Ty climbed with efficiency and precision of movement, making decisions about which handhold or foothold he would move to quickly and scaling the wall like a spider monkey. It was common sense: the longer he stayed clinging to one spot, the more fatigued his muscles would be and the more difficult it would be to continue upward.

Ty didn"t dally. He was heading steadily toward the middle of the wall and the large outcropping there.

“Great,” Zane muttered. “He would decide to take the toughest route.” As the rope grew taut in Zane"s hands, he carefully let loose some length so Ty could keep moving diagonally. The higher Ty got, the more Zane wished he"d been more insistent about staying in bed this morning, although he knew it was silly. Ty was a highly trained Marine, and a little rock wall like this was amateur hour to him. The thought really didn"t help Zane feel any better, though. Again he thought of Ty swinging around like a circus clown, and he pulled at his harness uncomfortably.

“Your friend"s a good climber,” Manny said appreciatively as he watched Ty"s agile ascent.

Ty slowed to a stop, briefly fussing with the line that had gotten tangled. “Tension!” he called down.

Zane pulled carefully on the line to tighten it up. “Yeah, he loves this kind of stuff,” he replied absently, not taking his eyes off his partner.

As soon as the slack was taken up, Ty started up and over again.

He was definitely moving toward the outcropping because it offered a more difficult climb. The outward incline meant the rope would take less of his weight as he went, and it was more taxing on his limbs as he pulled himself higher. Even from twenty-five to thirty feet below, Zane could see the muscles of Ty"s shoulders and forearms bulging as he neared the tip of the outcrop. It then occurred to Zane that he hadn"t even thought about Ty"s fingers. The surgery on Ty"s hand hadn"t been all that long ago, and Zane hadn"t asked if Ty had regained the strength and flexibility he was used to.

As if in answer to his question, Ty gave a short shout of frustration from above as he tried to grip one of the outermost notches with that hand. He pulled it back and shook it, looking down at them as he clung to the underside of the outcropping. He leaned much of his weight on the harness, more hanging in mid-air as he kept his hand on the wall than relying on the holds. Zane thought he might be grinning.

“Fingers!” Ty called down, shaking them.

Zane snorted. “Try using them!” he yelled back up, just to be annoying.

“I did! They didn"t like it!” Ty called down.

Zane could see him searching for a different hold, probably one that wouldn"t tax those weak fingers quite so much. Ty looked down at his harness suddenly, and at the same time Zane felt the rope lose tension in his hand. Zane pulled down on the rope to take up the slack, figuring Ty was preoccupied enough with his fingers not to call out.

Ty looked down at them in consternation. “Tension!” he shouted down, even as the rope grew slack once again in Zane"s hands. If Ty"s end was slack, Zane"s should have been getting tauter, not the other way around.

“What"s with the rope?” Zane asked Manny as he kept pulling on it without finding any resistance. He saw Ty glance down at him and then look up sharply, his entire body jerking in alarm at some warning that Zane couldn"t hear or see. Ty"s free hand scrabbled at his harness, almost in a panic that was highly uncharacteristic of him.

“Rock!” Ty called out, his voice just as panicked as his actions.

The warning that an object was falling confused Zane just as much as realizing Ty was trying to untie the securing knot that bound the rope to his harness. The rope in Zane"s hand suddenly thumped to the ground at his feet, and there was a whipping noise as dozens of feet of the heavy blue nylon rope fell from the heights of the rock wall.

“Hold on!” Zane yelled as he realized the anchor rope had just snapped. There was nothing he could do but watch, shocked and sick and scared as Ty fought to find purchase on the wall more than thirty feet above him.

As the rope fell, Ty was still trying to free himself from it. People waiting in line for their turn at the wall began to scream as they saw the two halves of the rope falling. The shorter end of the broken rope, the one still attached to Ty, fell past him just as he whipped the knot loose and threw it away from his body. But the weight of the heavy, falling rope was enough to pull at him even as he let it go, and Zane watched in horror as it dragged his body away from the outcropping.

Ty gave a wordless shout as his legs and one arm swung free from the wall. The rope landed with an anticlimactic thud several yards away from where Zane stood. Thirty feet above, Ty dangled from the outcropping by one hand, body twisting as if buffeted by the ocean breeze.

“Throw down another rope,” Zane demanded of Manny, who was on a two-way radio, waving at someone at the top of the wall.

“Inflatable cushion? Anything?” Frustrated beyond belief, Zane moved to try to stay where Ty could see him, close enough that he might be able to do… something. His heart was in his throat and blood was rushing in his ears. It was one thing to be in trouble and stay calm. It was another to be stuck watching it, helpless.

Ty hung there motionless for an eternity. He didn"t kick his feet in a panic or even try to reach for an extra handhold with his free hand.

The only things keeping him from falling to the doom he"d joked about not ten minutes before were five white-knuckled fingers.

He looked down at Zane as everyone on the platform scrambled.

“That sucked, man,” Ty called down in a frustratingly calm voice.

There was a jitter of nervous laughter and gasps from the watching crowd.

Zane shaded his eyes as he looked up at his partner and swallowed hard before answering. “Will you quit showing off!” he yelled, trying to play off the fear buzzing in the air around them.

“Don"t panic, sir!” Manny called up, sounding frantic himself.

Losing a wealthy passenger in a freak climbing wall accident probably wouldn"t look good on him or the cruise line. Neither would the blood smear.

Ty twisted and reached out slowly for the wall. He was hanging from the very tip of the outcropping, possibly the worst place for him to have been stranded. He couldn"t get his feet under him for purchase until he moved. And moving would be hard with only one hand. On the plus side, if he"d been anywhere else on the wall, he probably would have fallen when the rope did.

Ty gripped another hold, and Zane saw the muscles in his shoulders and back bunch as he tried to pull himself further up. When his hand slipped away from the wall again, Zane heard a very un-British curse drift down.

Zane clamped down on the urge to yell at Ty, instead turning to Manny. “Is there anyone up top to drop a secure line?”

“They"re working on it, sir,” Manny said shakily, holding up the two-way.

Zane grabbed it out of his hand and pressed the talk button as he returned his attention to Ty. “Who"s up there?” he snapped. But there was no answer. The attendants who had been up there when Ty started the climb were gone, hopefully in search of another rope.

Above, Ty had regained his hold on the wall with both hands and was merely hanging limp. “It"s this damn ring,” he called down. “My fingers,” he continued, not actually finishing any of the sentences he started as he looked up and around him. It was harder to hear what he said when he looked up, but when he looked back down the people below could hear him say, “The pessimist says, „It can"t get any worse!" And the optimist replies, „Oh yes it can!"”

The crowd tittered nervously, not sure whether to laugh.

Ty released one hand and made a swipe for a handhold further away, but he missed and swayed precariously before securing himself to the original one again.

“Jokes. He"s cracking jokes,” Zane said under his breath, deciding that once Ty had both feet on the ground he was going to smack him.

Hard. Right after he kissed him unconscious.

Ty had sense enough to remain quiet after that as he continued struggling to find a way up or down, left or right. He made several more failed attempts at swinging himself around the edge of the narrow outcropping, during the last of which he lost his grip with both hands and very nearly plummeted the thirty or so feet to the platform. He slid several inches, scrabbling at the wall with both hands: a split-second of honest-to-God free fall. Zane thought his heart was going to stop on the spot before Ty was able to catch another hold and stop himself.

Ty didn"t shout or scream or even curse, which to Zane meant either Ty truly was beginning to panic or his fatigued muscles were about to give out and he was expending all his energy on holding on.

Either way, they had to get him down.

The fall, however, proved fortuitous. Now farther below the outcropping with his good hand in a different position, Ty had more options. As two men at the top of the wall finally came to the edge with a new rope and shouted down frantically, Ty was able to pull himself over, slide his toes onto something solid, and press close to the wall. He practically sagged in relief as he rested his arms.

The attendants tossed two new ropes down, both ends landing a few feet away from where Zane stood. Manny rushed to grab one end and attach it to the belay device on his own harness, the other to another staffer, who shouted wordlessly up once they were both hooked up. One of the attendants above swung over the edge, slowly making his way down toward Ty with the other end of the new rope.

Despite the relief of this imminent rescue, the man was still a good fifteen feet above Ty, and his progress down was slow. There was a ripple of gasps and murmurs as Ty began to slowly climb up toward the man who was descending.

“No, sir! Stay where you are!” one of the staffers called out.

“Calm down, kid,” Ty called back in annoyance as he continued to climb slowly. It was obvious to Zane"s eyes that Ty was tired and being far more careful than he had been when attached to the ropes. He was going slowly but making the same pace as the man attempting the difficult descent.

“Hey, Lone Star!” Ty called down again.

Zane snorted and rubbed his hand over his face. “What?” he yelled back.

“A rope walks into a bar,” Ty announced. He paused dramatically as he struggled with finding a foothold. Then he went on, his voice strained with the physical effort. “Orders a beer. Bartender tells him,

„We don"t serve ropes in here." So the rope leaves the bar and goes outside, asks a guy passing to fray him at both ends and tie him in a knot. The guy does what the rope asks, and then the rope goes back inside and orders a beer. The bartender looks at him and asks, „Aren"t you that rope that was just in here?" And the rope says, „I"m a frayed knot!"”

Another ripple of nervous laughter and a smattering of clapping met his words. The crowd had grown considerably larger since news of possible death and dismemberment had spread.

Zane stared up at Ty, at a loss for a long moment. Then he called out, “How long have you been saving that one?” He knew his voice was bordering on strident, but Zane didn"t care. He was mad, upset, and scared, dammit! And all Ty could do was tell jokes!

“Been waiting until it was relevant,” Ty called down with a short laugh. He sounded winded from trying to talk and climb at the same time. He steadied himself where he had his feet on two solid holds and then pressed his forehead to the wall, flattened like a bug on a windshield. Zane growled in frustration. At least Ty had enough sense to know when he"d reached his limit.

Luckily the man climbing to him was only feet from him, and soon he reached him with the rope and began looping it through the carabiner rings on Ty"s harness. For a short moment, Zane was so lightheaded with relief that he thought he might fall over. Instead he turned to Manny and asked, “Where are the stairs to get up there?”

“Stairs?” Manny echoed. He looked shellshocked.

“To the top of the wall. Where are they?” Zane said insistently, glancing up to see Ty moving again, now safety anchored and getting closer to the top. He would be determined to reach the top rather than just pushing away from the wall and letting them lower him down.

Manny pointed to the side of the fake rock façade, and with one more look to check on Ty"s progress, Zane took off at a run to get up there. He rushed the steps and made it to the top just in time to see two men helping Ty over the edge of the wall. Ty crawled away from the edge and immediately flattened to the floor, looking like he was trying to hug the solid ground. Zane dropped to his knees right next to him, reaching down to touch and reassure himself that Ty was okay.

“Baby?” Zane whispered, the panic echoing through him again now that it was over.

Ty looked up at him in surprise, and this close Zane could see that despite the jokes he"d been cracking, Ty"s entire body was shaking, and he was covered with a fine sheen of sweat. “Did you fly up here?” Ty asked incredulously as he pushed himself up.

Zane didn"t answer, didn"t even think; he just pulled Ty into his arms and held him close, letting the fear rush through him and slowly start to dissipate.

Ty hugged him back hard, one arm around Zane"s neck as he twisted awkwardly, still on his knees.

“Are you okay?” Zane asked shakily.

“I"m afraid not,” Ty whispered against Zane"s neck, his voice barely audible. He began to shake silently, his body trembling with nervous laughter. Zane huffed and hugged him closer, but he didn"t think it was too damn funny.

After a long minute of being unable to let go, Zane finally pulled back enough to fumble with the buckle of Ty"s helmet and yank it off.

He tossed the thing to the side so he could kiss Ty gently and pull him close again. It was a struggle to hold himself together, and Zane really didn"t want to make a scene, but…. “Jesus, baby,” he said brokenly.