Jeffery Deaver - The Bodies Left Behind

“You think she was playing that game?”

Hart put away the BlackBerry and strode up and down the riverbank. “Hey, Lewis, what’s that look like to you?” He shone the flashlight on the ground.

“Like, I don’t know. Somebody was sweeping, covering up footprints.”

“Yeah. It does.” He walked to the base of the steep hill. “Okay. Here we go.” He found a broken branch. “Here’s her broom. They did come this way. And look at that…” He pointed out a tiny set of shoe prints. “That little girl. In the camper. She must’ve got out.”

Lewis had gone quiet again, and he rubbed his tattoo-the cross on his neck-compulsively.

Hart said, “I’m not inclined to kill children. We’ll take care of the women but let the girl be.”

But, funny, Lewis was bothered by something else.

“One thing I want to say. I should’ve before. But…”

“Go on, Comp.”

“That robbery I told you about?”

“The robbery?”

“The bank.”

In the snow, Hart remembered. Where he’d traded shots with the bank guard who was a former cop. “Yeah?”

“Wasn’t quite honest with you.”

“That right?”

“Something’s been eating at me, Hart.”

He was no longer the sarcastic “my friend.” And hadn’t been for hours. He said, “Go ahead, Comp. What is it?”

“Truth is…we didn’t get away with fifty thousand. Or whatever I said. Was closer to…okay, it was closer to three. Really two and some change. And, okay, it wasn’t a bank. Was a guard refilling the ATM outside…and I only fired to scare him. He dropped his gun. And peed his pants, I think. He didn’t have any backup piece either… I boost things up sometimes, exaggerate, you know. Got into the habit around my brother. Kind of had to, growing up…got disrespected a lot. So. There you have it.”

“That’s it, the confession?”

“Guess so.”

“Hell, Comp, I wouldn’t want to work with somebody didn’t have a healthy ego. Way you can look at it, you made two thousand bucks for, what, two minutes’ work?”

“’Bout that.”

“That’s about sixty thousand an hour. And he peed his pants? Hell, that made it worth it right there.” Hart laughed.

Lewis asked shyly, “You still interested in doing a heist together, you and me?”

“You bet I am. Sooner we’re done here, the sooner we can start planning some jobs that don’t crash and burn. One hundred ten percent.”

Repressing a grin, Lewis tapped his cigarettes again, like a good Catholic blessing himself.

THE TREK WAS much harder than she’d anticipated.

The hillside was so steep in places that it couldn’t be climbed, at least not with a nine-year-old in tow. Brynn frequently had to find alternative routes.

“How about there?”

Brynn glanced at the place where Michelle was pointing. It seemed to be a fairly level path between a rock ledge and a dense cluster of trees. Brynn considered it but that way would leave them completely exposed from below, with no escape routes. They had to bypass the path, taking precious minutes to find a way around. Brynn wasn’t entirely confident that Hart had bought the ploy about Point of Rocks. She was beginning to feel an itching sensation on the back of her neck, as if the men were drawing close.

The women continued upward, looping around a formation of limestone, twenty feet high. Brynn could see that rock climbers had been here. Metal spikes had been pounded into the cracks. Tonight the hobby struck her as pure madness. Something Joey would try. But she put her son out of her head. Concentrate, she told herself.

A brief respite as they traversed a fairly level trail. Then upward again, gasping for breath, all three of them.

The sound of the Snake running through the gorge on their right grew softer as they moved higher. Brynn guessed they were now sixty feet or so above the river.

“Oh, no,” Michelle whispered. Brynn too stopped. Their level plain suddenly ended in a sheer rock wall, a dead end. To the right, the ground extended to a steep drop-off into the gorge. Brynn walked toward it slowly. Dizzy, uncomfortable with the height, she didn’t get to the edge itself but returned quickly. “We can’t go that way.”

She sighed in frustration. The men couldn’t be more than a half mile from the interstate but the hike was taking forever. To go back and find a way around the wall would add another ten minutes.

Brynn looked back, then surveyed the wall. It was about twenty feet high and not completely vertical. The slope was probably seventy degrees in most places and the surface was cracked and craggy. She asked Michelle, “Can you do it?”

“Damn right, I can.”

Brynn smiled, said to Amy, “You remember when you were little, Amy? You and I’ll climb together. We’ll play piggyback?”

“I guess. Rudy wants me to ride piggyback sometimes. I don’t like it. He smells bad.”

Brynn shot a glance to Michelle, who grimaced in disgust. But Brynn smiled at Amy. “Well, I probably don’t smell too good either. But it’ll be fun. Come on. Let’s go.” Brynn turned around. She whispered to Michelle, “I’ll go up first. If something happens, I drop her, try to break her fall. Don’t worry about me.”

Michelle nodded and boosted the girl up, whispering, “Can you handle her?”

“No choice,” Brynn gasped.

The theme for the evening.

Though the burden wasn’t as great as it could be. She was thinking how thin the little girl was…and about the sad fate that had landed her squarely in such neglect.

They started up the cliff, a foot at a time. Heart slamming, legs burning, Brynn slowly climbed. About fifteen feet from the ground, the muscles in her legs began quivering. More from fear than from effort. How she hated heights… She paused frequently.

Amy, with her arms around Brynn’s neck, was holding on very tightly, making it hard for Brynn to breathe, but she’d rather the child kept a solid grip.

Her rubber legs propelled her another five feet, then ten, grasping handholds harder than she needed to, fingers cramping. Even her toes curled, as if she were climbing barefoot.

Finally, an eternity, her head was over the edge, and she was looking at a flatter plain. In front of her was a huge tangle of forsythia. Not daring to look down, she grabbed all the vines within arm’s length in her right hand, tested them and, with a deep breath, let go of the rock. She pulled herself halfway over the edge and then said, “Amy, go over my head. Put your knees on my shoulders and climb. When you’re on the top, stop. Just stand there.”

Brynn was about to offer more reassurance but the girl said quickly, “Okay,” and climbed off. And stood motionless, at attention.

A child used to doing exactly as she was told.

Brynn then pulled herself the rest of the way over the top and sat down, breathing hard. She looked over the side-disappointingly, it seemed much less intimidating from this end, as if the effort and fear had been wasted. She beckoned Michelle up. The young woman climbed quickly, despite her bad ankle-thanks to youth and that fancy butt-firming health club of hers. Brynn helped her over the edge and the three sat together in a huddle, catching their breath.

Brynn oriented herself and, looking around, found what seemed to be a path that led upward. They started walking again.

Michelle eased close to Brynn. “What’ll happen to her?”

“If she doesn’t have kin, a foster home.”

“That’s sad. She should be with a family.”

“The system’s pretty good in Kennesha. They check on the families real well.”

“Just nice if she could go to somebody who really wanted her. I’d love her.”

Maybe one of the problems between Michelle and her husband had to do with children. He might not have wanted any.