Summer Fling

‘You can’t do that.’ Kyla caught his arm but he shrugged her off.

‘I have to. We don’t know what his injuries are. He’s afraid and on his own. Someone needs to be down there with him.’

‘You can’t just jump, Ethan. It’s too far. You’ll break something.’

‘I’m not jumping.’ He removed his coat. ‘There are enough handholds in this place to climb down.’

‘Are you kidding?’ She eyed him with incredulity. ‘The wall is completely smooth.’

‘No, it isn’t. Stay there for a moment and then hand me the torch when I say so. Fraser?’ He raised his voice and wriggled his body through the gap in the gate. ‘I’m coming down to you. Just hang on.’

There was no answer, only the hollow plop of water, and suddenly Kyla felt sick herself. She ought to stop Ethan doing something so rash but she knew now that Fraser’s life could be at stake. Why wasn’t he answering? Was he unconscious?

Ethan gave a grunt as he anchored himself and held out a hand. ‘Hand me the torch.’

‘But you won’t have any hands to hold on, and—’

‘The torch, Kyla!’

‘All right.’ She bit back the impulse the tell him to be careful. They were all way past the point of being careful.

He took the torch in his mouth and started to descend with a smooth agility that astonished her.

And then she remembered the way he ran in the mornings. He may have been brought up in a city, but there was no doubting his physical fitness. Still, physical fitness was one thing. Climbing down a wall into a long abandoned dungeon was quite another.

Fifteen minutes, Kyla calculated, feeling the thump of her heart and the dampness of her palms. That was how long it would take Nick and a rescue team to reach them. Would that be fifteen minutes too long for Fraser?

They had no idea about the extent of his injuries.

All they knew now was that he wasn’t responding to their questions.

She didn’t dare flash the torch in case she distracted Ethan from his task. Instead she sat and forced herself to breathe steadily, braced to hear the sound of his powerful body crashing to the ground.

‘I’m down, Kyla.’ His voice echoed up to her from the bowels of the dungeon. ‘Can you shine some extra light down here? It’s pitch dark.’

She did as he’d asked, hugely relieved that he’d made it that far without injury to himself. And then she heard noise from above her and realised that the rescue party had arrived. ‘They’re here, Ethan. Have you found him? Is Fraser OK?’ Suddenly she wished she’d been the one to go down the shaft. She felt so helpless, just sitting at the top. If she hadn’t been holding the torch, she would have bitten her nails down to the quick.

‘He has a nasty laceration to his forehead and some bruising, but I don’t think anything is broken. He’s OK. Conscious. Just a bit weak.’

And extremely frightened, Kyla was willing to bet. She could hear Ethan talking to the boy and then there was a crunch of footsteps behind her and she turned to see Logan standing there, along with Nick and two other members of the coastguard.

‘We’ve brought ropes, and there’s more equipment up top.’ A light shone from the helmet on Nick’s head. ‘Give us an update.’

‘Ethan is down there so it shouldn’t be too hard to get him out,’ Kyla said, moving onto her hands and knees so that she could get a better look over the edge. ‘Ethan?’

‘Drop a harness on a rope?’ Logan turned to Ben. ‘We can bring him up that way.’

Ben nodded agreement. ‘That will certainly be the quickest way if the boy is up to it. Is he conscious?’

‘Yes, I think so.’ Kyla supplied the information they needed, and Ben frowned.

‘How the hell did Ethan get down there?’

‘He climbed down.’ And Kyla was still wondering how a man who dressed in suits costing thousands of pounds could so skilfully negotiate a sheer and slippery face.

‘Without a rope?’

Kyla heard the disapproval in Ben’s voice and threw him an impatient glance. ‘Fraser stopped talking. We were worried about him. If you were the one sitting here, would you have waited for a rope?’