Chapter 3 The Shed Doesn't Lie

POV: Thessaly Vance

"There you are, Miss Vance."

The flashlight dropped from my face before I could even blink the spots out of my eyes, and the man behind it stepped closer with a smile that didn't match anything that had just happened to me. Gray hair. Camp jacket zipped to the chin even though it wasn't that cold. I recognized him from the welcome meeting on my first day.

Aldous Wrey. Camp operations director. The man who signs off on every route, every permit, every summit window on this mountain.

"Mr. Wrey." My voice still shook. I hated that it did. "Someone cut my rope tonight."

His eyebrows went up, polite and mild, like I'd told him the coffee ran out at breakfast. "Cut it?"

"Halfway through. On purpose. I fell three feet before it caught."

He glanced at Kester standing beside me, and something passed over his face too fast for me to read, gone before I could catch it. "And you are?"

"Camp medic," Kester said. Flat. Careful. Nothing more than that.

Aldous nodded slowly, as that answer satisfied him completely, which struck me as strange, because it hadn't satisfied me at all an hour ago and it still didn't now. He turned back to me with the same easy smile.

"Let's take a look, shall we?"

He walked us to the wall himself, shined his own light up the rope, and I watched his face for any sign of alarm, any flicker of the fear I'd seen on Kester's face when he found that same cut. There was nothing. He ran his thumb along the frayed edge, hummed to himself, and stepped back.

"Old gear," he said. "Ropes wear thin in spots you can't always see from the outside. Happens more than people think, especially with equipment that's been through a full season already."

"It was cut," I said again, slower this time, like maybe he hadn't heard me right. "That's not fraying. That's a clean line."

"I understand you're shaken up. That's completely normal after a fall, even a small one." His voice stayed gentle, the kind of gentle you use on a child who's scared of thunder. "I'll have the whole rack of ropes swapped out first thing tomorrow, just to be safe. No climber should feel nervous on my wall."

"That's it? You're not even going to report it?"

"Report what, exactly? Bad luck?" He smiled again, and this time it didn't reach his eyes at all. "Get some sleep, Miss Vance. You've got a big summit window coming. Wouldn't want you exhausted for it."

He walked off into the dark without waiting for me to answer, and I stood there with my fists curled so tight my nails bit into my palms.

I didn't sleep.

An hour before sunrise, I gave up trying and walked straight to the equipment shed myself, alone this time, no stranger with a headlamp waiting to grab my arm. I went through every rope on the rack with my own hands, feeling for what Aldous claimed was ordinary wear, checking each one the way my father taught me, hands first, then by ear, tapping and listening the way you'd check a melon for ripeness.

Every single one of them was fine. Every one except mine.

Which meant somebody walked into this shed, picked my rope out of a dozen others, and cut it on purpose. Not bad luck. Not old gear. A choice. Somebody made a choice to hurt me, specifically, and Aldous had looked me dead in the eye and called it nothing.

"You shouldn't be in here alone."

I spun around so fast I knocked a coil of webbing off the shelf. Kester stood in the doorway, and something about seeing him again in daylight made my stomach do something complicated and unwelcome, a flutter I didn't have room for on a morning like this one.

"Neither should you," I shot back, "considering you're apparently not even supposed to be working nights."

"I needed to find you before you did something reckless."

"Too late. I already climbed a cut rope in the dark last night, remember?"

That almost got a smile out of him. Almost. It died fast, replaced by something tighter, more urgent, the same look he'd worn right before he told me my father's private habit like it was something he'd memorized from watching me a hundred times before.

"Thessaly, listen to me." He stepped closer, and his voice dropped into that same flat certainty from before, the one that made my skin prickle. "Don't attempt the north face on the fourth day of your summit window. I need you to promise me that."

"The fourth day. You keep saying that like it's already written somewhere."

"It is."

"Written where? By who?" I crossed my arms, daring him with my eyes to give me something real for once instead of another cryptic warning wrapped around a half-truth. "How do you even know my summit window? I haven't told anyone the exact dates. Not camp staff, not my sponsor, nobody. I only finalized it two days ago with Aldous, in his office, alone."

Something shifted behind his eyes. Not surprise. Calculation, like he was deciding in real time exactly how much truth he could afford to hand me without breaking something he wasn't ready to break yet.

"I can't explain that part," he said quietly.

"Can't, or won't?"

"Does it matter?"

"It matters to me!" The words came out louder than I meant them to, echoing off the shed's metal walls. "You knew my rope would fail before it failed. You knew my father's habits before I ever mentioned him. Now you know a private summit date I haven't told a living soul. Either you're something I don't have a name for, or you're the one who's been watching me a lot closer than any medic ever should. Pick one, Kester, because I can't keep standing here trusting a stranger who won't tell me anything real."

He opened his mouth as he might finally answer, really answer, and for one second I thought I was finally going to get something honest out of him.

Then his eyes dropped past my shoulder, toward the back corner of the shed, and every ounce of color drained out of his face for the second time in twelve hours.

I turned to look.

The rope rack behind me, the one I'd just finished checking rope by rope, hands and ears, every single line accounted for and safe not ten minutes ago, was missing one.

The gap sat right in the middle of the rack, an empty hook where a coiled line used to hang, and dust already settling into the space like it had been gone for hours, not minutes.

"That one was there," I whispered. "I checked it myself. I checked all of them."

Kester didn't answer. He was already moving, fast, toward the shed door, and when he threw it open, his whole body went rigid at whatever he saw outside, some sight that stole the words right out of him before he could even warn me.

"Kester. What is it?"

He turned back to me, and for the first time since I'd met him, he looked truly, completely afraid.

"They already took it up the mountain," he said. "Someone's already on the wall."