Nevada Barr - Blind Descent

He must have smiled; she felt his beard tickle her cheek. "Do you have to go to the bathroom? Do you want a drink of water?"

Reassured by the childhood litany, Anna breathed out slowly. "I'm old enough to be your mother," she said to cover the fact his simple stratagem was working.

"You're old enough to be my sister," he corrected her. "I always thought she was pretty hot stuff. If you let me watch you put on your makeup, I'll be your slave."

"Believe it or not, I've been known to wear it." Lipstick and perfume seemed far away, artifacts from a past life. Reflexively she raised her hand to touch her face, count the creases time had carved there. A furry brush stroked her cheek, and she realized she clutched a feathery rope-end in her fist, caught up, no doubt, in her scrabble from sleep. It took a second to figure out where she'd come by such an oddment. It was the end of one of Lisa's braids. Stealthily, though the darkness had masked her thievery, Anna put the pigtail back on its owner's chest.

Rolling onto her shoulder, she groaned as the bruised flesh reminded her of her transgressions.

"If I let you use me as a pillow will you stop squirming and go back to sleep?" Curt whispered.

"I'll try," Anna promised.

Schatz raised his arm so she could move onto her uninjured side and rest her head on his shoulder. Anna didn't know if he was a Boy Scout, an opportunist, or a friend when she needed one. She didn't much care. His warmth brought her courage, the sound of his heart beating soothed her like the ticking of a clock is said to soothe orphaned puppies.

Curt's breathing evened out, but sleep refused to return for Anna. Shielding the glow so it wouldn't disturb her bedmates, Anna flicked on the Mag. Brent was missing, and down the stoop-walk corridor to the rift she could see the water bottle in the "occupied" position. Even the time-honored remedy for insomnia of going to the bathroom and getting a snack was denied her.

Encased in perfect darkness the meager brilliance of her covered light showed everything clearly. Pressed between Lisa and Holden, Peter lay next to Zeddie. Like she and Curt, they'd found a degree of solace in each other's arms. Zeddie's head nestled in the crook of Peter's neck. His arm and one knee were thrown across her body. The embrace looked practiced; there was an ease of familiarity in the intimacy. Embarrassed, Anna turned off the light. She remembered Sondra's accusations. "Everybody's laughing themselves sick at my expense," Sondra had said, and, "Is there anything you wouldn't do to make yourself necessary to women?" That smacked of a fight over infidelity. Peter had said something about Frieda, then Sondra said, "Maybe I wasn't talking about Frieda." Zeddie. She'd been talking about Zeddie.

Homicide by avalanche struck Anna as a little over the top to get time alone with one's inamorata, but if avoiding an ugly divorce was thrown in as an added inducement it might tip the scales.

The absurdity hit Anna with its obvious counterpart. Peter wasn't the one with something to gain in the rockfall. Sondra said she was going ahead. As far as they knew, she was the last to head up for the Distributor Cap. An avalanche had started. She was out free. Her husband and his lover were trapped, possibly dead.

Holy smoke, Anna thought, consciously using one of the newly proffered cowboy curses. Following this epiphany was a wave of white-hot fury that shook her so hard she clenched her fists in Schatz's shirt and he swatted at her like a man conditioned to sleeping with pesky felines. An act of God or Mother Nature, Anna would accept. The deadly conniving of her fellow man, never. She could live with the fact that Frieda had lost her life, but not that she'd been robbed of it. Holden was not the only one anxious to know just what had caused the avalanche.

In a perverse way, Anna hoped it was Sondra. Unless she wanted to spend the rest of her days in jail, she would have to forgo the pleasure of wringing Sondra's neck but, given the mood she was in, it would feel good to knock her around a bit. Surely a jury would allow her that. After Lechuguilla, a plea of temporary insanity would sound not only believable but probably downright conservative.

Fantasies of revenge did what counting sheep could not. When next Anna stirred, the others were up and moving. Curt had slipped his bulk from under her and left a cold place at her side. Lying on the dirt floor of the cave, letting the pain of her shoulder bring her slowly into the new "day," she thought about how long it had been since she'd slept curled in a man's arms. More than a year. Two summers before, a long-distance affair with an FBI agent had dribbled unspectacularly to a close. On some level, Anna had known it was for the best-too many old wounds on both sides-but she'd never properly laid the affair to rest. Except for the final good-bye over the phone she'd not seen or heard from Frederick again. It was as if they'd never happened. Even her sister, Molly, wasn't keen to talk about it. That was where Anna might have found what the modern how-to books were calling closure. Without being able to talk a thing to death with her sister, it was hard to truly put it to bed.

The pure, unadulterated male warmth of Curt's expedient embrace had awakened dormant memories. Anna groaned and piled her aching self into a sitting position. As near as she could figure, it had been approximately ten thousand years since she'd last seen the sun. Her love life was the least of her worries.

Holden was already up. Flashlights were set butt-down on the cave floor, forming a makeshift campfire. The dark held few terrors for Tillman; he traded batteries for morale. Anna looked at her watch. They'd slept seven hours. Tillman looked as if he had never closed his eyes, and when he spoke it was a cross between rasp and a whisper. Stress and the injury to his ankle were costing him. Running on empty, Anna noted, or close to it. The idea alarmed her. She'd worked with guys like Holden before. They'd literally work till they dropped in the traces.

We'll be out of here before then, she promised herself. Then she remembered she had a gift for Holden: Sondra McCarty. She would tell him of the suspicions Frieda had had, of her own. If she could prove his choice of anchors hadn't killed Frieda, she knew a weight the immensity of which she could only guess at would be lifted from him. Even if Sondra was innocent, Anna would gladly throw her to the wolves for Tillman's peace of mind.

Opportunity didn't knock for several hours. Tapping what had to be toxic doses of instant coffee crystals into his lower lip, Holden kept the team together and working. Camp was cleaned and the logistics of what had now become a body recovery were hammered out. The traverse was rerigged using the bridge as an anchor. Because of Holden's own decency and the sensibilities he granted those around him, Frieda's remains were handled as if they still housed her soul. Delicacy was the respect the living paid the dead and the respect Tillman showed the cavers who had known Frieda.

Anna considered herself to be of the "lights out" persuasion; life is there, then it's gone, as if a switch was flipped. No afterlife, no haunt-ings, nothing. Here today, gone tomorrow. Regardless of this cherished hardness of heart, she was touched by the care shown the corpse. It allowed her to hold Frieda close a few hours longer if only in tending a home her friend had long since abandoned.

Taking landmarks from earlier surveys and comparing those measurements with the measurements of the newly existing gout of debris, Holden was estimating the thickness of the slide. Ten hours had passed since the rock had fallen. From his calculations and the sounds from the far side, he predicted it would be less than an hour before the rescuers broke through. As soon as Frieda was retrieved from the bottom of the Pigtail, he would detail three people to dig toward them. More than three could become a danger to one another.