by Kyle Mills
“I’m leaning toward ‘Disco Girl and the Mutant Strain.’”
He laughed and shook his head. “Like I said, you’re one weird chick. You warm up, I’ll go grab the gear.”
Tristan jogged back down to the van and began rummaging around in the various backpacks and duffels it contained. He glanced back up at Darby through the side windows just in time to see her gracefully rise from the splits to a perfect handstand. She tilted her body to one side and tentatively lifted her right hand off the rock. She stayed like that for about five seconds and then crumpled onto the boulder.
He tried not to laugh loud enough for her to hear, remembering the acrobat from the Cirque de Soleil who had developed a terminal crush on Darby a few years back during a climbing trip near Vegas. She’d been trying to duplicate the guy’s one-armed handstand ever since.
“Which shoes do you want, Darb?” he yelled through an open window.
“Stingers, please.”
He grabbed the pair that looked like a couple of mutant yellowjackets, stuffed the rest of the gear in a pack, and started toward the cliff. By the time he got to the base, Darby was pacing back and forth beneath the route.
He knew better than to talk to her at this point, though a comment on the quickly worsening weather was on the tip of his tongue—the wind had picked up and was kicking dust into the air in swirling clouds. He tossed the climbing shoes and a harness onto the ground in front of her and started to uncoil the rope.
Darby muttered quietly to herself as she struggled to pull on the shoes that were at least two sizes too small for her feet to prevent slipping on critical moves. She seemed to be in a world all her own as she slowly stood, slipped on her harness, and started threading the rope through it.
“You’re on, Darb. Whenever you’re ready,” Tristan said, pushing his end of the rope through a metal device at his waist designed to lock off the rope if she fell.
Darby slid her hands into a small bag of gymnast’s chalk tied around her waist to dry them and slipped two fingers into a small hole in the rock. She paused there for a moment, bouncing her forehead gently against the stone.
“Okay,” she said quietly, stepping her right foot up onto a small edge no thicker than a nickel and using her fingers to pull her weight over it.
Each individual move on a climb this hard had to be performed with absolute precision. The wrong hand on a hold, moving a foot out of sequence, even a slight swivel of the hips at the wrong moment, and the climber was guaranteed a fall. Darby performed the first four moves like a ballet dancer, making them look completely effortless, though Tristan knew it would probably take him a day of effort to just get both feet off the ground on this horror show.
He moved under Darby and put his arms up. Though probably fifteen feet up, she hadn’t yet reached the first piece of gear she could clip the rope through. If she fell, it would be an ankle breaker, unless he could absorb a little of the impact.
He watched nervously as she dug her toe into a small crease in the stone, tested it, then curled the middle finger of her right hand into a tiny pocket. She carefully grabbed a quickdraw from her harness and snapped it into a bolt that had been drilled directly into the cliff. Looking a little shaky, she pulled the slack rope tied to her harness up and clipped it through the ’draw. He heard her take a deep breath and expel it loudly. “That part’s pretty sketchy,” she said.
“Looks it,” he agreed, taking up enough rope to keep her from hitting the ground in a fall, but leaving enough slack so that it wouldn’t aid her effort—something taboo in this type of climbing.
She continued up, her grace fading as fatigue set in. He could hear her breathing fifty feet above him as she crouched down and made a desperate lunge, barely latching a large hold just before the rock turned horizontal. “Yeah!” he yelled. “Nice, Darby! Stay with it!”
She snapped the rope through another ’draw and hung off her right arm, shaking her left to get the blood flowing. She stayed there for over a minute, alternating arms and getting her breathing under control.
In the short ten minutes it had taken Darby to cover the first sixty feet of the climb, the weather had continued to worsen. She was partially protected by her position, but the dust was blowing around hard enough to start to sting Tristan’s exposed skin. Worse, distant rolls of thunder weren’t so distant anymore. Tristan looked behind him at the sky and then back at Darby, who had regained some of her composure and was dipping her right hand into her chalk bag.
This wasn’t good. There was a reason people didn’t hook a bunch of metal things to themselves and climb to the highest point during a storm.
“Weather, Darby!” he said simply. It wasn’t bad enough to tell her to get off yet. He knew she had tried this climb more than forty times over the last year and right now she was climbing better than he’d ever seen her. If she got it, it would be the toughest ascent by a woman ever.
“You hear me. Darby?”
There was a slight jerk of her head that told him she had. She was completely focused now, too much so to speak.
She arched her back and reached out for a hold on the horizontal roof. As soon as she got the fingers of her left hand around it, her feet swung free. In one smooth motion, she grabbed her left wrist with her right hand and pulled herself up until her head almost hit the rock above her.
“Jesus,” Tristan whispered to himself as she let go of her wrist. Except for her right arm reaching for the next hold, her body didn’t move. She just hung there, locked into a one-arm pull up.
She didn’t seem to notice the flash of blinding light that suddenly bathed them as she continued to fight her way across the roof. Tristan started counting out loud. “One Missis—”
The crash of thunder drown out his voice. “Okay, Darby! That’s it! We’re out of here!” he yelled when the echo had subsided. The wind had risen another notch and much of Darby’s long hair had worked its way out of her ponytail. It was fluttering around in the hazy white cloud created by the chalk being blown from the bag tied to her waist. She couldn’t hear him.
“Darby!”
There was probably more than fifteen feet of slack rope whipping around in the wind behind her. The next clip was only a few feet away. He saw her move her feet onto a small in-cut in the roof and hang there like a spider. “Come on. Darby,” he said to himself. “Make the clip already.”
She rocked herself back once, twice and then jumped horizontally through the air at the next hold. She missed it by a good two inches.
Tristan held the rope tight and fell to the ground as he watched Darby drop thirty feet through the dust-darkened air. When her body weight finally hit the rope, it pulled him five feet into the air. He relaxed his grip and let the rope slide quickly through the device attached to his harness, then stopped her about a foot from the ground with an enormous bounce. A moment later her feet were safely on land and she ran at him, pulling him against the cliff wall. She was laughing.
“Shit, Darby! Are you nuts?” The rain had just started and he had to yell over the dull thud of the drops hitting the loose dirt outside the cave.
She put her face in her still-shaking hands and let out a playful scream. “I was so close! Two more clips and I was at the anchors! I feel strong, man. I’m gonna get that this weekend. Guaranteed.” Tristan was helping her untie the rope from her harness when she suddenly grabbed his shoulders with both hands. “Are you having fun yet!?”
“Jesus, Darby.”
Tristan groaned quietly as he knelt next to the small ring of river rocks and blew at the fledgling fire it contained. Every muscle in his body was screaming, punishing him for leaving the sedentary life he’d been living and getting tricked into a climbing trip.
The storm had lost its will after he had spent about an hour out in it being dragged around the backcountry by Darby Moore. They’d crashed through bushes, waded through knee-deep mud, and forded creeks—all with Darby’s excited promise that “one of the best rainy day climbs at the
New is just up ahead.”
He decided against trying to stand again, instead crawling to a small flexible chair he’d found in the van. Thankfully, it was within reach of the cooler and he was able to get his swollen hands around a cold beer bottle. He stared at the cap for a few moments, finally mustering the courage to grab hold of the serrated edge with what was left of his skin and give it a hard twist. The pain was just like he remembered it.
The sun was about halfway set and the reddish light was fighting its way around the clouds still lingering from the afternoon thundershowers. At the edge of the clearing they were camped in, the world seemed to fall away as the tree-covered slope turned steep and dropped a thousand feet to the New River.
Tristan took a deep breath of air that smelled strongly of decaying leaves and campfire smoke and then turned his attention to Darby. She was about twenty-five yards away, standing naked in a trickle of a waterfall coming off one of the cliffs that surrounded their campsite. The flattening light heightened the contrast between the white skin of her breasts and hips and the deep brown of the rest of her. He watched her as she flipped her long hair over in front of her face and let the water run off it in a long stream.
Even after a couple of years to reflect, he still wasn’t sure if he’d figured out their relationship. They’d slept together, of course, but had always been careful to not let it evolve into lovemaking. By silent agreement, they’d limited it to being just another fun activity they could do together.
There had been no shortage of women since they’d parted—a fortunate trick of genetics had made Tristan’s face and body conform to what the media currently considered ideal for a male. So now he sat around smoky bars with women who made plans. Lots of them. Children, mortgages, a membership to the country club. Perhaps, if they were particularly adventurous, they would consider a fully guided trip to London. No set date, mind you. Someday when the economy was better.
Tristan took another long pull from his beer and focused on Darby again. The sun had finally disappeared over the mountains and she was more or less just a gray outline turning slowly beneath the dully-shimmering flow of water. She spoke four languages fluently, had been everywhere, had done everything. She was at the top of a sport that tolerated no weakness, fear, or lapses of concentration in its participants. In short, the most amazing woman he had ever known.
And he’d let her go. In the end, there’d been no choice. Despite the Zen way she liked to picture herself, Darby Moore was the most focused and driven person he had ever known. If it had come down to a choice between him and the rock, he’d have lost.
But it was unfair to blame it all on her. He would have never been satisfied living a life where tomato soup consisted of free hot water from 7-Eleven mixed with ketchup packets purloined from McDonalds. And when he tried to picture her at a law firm cocktail party, all he could see was her filling her pockets with peeled shrimp and cold cuts. But now things looked like they might be changing, that he might have finally tripped over a little bit of luck. If it held, maybe things could work out for them after all.
The flames sputtered, then sank into the red embers in front of him. He winced and cursed himself for stacking the wood so far from the chair and cooler that he had hoped to not move from until it was time to climb into the van and pass out. He struggled to his feet and selected from the small pile a few pieces of wood that didn’t need to be broken. The hiss of the fire as he tossed the half-green branches onto the coals was loud enough to cover the sound of Darby’s approach. He was a little startled when two brown arms wrapped around him from behind and he felt the initial cold of mountain water soaking his back, followed closely by the warmth of her naked body.
“Missed you, Twist.”
He smiled at the sound of his old nickname. He hadn’t heard it in years. “That’s because you just spent six months living in a grass hut with a bunch of headhunters.”
“Oh, come on,” she said, rubbing his shoulder with her chin. “You were the best climbing partner I ever had.”
“You’re just saying that because you want to get lucky.”
She was silent for a moment. “Maybe. But you weren’t a bad climbing partner.”
six
Carrie Johnstone looked down at her daughter and smiled. Emory had one tiny hand arounda vertical slat in the deck’s fence and the other held a small cup that a few moments ago had been full of orange juice. She looked like a little prisoner.
Carrie squinted against the glare of the sun and followed her daughter’s gaze to the meadow below them or, more precisely, to the black and brown horses contrasted against the fading green of the grass.“Pretty, isn’t it, honey?”
Emory nodded, but maintained her unbroken concentration.
Carrie walked up next to her daughter and leaned against the rail, running her fingers through the little girl’s curly brown hair. Except for the small log-and-cedar home behind them, the modern world didn’t seem to exist there. It was as if it had been swallowed up by an endless expanse of trees, rolling hills, and flat meadows. It reallywas beautiful.
She turned when she heard footsteps behind her. Tom Sherman emerged from around the corner of the house first, with Mark Beamon not far behind.
Carrie reached out when Beamon came into range and slung a playful arm around his waist.“This is amazing, Tom. If I’d have known how gracefully FBI agents retired, I’d have hitched my wagon to an older one.”
Sherman smiled in acknowledgment, but his face seemed to hold onto a hint of sadness until he crouched down next to Emory.“You know what one of those horses told me?”
Emory looked over at him with as stem an expression as the five-year-old could muster.“Horses can’t talk!”
“Can’t talk? Are you kidding? Some of them are practically blabbermouths! One of them told me that she was hoping a little girl would come and ride her tomorrow.” He pointed out into the meadow.“It’s that black one with the white face.” Emory pressed her own face as far as it would go through the slats.
This was only the second time that Carrie had met Tom Sherman, despite the fact that he and Mark had been best friends for more than a decade. She had met him for the first time a little less than a year ago, but that had been before his daughter died and his wife left him. Before he had retired. At their first meeting it had been difficult to picture the quiet, gray-haired man with the soft eyes as the man who had risen at warp speed through the ranks of the FBI to become the youngest associate director in the history of the organization. Now, it was completely impossible. His introspective nature had grown into introversion and he seemed to have trouble tracking on long conversations.
“So have you been able to get anything out of him?”Carrie said as Sherman stood and left Emory to dream about tomorrow. Her boyfriend had been characteristically tight-lipped about the hearings he’d been involved in.
“Not yet,”Sherman said.“Being a psychiatrist, I’m sure you understand that you have to tread lightly around Mark’s delicate psyche.”
“Tell me about it.”
Sherman turned to his friend.“Well?”
Beamon leaned against the table behind him and frowned, obviously not happy to be talked about like he wasn’t there.“They were completely won over by my effusive charm.”
Sherman pulled his glasses down on his nose and glared at Beamon. For a brief moment, Carrie saw a glimmer of the man that had taken control of the FBI at the age of forty-six.
“What?”Beamon said.“Shit, Tommy, you’re still probably one of the most connected guys in Washington. You tell me how it went.”
Sherman swirled the ice in his glass and drew it slowly to his lips.“Okay, I will. You didn’t give them what they wanted, Mark.”
“What was it theydid want?”Carrie said to neither of them in particular. They looked like they were in one of those staring contests little boys favored so much.
Sherman spoke first.“They were looking to trip Mark up. To cast enough doubt over the legality o
f how the tapes were obtained, or the man who obtained them, that they could fabricate doubt as to their validity. Or at least divert the attention of the public. That’s what they wanted, and that’s what Mark didn’t give them.”
“That’s good, though, right?”
Sherman softened when he looked over at her.“I don’t know, Carrie. I just don’t know anymore. When the Vericomm tapes were leaked it was like a bomb going off in the Capitol building. The public’s apathy toward their elected officials’ behavior had already started to turn to rage and this just amplified it. The politicians are getting desperate. And when people like that get desperate …” He let his voice trail off and Carrie looked over at Beamon. He was slowly running his finger up the side of his can of Miller Lite, trying to gauge how much was left by the temperature changes in the aluminum.“I don’t know what’s going to happen, Carrie,”he said finally.“There’s nothing I can do now.”
“You could ride off into the sunset,”Sherman said. Carrie silently thanked him for broaching a subject she’d been skirting for months.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard what I said.”“Come on, Tommy, you know that everything relating to my suspension was a bullsh—”He cut himself off as he looked down at Emory.“They’ve got nothing, and next week they’re going to bring me back to full duty. The whole thing’s already got the director’s rubber stamp across it.”
Sherman didn’t reply right away. He seemed to be trying to decide something. How much to say.
“If they do bring you back, Mark, it won’t have anything to do with justice.” He spoke slowly, now. Deliberately.“You make it a little too obvious how important your job is to you.”
Beamon tried to interrupt, but his friend held up his hand and silenced him. Carrie fought off a moment of confusion. She’d never seen anyone with the power to make Mark Beamon shut up before.
