Page 101 of One Last Shot

“Crevasse,” she said. He scooted back, away from the rip in the snow. “Take off the pack.”

He shrugged it away, and she dug inside it and pulled out a rope, extra webbing, and a cord that held carabiners. She got up and fought her way to a sturdy pine. Securing thewebbing around it, she clipped on a carabiner, then secured the line to it with a bowline.

She brought the line over to him. “I’m going to rappel down and see if I can find her.

“And if you do, then what?”

Right.

“New plan.” She unhooked the belay line from the carabiner, then tied another length of webbing onto a nearby tree and attached her only pulley to it. Running her rope through it, she then secured the bowline knot via a carabiner to his harness. “You’ll pull her up.”

“And you?”

“You’ll throw down the line and then unhook the pulley and belay me while I climb up. Remember how?”

He nodded.

She headed back to the line and clicked her descender onto it, then her harness to the descender.

Then she backed up.

He came up to her then, grabbed the front of her jumpsuit, looked in her eyes and said, “Don’t die.” Then he kissed her. A cold, brisk kiss, but it heated her all the way through to her bones.

“I won’t.” She went over the edge.

Her feet slipped on the cliffside—she should have worn crampons. And she had no ice axe. But she let the rope out easy and, thirty feet down, landed on snow.

Please, let it not be a bridge. “Hannah! Grace!”

“Help.” The voice sounded nearer, smaller, fragile. And when she turned her lamp, the light fell upon a girl. She lay with her leg at a terrible angle, and even from here, Boo could diagnose a fracture.

“Hey,” Boo said, unclipping from the descender. She walked up to her, crouched. “Are you Hannah?”

Frizzy brown hair, glasses, wide eyes, she stillwore her hat, the one that saidJunior Bridesmaid,her parka and snowpants. Probably the ravine had kept her protected, but, “I’ll bet you’re cold.”

Hannah nodded.

“My name is Boo. I’m with a rescue team.” She assessed Hannah’s leg. The foot splayed out the wrong direction, overextended. “Can you move your leg?”

“Just my knee, but no, not my foot.”

“Yeah, it looks like it hurts.”

“I can’t really feel it anymore.”

Oh, not good.

Boo picked her way back over to the edge. “Oaken!”

His light appeared over the side. She held up her hand to shade her eyes.

“Sorry!”

“She’s got a broken leg. There’s an inflatable splint in the medical bag. Pull up the rope and lower it down.”

The rope snaked up and he disappeared. In a moment, the entire medical bag came over the side.

She unclipped it and returned to Hannah. “We need to get that leg immobilized.”