“Will it give at all?”
His body trembles, his eyes shutting for a moment. Then he lowers his arms. “Might just need to re-approach it from another angle,” he says, looking briefly at his feet.
As I peer up at it, he walks around me, nudging my arm gently as he does. The motion is so feather-light, I might have imagined it. I watch as he strides back to the stream, splashing water on his face and hair before he bends into a crouch, breathing perhaps a bit hard.
I’m not sure what to do with myself, and I’m feeling nearly faint with terror, so I join him, bending over and dipping my cupped hands into the stream for a drink.
When I straighten up again, he’s looking at me, his head tilted sideways like my dog Heath used to when he saw something that puzzled him.
“How ya holding up, Siren?” he asks quietly.
“Better if you’d stop using that ridiculous name.”
“Fin?”
“Never—if you value your life.” Someone I loathe calls me that, and I dislike it intensely.
“Finny?”
“Of cou
rse not. I will warn you, though, I’m calling you ‘the Carnegie’ in my inner monologue.” I don’t mean to flash him a wicked smile. It just happens.
“The Carnegie?” His mouth opens. “That sounds like a villain name.”
“So it does.”
“Tell me, Finny. Do you have a hatchet in that bag of yours? Something I could use to chip away at the rim of the cave’s mouth—the rim of rock around that stone? If I could get rid of some of that rock, I could maybe get my hand around the motherfucker.”
By that, I assume he means the boulder.
I don’t have a hatchet, but I have a hammer. I give it to him and fiddle with my broken radio while he starts hacking at the rim of the cave’s mouth. I know for sure the radio is broken, but I keep toying with it anyway.
I feel as if I’m in a Hitchcock film, where everything is menacing and surreal. I’m locked in a nightmare, and the stranger out in front of me is all that’s standing between me and utter isolation.
* * *
Declan
She’s nervous. Not just because we’re stuck here, but because of me, too. I saw her fucking with that broken radio last night before she fell asleep, and as I chip at the rim of rock around the motherfucking boulder, I see her messing with it again. When she thinks I’m not looking, her gaze runs up and down my body. When I glance her way, it falls back to her lap.
The hammer she had in her bag is a wall hammer, the kind that people use for climbing. One side is more flat, the other more pointed. Neither side is great for chipping rock, but the rim of the cave’s mouth is sort of flaky, like slate, so I’m making a little bit of progress. I try not to think about how long it might take to chip away enough to move the stone that’s got us trapped here.
Fuck, I’m getting lightheaded from not eating. Last night, I saw a couple of meal bars in her bag, and I know I should probably ask for one. Doesn’t matter if I’ve got an appetite; gotta fuel up if I’m going to work. Right about the time my stomach growls, I hear the distinctive rip of a wrapper and look across the way to find her munching on one of said bars. A moment later, she’s on her feet, coming to stand slightly behind me.
I turn to find her with her eyebrows arched, her delicate face soft with what looks a little bit like shyness.
“Would you like an Atkins bar? I had several stashed in my bag.”
For a second, I’m just looking at her—trying to reconcile that soft voice and pretty face with all those smartass comments. Who is this woman? I like calling her “siren” because it gets a rise, but maybe she’s more mermaid. The more I’m around her, the more I get the feeling that her temper masks a secret soft side. Something sort of like shyness.
I blink. “Yeah.” She passes the bar to me. “Thanks.”
She stands there looking at me for a minute. Then she crouches, rising with a stone in hand. It’s flat with jagged-looking edges. As she looks at it, she murmurs something.
“Mmm?”
“It might have been a lightning strike.” She holds the stone out. “I think this is from the arch. Look…” She turns the stone over, and something flashes on it. It’s a metal bar, shaped like a giant staple. “Years back, someone welded these into the arch, so when the youth would climb it, there’d be safer handholds.”