Stone Cold Heart (Tracers #13)(5)
Sara stepped into the harness and buckled it around her waist. Bryce checked the fit and nodded.
“Hey!”
Ranger Evans was back now, his face reddening as he charged across the parking lot. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Going down there.” She snugged the helmet on her head.
“That scene’s off-limits. Authorized personnel only.”
“I’m a board-certified crime-scene investigator.” She tightened her chin strap. “Did you tell the detective I’m here?”
“Yeah, but—”
“If you’ve got a problem, take it up with him.”
“But you’re not authorized—”
“Springville PD summoned me to this location. It’s their jurisdiction. I need to examine this scene before nightfall, and we’re burning daylight.” Sara stepped around Evans and clipped the belay device into her harness. She double-checked the system and made sure her carabiners were locked.
The ranger stalked away, and Bryce shook his head. “Guy’s a prick,” he muttered. Then he looked Sara over. “Everything locked?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, it’s a hundred-forty-foot wall. Slight overhang at the top. Ledge about two-thirds down, case you need to stop.”
“I’m good.”
She approached the edge and turned her back to the abyss. Holding the brake strands in her right hand, she leaned back until the rope was taut, positioning her body as though sitting in an invisible chair. Her heart thudded as she adjusted her grip.
First a long, deep breath to help her focus. And then she took the most unnatural of steps—backward off the cliff.
CHAPTER 3
Sara used the rope like a brake as she walked down the wall and reached the overhang Bryce had mentioned, a distinct curve as the rock sloped inward. Her stomach clenched as she dipped her foot down and felt nothing but air. It was a leap—part faith, part science, but always nerve-racking—as her leg dangled and she leaned into the void. She fed more rope through the belay device until her toes touched stone. The wall curved again, and she was able to press the soles of her boots flush against the rock.
Sara looked straight ahead, studying the striations in the limestone as she walked down, nice and easy. Weeds and saplings clung stubbornly to the rock face. She didn’t look down. Instead, she focused on the honeycomb texture and felt the residual heat coming off the rock. Sweat slid down her temples. She concentrated on her breathing and on keeping her fingers away from the sharp teeth of the belay device as the rope slid through. Sweat beaded at her temples, and not only from the heat.
Sara had been on a volunteer search-and-rescue team when she was in grad school. She hadn’t rappelled in years, but she remembered the basics, and the details were coming back to her—such as that tight, sickly feeling in her stomach as she gripped the brake strands, slowly feeding the rope through. She was more than one hundred feet up, and as a forensic anthropologist, she knew what that sort of fall could do to the human body.
The gorge was narrow here—only sixty feet across, give or take, so more than twice as deep as it was wide. After several long minutes, she reached the ledge where Bryce had rescued the stranded climber. It was a small outcropping, barely a ledge at all, and she noticed the faint shoe prints in the dirt there. She didn’t stop.
Down, down, down. Her pulse pounded. Her mouth felt dry and cottony. The space around her grew cooler and dimmer, and she peeked over her shoulder to survey the gorge’s shadowy floor.
A great gust whipped up. Startled, she lost her grip on the brake strand and dropped abruptly, then jerked to a halt. A black cloud whooshed around her, swooping, flapping, squeaking, and she hunched forward and squeezed her eyes shut.
Bats. She clenched her teeth as thousands of little winged mammals swirled around her. Seconds ticked by. Minutes. When the air was still again, she opened her eyes and gazed up at the black cloud curling against the lavender sky.
Deep breath.
Peering over her shoulder, she searched the base of the wall and spotted the dark maw of a cave. Her heart did a flip-flop.
Not much scared her. She wasn’t afraid of snakes or rats or creepy-crawly insects. She could handle musty bones and decomposing flesh. But tight spaces got to her. And she desperately hoped the remains she’d come for weren’t tucked back in that hole.
She continued down the wall, alert now for more surprises, such as a loose rock tumbling down on her head. At last, the wall sloped toward her, and her feet touched ground. Relief flowed through her, and her stomach muscles relaxed. She unhooked herself from the rope and unfastened the harness.
“Off rappel!” she called toward the top.
Bryce hollered down and gave the rope a tug.
Sara stepped away from the wall and did a slow three-sixty, taking in the setting. She paused to listen. No flap of bat wings. No hiss of a rattler. The gorge was silent, and for a moment, she simply stood there, surrounded by the hot summer breeze and the pungent smell of guano.
Two hours ago, I was at a wedding, she thought. Some days, her job was surreal.
Sara pulled out her flashlight and beamed it in all directions, trying to get a sense of where the climber might have been standing when she spotted the bones or the body, whatever had sent her into a panic.
Dropping into a crouch, she aimed the flashlight across the ground at an oblique angle. White rocks of all shapes and sizes made up the floor of the gorge, but the terrain was too uneven to expect much in the way of footprints. Sweeping her beam over to the wall, she spotted some initials scratched into rock: JM & CL. She shone her light on the wall nearby. Metal glinted. Someone had hammered pitons into the stone—a definite taboo in a park where climbing was prohibited.