Burning Bright (Peter Ash #2)(12)

June wasn’t a biologist, wasn’t part of that team, but it had been a way to spend time with Bryce. She’d started free-climbing boulders and trees during her lonely tomboy childhood in rural Washington. When she moved to California to live with her mom, she’d joined a climbing club and turned into a serious rock monkey. Ascending tall trees with Bryce was just another way to feed the rat.

As it turned out, she’d also written some of her best articles up there in the high canopy. Surprisingly, her laptop’s cell modem caught a signal just fine up there. The trick was getting enough sunlight in the temperate rain forest for the solar chargers to keep her gear powered up.

The green rope hung down into the mist, and voices filtered up, louder now but still indecipherable. Three of them? Four? The wind had dropped. It smelled like rain.

He spoke in a soft voice. “We need to get closer.”

June shook her head. She wasn’t going down there. She could still see the date rapist’s leer, his piggy little eyes. And now there were more of them.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll go.” He seemed so calm. How could he be calm?

“They have guns,” she hissed.

“And I don’t,” he said. “So I’ll be very quiet.”

Her mouth opened, but she didn’t know what to say. Why was he doing this for her?

So she said it. “Why are you doing this?”

He gave her a toothy grin. “Why not?” he said softly. “Maybe we’ll learn something.”

“I don’t know if I trust you yet.”

“Tell you what,” he said. “If you decide you don’t trust me, you can always cut the rope.”

What the fuck was she supposed to say to that?

He was already wearing his harness, but he tucked one of her Jumar ascenders into each of his cargo pockets, she assumed so they wouldn’t clink together on the harness. Then he pulled a bight from the big rope into a figure 8 descender, ran it around the bottom, and clipped it into a locking carabiner on his harness. From the way he screwed down the lock and checked it, she could tell he’d definitely done this before.

He smiled, held a finger to his lips, took the bottom rope and wrapped it around the small of his back. He was left-handed, she noticed. Then he stepped backward off the Perch and down toward the ground, slowed only by the friction of the rope through the descender and the pressure of the rope around his body.

June watched him slide down the rope, thinking he’d missed something, skipped some step. Then she realized he hadn’t attached the ascenders’ safety lines to his harness.

Their locking carabiners lay on the wide branch at her feet.





5





PETER



Where the hell is this chick? Is she some kind of ninja or what?”

One of the men held an electronic device in one hand. He turned in a slow circle, looking from the device to the rugged landscape and back to the device.

Another stood with his foot on the bloody corpse of Mr. Griz. “Hey, somebody take my picture.” He held the unmistakable form of a compact semiautomatic rifle, maybe a Steyr or a Heckler & Koch. Either one a very good weapon, and expensive.

“Yo, shut up,” said a third man, a similar rifle slung across his chest, studying the remains of Peter’s gear spread around the base of the sapling he’d climbed. “I’m telling you, I think this goddamn bear ate her.”

The man with the device kept turning, kept looking. His rifle was slung across his back. “What, it swallowed her whole? Where’s the bones? Where’s the remains?”

A fourth man stepped deliberately around the perimeter, eyes out. He had a different weapon, with a fat barrel and minimal magazine, something out of a sci-fi movie. Like the other three men, he was dressed in hiking clothes so crisp and new he might have stepped out of REI and onto the trail. Four big internal-frame backpacks lay against a fallen trunk, out of the way. They were new, too.

Peter hung at the bottom of the rope, one foot in the loop, sixty or seventy feet up, at the edge of the fog. The wind didn’t penetrate the lower canopy, and their voices were soft but clear in the hush. Peter couldn’t see their faces, just the tops of their heads.

He didn’t want to see their faces.

If he could see their faces, they could see him.

Peter was mostly worried about the guy at the perimeter. He was the one most actively searching the landscape. It might occur to him to actually look up.

Peter reached into his left pocket for an ascender. It was a simple device, basically an aluminum handgrip with a channel for the rope. The channel had a locking mechanism so the rope would only move in one direction. Push it up the rope, and the grip would hold while you pulled yourself up. Much easier than shinnying up hand over hand like he’d done earlier that day.

He held the lock open and set it on the line. Closed the lock with his hand fully engaged to dampen any sound. These men would definitely notice a metallic click in this environment.

They were hunters. Serious people.

Hunting Riot Grrrl.

Four on one. Not exactly fair.

What had she done to attract their attention?

They weren’t trying to pass for government, like she’d said they’d done before. They were trying to look like backpackers, although with all that new gear they might pass as tourists. The assault rifles gave a different kind of impression. But that’s what the backpacks were for. To hide the weapons until they were deep in the forest.