David Dun - At The Edge

"Are you ready?" the German asked.

"I am."

"Fischer will come out of the Palmer Inn on Saturday morning, as usual. We have reason to believe she's going on an outing. Follow her. If you get a good opportunity, take her. If not, bide your time. I don't want any screwups. Make sure no one is watching when you grab her. The rifle is a last resort. If we haven't got her by Saturday evening, we've devised a ruse to get her out of the hotel very early Sunday morning. But that's the end of the time window, so we want to try to take her before that. Jack, you do what Corey tells you."

They then proceeded to go over the details of the plan. Over the weekend Jack had completed the remodeling of the barn, finished the Sheetrock, and installed a solid wood door and a two-way mirror, all to the German's specifications. From inside the interrogation room, it was impossible to discern that you were in a barn. Maria would see only white walls, fully carpeted floors, fluorescent bulbs, and the large mirror. As the German and Jack had planned, the room could be dismantled in minutes, leaving no trace of its presence save a few nail holes in the rafters.

Corey knew she would get only one chance to double-cross the German, and if she failed, she could end up dead- or worse. She had to get all the evidence he had on her, and then she had to kill him.

''Hi,'' Maria said as Nate climbed into her old Jeep Cherokee.

"Hi." He sat there, arms crossed and a grim look on his face.

"Nate, I think I understand how you feel. I'll bet that drag boat sounded pretty good. If you don't want to go somewhere today, I'll understand. We can stay home and you can play around the house."

He shrugged. "Maybe we should go someplace."

"Did you bring your boots?"

"Uh-huh." He pointed to his pack, which he'd tossed in the backseat.

"Your father didn't fill you in on what we're doing, did he? It was supposed to be a secret." Nate just grunted, a "no" from the sound of it. "Well, we were going fishing, but you can stay home. Really, it's OK."

"I wanna go," he said, making it sound like a groan.

''I suppose you don't like trout fishing,'' she said casually as they entered the National Forest. "So would you like to leave the fishing poles in the car or take them with us?"

"I don't care," Nate said, looking straight ahead.

Something has got to change, she thought. She went to the back of the car to get her pack. "We were going to scout places to fish. That was my big surprise. But I guess we don't have to do that."

Nate's eyes flickered at her for just a second. ''We could take the pole," he said.

"Who would use it?"

"Well. Um. I would."

The boy squelched his enthusiasm masterfully, she thought to herself. Poor kid.

Soon they started up a steep incline through the forest, mostly second growth that had filled in since the early 1900s, the redwood trees some four and even five feet thick at the base. They climbed quickly, Nate with his head down and a determined look on his face. After a time the path came to a rushing stream, then followed it up the hillside. Eventually they came to a fork in the trail. To the left the trail continued alongside the stream, toward a waterfall, from the roaring sound in the distance. To the right the trail moved off into the trees, up the mountain. "This way," Maria said, pointing left.

Finally they came to the end of the trail: a small gorge with a roaring cascade at one end, which sent a cool mist floating through the rays of sunlight pouring down from overhead. Spanning the gorge was a thick log, which from the look of the damp green stuff covering it would be quite slippery to walk across.

"Pretty nice place, huh?" Maria whispered, looking at the crystal-clear water from the falls as it poured over some boulders in the gorge below. A shiver of pleasure ran through her; there was nothing like this, the feeling of being closed in by lush green-the trees, the moss, the lichen.

"It's like a magic forest." Nate pointed his finger. "That'd be a good place to fish."

Looking downstream, Maria saw a still pool off to the side of some rushing waters, covered over by a couple of old, fallen logs. Perfect place for trout to hide. "Yes, it would," she said. "But to get down there, we'll have to cross the log."

Together they looked at it. An old Doug fir, it was over one hundred feet long, the topside worn smooth and slightly flat, and pockmarked by burrowing bugs and the spiny, sharp cork boots that loggers wear. Four feet through at the big end, nearest Nate and Maria, the log spanned a chasm fifty feet across and perhaps forty feet deep at the center.

"Well?" Maria asked, smiling.

Nathaniel looked at her, wide-eyed. "I don't know," he said, bewildered. "How?"

"Well, you could walk or crawl."

Nate peeked down at the rocks in the stream far below. "Are you going too?" he finally asked.

"Of course," she said. Maria recalled the feeling she'd had the first time she had to cross a sheer drop like this one, which could kill with one slip. A sensation of a cool draft, even if there is no wind, the feeling of lightness that is an adjunct to dread.

"If you go, I'll go," Nate said. "I think."

Maria smiled. A tough guy-sort of-just like his dad. "I have a safety harness in my pack. You can put it on, and it would catch you if you fell. I will be right with you. You can do it, Nate. I'll show you how and I won't let you fall."

"OK."

Maria quickly removed two harnesses. Then she donned some Gore-Tex climbing gear and helped Nate into some rubber pants.

''You do this a lot?'' Nate watched as her fingers adjusted the harnesses.

"Yup." She snapped a tether from her harness to Nate's.

"Sit," she said after leading him to the log. Following her instructions, he climbed up on the natural bridge, straddling it.

"Look at that tree on the other side," Maria said. "Stare at it. Don't look down."

She sat immediately behind him, Nate almost in her lap. Then, picking him up, she scooted him forward. "Look at the tree,'' she said, encouraging him to repeat the movement on his own.

Within minutes they were across. When they stood, Nate turned to her, respect in his eyes.

"We did it," he said, a tinge of excitement in his voice.

"Yes, we did. And it took two of us. So you would be making me feel safe if you promised not to do that by yourself. OK?"

Nathaniel nodded.

Then they fished. Assembling a small collapsible rod, she taught him how to use a fly with a barbless hook and a bobber. Small trout took the fly repeatedly. After reeling them in, Nate and Maria released them. After they'd reeled in a half-dozen small trout, Maria led Nate to a pool near the base of the falls. The shore was crowded with huckleberry and thimbleberry, so they had to crowd past the many spiny stems and damp, leafy branches to get to the creek's edge. There she pointed to a log that angled across the pool's edge, above a back eddy that made the foam move upstream past an old alder log.

As they neared the log, Maria hunkered down, indicating to Nate that he should do the same. Together they crept the last few feet to the log and the deep pool beyond it. Even with the roar of the falls, the place had a tranquillity that they didn't want to disrupt with shouting, so they gestured as if sharing secrets.

Standing behind Nate, Maria placed her hands over his, then gently cast the fly near the falls, letting the fly drift down the stream's center and into the eddy, where it moved back up past their log like a tiny float in a parade. It was a special caddis fly, with gray wings and a tiny silver strand around its furry body. Jutting out from the body were little whiskers that stood the fly on the water, each whisker making its own tiny dimple in the glassy surface. Without warning, a swirl appeared where the fly had been, and the reel began to sing as the line peeled out across the creek. Nate shrieked. "Keep the tip up," Maria said calmly in his ear, reaching to tighten the brake on the reel. Then the line went slack. "Reel quickly," Maria urged.