Rocky Mountain Fugitive

by Ann Voss Peterson

  “How far along?”

  “Four months. I found out shortly after we…after you…”

  “Left.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me then? Call me?”

  “I was going to. Really I was…but…”

  “But what?”

  She’d made excuses to herself for months. She didn’t want to try to make them now. Not when she knew the reason she hadn’t told him. “I was afraid.”

  “Of what? You had to know I’d marry you.”

  She flinched and took a step backward. Of course, she knew. It was the right thing to do. And Eric would never walk away from doing the right thing.

  And that was exactly what she feared most.

  SARAH STARED AT ERIC as if he’d just said exactly the wrong thing. Slowly, she shook her head. “You don’t want to get married.”

  Eric couldn’t disagree. “It wasn’t in my plans. But some things are more important than plans.” He closed his eyes. Dizziness swept over him in a sudden, stomach-wrenching bout of vertigo. He pulled in a breath and beat back the sensation. He wasn’t a man who ran out on his responsibilities. Ever. If he wasn’t sure he could come through, he didn’t take it on in the first place. He approached things in a controlled way, a logical way. Reason instead of emotion. He just had to get used to the idea and the weak, shaky feeling in the pit of his stomach would go away.

  Wouldn’t it?

  “I’m not going to marry you, Eric.”

  He opened his eyes and stared at Sarah. He couldn’t have heard her right. “What?”

  “I don’t want to marry you.”

  He shook his head. “But you’re pregnant.”

  “And people have babies without getting married all the time. Really, it’s fine.”

  How could she say that? “No. It’s not fine. I’m tired of you saying everything is fine.” If there was anything he knew about any of what he’d had sprung on him the past two days, it was that absolutely nothing was fine.

  “A couple of months ago, you told me you didn’t even want to date anymore. Now you have a pressing desire to marry me?”

  “Things have changed.”

  “Nothing’s changed.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “You just think marrying me is something you have to do. Your duty or whatever. Well, I’m telling you it isn’t.”

  His duty. That was how he felt, she was right. But that didn’t mean she could absolve him of it. “I want to do it.”

  She tilted her chin down and looked up at him. “Well, I don’t.”

  He looked away. He couldn’t blame her. He knew when he’d broken things off she’d assumed he didn’t care about her. And for the ease of the breakup, he’d let her believe that. He’d told himself the truth was far too complicated. Compared to the mess they were in now, it was amazingly simple. Not that it mattered. Not anymore. “So where does that leave us?”

  “Same place as before. We find whatever it is that’s up on that ridge and we use it to try to get our lives back.”

  Their lives. He knew she meant their separate lives. But to him, that was no longer an option.

  “They’re here.”

  He followed her gaze to where the white dot of an SUV bounced over rutted gravel road, slowly making its way to the head of the switchback trail.

  SARAH KNEW ERIC DIDN’T want to get married. Hell, he probably knew it, too. But that split second when she told him she wouldn’t consider wedlock, the look of rejection on his face felt good.

  She wasn’t sure if that officially made her a horrible person, but…whatever.

  She shook her head and found her next foothold. As satisfying as revenge felt, her reason for turning him down went a lot deeper. As much as she wanted to go back to the way things were before Eric left, before Randy died, before her life totally fell apart, when he’d asked her to marry him, the feeling that he was merely doing his duty hit her like a kick to the gut. No, more like a void. An emptiness that could never be filled. There was no use pretending things might have worked out between them if she’d played things differently, said different words, batted her eyes just so. There was no more pretending at all.

  The bottom line was that Eric didn’t love her. If he had, he never would have walked away. And she wasn’t going to marry someone without love.

  Period.

  Now all that was left was the task ahead. Finding whatever had gotten Randy killed and using it to clear their names.

  She shoved all other thoughts from her mind and concentrated on fitting her fingers into a jam-crack in the short rock face at the top of the ridge that Eric hadn’t been able to avoid letting her climb.

  Last summer, Eric had said she was a natural climber. She was patient, and she relied on her legs to make the climb, using her hands only for balance. That might have been the case back then. Today she felt clumsy and hurried and her arms ached with exertion. And every time her tummy rubbed against the rock, all she could think of was the danger to her baby if she fell.

  Concentrate.

  She placed her boot on a block. Keeping her heels low, she took weight onto the foot and pushed herself up. Eric took up the slack in the belaying rope. She pulled herself to the top of the ridge and shifted her weight to her elbows.

  “You got it.” Eric’s voice sounded in her ears, right above her head. “Now just bring your foot up, and you’re home free.”

  Home free. She knew it was merely a saying, but she couldn’t help the hitch in her stomach all the same. She might be home free as far as this climb went. But the situation they were in stretched in front of them like the most rugged of mountain ranges. And even if they could get through all the obstacles before them, she might never be home free again.

  She raised her foot to the ledge and thrust her body up onto the top of the ridge. For a second, she just lay there, her muscles quivering under her skin. Then she pulled herself into a sitting position.

  Saddle Horn Ridge.

  All around her mountains rose above them, jutting their snow-topped peaks into the sky. Rock and stretches of lodgepole pine seemed to go on forever. “Beautiful.”

  “It is.” Eric quickly looked away from her and out at the gully cutting below the other side of the ridge.

  She watched him for a second, like he’d been watching her. Now that he knew about the baby, now that they’d gotten the marriage discussion out of the way, they seemed as awkward as strangers. “Do you see anyone?”

  A light swirl of wind blew past her ears and swept away his answer, but she could read from his body language that he hadn’t. She scanned the area with her own eyes. No sign of human life other than them. But then, Eric had led them on such a winding path up to the ridge, she was no longer sure in which direction to look.

  She scooped in a long breath. “Now what?”

  “Now we look around.”

  He moved to the far edge of the ridge, where the rock rose in a column and formed a shape some explorer must have thought looked like a saddle horn. He peered down, not moving except for the light breeze rifling his hair.

  She thrust herself up from her resting place. “If the sheriff was worried about Randy finding money or drugs, why didn’t he just come up here and take it himself?”

  “Maybe he tried.”

  Something in the tone of his voice stopped Sarah as effectively as if he’d grabbed her. Pulse thumping, she willed her wobbly legs to carry her along the rocky ridge toward the base of the saddle horn.

  The area was wider than it seemed, flat, but on all sides the plunge was straight down. And even though she logically knew she was in no danger, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the wind could push her off her perch at any moment and toss her to the rock below, even though there was surprisingly little wind. “What is it?”

  “Not what we thought.” He pointed to a fissure in the rock.

  Deep in the shadows, she could see light tan against dark. Something with a trunk, with
arms…“A person?”

  “A body. And judging from the shape he’s in, he might have been stuck in that crevasse a good long while.”

  Chapter Seven

  “Randy was looking for a dead body?”

  Eric felt as shaken by the discovery as Sarah sounded. “He was looking for something valuable enough to pay off his debt.”

  “So what makes this guy valuable?”

  Shielding his eyes from the sun, he tried to get a better look. What he wouldn’t give for a pair of binoculars. “Maybe there’s something valuable on the body.”

  “Like money or drugs. But what would he be doing with money or drugs out here? And how did he die? Fall?”

  “Good questions.” And ones he couldn’t answer. “I’m going to rappel down. Take a look.”

  Sarah inched closer to the edge and craned her neck. Swaying a little, she clamped her hand to her stomach.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Just a little dizzy.”

  “Heights do that to some people.”

  “I climbed up all right.”

  “Not the same as rappelling down.”

  “I guess not.” She took a deep breath, as if she could push the vertigo down with willpower alone.

  “You don’t have to do it. I’ll go alone. You stay up here and watch for the sheriff’s men.”

  She nodded, as if eager to jump at the chance to sit this one out.

  She had to be tired. Even though she was in great shape, and they’d avoided the worst of the climbs, scaling rock worked different muscles than ranch work. Add that to a sleepless night and extreme stress and anyone would be dragging. He couldn’t even begin to imagine adding the strain of being pregnant.

  Pregnant. He still couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that he and Sarah were going to have a baby. He felt excited about the idea on some level, but jangled and confused at the same time. And not just about the baby. Seeing Sarah again, being near her, made him feel like a broken compass with no sense of north.

  He needed distance. A chance to think things over logically, approach the whole thing with a clear mind.

  But in order to get control of that situation, he needed to get out of this one first.

  Using a tape sling, he set up an anchor around a solid rock formation. He ran a coil of rope through a carabiner, forming a pulley. After formulating a plan and giving Sarah a quick lesson in threading the rope through a descender, he started down the side of the cliff. It took mere seconds to rappel down the thirty-foot drop. As soon as his feet hit the narrow shelf of rock on the edge of the crevasse, a thick sweet smell touched his senses.

  Apparently the body hadn’t been here as long as he’d thought. He crouched down to take a look at the dead man.

  From the top of the ridge, all he’d seen was the clothing. A shearling coat sun-bleached and ratty from the elements. A pair of Wranglers. Cowboy boots. And at first that was all he could see. Wedged about four feet down into the crevasse, the body was angled head down. Eric focused on the boots. Great for riding, but not something a hiker or climber would wear—he thought of Sarah’s footwear—not by choice, anyway. But the popularity of Wrangler jeans and shearling coats in this part of the country meant the rest told him little about who this man was and how he had ended up here.

  Or what of value he might have.

  He bridged the narrow crack, one foot on either side, and settled in as low as he could get. Reaching down, he patted the coat pockets. Empty. He grasped the bottom hem and yanked it up, exposing a stained shirt. There was little left of the guy except clothing and bones, but a strong wave of odor still wafted up at him and tainted the air around him. His stomach bucked for a moment, then calmed. He breathed through his mouth and prodded further. All the man’s pockets were empty. Not even a wallet.

  A leather belt loosely circled the man’s waist. Judging from the circumference, it had likely propped up a good-sized belly, back when their mystery man was alive. An ornate belt buckle fastened the ends of the tooled leather.

  Eric grabbed a small flashlight from his pack and focused its beam on the buckle. Exposure to the elements had tarnished the silver to a dull gray, but Eric could still make out the inscription among the curlycues surrounding a man on a bucking horse—Cody Nite Rodeo Bareback Champion, 1978.

  He skimmed the beam up the torso. What he’d thought was the man’s head when looking down from the ridge above was really his shoulder. The crevasse cut deep into rock, narrowing on its way down to blackness. One arm reached down, but he could see nothing below, no bag or pack or anything that could be considered valuable. Below the shoulder, the skull wedged between rock, only a small tuft of gray hair clung to shriveled skin and bone.

  Eric ran the questions the sheriff had asked Sarah through his mind. Even if Gillette knew the area to look, he would have only been able to see the body from directly above the crevasse. And even if he’d known exactly where it was, it would have been difficult to move a body wedged deep like this.

  “Who in the hell are you, Mr. Rodeo Champion? And why are you so valuable?”

  Of course, dental records or DNA could tell them who he was. Not that he nor Sarah could waltz into the Wyoming crime lab with a sample. Even a private lab would ask too many questions, provided they asked questions at all and didn’t merely call the police.

  And in light of what Layton had told them, they couldn’t rely on police to do anything but arrest them and ship them back to Sheriff Gillette.

  He moved the light beam over the skull, stopping on a spot at the back of the head.

  Wait.

  Throat dry, Eric adjusted his position and leaned as far into the crevasse as he dared. He scanned the skull again, raking the beam slowly over hair and bone. There it was. A hole marked the cranium like a perfect dark circle, just an inch or so behind the ear.

  He pulled in a breath of foul air. There wasn’t any treasure at all at the end of this treasure hunt. The deputies hadn’t been hiding a stash of money or drugs. They’d been trying to cover up a murder.

  The rope around Eric’s waist jolted.

  Sarah’s signal. He looked up. The men must be getting close. Too close. He needed to get back up to the top of that ridge and he needed to do it now. He reached for the rodeo belt buckle, unhooked it and gave it a hard pull. The leather started slipping through the denim loops, then caught. He tugged harder.

  No good. It held fast.

  Twisting the buckle upside down, he fumbled for the snaps holding leather to silver. He popped one snap, then the other. Slipping buckle free of belt and body, he stuffed it into his pack.

  The rope tugged again, more frantic. He needed to hurry. The thought of Sarah up on the ridge alone, frightened, facing down men with guns…He spun around. His foot skidded beneath him. He struggled for balance, grasped at rock for a hold. No good.

  He plunged into the crevasse up to his waist. Damn.

  The body’s skull pressed against his thigh. The scent of decay coated the back of his throat. A wave of revulsion shuddered through him before he could take control.

  Calm. Logical. Pull yourself out and get the hell up to that ridge.

  He placed his palms on the edge of the crevasse. His forearms were already over the ledge, in a position where he could push himself over the rock instead of pull. He’d mantled more times than he could remember. Performing the move next to a dead body didn’t change anything.

  He pushed down with his hands and slung his left foot up onto the narrow ledge. Scooping in a breath through his mouth, he pushed upward.

  His right foot didn’t budge.

  He tried again, giving it every ounce of strength he could muster. No good. His foot wouldn’t move. A cold sweat blanketed him, thick as the odor of decay.

  He was as stuck in the crevasse as the dead man.

  SARAH TUGGED ON THE ROPE for a third time. What was taking Eric so long? The men had crested the point and had now disappeared behind a stand of lodgepole pine. She wasn’t s
ure how long it would take for him to make the climb back up to the ridge and then for them to make their escape, but time seemed to be tightening at an alarming rate.

  “Sarah.”

  She leaned over the edge.

  Eric seemed to be standing in the crevasse next to the body. He hadn’t moved, even though she’d warned him three times.

  The beat of her pulse drowned out the whistle of wind in the rocks above.

  Eric scooped the air with one arm.

  At first she didn’t understand what he was trying to tell her. The second time he made the gesture, his meaning dawned.

  He was telling her she’d have to come down to him. He was asking her to rappel down the sheer drop of rock.

  A tremor seized low in her stomach. She looked back in the direction of the men. Eric must have figured out that he didn’t have time to make the climb and then make their escape. Something had delayed him. Something was wrong.

  She pulled in a breath of too thin air. She’d rappelled down a rock face before. She was the same person. She could do it again. But somehow every risk seemed to be bigger now, every possible danger more dire.

  She glanced back at the path one more time. She couldn’t see the men. Not yet. But they were coming. And they would be armed. If she wanted to think about danger, that was the direction from which it would come.

  She grasped the rope Eric had used. Still threaded through the pulley he’d set up, the rope was now loose on Eric’s end. He’d detached it from his harness, freed it for her. Hands shaking, she threaded it through the big circle of the descender. She looped it around the small end and clipped the device to her harness the way Eric had shown her.

  So far, so good.

  After checking the ropes, she stepped to the edge. Eric’s instructions rang in her ears. She had to trust her equipment, take her time. Breathe.

  She leaned back and dug her heels into the rock. Her front hand shook, fingers aching. She forced her grip to loosen. Her right hand, resting along her thigh, was controlling the rope. She had to remember that. If she moved it to the side, the rope would slide through the descender. If she held it behind her back, the rope would stop.