by Sue Henry
Opening one of the cans of stew, she stirred in a package of dry milk with the spoon and poured it out on a flat rock for Tank, who began to wolf it down. The taste of it on the spoon almost inspired her to open another, but, deciding she should save it for him, she set the other two aside and open a can of tomato soup instead. It was concentrated, but she gulped it down with a handful of crackers and drank some water from the bottle she had filled. Almost immediately she felt stronger.
When she got back to her feet, she discovered that the incoming tide had halved the available space below the cliff and in some places was even washing against it. Any question of either returning to the cove where the stalker waited or going on to the east cove had been effectively canceled. The narrow passage was filled with perilous waters, trapping them where they were. It would take some time for water to fill the area in the cut below the rock fall, but sooner or later it would reach the sand on which she stood. The only escape was to somehow climb up the rock fall itself, a thing she would hesitate to attempt even in daylight.
Jessie realized that, in the back of her mind, she had known all along that this could finally be the only alternative open to her. It would not be easy, especially in the dark, and might not be possible at all. Her concerns were three: that she would not be able to make it to the top, that she might not be able to make it with Tank, and that the stalker would anticipate her effort and be waiting there.
All she could do was try. Repacking the supplies, she managed to fasten the pillowcase securely to the back of her belt, encouraged Tank, who in spite of the bad weather was inclined to settle in for a nap, and, determining a likely direction, scrambled over the first rocks at the foot of the steep cut, toward the fall itself.
27
The bottom of the rock fall was not slippery with kelp, nor did it have barnacles covering its stones, like those on the beach, where the salt water regularly washed twice a day. Out of the reach of most high tides, the cracked and broken pieces of fallen rock remained naked of sealife. They were wet, however, and Jessie found them treacherous because the dark hid their uneven, sometimes water-slick surfaces. Several shifted or fell under her feet, forcing her to move slowly and with great caution.
Tank was not pleased to be following her through this new puzzle, but came hesitantly along behind her, and seemed to have an easier time of it. He can see better, she thought, remembering times when he, in harness, could tell what was ahead of them in the snow more accurately than she could and would make detours around obstacles in the trail.
Carefully, she clambered over rocks and boulders until she finally arrived at the primary section of the fall that filled the end of the cut. Off and on, through this first effort, she had used the flashlight, filled with the new batteries she had found in the beach house. Now she dropped it back into her pocket; she would need both hands for the steep rise she was about to attempt.
“Well,” she told Tank, “here we go. Come on, fella. If I can do this, maybe you can, too.”
This part of the slide was an enormous heap of rocks, large and small, and between them were piles of dirt that had also caved off. The dirt was half clay and the rain had turned it to a slime that was treacherously slick. Jessie soon decided that she would not recommend rubber boots, slightly too large for her feet, as a choice of climbing gear. Their shallow tread provided little traction and the flexible soles slipped easily, making it difficult to retain her footing. She was tempted to take them off and climb in her stockinged feet, but decided to wait and see if this became absolutely necessary.
By the time she reached the top of the acute slope of rubble, she had fallen several times, slipped back a step for every two she took, and was covered in muddy clay. Tank was little better off as the gooey stuff oozed between his toes and clung to the hair on his feet in cakes. More than once Jessie paused to clean it off as best she could.
What remained of the face of the cliff rose perhaps thirty feet above them, but the dark made its configuration almost invisible. It would have to be climbed mostly by feel, rather than sight, and was a task Tank could not handle without assistance. From the pillowcase, she took the length of yellow nylon rope, knelt beside him, and tied one end around his chest and shoulders in a makeshift harness that would not constrict his breathing or crush his ribs. It was a trick she had learned in sled dog racing and she hoped it would serve in this instance as well.
“Stay,” she told him, and, tying the other end of the rope to her belt, turned to the cliff.
He whined as she moved away, but did as he was told, trusting her command.
Knowing she could go up, but that retracing her steps would be impossible, made the next few minutes seemed like hours. They were some of the worst Jessie could remember. There were few handholds on the face of the crumbling surface of the steepness and those she found she searched out blindly and with difficulty, able to use only the thumb and first two fingers of her right hand, because of the splints that enclosed the other two fingers. Lack of secure support for her feet in the ill-fitting boots often forced her to draw herself up with her arms and shoulders, hoping there would be something to relieve the painful pressure before the strain grew too intense. She was thankful for the hours she had spent in weight training, getting her body in shape to endure the rigors of distance sled dog racing.
Once, a protrusion she had tested and thought safe gave way, leaving her to dangle dangerously by her left hand, frantically hunting until she located a narrow ridge for one toe that saved her from falling back to the rocks. Sucking in air and relief, she was glad she could not see what lay under her, for, as the distance grew between herself and the mass of rubble below she knew that a single false move could send her plummeting to disaster.
A little more than halfway up the precipice, she found a narrow, foot-wide ledge and paused to rest. The rope that connected her to Tank had only a little play left in it and would not reach to the top. She would have to lift him up to this ledge, then climb the rest of the way and repeat the process.
When the burning had left her trembling arms, she looked down and quietly called to him.
“Okay, guy. Good dog. I’ll pull you up. Come, good puppy. Here you come.”
Bracing herself, she pulled the rope till she could feel his free weight on the other end. He yipped once as the rope tightened and pinched somewhere, and wriggled a little, but was used to being lifted and moved by his harness, sometimes hauled out of holes on the Iditarod and other winter trails, and so did not struggle.
“Stay, Tank. It’s okay. Good boy.”
Slowly, with great care, hand over hand, Jessie raised her lead dog gradually through the air, trying not to pound him against the hard wall, as the force of the wind caused him to swing slightly. She could feel it thrumming the line in an increasing frequency as she collected the length of the rope until he stood beside her on the slim projection.
“Good dog,” she told him, scratching his ears in appreciation of his trust. Would she have let someone pull her up such a questionable distance? Not likely, she thought, and not often.
“Stay, now. Stay still.”
Again he obeyed, and she hated to leave him, knowing he could easily fall from such a narrow space if he moved, but was comforted that the rope to his harness was still firmly attached to her belt.
Once again she began to climb.
The last and steepest section was even more difficult, for there were spaces that were nothing but clay—not a stone to hold or step onto. Almost at the top, with several feet left to negotiate, Jessie realized that she had had climbed her way into a seemingly impossible situation. With one foot on a small outcropping of rock and a hand clinging to another, she searched every inch of the steep face. Nothing. She could hardly breathe with the strain. Then, as she took her hand away from the rock, it brushed against a root that the collapsing soil above had exposed and left hanging. The tree, she hoped, was still firmly planted in the ground, for this root must serve as a line—it was
her only option.
Heart pounding, she transferred her weight a little at a time, till she was hanging from the root. Moving one hand and then the other, favoring the right, she began to raise herself up, finding small resting places for her boots on the surface of the cliff to give her precarious balance. With less than a foot to go, she found a stone on which to place the toe of one boot, then discovered another, heavier root, which she tested and grasped. One hand on each root put her in a better position—made the job a little easier. Still, her arms shook with the effort and her shoulders burned as if hot wires had replaced the muscles. Only a foot more…six inches.
Without warning, the larger root that she had thought most secure, suddenly broke away. The force of its parting wrenched Jessie from her support on the wall and sent her swinging like a pendulum across it. Grasping the other root with both hands, she desperately struggled to pull herself up its length to the top. If she fell, she would not only land on the hard, jagged rocks below, but her descent would jerk Tank from the ledge to drop after her.
Her injured hand slipped, the broken fingers aching with the punishment, and there was a second of eternity when she knew she was not going to make it.
“Give me your hand,” a voice said, calmly and firmly, from the top of the cliff. “Reach up and give me your hand.”
Startled, Jessie came very close to panicking and letting go, then realized it and redoubled her grip. She stopped breathing and looked up, but could not see well enough to distinguish the identity of the head and shoulders that leaned over the edge. It was only a shape, a figure in the dark, but she had no doubt who it was. He had figured it out and waited for her—found her—helpless.
Damn…damn…dammit.
She could not go back down. There was nothing to do but what he suggested.
“Don’t think about it. Just reach up.”
Letting go with one hand, she did.
“Careful, I’ve got two broken fingers.”
She felt the solid grip of a strong person as he grasped her wrist and lifted her steadily upward until she was lying on her belly on the lip of the wall, gasping a combination of relief, fear, and anger.
Out of the frying pan, she thought, and rolled over, away from him and the drop, feeling the hard lump of supplies in the pillowcase under her back. Sitting up, she stared silently at his dim shape in the dark, waiting for what would come next—feeling her pulse pound in her throat.
“Better pull up your dog,” the voice in the dark reminded her.
“Why? So you can shoot him?” Jessie’s words were clipped with fury and fear.
“So we can get out of here before whoever is hunting you shows up.”
She frowned, confused, and looked again at the figure she could barely make out in the blackness. The head was oddly shaped, and she realized that he was wearing something—a hat of some kind that came down over the upper part of his face. Doubt filled her mind. Was this the same person she had encountered with Rudy in the beach house?
“What…who the hell are you?”
From the sound of his voice, she thought he was grinning.
“I’m the guy you suckered into stepping on that trap by the creek earlier this morning.”
“But…”
“Listen, Miss Arnold. My name’s Gill—Terry Gill. And let’s just say I’m a friend of a friend, okay?”
“What fri…?”
“I’ll explain it all later, okay? Right now I’d like to get your dog up here and move our base of operations before we have to deal with the guy who’s after you.”
Jessie hesitated a moment longer. Was this person who he said he was, or could he be in league with her stalker—be her stalker? Did it matter? Did she have a choice? Uncertainty pulled her in conflicting directions. Whoever the man was, Tank was still down below on the ledge and would have to be rescued.
Reaching both hands behind her under the slicker, she untied the rope connecting her to Tank and handed it to him. As he took it, she eased her handgun from its holster and leveled it at his body.
“You pull him up, Mr. Gill,” she told him. “I’ll just make sure you do. Then we can go somewhere else and straighten this out. And while we’re at it, what’s that thing on your head?”
“It’s an infrared night scope,” he told her, ignoring the gun and beginning to pull on the rope. “Lets me see very well in the dark.”
Carefully but hurriedly, hand over hand, he raised Tank from his perch on the narrow ledge, up the rest of the cliff and over the lip. As he was set down on solid ground, the dog began to growl at his benefactor.
“Stop it, Tank. It’s okay,” Jessie told him, hoping she was right but taking no chances. “Now take that rope off him and let’s go.”
Gill removed the temporary harness and stood up. From the ground behind him, he retrieved a rifle with another scope attached.
“You want to carry this, too?” he asked, holding it toward Jessie. “Look, we’ve got a problem here and really should get going.”
It was a disarming move, encouraging her to trust him, but was it calculated to do exactly that?
She shook her head. “No. You carry it, but you lead.”
They started toward the east beach on the path along which she had earlier fled.
“Now,” she said, “who are you, what are you doing here, and why?”
“Okay. I’m with a pararescue unit. Your buddy Jensen called and said he was worried about you being out here alone with no protection. He asked if I could come and hang out, just in case, so I did. That’s it. I’ve been here since…ah…Sunday—no, Saturday.”
“So…” Jessie said, temper rising, “you were assigned to baby-sit me without my knowing it. Alex knew I wouldn’t agree to it, so he just went ahead anyway and told me nothing. Dammit. I really resent that.”
“Hey,” Gill objected, “relax. He’s just worried about you. It’s okay.”
“You think so? He knew how I’d feel about it,” she replied in a tense voice. “I told him I didn’t want anyone else.”
Though Gill had rescued her from an almost certain fall from the cliff, Jessie found she was incensed at Alex’s deception. There were few things she valued more than her independence, but one of them was honesty. She had trusted him to honor her wishes—left Knik and come to Niqa on the conditions she had set out. It hurt and infuriated her to have that trust disappointed. She knew that he didn’t always tell her everything, but had always counted on him to speak the truth in what he did tell her. She felt betrayed and misled.
She swallowed hard and decided to leave it alone for the moment. There was too much going on to waste time on anger. Later, when this was over, she would confront him about it, straighten it out. She deserved an explanation, at least, and he would have to know how his deception had made her feel.
Looking ahead of them, she realized that she could discern the trunks of trees and some of their foliage. A thin hint of morning light had begun to steal in among the green of the forest.
“Where’re we going?” she asked Gill, who she could now see was dressed in an ill-fitting camouflage uniform and poncho that kept the rain from soaking him. He had removed the night scope from his head and carried it in one hand, the rifle in the other. He looked like a military man, and that fact, at least, was encouraging. Tank was keeping close to her, bringing up the rear in their marching order.
“There’s a spot on the east end of the island, away from the rest of the buildings in the trees—an old shed that was used for some kind of animal.”
“Goats,” she told him. “It was used for goats several years ago. They used to have several. Made cheese from some of the milk. One little one used to play tag with the cat.”
“Could be kind of nice, living out here.”
“Yes, I think so. They had other animals, too—rabbits, a turkey, a pig named Sir Francis Bacon.”
She heard him chuckle. “Well, I’ve got supplies there and we’ll need some of them.”
Jessie noticed he seemed to be limping slightly, favoring his right foot.
“It was you who sprang the trap by the bridge? I thought…”
“Yeah.” He grinned. “I could tell what you thought. Didn’t mean to scare you into running like you did—and you run pretty good, by the way. I stepped on the darn trap and it got my foot, but the boot sole took most of it. The teeth sliced through the top and did a little damage—not too bad—couple of stitches’ worth. I got it taped.”
“Why didn’t you speak up—say something?”
“Would you have listened?”
She thought about it as they continued to move along the trail that followed the line of the cliff, and knew that she wouldn’t have paid any attention. Finding the hidden trap had heightened her sense of threat and she would have been off across the bridge at the slightest hint of his presence no matter what he might have said. She was still not completely comfortable with this supposed friend of Alex’s, but was growing to believe he was telling her the truth.
As she considered, she realized that the rain had almost stopped, though the wind was still blowing hard and she could hear the surf pounding the rocks below. In the thickness of brush and trees somewhere above them on the hillside, a stick cracked and something rustled the bushes.
Instantly Gill was alert, dropping to a crouch.
“Get down,” he hissed, facing the direction of the sound, rifle aimed and ready.
A large, dark shape moved toward them, finally stepping into an open space.
Jessie grabbed Tank’s collar, halting his lunge before it happened. “No,” she said sharply, and he gave up with a disappointed whine.
“The moose,” she breathed, grinning. “I’d forgotten that there’s one on Niqua. Somehow she swam across from the mainland years ago and has been here ever since. Every so often, somebody sees her. I never have until now.”
As they watched, the huge animal moved casually away and vanished like an apparition into the forest.
