I do that, and I find a crevice in the rock, one I can dig my fingers into. It’s an even better grip than I have with my left, and I ease a little of my weight that way.
“Don’t get too comfortable, kitten. I’m going to make you switch hands. Which will be tricky, but a whole lot easier to maintain. Okay?”
“Okay.”
He guides me through it, and a few minutes later, I’m still hanging, but in a far more secure position.
“I’m going down—” Dalton begins.
“No, Eric, you aren’t,” Cypher says. “I’m not rescuing both of you today. How about you help me figure out how Casey can rescue herself?”
“I’d rather—”
“I know you would. But if you try, I’ll throw you down there with that poor drowned woman and save the trouble of having to rescue you.”
As he says “poor drowned woman,” I turn to see Val’s body, directly below. Her one arm is stretched over her head, the current catching it in a macabre wave.
“Yeah, she’s still there,” Cypher says. “Still dead. Like she was when you apparently decided you had to go after her.”
“I wanted to retrieve her body.”
“Why? She doesn’t give a damn.” He shakes his head, grizzled hair hanging. “You almost kill yourself for a dead woman. Your boy here tries to turn this into a double suicide mission. And people say I’m crazy.”
“Casey?” Dalton calls. “Don’t move just yet, but I’m going to have you keep shifting left. Once you get past that overhang, you’ll be able to get footholds.”
“Oh,” Cypher says. “You’re back with us, are you?”
“Have to, or you’ll talk Casey to death.” Dalton leans out. “You’re going to be fine, but if at any point you feel yourself slipping, or if a hold doesn’t seem as safe, I want you to stop. No heroics. I can get down there. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
Dalton guides me. Whenever he hesitates, Cypher points out possibilities, and they debate them quickly, before coming to a consensus. I move about five feet left and then I’m clinging to the cliffside, hands and feet secure.
“Up or down?” I ask.
“You can make it up,” Cypher says.
“I’d rather you went down,” Dalton says. “Please.”
When I pause, he says, “It’s a crawl with no serious obstacles. It’s safer.”
I start down. Once I’m securely heading that way, Dalton heads along the cliffside to find a more gradual decline. He’ll join me, and we’ll see if we can get back to Val. Cypher grumbles about that, but we outvote him.
I make it down. It is not an easy trip. Nor painless or even remotely graceful, as I slide down the last ten feet on my ass, try to put on the brakes, and land in the icy stream.
“It’s not a waterslide, kitten,” Cypher booms down the gorge.
I wave at him as I get to my feet. Dalton is already down, picking his way along the stream. I wave to him too as I start toward Val. She’s still bobbing, her shirt hooked on a rock. I can’t get very close. She’s on the other side, and the stream is a good ten feet across and moving fast with spring runoff. One wrong foot placement, and I’ll hurtle downstream.
“Wait,” Dalton calls.
“I am.”
I sit on a rock. He’s discarded his sling, not surprisingly. He’s almost there when his foot slips, and I leap up, my hand swinging out. He grabs it, but only gives it a squeeze and says, “You okay?”
“I am.”
He nods, and I feel his assessing gaze, stopping on every gash and rising bruise, his lips tightening.
I hug him. Throw my arms around his neck and squeeze, and that’s meant to reassure him, but as soon as I feel him against me, my knees wobble and every muscle unclenches, and if he didn’t hug me back tight, I’d have been on the ground.
“You’re okay?” he says again as he releases me.
“I’m fine, Eric. But Val . . .”
“Yeah, I know. Bastard.” He looks over at Val’s body. “I don’t see the point, Casey. I really don’t.”
“With people like Oliver Brady, I don’t think there needs to be a point. He killed her because he could.”
He nods, as if he understands, but I know he doesn’t. He can’t.
“Let’s just take her . . .”
I’m about to say “home.” Rockton is our home; it wasn’t hers. I’m not sure it ever could have been.
“Is there some other place to . . .” I’m being foolish when I need to be practical, so I don’t finish voicing the thought.
“We’ll figure something out.”
He looks over at her. “All right. Trick will be getting her free without losing her. I’m going to grab her leg closest to this side.” He starts untying his boots. “It looks about a foot deep. I’ll wade. Safer than rock jumping.”
“There’s a clear path just above that rock. Stick to it or even in water that shallow, you can get your foot caught, and the current will take you down.”
“I know. If it feels too strong, I’ll drop.”
He means that he’ll fall on his ass and crawl. That’s the way to do it. Twelve inches of water does seem like a simple wade, but between the current and the slippery rocks below, it’s treacherous. He takes it slow, placing one foot down and making sure it’s secure before lifting the other. Twice he just stops and waits until he has his balance.
Seeing Val’s body this close up leaves little doubt she’s been dead and in the water since not long after she disappeared. Her thin face has bloated, and her slender body strains against her clothing. That amount of water retention suggests he killed her on the first day. I can’t see how—there’s no obvious sign of injury—but I will once I can examine her body.
Dalton is close enough to reach Val’s leg. Then he looks about, assessing.
“If you’re considering whether you should drop,” I say, “the answer is yes.”
He lowers himself. A quick gasp as the icy glacial runoff soaks him. He’s on his knees, stable now and less than a foot from Val.
Dalton reaches for her trouser leg. Her corpse rocks, as if even his body mass disrupts the rush of water. He lets out a curse and grabs for her, but that movement unsnagged her blouse and her body shoots off downstream.
I take a running leap along the rocky path, but Dalton shouts “No!” and he’s right. The water is moving fast, and Val’s body is hurtling faster than I can run along this uneven shore.
“She’ll come to rest farther down,” he says. “It lets out into a small lake. We’ll get her there.”
We’re up on the cliffside with Cypher and Storm. Dalton has explained that he saw my yellow flag, and they’d been by it when Storm started howling. Which means I suspect she really had initially scented Dalton and only diverted when she smelled Val—the target I’d set her on. Doing as she’d been told, while her master freaked out, mistaking her for a feckless puppy.
When we reach them, Cypher has something for me. The young cougar.
“You went back for that?” I say.
“Fuck no. I was busy watching you two fools, in case you needed grown-up help. We found him”—he hefts the carcass—“up by your flag. When your pup started yowling, I grabbed the cat and . . .” He swings the cougar over his shoulders to demonstrate.
“And ran down the mountain with a hundred-pound cougar on your back?”
“Wasn’t going to leave him for scavengers. That’s some fine shooting. I’m guessing by the placement of those bullet holes the cat was midleap when you put them in him.”
I nod. “They didn’t kill him, though.”
“Disabled him. That’s all that matters. And you knew what to do next. Put the kitty out of his misery. See, now that’s what I need.”
“Someone to put you down?” Dalton says.
Cypher rolls his eyes. “I mean a girl like Casey to keep me company. Smart and pretty, a good conversationalist, knows how to take care of herself. If I found one who could cook and clean, too, I’d be set.” He looks at me. “What do you figure my odds are?”
“Excellent,” I say. “If you’re twenty-five, gorgeous, have a Ph.D., and can bench-press triple your body weight.”
“Two outta four ain’t bad.”
“Never knew you had a Ph.D.,” Dalton says.
“And the boy makes proper comeback. The next step? Make one that’s actually funny.”
34