, making it look like he wore lipstick. The giggle stayed in my throat. He placed the water bottle along the wall and positioned the bamboo straw inside. Instantly, the bottle began collecting the water that dribbled from the rocks.

“Smart,” I said. “I give you an A plus for ingenuity.”

“How you doing with the whole cave thing?”

“Not bad. It’s pretty open. If I have to go back farther, I don’t know how I’ll do, but up here is okay. It’s better than hanging out with murderers. Do you think they were drug dealers or something?”

“I don’t know. Drugs, human trafficking, paid killers. All I know is we need to stay away from them.”

“I still hear the water.”

His hand cupped around his ear. “Hear how deep and hollow it sounds? There’s got to be something farther in. Plus —”

I spun, hearing the change in his tone. “Plus what?”

“Well, I just need to make sure there’s no sign of an animal living
in here. If there is . . . or if I decide climbing that mountain again is worse than fighting off armed killers using our garden tools, we may have to find a new place.”

Oh. I hadn’t thought of animals.

“I’m just trying to be safe, Summer. If we have to bug out to this location, I don’t want any surprises when we get here.”

Behind him, the dark cavern loomed, ready to swallow us. My eyes had adjusted somewhat, and I could see the cave split off in two directions. Slowly, I moved to the back where they spread, one left and one right. “Hey, is that light?” It was hard to tell, because the water on the cave walls bounced tiny bits of light around inside.

Bray took a few steps deeper on the right hand side. “It is.”

From my vantage point, it only looked like a thin trickle of light, but hopefully it was enough that Bray wouldn’t fall into a pit or something. My fingers itched to grab him as he moved deeper into the cavern.

“Summer, there’s plenty of light back here. Must be an opening somewhere in the top of the mountain.”

His words grew faint as he went deeper, bouncing and playing off the cave walls, like the cave was stealing him and turning him into an echo.

“Whoa,” he said, voice filled with awe.

“What? What did you find?” The Loch Ness Monster, maybe? Jimmy Hoffa? Amelia Earhart?

But my words bounced off the rocks and returned to me unanswered. “Bray! What is it?”

“It’s . . . it’s . . . You gotta see it.”

My feet stammered at the crossroads between the two directions. Off to the left, I could see the cave ended just a few feet in. But the other went far enough to cause Bray’s voice to sound foreign.

“Come on, Summer. It gets a little squeezy, but I swear it will be worth it.”

There was so much excitement in his tone; I knew I couldn’t let him down. Pulling a hard draw of air, I dove into the cave, my feet making tentative steps as the rocky walls tightened around me until I saw what lay ahead. My lungs squeezed. I had to nearly bend into a pretzel to get through one part, but I did it, expecting an opening on the other side. Instead, I was met with a blank wall. That’s when I couldn’t keep the panic at bay any longer. Palms sweaty, heart hammering, ears red-hot and ringing. I grabbed the rock in front of me in a futile attempt to push it out of my way. My lungs weren’t getting any oxygen, and tiny spots appeared before my eyes. This was an anxiety attack. I recognized it. And I was all out of paper bags. Something dropped onto my left shoulder and I screamed as the sound bounded off the rocks and back to me, filling my ears with my lonely roar of fear. Something else closed around my waist and tugged.

Bray. He was dragging me from my frozen spot. The tight enclosed space widened as he pulled me to him. I knew I was trembling, but couldn’t help it. Then he turned me around and held me in a tight embrace. My eyes squeezed shut, and I breathed him in. Just feeling him calmed me. He held my head to his chest and mumbled, “That’s my girl.”

I felt the soft kiss on the top of my head and knew that what had frightened me wasn’t so much the cave, but my own inability to control my situation. To have to bend and twist to get through to the other side. But I’d done it. Which in some tiny way, meant I’d conquered the cave.

“You’re gonna love this,” Bray said, his words a low rumble in my ear.