Thirty Below. Harry Groome

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      THIRTY BELOW

      by

      Harry Groome

      ALSO BY HARRY GROOME

      Wing Walking

      The Girl Who Fished with a Worm

      for my natal pack

      “The snows and the camp-fire, with wolves at my feet.

      Good-bye, for it’s safer up there.”

      —Robert Service

      THIRTY BELOW

      1

      HER ADVENTURE BEGAN on a Saturday, one much like every Saturday in her life, a life she would describe as “going nowhere, unless you consider a dead-end somewhere.” Adele Caroline Ritter, called Carrie by almost everyone for as long as she could remember, was standing in her morning shower thinking being warm was the best part of her life. She loved the warm weather in southern California; loved lying around at the beach, loved her tanning salon, and loved taking hot showers at the start of every day. She thought all were warm and good and with all these good warm things at her fingertips, what more could a girl want? The thought caused her to let out a short laugh for the answer was more. Tons more.

      The man of her dreams for starters.

      And a new job.

      And a change of scene.

      And anything else that would be new and exciting.

      She kneaded shampoo into her blonde curls and, for a moment, wondered about the weather in Alaska and then turned the shower dial past the red temperature-warning button and raised her chin so the water hit the top of her head, rinsed her soapy shoulders and washed over her back and hips and down her legs and swirled around her narrow, long-toed feet. She pressed her hands against the shower wall, inspected her nails and thought she’d get a manicure, something she did every Saturday because it was part of being a professional even though most of the time her hands were hidden in vinyl gloves. She turned her hands front and back. Not ugly, she thought, but big. Really big. It was a wonder one of her patients hadn’t said something.

      While she was thinking about the size of her hands she thought she heard a sound in the living room and pushed open the shower door and called, “Hannah, that you?” but the small apartment was quiet except for the pulsing hum of the air conditioners. She listened a moment longer and stepped back under the shower and began to sing to feel less alone. She sang Hard Hearted Hannah, the song she thought must have been written about her roommate, Hannah Hall. She was singing, “Talk of your cold, refrigerating mammas, brother, she’s the polar bear’s pajamas!” when once more she thought she’d heard a noise in the living room. Again she pushed the shower door open and leaned her head out. “Hannah? You home?”

      Still there was no answer. “Hello!” she said, and waited. “Hello? Is anybody there?”

      Maybe Hannah’s right, she thought. Maybe she should give up caffeine or maybe tonight’s long-awaited date had put her on edge. She took a deep breath and forced herself to relax and watched the water rinse the soapy bubbles from her breasts. Not flat as pancakes, but not great either and she wondered if old Doctor-Boobs-dot-com, or whatever his name was, could help. It wasn’t like maxillofacial surgery or anything; it was only a couple of incisions and silicone shells for Pete’s sake. Maybe it would be worth the $7,500 if it would help her find Mr. Right.

      She turned off the shower and swept water from her thighs and calves. When she finished drying herself, she draped her towel over the sink and stepped on the scales. Her weight hadn’t changed since college and it was one of the few constants in her life that pleased her, for she knew from her years of being a swimmer at USC that one hundred and forty-six pounds was the right weight for a woman with her build who stood five feet eleven inches tall. She rewrapped her towel and began to blow dry her hair, adding another mental note to tell her hairdresser that she was tired of her curly blonde ponytail hanging from the back of a baseball cap like all the other girls in La Jolla and that she had to do something new and different.

      The idea of something new made her smile, something she felt she should do more often because, by her own professional analysis, her teeth were straight, a good size and a one or a two on the tooth shade whiteness scale. “The perfect pearly whites for a dental hygienist,” was the constant refrain of the dentist she worked for, and she shook her head as she swept the blow dryer over her curls, silently cursing her boss for standing too close to her in the examining room, occasionally pressing against her or brushing her butt with his small, delicate hands. She dismissed these thoughts as part of a bigger problem, moved the blow dryer quickly about her head, and decided to take inventory.

      She began by focusing on her large green eyes in the mirror, gave them a better than average grade and thought her teeth and weight were okay, maybe even better than okay, but worried that she was too tall for most men and that her hands and feet were too large. Her breasts were adequate, but nothing to write home about. Her hair color also was nothing special, although she thought her tight curls were distinctive—kind of her trademark—and shook her head and said aloud, “But shoulders like a linebacker, and hips like a little boy.”

      When she’d almost finished drying her hair, for what seemed like the thousandth time, she debated the pros and cons of getting the tattoo that most people never saw. Why did I ever do that, she wondered. For breaking sixty seconds in the 100-meter fly, that’s why. She unwrapped her towel and began to turn to look in the mirror at the red and blue tattoo of a butterfly on the small of her tanned back, to re-convince herself that it was stylish—hopefully even sexy—but as she turned, she saw something flicker in the corner of the mirror and held the blow dryer still above her shoulder. Her heart began to race and her body shook with adrenalin when a thick forearm covered with coarse black hair slid across her breasts and pulled her hard against its owner.

      Carrie screamed for holy Jesus and looked in the mirror at a tall man pressing against her from behind. She expected to see a stranger wearing a stocking or a ski mask over his head but instead, Jake Hornbeck was undisguised and laughing, his muscular body naked from the waist up.

      “Scare you?” he said.

      “What do you think?” Carrie said, struggling to pry his arm from her chest. “Now let go of me.”

      Her efforts only seemed to tighten his grasp and she felt a sudden rush of panic as she realized that she was at this man’s mercy for he was the strongest man she’d ever encountered, certainly way too strong for her. “Jake, let go of me,” she said again, and told him that he wasn’t funny, but as she pleaded with him she felt his arm tighten even more, and watched the muscles of his forearm flex, and for an instant thought that his heavily haired arm looked so out of place pressing against her breasts, still pink from the warm shower. “Please, Jake,” she coughed out, “I don’t like this and you know it. Remember? The rough stuff is one of the—”

      “Ah, come on, Carrie,” he interrupted, and continued to grin at her in the mirror. “I thought I’d give you a surprise. To change your mind about Alaska.”

      “It’s not about Alaska, Jake. It’s about you and me. And no matter what you do you can’t change my mind about us.” She stared at him in the mirror, trying to sort through her thoughts that were now jumbled by fear. “How did you get in here anyway?”

      “You gave me a key, remember?”

      “But that was before…” She turned off the blow dryer and placed it in the sink. Even though she was having a hard time breathing, the bathroom seemed a little more settled, even a bit more hopeful, without the whirring sound. She rested her hands on the sides of the basin and tried to draw a full breath, all the while staring at Jake in the mirror. She was repulsed by the Death Before Dishonor and scorpion tattoos on his biceps and shoulder. They said so much about him; reflected his dark side that it had taken her so long to discover.

      Jake