Free Fall

by Kyle Mills

  There was a muffled whup and a plume of white snow, followed by a loud cracking sound. Darby was far ahead by the time Beamon felt the low rumble come up through the ground into his feet and legs. She was nearly to the trees. She was going to make it. But he wasn’t.

  Beamon slowed and then stopped, turning back toward the slope just before he was engulfed in a billowing cloud of snow and ice. He felt it washing over him, gaining weight and force, filling his mouth and every gap in his clothing. The world flashed the white of snow, the red of the sunset, and the deep blue of the sky, more times than he could process as he was turned over and over by the irresistible force of the slide. He didn’t bother to fight, instead closing his eyes and relaxing, waiting for all the colors to permanently turn black.

  He didn’t know how long it took—it could have been seconds or hours—but it finally stopped. Despite the darkness, silence, and lack of gravity, it wasn’t exactly what he expected. If this was death, it was going to be a cold and boring afterlife.

  He experimented with moving, but was held completely immobile by the pressure all around him. The flair of pain he felt in his right shoulder suggested that he was still alive, but he couldn’t decide whether or not that was a good thing.

  He suddenly realized that he wasn’t breathing and tried to take in a tentative breath, but didn’t get any air. Thinking that the snow was packed in around his face, he jerked his head forward to try to clear an air pocket, but found that nature had already created one. He forced back the panic that was starting to overtake him, finally realizing that he had snow packed into his mouth and nose. He forced what little air he had out of his lungs, clearing a passageway and starting to breathe again.

  To what end he wasn’t sure. There couldn’t be more than a few minutes of oxygen in there with him.

  He thought of Carrie and Emory, then about Darby, who was probably futilely searching for him in the thousands of tons of snow that had come down the slope. She wouldn’t survive on her own. He was sorry about that.

  The quality of the air didn’t support deep thought for long. As he started breathing in less oxygen and more carbon dioxide, he could see the sparkling lights on the in-sides of his eyelids grow in intensity.

  He was only vaguely aware of a sudden, sharp pain in his back and assumed it was a disk exploding or his spine giving way. Nothing to worry too much about at this point

  “Mark!”

  The voice was muffled. It didn’t sound real.

  Another pain—less severe and in the back of his head. He couldn’t ignore it this time, because of the cold rush of air that accompanied it

  “Mark!”

  His head cleared a little and he could hear the loud crunch of snow reverberating in his ears. He abandoned the shallow breaths he’d been taking and sucked in a lungful of clean air.

  “Mark! Can you hear me?”

  He felt a hand clearing the snow away from his face and wiping it roughly from his nose.

  “I… uh. Yeah,” he said, opening his eyes to see the sky spinning sickeningly above him. He focused on Darby as she drove a bright yellow shovel into the snow above him. “Just relax, Mark. I’ll have you out in a second. Can you move? Where are you hurt?”

  “Everywhere …” He tried to move his arms. One remained immobile and felt like there was a knife in it, but other than that and the milder pain in his left ankle, everything seemed to more or less work. “I… I think I’m okay. How … how did you find me?”

  She reached over and picked up something that looked like a bright yellow transistor radio. “Remember this?”

  He reached up to his chest and felt the outline of the matching transmitter in the pocket of his jacket, then leaned his head back into the snow and closed his eyes.

  “Do you have any idea how lucky you are, Mark?”

  “How lucky?” Beamon said, looking up at the first stars appearing in the black and blue sky.

  “Look behind you.”

  He twisted around, sending another charge of pain through his shoulder. The world fell away no more than three feet from where he’d come to a stop.

  “What the hell happened?” Beamon said, laying his head back in the snow again. Darby slid down into his hole with him and began running her hands up his legs, squeezing intermittently and looking at his expression to gauge the level of pain. “It was, uh, kind of a bomb, I guess you could say.”

  “A bomb? A fucking bomb? Where the hell would he—”

  Her hand suddenly clamped down around his ankle and the pain was enough to cut him off.

  “It’s a charge used to set off avalanches. You know, like ski patrollers use.”

  “Jesus.”

  He let the rest of her examination pass in silence. When she was through, she leaned back against the opposite wall of the bathtub-sized pit she’d dug around him. “The gods were smiling on you, Mark. The only thing I can find that’s worth mentioning is an ankle sprain. I mean, you’ll be black-and-blue for a couple of weeks, but after that ride …”

  He wasn’t impressed by her medical expertise. “You didn’t even look at my shoulder and it hurts worse than everything else combined.”

  “Don’t have to, I know what’s wrong with that Look at it, it’s dislocated.”

  He decided against looking—the mental image the word dislocated conjured up was bad enough.

  “If you’re ready, I’ll fix it for you,” Darby said.

  “That’s going to hurt, isn’t it?”

  She gently grabbed hold of his right hand and elbow, and put a foot in his rib cage. “I’d put it somewhere between childbirth and accidentally setting your foot on fire,” she said, and then yanked furiously.

  The analogy seemed fair.

  “You’ll be fine here, Mark. No problem,” Darby said, peeking into the small opening in the four-foot-by-four-foot snow cave she’d dug for him. “You’re not claustrophobic, are you?”

  Beamon turned his head and let his headlamp shine on the white walls surrounding him. “No.” In truth, he normally was, but relative to his recent premature burial, the accommodations seemed spacious.

  “You’re clear on how to light that stove, right? And the shoulder’s not too bad?”

  “I’m fine,” he said glumly. The last thing he wanted was to be stranded alone in this frozen nowhere, but the combination of not being able to put weight on his ankle and not being able to hold a ski pole made it impossible for him to travel.

  “Well, bundle up in that sleeping bag; it’s going to get cold tonight.”

  “It’s already cold.”

  His headlamp flashed off her teeth as she shot him an ironic smile. “No, it’s not. Not for a couple more hours.”

  “Great.”

  Her head disappeared back through the small portal and Beamon heard the click of ski bindings. “I’ll be back with a snowmobile as soon as I can. Probably mid-morning. Hopefully, anyway. Good luck.”

  forty-four

  “no, David. No,” Roland Peck said, pacing back and forth in front of Hallorin’s desk. “We’re okay. There’s still time.”

  “We’re not okay, Roland,” Hallorin said, struggling to keep his voice even. “You let this get out of control. You have no idea who he is or what he has….”

  “We can still turn him away, David. He said if we didn’t accept his offer, he would destroy it and leave the country.”

  “And you believe him?”

  Peck didn’t. He didn’t know what to think. When he’d hired Frank Sorvino to find Darby Moore and the file, he had initially refused to let Sorvino bring in the Slovenian. Too much of a risk. In the end, though, he had acquiesced. There had been no time for conservatism. The file and the girl had to be found.

  But now it had degenerated into chaos. Where was Sorvino? And how had Vili Marcek come to call the campaign headquarters of David Hallorin? Thank God the receptionist had been confused enough to ring Marcek through to Peck’s office and not discount him as just another crank.

&nbs
p; Peck’s heart jumped when the door to Hallorin’s office reverberated with the sound of a short knock. A moment later, it opened and Hallorin’s secretary poked her head in. Peck nodded slowly. There was no going back now. David Hallorin would be the president of the United States. The situation was still controllable. It had to be.

  The Slovenian entered the office tentatively, tensing visibly at the sound of the door closing behind him.

  Peck studied the young man for a moment, starting at the long blond hair framing his vaguely Asian features, then to the bulky down jacket covering his torso, and finally to the stick-thin legs sticking out below it.

  He was beautiful. Strong, athletic, exotic. When Peck finally raised his head far enough to look Marcek in the eye, he could see that the young man’s attention was focused on a point behind him. A point that he knew was David Hallorin.

  Peck continued to watch Marcek’s face as Hallorin rose from his chair and walked to the private side door to the office. He imagined that he could see Hallorin’s reflection in the Slovenian’s perfect blue eyes as he heard the door open and Hallorin leave the room.

  “Can I offer you a chair?” Peck said, moving behind Hallorin’s expansive desk and sitting down.

  Marcek didn’t say anything for a moment, but looked around the room at the wood paneling, antiques, and art “Where did he—Senator Hallorin—go?” The accent was thick, but understandable. On the phone, Marcek had insisted he would only talk to Hallorin. Not surprising under the circumstances but, of course, impossible. A man like Hallorin couldn’t be exposed to a situation like this. He had to be protected at all costs.

  “The senator is quite busy, as you can imagine. Quite busy. I’m afraid he had another engagement” Peck was certain that Hallorin’s brief presence would be plenty for the Slovenian, who would undoubtedly rationalize his absence in any way necessary to get whatever it was he wanted. And more importantly, it provided Hallorin plausible deniability in the unlikely event that there was a problem.

  “You mentioned Frank Sorvino,” Peck said. “That’s the only reason we’re meeting. Frank has done some work for us in the past… though that was some time ago.”

  Marcek looked confused for a moment. Uncertain.

  “Can I ask what this is about?” Peck said, smiling with a condescending warmth. “While I’m not as busy as David, I do have an appointment that I can’t miss.”

  The Slovenian’s feet remained planted on the thick carpet, but his eyes darted nervously toward the door Hallorin had disappeared through as he tried to decide whether or not to shelve his demand that the senator be present.

  “I don’t have much time,” Peck prompted again, smoothing his mustache with his forefinger and wiping away a few small droplets of sweat that had accumulated there. Had this beautiful boy brought him the prize?

  A few moments later, Marcek seemed to come to a decision—the only one Peck had left him. The Slovenian reached into his down jacket and produced a single piece of paper. Peck watched him closely as he advanced, dropped it on the desk, and then retreated to his former position.

  “What’s this?” Peck sighed, reaching with exaggerated slowness for his reading glasses. He felt his serene façade crack a bit as he looked down at the sheet of paper.

  The text was insignificant—a portion of a memo with no real context The date and the slightly yellowed FBI letterhead, though, were all-important Peck pushed the memo back to the center of the desk and faked a violent coughing fit to excuse the tears that were beginning to blur his vision. All the planning, the risk, the work. It would have ended in nothing without this piece of paper and the others that had been generated with it He realized now that he had never really been sure that the Prodigy file existed. That it wasn’t just part of some kind of bizarre legend.

  “A thirty-year-old FBI memo?” Peck said. “I don’t understand. Does Frank have something to do with this?”

  “He’s dead,” Marcek said. “And the FBI man.”

  Peck affected a sad expression while his mind recalculated his position based on the confirmation of what he’d already suspected. “I’m sorry to hear that. How did it happen?”

  “Avalanche.”

  Peck leaned forward, thinking he hadn’t interpreted the man’s poor English correctly. “I’m sorry. Did you say an avalanche?”

  The Slovenian nodded. “They were crushed.”

  “And the young woman?”

  “No. She still lives.”

  Peck let that sink in for a moment. Mark Beamon had turned into a major problem, as Peck had always known he would. His death solved a number of issues and left Darby Moore defenseless. Peck’s excitement notched even higher at the thought that he might have an opportunity to see her again. They had unfinished business.

  Marcek approached again and placed another, smaller, piece of paper on the desk. Peck read the nearly illegible handwriting scrawled across it—apparently the name and number of a bank in Eastern Europe. Below that was an amount: three hundred thousand U.S. dollars. He struggled not to laugh at its insignificance, and the time and effort the Slovenian must have put into coming up with it.

  “I have the rest,” Marcek prompted. “It says Prodigy on it.”

  Peck felt another tiny burst of adrenaline course through him at the Slovenian’s mangling of the word Prodigy.

  “Well, Vili. As a servant of the public, I know that the senator wouldn’t want to see an obviously stolen FBI file circulated—” Peck cut himself off. Marcek’s brow had crinkled deeply and he had turned his head slightly as if to try to hear better. It was quickly becoming obvious that his English wasn’t good enough to decipher the nuances of plausible deniability. Anyway, there was no time.

  “Do you have it?” Peck said, abandoning subtlety and enunciating carefully.

  Marcek had obviously anticipated the question. He shook his head. “Money first. Then I call and tell you where.”

  Peck leaned back in his seat and folded his hands together in front of him. “That’s a great deal of money. How can I trust you?”

  “I don’t understand the file, it means nothing to me. Senator Hallorin is a powerful man, your next president, yes? I just want money.”

  It wasn’t an elaborate answer, but it seemed adequate under the circumstances.

  “Honor is very important to the senator. If we make a deal, he would expect you to abide … to live up to your agreement.”

  Marcek seemed to understand what he was driving at. “No more money after this. The senator is a powerful man. No more.”

  Peck stared at the young man for a long time, but his mind was filled with the image of Darby Moore. She was still alive.

  He remembered her thin, tight body, the narrow scars along her nose, the smell of her. He’d fantasized about the day she escaped a thousand times. In his mind, it went differently. She would be tied to the small bed, sweat running along the muscles of her stomach and glowing in the fading light coming through the windows. The only sound would have been her muffled screams and the struggling of Tristan Newberry as he was forced to watch the things Peck did to her.

  “No one must ever know about this, Vili.”

  Marcek’s face broke into a wide smile and he folded into a shallow bow.

  “The money will be wired today. And I’ll expect your call this afternoon.”

  “This afternoon,” Marcek said. He turned and started toward the door.

  “You say that Darby Moore is still alive,” Peck said, stopping Marcek with his hand on the doorknob. “What if we make it an even half a million?”

  The Slovenian looked back over his shoulder. From his expression, it was clear that he had understood what Peck was asking and was more than willing.

  “But I want to speak to her first. I must see her. Do you understand?”

  A cruel smile transformed the young Slovenian’s face as Peck wiped a few more droplets of sweat from his mustache. Perhaps this beautiful boy would like to join him in his “interrogation” of the gi
rl. Yes, that would be fine. Just fine.

  forty-five

  Beamon checked his speed again and forced himself to ease off the gas and let Darby’s old truck coast to just under the speed limit. He’d been driving nonstop since he’d sneaked without incident from the Middle-of-Nowhere, Wyoming, hospital Darby’d taken him to. What he didn’t need was for some state trooper to pull them over and shine a flashlight in Darby’s face. That story was getting too long to go into.

  With his right arm in a sling, he had to steer with his knees in order to reach the half-full beer balanced on the dashboard. Swallowing was almost more trouble than it was worth due to the inexplicable lump swelling from the inside of his cheek. He wasn’t sure how the washing machine action of the avalanche had left that particular injury, but it was becoming increasingly clear that no part of his body had been left unbattered. Miraculously, most of the damage looked like it would heal.

  Darby had offered—insisted—that he climb into the makeshift bed in the back of the truck and let her drive, but he’d declined. Driving always calmed him down and helped him think.

  It had been an unusual couple of days, to say the least His night in the Wyoming mountains had been an experience he hoped never to repeat Bitter cold, dizzying darkness, the wind’s constant scream as it blew across the entrance to the tiny cave Darby had dug out for him.

  He had tried to sleep, but found it impossible. In the end, his exhaustion might have actually been able to overcome his body’s busy little pain receptors, but it had refused to overcome the drop in temperature. All he could do was lay there, huddled in the sleeping bag, adjusting his position at least once every five seconds to ease his shivering and keep his circulation going.

  He’d spent the first few hours of sleeplessness creating elaborate scenarios that would prevent Darby from coming back for him: another slide, her freezing to death, the interference of Vili Marcek, alien abduction. It hadn’t taken long for that to get depressing, though, so he’d forced himself to focus on what he was going to do now that the Prodigy file was undoubtedly making its way into David Hallorin’s capable hands. As it turned out, dwelling on the fact that he’d allowed himself to be stripped of the one thing that could keep him and Darby alive was even more depressing.