Burning Bright (Peter Ash #2)(16)

Riot Grrrl stood on a large limb just off the landing platform. She watched him closely as he turned to her, grinning like an idiot after a rush of emotion so outsized that it felt like a religious experience.

“Let’s do it again,” he said.

She looked him full in the face, and he felt like he’d passed some test.

“Another time,” she said. “Right now we’re running away from the bad people, remember?”

“Tell me one thing,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“June,” she said. “June Cassidy. Now can we go?”





6





Another path marked by red ropes led them down through the new tree in a spiral.

The path ended at a branch six feet across, the lowest substantial branch on the tree. Below was green-tinted air and mist and a few little twigs that looked like they wouldn’t hold a sparrow.

Riot Grrrl—June, Peter reminded himself, her name was June, although Riot Grrrl fit her like a glove—opened her pack and pulled out a long coil of rope and another shorter loop of thick webbing. She swung the webbing around the base of a protruding branch hard enough for it to come around the other side, where she caught it, clipped the open ends together with a locking carabiner, and screwed down the lock.

“How far down?” asked Peter.

“About a hundred fifty feet.” Fifteen stories. “We don’t have enough rope for you to belay me. Or me you.” She sat on the wide limb and made one end of the rope fast to the locking carabiner, then checked the lock again.

“No problem,” he said. It would be better to have a second line for backup, but they hadn’t had one the last time, either. It wasn’t the safest way to climb, but when there were men with automatic weapons after you, escape was more important. Nobody had belayed Peter in his fifty-foot helicopter drops, either. It was you and your figure 8, friction, and the strength of your hands. Basic physics.

She began to pay out the rope, making sure there were no tangles.

“What’s the terrain like when we get down?” he asked.

“It’s a scramble down the drainage, no trail to speak of. The creek runs to the river, which parallels the road out. That ridge we crossed stays between us and where we came up. It’s not easy, but it’s a much more direct route than the trail they’ll be following. Even if they know we’re coming down, we should be able to beat them back to the car.”

“And if they’ve disabled your car?”

“It’s hidden.”

“What if they found it?”

She looked at him, and he saw again how terrified she was. She was handling it very well, using her climbing skills and knowledge of the tree to feel like she had control over the situation, and her sense of humor helped keep things light. But these men had pursued her before, had almost captured her. Once she was back on the ground all her tenuous advantages would be gone, and she was feeling it.

“I’m not trying to scare you,” Peter said, keeping his voice deliberately calm. “It’s a planning tool. Human nature is to see the outcome we prefer. The ‘what if’ game helps us to see other possible scenarios, and plan accordingly.”

“If they found my car,” she said, “I’m fucked.”

“Maybe, maybe not. The point is to think ahead. Make contingency plans. What are our options?”

She took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay. We could stay in the woods. Make our way down to the highway. Catch a ride there.”

“What if they come after us in the woods? What are our strengths?”

She thought for a moment. “We use the climbing gear. Go back up, hide and wait. Or go down some rock face where they can’t follow.”

Or the bow and arrows, thought Peter. But he wasn’t going to mention that just yet.

“There you go,” he said. “You’re thinking tactically already.”

She gave him a look. “Yeah,” she said. “I am so tactical.”

She’d seen right through him, of course.

“Regardless,” he said. “We need to keep moving, right?”

“Right,” she said. “I’ll go first.”

She ran a bight through her figure 8, passed it under the harness point, then clipped the 8 onto her harness. She double-checked the carabiner lock and wrapped the rope past the small of her back, under the bow where it was strapped to her pack. She turned to face him, her freckled face intent and focused. “See you on the ground,” she said, and flashed that grin. “If you fall, try not to land on me.”

Then she walked backward off the branch and into the air.

Peter lay down across the branch and poked his head around its curve to keep her in sight. The rope went down and down, but he’d already lost her in the mist and shadow. He couldn’t even see the ground from here.

He waited until the rope went slack, just a minute or two. Then a wave ran up the line, and he knew she’d flipped it to let him know she was off. He ran the rope through his own figure 8, clipped on, checked the lock.

He turned away from the drop and bent his knees slightly, enjoying the green glow of the tree and the solidity of the branch beneath his boots for one last moment. Then took a deep breath, wrapped the rope into the small of his back with his left hand, and jumped into the darkness.