by J L Raven
Tiffany returned from the kitchen with a backpack I hadn’t seen before. “Lunch is all packed,” she said, patting it. “Is everyone ready to clear our heads in the great outdoors?”
We bundled into our warmest coats, scarves, gloves, and hats, and followed her outside into the cold.
If the sun had been shining, the walk might have had the intended effect. But the day was as gloomy as the one before, only this time with the addition of snow to hide any holes we might step in. At least it wasn’t actively snowing at the moment.
A marked trail led to the falls, but it was narrow and uneven. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the landscape hadn’t consisted largely of small ravines, oftentimes with streams at the bottom. Tiffany and Adam moved through the terrain as though they belonged in it. The rest of us…not so much.
Most of the creeks were easy to step across, but Melissa’s foot went through the thin ice overlaying one, and she ended up with water over the top of her boot.
“Yikes!” She yanked her foot out and nearly fell. “Damn it, that’s cold!”
I extended a hand and hauled her the rest of the way up the slope. “Will you be all right?”
She glanced at Adam’s retreating back and sighed. “I guess I’d better be.”
By the time we reached the falls, I practically had to force my aching legs up the slope. Melissa trailed well behind the rest of us, and even Rick looked winded. We could hear the water long before we could see it: a deep, dull roar that my brain kept expecting to fade away, but instead went endlessly on and on.
Tiffany and Adam came to a halt and waited for us to catch up. “I have to ask you to stay back from the edge,” she said. “The falls are beautiful, but dangerous, and there’s no guard rail. The snow and ice will make the rocks even more treacherous than usual, so be careful.”
We all nodded to show we were paying attention, except for Adam, who looked bored with her speech. Tiffany led the way out through the trees and back into the watery daylight. I followed, then stopped, my breath catching in my throat.
All the discomfort from the hike seemed to fade into nothing at the sight before me. A plume of water poured from the steep cliff above, roared past us, and cascaded hundreds of feet into the gorge below. The main part of the stream remained unfrozen, but great streamers of ice, too enormous to be called mere icicles, clung to the rocks around it, piling up on one another until they resembled frosting on a wedding cake. The very stones vibrated under my boots from the sheer force of thousands of gallons of water striking the rock. A group of birds—ravens, I thought—tumbled through the abyss before us, playing tag on the wind funneling through the gorge.
The clouds thinned, and the first sunlight I’d seen since the trip began broke through the clouds. The haze of mist hanging above the waterfall glittered until it formed a miniature rainbow.
“Do you see?” Adam asked, yelling to be heard over the thunder of the falls. “This is why I wanted us to come here. To see real, authentic wilderness that hasn’t been tamed or pre-packaged.”
An odd feeling of peace descended over me. I’d never imagined myself as one for the glories of nature, but the ice wall and the falls were truly spectacular. For the first time I understood why people would willingly subject themselves to bad weather or rough terrain.
This was exactly the sort of place Dorie and Janice—my half sisters—would have tried to convince me to come to, laughing at my insistence that all the athletic genes were on their mom’s side. I imagined Dorie’s face if she’d been here instead of me, her dark eyes wide with wonder.
Everyone else seemed equally entranced. Since we had to shout to make ourselves understood, lunch was mostly silent. Tiffany distributed the sandwiches, then took out a thermos and poured coffee into stackable mugs for us.
After a while, muscles warmed from the hike started to cool off. Melissa shivered, and Rick paced up and down, as if to hold off the cold. Adam, on the other hand, seemed fascinated by the cliff.
“Adam,” Yasmine called sharply. “Come back from there. One of those huge icicles might break off and kill you.”
He swiveled around and gave her an annoyed look. “I know what I’m doing.”
And just like that, whatever peace had settled over the group was shattered. “Can we go back now?” Melissa asked. “I’m sorry, but my foot’s gone numb.”
Adam rolled his eyes. “Fine. Just standing here is boring anyway.”
“We do have some gear for ice climbing back at the lodge,” Tiffany said hesitantly. “But I think that might be a little too advanced a challenge for this weekend.”
A sneer curled Adam’s lip as he glanced at the rest of us. “You can say that again.”
Eleven
Melissa started the walk back limping. She did her best to hide it, but by the time we reached the lodge, she was leaning on Tiffany for support.
Tiffany took her straight to the fire and helped pull her shoe off. The inside was sopping wet, the sock soaked. Melissa’s brown toes had taken on a bluish tinge.
“Can you feel this?” Tiffany asked, touching Melissa’s big toe.
Melissa shook her head. “My whole foot is numb.”
“All right. Just angle it toward the fire, and I’ll heat some water to soak it in. It looks like you’re bleeding a bit on the heel—just a raw spot, nothing to worry about.”
The rest of us fetched drinks while Tiffany tended to Melissa. I would have killed for some more coffee, but since we had to make it over the fire, and Tiffany was busy heating water for Melissa, I settled for neat whiskey. Then we huddled as close to the heat as possible, while still giving Tiffany room.
“The feeling is coming back,” Melissa reported with a wince.
“That’s a good sign.” Tiffany removed the pot she’d been heating the water in and tested it. “Now, this is just tepid, but it’s going to feel like it’s scalding on your toes.”
Melissa whimpered as she lowered her foot into the big pot. “I think we’re out of supplies and you’re cooking me for dinner,” she managed to joke through her obvious pain.
“I don’t think we’ve become quite desperate enough to re-enact the Donner Party,” Rick said.
“Let’s just hope we don’t run out of coffee. If that happens, I can’t be held responsible for my actions.” I mimed a shudder. It got a laugh out of everyone but Yasmine.
Having done what she could to help Melissa, Tiffany rose to her feet and turned her attention to the balloons bumping slowly along the ceiling. “Now that we’ve cleansed our spirits outdoors, is everyone ready for Balloon Question?”
Rick grimaced, his eyes flashing up to the balloons, then back down. Interesting. Had he written something earlier in the heat of the moment, which he was regretting now that he’d had a chance to cool off?
“That’s what we’re here for,” I said.
“Great.” Tiffany clapped her hands together, as if we’d all cheered at the prospect. “Okay, here’s a pin to pop the balloons with. Who wants to go first?”
“I’ll do it,” Rick said quickly. I wondered if he hoped to get his own balloon and pretend to read off a different question than the one he’d written down. Taking the pin from Tiffany, he stared up at the balloons and their dangling strings for a minute. He must have used the same color as someone else; otherwise, he would have grabbed his immediately.
“Just pick one,” Adam said impatiently.
Rick bit his lip and grabbed the string to a purple balloon. He pulled it down, popped it, and caught the slip of paper inside before it could tumble to the floor. He unfolded it…and his face fell.
Wrong guess, it seemed.
“How do we, as a company, learn from our failures?” he read.
I glanced across at everyone else’s faces. I’d thought my question was innocuous enough, but Adam looked angry, Melissa worried, and Rick faintly ill. Only Yasmine gave nothing away. The walk through the woods seemed to have given her time to reconstruct her lawyer expression.
“Well,” I said, since it seemed no one else was going to speak up, “I guess the healthiest way to deal with failure is to face it head on. Accept the consequences. Learn from our mistakes and work hard to make sure they don’t happen again.”
Melissa removed her foot from the pot and dried it on a towel Tiffany had provided. “I need to get a sock from my cabin.”
“I’ll get it,” Tiffany said quickly. “That way you won’t miss out on anything. Back in a jiffy.”
Melissa didn’t seem thrilled by Tiffany’s offer, but she handed over her cabin key without arguing. Once Tiffany was gone, I looked around. “So, what do the rest of you think? About failure, I mean?”
Adam gestured in my direction with the drink in his hand. “My advice: don’t fail to begin with.”
“Just be perfect like you,” Yasmine murmured, loud enough for us all to hear.
Adam scowled. “I didn’t build Agonarch from the ground up by failing.”
Right. If you don’t admit to failing, you can pretend there aren’t any consequences. No need to learn or change anything.
Being in finance, I knew Adam had built Agonarch with a healthy infusion to the tune of eight million dollars from his father. Certainly everyone else here did as well, but no one challenged his self-made man story.
“Next balloon,” Melissa said. “Rick, would you get one for me so I don’t have to get up?”
Rick fetched the lone blue balloon and passed it to her along with the pin. She held it at arm’s length to pop it. Unfolding the paper, she read, “How can the team better support upper management?”
No guesses as to who wrote that one. I managed to keep from rolling my eyes in Adam’s direction, but only barely.
“We keep in mind whose vision we’re following,” Rick said quickly. And maybe it was part of his usual suck-up routine, but maybe he was hoping to distance himself from whatever he’d written for his own question. “Sometimes it’s easy to get lost in our own day-to-day, focus too heavily on our own problems. We have to keep in mind where leadership is taking us.”
“Like sled dogs,” I said. “They all pull together, but there’s one out in front.”
Yasmine gave me a look as though she was trying to decide if I was being sarcastic. Rick and Melissa nodded their agreement.
Adam grinned at me. “Now see? That’s a much better answer. You’re catching on.”
“I’ll go next,” I volunteered. I was dying to know what Rick had written down. Since he’d picked my balloon, it stood to reason his was in the remaining purple one.
I grasped the string and pulled it down. Rick paled and looked around. “Tiffany’s been gone awhile. Do you think she needs help?”
“It hasn’t been that long.” I returned to the group and Melissa handed me the pin. I popped the balloon, and the slip of paper fell to the floor. Picking it up, I read, “This is a joke. We’re only here to stroke Adam’s ego.”
Dead silence followed. Adam slowly lowered his drink as his face turned red with fury. Everyone else exchanged queasy looks, except for Rick, who stared fixedly at the paper.
“Who wrote that?” Adam’s voice was more growl than anything.
Yasmine tipped her head back. “I think the more interesting question is: is it true?”
His glare focused on her. “I’ve got another question: why is Yasmine such a bitch?”
“Okay!” Melissa put up her hands. “Okay,” she repeated when everyone looked at her. “We’re all on edge here. Maybe we should just move on to the next balloon, before anyone says something they’ll regret.”
“Agreed.” Yasmine unfolded her long legs and stood up. She strode to the three remaining balloons, grabbed the string dangling from a green one, and yanked it down unceremoniously. “How can we focus our departments to become more customer-centric? Oh, honestly, Melissa.”
“It’s a good question,” Melissa protested.
“I’m a lawyer. My job is to protect us from our customers.”
The door swung open, and Tiffany returned, shaking snow off her boots. “Whew! I think it’s getting colder out there.” She stripped off her hat and coat. “I brought two pairs of warm socks for you, Melissa.”
“Thank you.” Melissa took them eagerly.
“So how have things been going in here?”
“Swimmingly,” Yasmine said. “We’re really coming together as a team.”
“That’s fantastic.” Tiffany beamed. “All right, so who’s next?”
“I am.” Adam crossed the room and grabbed the second green balloon. “Why can’t things just go back to the way they used to be?”
Yasmine’s question—it had to be hers by process of elimination—struck the group to its core. I glanced around, feeling like an intruder even as everyone else silently avoided each other’s gaze.
“We used to be happy, didn’t we?” Yasmine asked. She’d wrapped her arms around herself, eyes fixed on her boots. “I thought we would be again. I thought that’s what this weekend was all about. But it’s not going to happen, is it?”
“Of course it is.” Tiffany’s assurance, delivered in a too-perky tone, was jarring after Yasmine’s raw wistfulness. “I’ve got some great exercises lined up for tonight and tomorrow that will get everything back on track.” She gestured to the lone remaining balloon. “So whose turn is it?”
Rick sat back with a frown. “We’ve all gone, haven’t we?”
“Maybe someone suggested two things?” Melissa said. She seemed glad to move on from Yasmine’s question.
Tiffany’s smile faltered. “Only one question per person, guys.”
I stared up at the balloon. “Wait. There were only blue, green, and purple balloons, weren’t there? Agonarch’s colors? But that one’s red.”
“It must have gotten mixed in by accident,” Tiffany said uneasily. But she didn’t move to get it.
Adam let out an impatient sigh. “Who cares what the color is?” He strode over, yanked the balloon down, and popped it with the pin still in his hand.
The slip of paper fluttered to the ground. The handwriting on it was bold, blocky.
Angry.
Adam picked up the paper and read, “How does it feel to have blood on your hands?”
Twelve
“Enough is enough.” Adam waved the slip of paper at it, its accusation scrawled large enough for the rest of us to see. “Who wrote this?”
No one spoke. Tiffany looked horrified. Melissa’s eyes went wide, like a deer in the headlights.
“Fine.” Adam snapped his fingers at Tiffany. “Give me a sheet of paper. We’re all writing this down—in block letters. Whoever’s handwriting matches can clean out their desk the second we get back.”
We all did as ordered. I was no expert, but none of our writing looked as though it matched. Adam seemed to think the same thing. “Good try at disguising your handwriting, but you’re not out of the woods yet. When I find out who did this—and I will—you’ll pay.”
The sunlight streaming through the glass wall caught my eye. “What if none of us wrote it?”
Rick sat up sharply. “Are you talking about whoever was in the blind? The guy you saw when we were coming in?”
“We were gone for a long time. While we were at the falls, anyone could have walked inside, gotten another balloon out of the supply closet, written this, and left.”
“Shit.” Adam went to the door, opened it, and stared outside. “There are tracks all over the place. We’ve come and gone too many times to tell if anyone else has, too.”
The air grew tense. Tiffany laughed, but it had a high, false sound to it. “There’s no one else here.”
“You can’t know that.” I stood up. “I’m going to check my cabin. Make sure nothing’s missing.”
“Good idea.” Rick joined me, and soon we were all pulling our coats, hats, and gloves back on.
Our new tracks added yet another layer of confusion to the snow as we tromped out to the cabins. Mine still f
elt like a refrigerator, and I spared a moment of thought to restarting the fire, before deciding against it. I’d probably regret my decision tonight, but for now I didn’t want to waste the time when there were far more important things to do.
“Everything’s there,” I reported when I was back outside again.
“Same,” Rick said. One by one, everyone else returned from looking at their cabins. Nothing seemed to be missing or disturbed, and no one had noticed any unusual footprints.
“What about inside the lodge?” Adam asked.
We trooped back inside and took a look around. Once again, nothing seemed to be out of place, at least not that we could tell.
Frustrated, Adam balled up the mysterious question and threw it into the fire. “Tiffany’s right. No one else is here. It had to be one of us.”
Melissa had been unusually quiet ever since the red balloon. Now she limped to the bar and poured herself a gin and tonic, heavy on the gin. While the rest of us followed her lead, she returned to the fireside, turned to face the flames, and slumped down into the nearest chair.
I wavered, wondering if I should go to her. She obviously didn’t want company, but at the same time, something was definitely wrong.
Rick had returned to his usual spot near the glass wall, so I joined him. “What’s going on with Melissa?”
“Right. You wouldn’t know.” He squeezed the lime wedge into his kamikaze. “At least that rules you out as a suspect.”
“Does this have something to do with her DUI?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Honestly, I’d almost rather believe some stranger left the balloon. But the more I go over it, the more I think Adam’s right. This was aimed at Melissa, and that means it was one of us.”
I reflexively turned to look at Melissa, but all I could see past the back of her chair was one leg stretched toward the fire, and an elbow on the chair’s armrest. “But she’s so…I mean, who would want to hurt her?”
