The Last Time I Saw Her

by Karen Robards

  “See,” Charlie hissed.

  “Fuck.” Michael stood up. He grabbed her by the upper arms. It was at times like this that she was reminded just how very much bigger and stronger than her he was. “I don’t care what happens. I don’t care if it sounds like the shoot-out at the OK Corral up there or you see a hundred people falling to their deaths or ten thousand girls start screaming, you keep quiet and stay put, you understand? Do not try to climb the cliff. Do not call out. Do not—”

  “Yes,” Charlie interrupted. “Yes, yes, I understand. Would you just go?”

  “Damn it to hell anyway,” Michael muttered, and kissed her, a brief, hard brush of his mouth against hers. Then he let her go and shoved something—Charlie saw it was the gun as he turned to face the rock wall—more firmly into his waistband at the small of his back, where his untucked shirt hid it from view. Grabbing on to what looked like sheer rock, he proceeded to scale the cliff with the agility of an experienced mountain climber. His white shirt made it easier than it should have been to follow his progress through the darkness and the mist, and it occurred to her that she might not be the only one who could see him. She tensed at the thought, but there was no gunshot, no outcry.

  Another abbreviated shower of rocks and dirt brought her heart leaping into her throat. All she could do was look up and hope that there was something Michael could do, that he wouldn’t be too late, that whoever was up there would be okay.

  Michael hoisted himself onto the ledge where Fleenor had died—she hadn’t heard Fleenor’s loop for a while, which didn’t mean much because it was a random thing, but she was really hoping he’d been swept away to whatever the afterlife had in store for him—and then he was out of sight.

  After that, nothing.

  Nada. Zip.

  Not a rustle of leaves, not a sprinkle of dirt, not a glimpse of anything where something should be happening.

  Charlie’s heart pounded.

  Had Michael disappeared? Had whoever or whatever he’d gone up there after disappeared?

  What if a hunter had been lying in wait? Or some other hideous creature had emerged from the depths of the netherworld to drag him back?

  What if the whole thing had been a trap and she’d sent him right into the jaws of it?

  Charlie strained her eyes trying to see through the darkness. She strained her ears trying to hear anything that wasn’t wind or natural forest sounds. Her neck ached from being craned so far back. Despite Hughes’s coat, she was shivering, and not only from the cold. Her throat was so tight she could barely swallow.

  What if he never came back?

  The thought terrified her.

  It occurred to her that the downside to having Michael in Hughes’s body was that the body could be injured or killed. Presumably Michael would still be able to stay with her in spirit form if that happened. But never having had her own personal spirit before, she knew so little about the parameters of his existence that she couldn’t be sure.

  She couldn’t be sure about anything.

  Except that she was growing increasingly afraid that something had gone badly wrong. She was so nervous that she resumed pacing, back and forth, on that tiny ledge.

  Finally she sat with her legs tucked up beside her and one shoulder resting against the cold stone wall as she alternated between watching the ledge and scanning the woody fringe at the edge of the cliff high above.

  Nothing, nothing…more nothing.

  When at last she saw Michael swinging his big body down from the ledge overhead and then descending toward her, she was so relieved she felt light-headed and at the same time so wired with nerves that she leaped to her feet. Or at least she tried. By then she was stiff and cold and achy and her leap was more like an awkward clamber.

  She was waiting as he stepped down onto the rock shelf. When he turned to face her she hugged him, the greeting as natural as breathing, wrapping her arms around his neck and giving him a quick I’m-so-glad-to-see-you kiss. Low-voiced and anxious, she said, “Oh, my God, I was worried! What happened? Are you all right?”

  Having hugged her back and returned her kiss with a brief, hard kiss of his own, he stepped back, jerked a thumb upward, and said quietly, “I’m fine. Careful, we’ve got an audience.”

  Looking up, Charlie discovered a quartet of dark-uniformed men standing on the ledge and peering down at them.

  “Who are they?” she asked.

  “A local search-and-rescue team.” He was untying a rope from around his waist as he spoke. That was the first time Charlie realized that a rope had been snaking down the cliff with him, a rope that had been tied around his waist and which extended all the way back up to the ledge. Michael continued, “I’m Rick Hughes, remember, and you don’t know me very well. You probably don’t want to be seen kissing on me.”

  Oh. Right.

  “So what happened?” she demanded impatiently.

  “The scream—it was the blond girl. Google Eyes—Sayers—had knocked her out and was on top of her by the time I got there. I was able to get the drop on him, but then I had a nearly naked, unconscious girl on my hands. No way to let you know what was going down without yelling and maybe drawing attention we didn’t need. So I got the girl bundled up in what was left of her clothes and carried her down the mountain until I found some help. I handed her over, and then I came back with those guys to get you off this damned ledge.” Rope in hand, he reached beneath the jacket she was wearing to pass it around her waist. “Hold still. I’m going to fasten this around you and then they’re going to pull you up.”

  “Paris. Is she going to be all right? How badly is she hurt?” Charlie asked, standing obediently still as Michael looped the rope around her to form a kind of makeshift harness. She attributed his familiarity with ropes and rock climbing and handcuff breaking and all the rest of that type of thing to his time in the military, trusted that he knew what he was doing, and dismissed it from her mind.

  Michael said, “Her head was bleeding. I think Google Eyes used a rock to knock her out. It wasn’t anything life-threatening, and she was awake last I saw of her. They were taking her the rest of the way down to an ambulance.” Having passed the rope over both Charlie’s shoulders as well as between her legs and wrapped it around her waist one more time, he tied some kind of intricate knot at her waist. “She was telling a deputy that she’d been hiding in the woods until he found her and she ran. What we heard must have been him catching her. Like I said, Google Eyes had knocked her out by the time I got up there.”

  Charlie shuddered. “Her eyes—”

  “Didn’t touch ’em. He didn’t get that far.”

  “Poor girl, did he—” She broke off, unable to put the thought into words.

  A glance at her face apparently told Michael what she meant. “Rape her?” He shook his head. “No. I got there before he could.” He was double-checking the ropes he’d tied around her. “You saved her life, babe.”

  Charlie said, “Are you kidding? You saved her life. Did you—is Sayers—”

  “Dead.” He didn’t elaborate, but then, he didn’t have to. Since she hadn’t heard a shot, Charlie assumed he’d killed Sayers with his bare hands. If she’d been a better person, she supposed that ability of his would have bothered her, but instead it just made her feel safer. Having finished with his knot, Michael took a step back and looked her over critically. It occurred to her then that he was free of the broken handcuffs.

  “What happened to the handcuffs?” she asked.

  “Guy had a key,” he said without elaborating. Then he took both of her hands and curled them, one hand above the other, around the rope that was rising in front of her. “Hang on to the rope and they’ll pull you up. When you get close to the ledge, watch out that you don’t crack your head on the underside of it. Push off from the cliff with your feet if you have to.”

  Charlie nodded and tightened her grip on the rope. “What about you?”

  “I’ll be right behind you.” He looked her over
one more time and said, “Ready?” When she answered “Yes,” he made a whirling gesture over his head that was clearly aimed at the men on the ledge above.

  The ropes tightened around her without any more warning than that, and she caught her breath as she was lifted off her feet. An unexpected rush of nervousness was countered by having Michael’s hands on her, steadying her for that first little bit as she started to rise.

  Then she was on her own, dangling in mid-air as she looked out over a vast expanse of night. The rope circling her thighs cut into them as she was hoisted steadily upward. She shifted uncomfortably, which made her sway back and forth like a pendulum, which was alarming, so she quit shifting and tried to stay as still as she could. The harness Michael had devised suddenly did not feel substantial enough to be all that stood between her and what, she determined with an unwary glance down, was an unchecked plummet to certain death, but she trusted him enough to assume that it was. Still, her pulse pounded and her chest felt tight. Heights, she was rapidly discovering, were not her favorite thing. The drop beneath her was terrifying, so after that one quick glance she looked skyward instead. A few more stars were out, but if there was a moon it was hidden by the cloud cover, which was threateningly low. Jagged black peaks towered everywhere around her like waves about to crash. The wind was biting now, and strong enough to rock her into the cliff face even though she was taking care to remain perfectly still. She had to push off with her foot more than once. Mist drifted beside her, eerie and pale, smelling of damp and making the rope feel slippery in her hands. By the time she was close enough to the ledge so that she could reach up and touch it if she’d wanted to—she didn’t—her heart was thumping.

  “Dr. Stone, I’m Deputy George Trent. If you’ll hold up your hands we can get you the rest of the way up, no problem.” The voice belonged to a heavyset, fortyish man who was peering over the edge at her. Charlie held up her hands, one at a time because she was wary of releasing her grip on the rope, and felt warm, thick-fingered hands lock around her wrists. The next thing she knew she was being lifted up onto the ledge and surrounded by four deputies. At least she assumed that’s what they were, because Trent had introduced himself as a deputy and because the words SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT were emblazoned in white on their black caps.

  “How do you know my name?” she asked, as two of them helped her out of her rope harness.

  “We have a list of the hostages,” Trent answered. “And Mr. Hughes identified himself and you.”

  It took her a second to associate Mr. Hughes with Michael, and that’s when she knew for sure how really, really tired she was. She was going to have to take care not to forget.

  The rope had been thrown over the side again, and she saw that this end of it was wrapped around one of the sturdier tree trunks for ballast and that the two men who hadn’t been helping her out of her harness were anchoring it. As she pulled Hughes’s jacket tight around herself again, a sideways glance found Fleenor’s body sprawled near the cliff face. At some point it would be transported down the mountain, but probably not until the medical examiner could look at it, she assumed. The night was so dark she couldn’t see anything much beyond the shape of it, but the angle at which the head was attached to the neck precluded the body being alive, and she hastily averted her gaze. Fleenor’s spirit was nowhere in evidence, and for that she could only be thankful. If he was still experiencing the loop, she was glad to have missed an up-close-and-personal viewing of it.

  “There’s an ambulance standing by for you at the foot of the mountain and a truck waiting to take you there,” Trent told her. “Can you walk to the road? It isn’t far, just up that path. If you can’t, we can get you there.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The truth was, her legs felt about as sturdy as cooked spaghetti, and what she really wanted to do was sit down. She was cold with the wind still swirling around her, and she thrust her hands deep into the pockets of Hughes’s jacket for warmth. The men around her were scarcely more than shadows. The pines crowding the ledge were black as ink, and every sound—rustling trees, moaning wind, the crunch of the rescue team’s footsteps—made her tense. She realized that she was listening for any sign of the other hostages, but there was nothing.

  “I can walk, and I don’t need an ambulance,” Charlie responded, watching as Michael, climbing up under his own steam, hoisted himself onto the ledge. He stood up and started to untie the rope around his waist while two of the deputies, inches shorter and far less physically impressive than he was, tried to steady him. Remembering that he’d climbed down to her tethered to a rope, she assumed he had tied himself to it for both descent and ascent as a sensible safety precaution, because, as she had learned, under the right circumstances he could be a surprisingly careful man. Summoning her inner fortitude, she squared her shoulders, looked away from Michael, and got right down to what was important, saying to Trent, who seemed to be in charge, “The escapees were heading for a barn large enough to hide a school bus in. It should be within fifteen miles of here. They have a pickup truck waiting inside. You have to find that barn. I think they’re planning to kill at least some of the remaining hostages once they get there.” Taking a breath, she tried to calculate the amount of time that had already passed and felt her chest tighten. “There may not be much time.”

  “I told them all that. It’s taken care of, you don’t have to worry.” Michael joined her. She wanted to rest against him, to have him wrap his arms around her and take her weight for a little while, but she didn’t. She was exhausted and sore and emotionally wrung out and practically jumping out of her skin with anxiety, and none of that mattered. What mattered was getting the rest of the hostages back safely. But staying on her feet and keeping her concentration where it needed to be if she was going to be of any help to anyone was getting harder. Always able to read her expression too easily, Michael frowned down at her.

  “You okay?” he asked quietly.

  She said “Yes” and looked at Trent, who hovered nearby. She asked him, “Have any of the other hostages been rescued?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am,” he replied. “We got a big operation going on here. Hard to know what the other hand’s doing, if you know what I mean.”

  “The Sheriff’s Department thinks they know what barn it is,” one of the other deputies told her. “Only one up here that size. They’ve got people on the way there now.”

  “That’s good,” Charlie said, although she was horribly afraid that it might already be too late.

  “If you’re ready, ma’am…” Trent said and gestured. Charlie nodded and started walking back up the path Fleenor had chased her down what felt like a lifetime ago.

  While three of the men stayed behind, Trent escorted her and Michael up to the top of the trail, where a small truck with a closed bed waited. Its lights were off, and when Trent opened the door for her to slide in along the one bench seat no interior light came on.

  As the driver got out and went around to talk to Trent, Charlie clambered in out of the wind with relief and scooched over to make room for Michael. He got in beside her. The warmth he radiated was welcome, and the feel of his big body against hers was instantly comforting.

  “Hughes have military training?” Michael asked under his breath.

  “No, why?” Charlie replied, looking at him with a frown. He was almost impossible to see in the dark, so she guessed her frown was lost on him.

  “Couple of broken necks to account for,” Michael said, as the driver, a strapping man who looked to be in his early twenties, got in behind the wheel, introducing himself as Lieutenant Tim Brown, National Guard.

  They started off, pulling away without turning on the headlights.

  “Um, lights?” Charlie said, alarmed. She couldn’t even see Michael, who was squeezed in beside her, let alone the road in front of them.

  “Trying to keep a clandestine presence, ma’am,” Brown replied, which did nothing to calm Charlie’s misgivings about navigating the s
teep, twisty road in the pitch dark. The sheer drop-off she’d just ascended, along with similar ones she’d seen on the drive up, was vivid in her memory.

  “He’s wearing night-vision goggles,” Michael said in her ear, clearly having once again read her thoughts, or more likely her body language, because she’d gone rigid and had grabbed hold of his leg.

  Charlie darted a glance at the driver. Now that Michael had alerted her to their presence, she could just see their shiny blackness against the paler skin of his face.

  The ride down the mountain proved uneventful, although Charlie continued to experience spasms of unease over negotiating hairpin turns in the dark. She kept scanning the dense woods lining the road, hoping against hope that she would see one or more of the hostages who might have escaped the bus emerging from the woods. The blackness beneath the trees was impenetrable, however, and all she saw was an occasional gleaming pair of animal’s eyes tracking the truck as it passed. She tried not to picture anything horrible that might have happened or might be happening in that dark forest. Upsetting herself did no one any good. Despite Hughes’s jacket, which she kept wrapped tightly around her, and the fact that she was sandwiched between Michael and the driver, she was still freezing. The temperature outside had dropped to what felt like the upper forties and she’d gotten thoroughly chilled on the ledge, but it was warm enough in the truck that she knew the reason she was still so cold had little to do with the weather. A digital clock on the dashboard read 10:43. In the course of the seven-plus hours since she and Hughes had evacuated her office, so much had changed that she could barely wrap her mind around it. On the one hand, Michael was back, which filled her heart with so much lightness and joy it could have floated away like a helium balloon. On the other hand, in that same span of time at least five and possibly six people had died either in front of her or in her near proximity, all but two of them good men who hadn’t deserved what had been done to them, and the lives of nine more, seven of them teenagers, were currently at risk. Charlie braced herself to pass the bodies of the guards who had been killed and thrown from the bus, but the road was empty. The bodies had already been removed. They did pass a convoy of Jeeplike vehicles heading up the mountain, all running without lights just as they were. It was hard to be sure in the dark, but Charlie assumed they were crammed full of law enforcement officers.