Worth the Risk (Sagebrush #1)

Chapter 1

One

Sierra

No one is holding the rope.

It takes me a second to register what’s happening.

Everything else feels perfect for my climb.

Wind whistles past my ears, harmonizing with the sound of the soft limestone crumbling under my feet.

Warm sunshine kisses my bare shoulders and arms. Beneath my fingertips, the dry rock feels sharp but comforting. Solid.

Everything feels right, except for the suddenly slack rope.

I call out to Dave, who is belaying for me, to tighten the rope. “Up rope!”

Nothing happens. I peer down. Instead of standing directly underneath me, my climbing partner has walked away. I see the outline of his tall, lanky form out of the corner of my eye. Dave lifts his water bottle and takes a nonchalant drink.

The asshole unclipped himself from the rope in the middle of my technical sport climb.

Angry heat flashes through me, but I tamp it down.

I rarely have the luxury of being angry.

This time, even less so. I’m clinging to a forty-foot ledge up a limestone wall in a canyon miles away from civilization.

Dave is an experienced enough climber to know that this goes beyond any safety mistakes a belayer can make.

It isn’t quite attempted murder, but not far off. A forty-foot fall will kill me.

I decide to give him one more chance to stop fucking around. “Don’t leave me hanging here, Dave,” I say jokingly. “Up rope!”

“Like you’ve been leaving me hanging, Sierra?” His voice sounds a little bit breathless, like he’s been gulping his water. He gulped his beers the same way last night too, getting tipsy and handsy in a way that still makes me shudder. “I don’t appreciate how you’ve been leading me along.”

“Leading you along? In our lead climb yesterday?”

There’s a pause. I can’t risk another look down and mess with my already tenuous balance.

“You invited me out here, just the two of us,” he finally says. “I thought it was pretty clear what you wanted from me.”

I decide to reapply chalk to my hands to give myself time to think about how to react. Left hand first. Reach behind my back, dip fingers into my chalk sack, and back to the hold.

A thread of exasperation breaks through my concentration.

Of course I invited just him out here—climbing alone with a man is, unfortunately, a risk I have to take if I want to climb ever.

Options for trustworthy, skilled climbing partners are limited to begin with—female ones especially so.

You take what you can get, and to me, the rewards of climbing are greater than the risks.

Besides, that is part of the whole unpredictable, adrenaline-filled life of Sierra Howard that I’ve embraced. In today’s episode, will Sierra be murdered, or will she fall during a climb? Or in this case, a little from column A and a little from column B? Stay tuned.

“I thought my expectations were clear when I invited you out here,” I say. “I wanted a climbing partner.”

I thought Dave—a competent climber I met a few weeks ago at Queen Creek Canyon—was okay because we have a mutual friend in Travis. I belayed for him, complimented his climbing technique, and then we exchanged info since neither of us had a consistent, permanent climbing partner.

But then, last night, after his fourth gulping—it seems dishonest to refer to the way he treated those beverages as drinks in any way—Dave tried to kiss me.

I wasn’t surprised that Dave would expect sex—unfortunately, men almost always do.

But usually, gentle redirection and a hasty skedaddle deter them.

I must have made my rejection a little too subtle with Dave.

The rope continues to swing loosely against my hip. Clearly.

Right hand next. My left thigh shakes a little as I adjust my balance and reach behind to the chalk. Hand back on the ledge.

My left thigh continues to shake. Another climber at Queen Creek Canyon commented that I rely more on my right leg than my left. I should have listened to him and worked on strengthening my left leg.

“Travis said you use your partners for both climbing and sex,” says Dave. “That you slept with him when he partnered with you.”

Another flash of surprise, followed by anger. Travis, you lying son of a bitch.

“Come on, Dave. You know you can’t believe half of what Travis says.

Remember when he claimed he climbed El Cap faster than Alex Honnold, but the only reason he doesn’t get the glory and documentaries is because he’s not a showoff?

” My laugh sounds forced, but I hope he won’t notice from so far away.

“Can you re-clip the rope, please? My arms are getting pumped.”

“I drove all the way out here in good faith, Sierra.”

I turn my head down and to the left to see if there’s anyone in the nearby area. No one.

To the right is equally desolate of human life. Jacks Canyon is not a popular destination, despite sounding like a dream—a beautiful, remote, limestone canyon with well-protected sport routes on high-quality rock. Dave’s car is the only other vehicle I’ve seen for the two days we’ve been here.

It’s okay. It’s okay, I tell myself again more firmly as my arms begin to pulse.

It’s not a disaster yet, not according to my three-strike disaster theory anyway.

My theory, which I developed from listening to far too many disaster- and survival-themed podcasts, is that it’s never one, or even two, things that go wrong that cause a disaster, but a series of at least three failures or misfortunes that cascade.

The Titanic disaster didn’t just happen because of a collision with a giant hunk of ice.

There weren’t enough lifeboats for everyone on board, and there wasn’t another ship close enough to pick people up.

The water was also fucking freezing. If any one of those strikes hadn’t occurred, the Titanic would not have had the number of casualties to inspire an entertaining ’90s flick.

I know I’m a scrappy survivor, and I will continue to be a survivor if I don’t panic before things turn into a complete three-strike disaster.

In any situation that I get myself into, if I can keep the number of misfortunes low, I think I have a pretty good chance of staying on the side of the living.

Right now, strike one was choosing Dave as a climbing partner.

Strike two was that Dave had dropped the rope.

Strike three will be if I lose my grip and fall to my death.

I’m not quite there yet. I just need to get him to pick the rope back up.

My fingers start to ache. I breathe through the pain. “I didn’t want to assume. I didn’t want to treat you like a piece of meat, you know? I value you as a climbing partner.”

Nothing.

“But now we’re on the same page, I think we should spend the rest of the day getting to know each other.”

Still nothing.

“Did you bring condoms?”

Dave clips the belayer device back into his harness. Ah, condoms. The magic word. The rope tightens so beautifully, tears come to my eyes.

“Ready to lower.” I hope my voice doesn’t sound as hoarse to him as it does to me.

“Lowering.”

I rappel down, my legs shaking until they touch the flat ground. “Off belay.” I give myself two seconds to freak out, then I shut that off. It’s a victory. I’m winning this game. I am down to one strike now—I can still get out of this.

My flirty smile is ready when I turn toward Dave. “Ready to pack up our gear and head back?”

Dave’s jaw relaxes. He looks relieved. “Hell yes.”

My mind races as we clean up the staging area at the base of the canyon wall. I have to get away from this psycho. Physically overpowering him isn’t an option. I am strong; my arms frequently stir envy in the hearts of gym bros. But unfortunately, so is Dave.

I’ll have to rely on cunning then. He already thinks of me as easy; I’ll use that.

I know how I came across, how I always come across.

People can somehow sense that I’ve made mistakes in the past. I don’t know what it is—a vibe, an invisible mark on my skin, a scent.

But no matter how much I try to present myself as a good girl, they somehow know.

I shouldn’t be surprised that Travis said that about me—who would believe otherwise from a girl like me?

I don’t have too much time for self-flagellation. The walk back to our campground is very short. I have to make it seem like I’m not a flight risk.

“I can’t believe you let go of the rope like that,” I say, playfully bumping his shoulder with mine. “What would you have done if I’d fallen, huh?”

“You had nothing to worry about. You’re such a good climber,” he says confidently. “I just wanted you somewhere you couldn’t run away, like you did yesterday.”

Oh, fuck this guy. Dave has gone climbing with me twice. Also, still fucking dangerous, even if I am the best damn climber in the world.

An intense desire to commit homicide rushes through me, but I once again tamp it down. Disaster prevention is the goal here. I can make a little voodoo doll of Dave to stick pins into when I am well away from him. Not that I have ever sewn a voodoo doll before, but it could be a fun project.

We approach the campground where my van is parked and his tent is pitched. “I’m going to go wash up, and I’ll come out to you when I’m done wiping myself down,” I invent.

He places a hand on my shoulder. I resist the urge to shudder. “We don’t need to wash up,” he protests.

I raise my eyebrows at him and cover his hand with mine.

“You don’t want us to wash up first? Ugh, but we’re so dusty and sweaty.

I’m kinky, but not that kinky,” I tease.

I take a step toward him and run my fingers along his pecs.

See? I’m into this too. You can leave me alone for a few minutes, I try to press into his mind. “I wanted to give you a blowjob, but…”

His eyes darken. “Never mind. Let’s wash up.”

“Great. Give me a few minutes to get sexy?” I give him a wink, then turn toward my van.