She didn’t want to consider how quickly the timbre of his voice had engraved itself on her consciousness, for good or ill. Instead, she fixed on the fear in his tone.Something had happened. Something bad.She quick-timed it back along her route, traversing a narrow crevice that barely held the tips of her climbing mocs, and then swinging around the corner almost blind, her entire weight suspended by the fingertips of her left hand as her right reached for the faraway hold. At deadpoint, the moment when her body stopped swinging up and gravity took over, she stretched extra hard and felt the grippy, sponge-like material beneath her fingertips. She grabbed it, felt sinew and muscle stretch, and then released with her left hand, letting gravity turn her into a pendulum as she lifted her legs and aimed for a narrow ledge that was maybe three inches wide.For a moment she was weightless. Flying. Free. Nothing else mattered. Then her toes hooked the ledge and she balanced there, no longer weightless, now shackled to the wall by the bonds of gravity and shackled to the present by the glowering man who stood twenty feet below.She turned and leaned back against the wall with her heels braced on the ledge, resentful that he’d interrupted and annoyed that she felt a sharp slice of guilt.
