Free Fall

by Kyle Mills

  She looked down the beach again, searching for any sign of life in the boarded-up bars and restaurants, but there was none. She looked up at her friend, and suddenly realized how ridiculous she must look, cowering in a bush. A stupid bush.

  Darby stepped out on the beach and started toward a rocky path uncovered by the low tide. “Let’s go.”

  He followed a few feet behind, silent until they left the sand and began scrambling over the jagged boulders to gain the beach to the north.

  “So, what happened, Darby? What happened to Tristan?” Sam’s voice was hesitant.

  The cool water splashed up on her as the waves collided with the rocks, mingling with the sweat that had already drenched her. She tried to concentrate on that feeling and let everything else go. “Do you think I killed him?”

  “No. Hell, no.” Sam forced a smile. “I mean, I only met the guy once, but he just didn’t seem that irritating.”

  “He wasn’t. He wasn’t irritating at all.” She bent over to start down the other side of the boulder they were on, but stopped when she felt Sam’s hand on her shoulder.

  “Look, Darby. Have you thought this through? If you didn’t do it, and I know you didn’t, is running to Southeast Asia the right thing to do? It makes you look guilty. Have you thought about maybe going back and turning yourself in? Telling your side of the story? My dad knows some pretty heavy-hitting lawyers, maybe I could—”

  Darby put her hand on his, silencing him. “Thanks, Sam, but it’s more complicated than that. I’m just going to have to work this out myself, okay?”

  He didn’t immediately follow her down to the sand.

  “I’m leaving next week, Darb,” he said finally, jumping off the tall boulder and landing next to her. “This is as much my home as anywhere, but it’s getting too creepy, even for me.”

  Darby nodded and started up the beach without saying anything. They continued in silence for another ten minutes and then cut right onto a steep, narrow trail rising into the jungle.

  “You can stay at my place as long as you want,” Sam said.

  Darby stopped and looked back down the trail at him, wiping the sweat from her forehead with an equally wet forearm. “Sam, I appreciate you letting me stop here, but I don’t want to—”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Look around you—Railei is a ghost town. It’s either you or a family of macaques. And you know how I feel about monkeys. Just promise me one thing.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll think about what I said.”

  “I’ll think about it,” she said truthfully. That’s what she’d come here for—to think. So far, though, every strategy she dreamed up was a losing one. And worse, she was finding it impossible to let go of Tristan’s memory, to separate her growing anger from her logic. As much as she wanted all this to go away—to make a deal, or to just keep running—she also wanted the men who had killed Tristan to pay for what they’d done.

  “That’s it. Right there,” she heard Sam say from behind her. She picked up her pace a bit, hopping from rock to rock until she came to the base of the cliff. She craned her neck upwards, following the line of shiny bolts with her eyes, mapping each hole, divot, and ledge in the rock face, calculating the optimal body position for each move. Normally, her mind worked through these kinds of sequences automatically, but now she had to concentrate. To try to block everything else out.

  “I don’t know, Sam. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. I’m not really in the mood—”

  “Come on, Darby. This is exactly what you need.” Sam dropped his pack and began pulling a rope and a pair of shoes from the top. “It’ll take your mind off your problems for a few hours. Clear your head.”

  When she didn’t move, he let his shoes fall to the ground and crossed his arms in front of his chest self-consciously. “Okay, the truth is, I’ve got fifty-two tries on this route and I’m within two feet of doing it. If I don’t get it before I leave, I’m afraid my elbows will be too old when it’s finally safe to come back.”

  It was the least she could do for all the help he was giving her, for never questioning her innocence. In the grand scheme of things, another two hours weren’t going to make a whole lot of difference.

  “You first,” Sam said as she slid her pack off and dumped the contents on the ground.

  “What?”

  He held a handful of quickdraws out toward her. “I don’t want to tire myself out putting these up. You don’t mind, do you?”

  She shook her head and clipped the ‘draws to her harness before sliding it on and tying into the rope.

  “Great. Thanks. You’re on belay, Darb. Whenever you’re ready.”

  She laid her hands against the cliff and closed her eyes, trying to fill her mind with the texture of the rock. Trying to tell herself that she was safe now, back on the fringes of the real world where she belonged. She took a deep breath and reached up for a doorjamb-sized edge, pulling herself up onto it and bringing her feet up onto two similar ledges beneath her.

  She felt out of balance. As she continued up, moves that should have flowed effortlessly turned into wild throws for the tiny holds that dotted the route. Each time she latched onto one, gravity grabbed hold of her and her body sagged dangerously toward the ground.

  She barely made it to the first bolt, clipped a quickdraw into it, and snapped the rope through the other end. Her arms and shoulders already felt like they were on fire and there was a stream of blood running from the edge of one of her nails down the sweat-soaked back of her hand.

  This was usually the best part—the burning of lactic acid in her muscles, the unavoidable cuts opened by the jagged rock. It had always felt like life to her. Now it just felt like pain.

  “I’m going to hang,” she called down. Sam took the slack out of the rope and she sat back in her harness, gently swinging in the damp breeze. There was no joy in it anymore. The harder she tried to fall into the unconscious alignment of mind and body that had always been such a high for her, the further it seemed to slip away.

  “Are you all right, Darby?” Sam called up. “Hey, if you don’t want to finish it, come down. I’ll do it”

  She slammed a hand into the rock face, setting her to swinging violently. “NO! I’m going to finish it.”

  She shoved two fingers into a small pocket so hard that she felt another cut open up. Ignoring it, she abandoned any attempt at technique or grace, just grabbing holds as fast and powerfully as she could.

  She made it another thirty feet and latched onto a hold big enough to fit both of her hands. Breathing hard, she could feel the sweat running down her back so thick that it was actually trapping the heat to her body.

  “What do you want?”

  It was Sam’s voice, but it didn’t seem to be directed at her.

  She managed to find a foothold just large enough to allow her to twist her body around and look down to the ground.

  Sam was trying to back away, letting rope out to compensate for his increasing distance from the cliff. He had to stop after ten feet, though, when he reached the edge of a forty-foot drop-off. Five uniformed Thai men had more or less surrounded him and began speaking in rapid-fire Thai as they examined the rope he was holding.

  “What do you want?” Sam repeated in Thai, fear edging into his voice.

  “What you want?” one of the men mimicked. His companions laughed as he stepped forward and grabbed the rope that Darby was tied into, giving it a firm tug. She felt the sudden downward pull in her harness and her feet skittered off the rock, leaving her hanging from the cliff by her sweat-soaked hands.

  “Get the fuck off that!” she heard Sam yell as he pushed the man away.

  Darby brought her feet up again quickly, trying to take some of the weight off her exhausted arms. She looked down again, spotting the last bolt she had clipped about fifteen feet below her, then staring down at the ground forty feet below that.

  Sam played out a few more feet of slack as the Thais started inchi
ng toward him again, then hit the ground hard when one of them drove a foot into his side. The additional rope that he’d let out kept him from pulling her off when he fell, but based on the position of her last bolt and the amount of slack, she was no longer certain that she wouldn’t hit the ground if she came off.

  Darby looked above her as the shouts below started to increase in volume and anger. The next bolt was only about five feet away, but the wall turned almost blank above her. She could already feel her grip weakening and what little focus she’d had slipping away. She’d never make it.

  “She come down!” The words were barely decipherable around the thick Thai accent. Darby looked down again just in time to see her friend absorb another firm kick to the ribs and one of the Thais hang his weight on the rope. She tried to brace herself, but her feet slipped out from under her again.

  The tension on the line and laughter below increased as the man lifted his feet off the ground and left her supporting his entire body weight as well as her own. They were ignoring Sam now, and in a desperate glance in his direction she could see that he had taken up what slack he could and braced himself. When he looked up at her and gave a terrified nod, she let go.

  The way the wind felt as it blew through her newly cut hair seemed strange when mixed with the familiar sensation of falling. She let her body go completely limp, knowing that there was nothing she could do now but hope that it would be the rope, and not the ground, that broke her fall.

  She came to an abrupt halt to the sound of a shrill scream from the man who had been trying to pull her off. She opened her eyes in time to see him stagger back a couple of feet, staring down at the deep wound the rope had cut into his palm. Judging by the volume of his friends’ laughter, they thought that was pretty funny, too.

  She had stopped about fifteen feet from the ground, close enough to see the rage on the injured man’s face when he turned it up to her and pulled a knife from his pocket

  Darby tried to swing back to the rock but it was too far away. She searched hopelessly for a safe landing in the jagged boulders that littered the ground as the man went for the rope. He was within inches of it when Sam jumped to his feet and ran to his left, leaping off the ledge he had been standing on.

  She felt herself pulled up about a foot as his body weight hit the rope, then she was in a free fall to the ground. Just before she impacted, the rope went tight for a moment—slowing her down enough to leave her lying among the scattered boulders dazed, instead of dead.

  The Thai who had been injured was on her the moment her back hit the ground, knife cocked back in hand. She tried to grab a rock to defend herself but didn’t have any strength.

  “Stop!”

  The Thai froze, knife hand still cocked by his ear and face still full of fury. Darby turned toward the voice and saw the blond head of Vili Marcek appear through the trees.

  The Thai man on top of her adjusted himself so that his knee was planted painfully in her chest, effectively pinning her to the ground. The blood from his hand had spattered onto his face and combined with the rage etched there made him look like a deranged killer from a slasher film.

  “My, this was close, was it not?” the Slovenian said, smiling as he approached.

  “Vili? What… why—” Darby looked into his bright blue eyes, but the wind had been knocked out of her too badly to get a full sentence out.

  Marcek placed a hand on the shoulder of the man pinning her to the ground. The Thai stood and let Marcek lead him past his companions to the edge of the drop that Sam had jumped from. Darby struggled to her feet and limped up behind them.

  “He’s the one who did that to you,” Marcek said to the Thai, pointing to her friend’s semiconscious form. He patted the man on the back and then turned back to Darby, who was trying desperately to unbuckle the harness at her waist and escape the rope tied to it She looked up just as the Thai started climbing down the rock toward Sam.

  “Stop! Vili—stop him!”

  Marcek jumped in front of her and kept her from going to her friend’s aid.

  A moment later, she heard a loud grunt and the unmistakable sound of the impact of flesh on flesh. Marcek let her go just in time for her to see the Thai stand, leaving his knife buried to the hilt in her friend’s chest.

  She stepped backward and tripped over the harness that had fallen around her ankles, landing on her back among the boulders. For the first time in her life, she felt herself give up. Her muscles went slack and her brain seemed to short-circuit. She was only vaguely aware of Vili Marcek standing over her and the four Thai men scooping her off the ground. None of it mattered. Maybe they’d kill her. Then it would be over.

  thirty-eight

  Darby Moore squinted into the blackness as the rotting wooden door opened, and was staggered by the stench that washed over her. The four Thai policemen holding her seemed to be temporarily confused. The ones who had already staked out the more interesting parts of her anatomy seemed unwilling to let go long enough to get through the door, afraid that on the other side they might end up with a less titillating selection.

  The argument that ensued between the men was loud but brief. When a post-threshold hierarchy had been tentatively sketched out, she felt herself being shoved through the doorway and dragged to one of four empty cells along the right side of the narrow passageway. But it didn’t really feel like it was happening to her. She felt completely disconnected—as if she was already half dead.

  A de facto leader had obviously been chosen during the negotiations, and he was the one who accompanied her into the cell. Once inside, he jerked her around to face him and ran a hand slowly down her cheek. “You pretty.” She looked at the handkerchief covering the deep cut her rope had left in his hand and wondered if all the blood on it was his or if some of it had come from Sam. The image of her friend’s dead body lying below the cliffs that he’d loved so much melded with the one of Tristan’s blood-spattered foot hanging from the door of her van, and her disconnection turned to fury too quickly for her to control.

  In one smooth motion, she grabbed the man’s injured hand and squeezed with everything she had. He opened his mouth to cry out, but then realized that his comrades were watching from just outside the cell. His teeth clenched tight, stifling any sound, and he forced himself to do nothing for long enough to prove that he couldn’t be hurt by a mere woman. Then he swung his good fist at her head.

  Darby released him at the last possible moment and ducked, letting the blow glance off the top of her skull. He connected solidly on his second try, and though the blow wasn’t really powerful enough to hurt her, she dropped to her knees hoping he would be satisfied.

  She wasn’t that lucky. The next shot caught her in the back of the neck and had the Thai’s full weight behind it. Stunned, she fell to her side in the wet, foul-smelling grime puddled on the floor. She brought her arms up to protect her face, noticing for the first time that Vili Marcek was standing just inside the door they’d brought her through. He was enjoying this.

  “Enough!”

  The Thai standing over her had been about to let loose with a vicious kick but froze at the sound of the man’s voice. Darby lowered her arms a few inches and looked in the direction it had come from.

  At first, all she could see was a sweat-stained, white dress shirt hovering in the gray gloom of the jail. When she concentrated a little harder she was able to make out a pair of dark slacks that blended almost perfectly into the stone wall behind them.

  Darby redirected her gaze up a bit as the Thai retreated a few feet. Whoever the man was, he was white, but with dark, almost black, hair combed over in a way that suggested it was hiding a bald spot. The lower part of his face was padded with heavy jowls surrounding what once must have been a strong jaw line.

  “Get out,” he said authoritatively.

  The Thai man who had been beating her said something as he backed away. She hadn’t been quick enough to translate it, but the lecherous titters from his companions mad
e the meaning fairly clear.

  She laid there in the filth until the Thai locked her cell, then pushed herself to her knees and stood, scraping the sludge from her side and staring directly at the man standing against the wall. She was sure now that she had never seen him before. She’d expected the man who had turned up at Lori’s ranch, but it definitely wasn’t him.

  He turned to Marcek. “You, too.”

  The Slovenian looked like he was going to say something, but ended up just shuffling out with an expression of deep disappointment on his face.

  “Tell me, Darby. Do you regret saving him?” the man said as Marcek pulled the door at the end of the corridor closed.

  “What?”

  “It’s a simple question. Do you regret risking your life to save Vili? He obviously wants to see you dead for doing it”

  “I never really thought about it”

  The man nodded and leaned his considerable weight against the wall behind him. “It doesn’t have anything to do with you rescuing him, you know. I’ve been unlucky enough to have had to spend a lot of time with him over the past two weeks and it’s pretty obvious that he has some kind of infatuation for you. A man scorned …” His voice trailed off.

  Darby had known about that. She’d let him down as easily as she could, but he’d gone nuts, showing up at places she was climbing, calling her whenever she was staying somewhere with a phone. The story had quickly made its rounds through the eternally gossipy climbing community and then the whole thing had ended with the rescue on Ama Dablam. The humiliation had just been too much for him.

  “As big a fuckup as I’ve ever met,” the man continued. “You’ll be happy to know that he’ll never get the money he’s been promised. When I’m done with him, I’ll put a bullet in the back of his head. I’ll enjoy doing it, too.”

  Darby just stared at him, still trying to process what had happened to her and what, if anything, she could do about it. “Do you want me to thank you?”