Exit Row (17 page)

C
HANGING THE TIRE
cost them valuable time. Greg was furious. “Who's fucking idea was this anyway?” He kept complaining until Fiona told him to just shut up and help. First they had to grapple with an unfamiliar jack and overtightened lug nuts, then look for a place to have the old tire repaired. Even Rosa admitted it would take too long for AAA or the rental car company to send someone.

They found a filling station back in San Jackson, a yellow stucco structure with three pumps holding an unfamiliar brand of gas. Next to it was a small weathered house, its porch crammed with discards. As they pulled in, Fiona saw that it was a secondhand furniture shop, opening at noon. Would anyone really buy a dresser missing its bottom drawer?

But at least the mechanic knew what he was doing. He showed them where a metal butterfly had been pressed into the tread, a time bomb designed to expand against the inner tube and cause a slow leak. He also found an identical device in the left rear tire.

Dominick shook his head. “God help us if both tires had gone at once.”

Rosa shuddered. “We would have been stuck in the mountains miles from anywhere. And probably without cell phone coverage.”

While they waited for the patching equipment to heat up, Rosa and Fiona walked down the road. “Look at that.” Rosa pointed to an oversized statue of two bronze figures rising out of the rock, staggering under the weight of a massive cross. “Centuries of symbolism from one strange image.”

Fiona sighed. “I know how they feel.”

Somehow, without her realizing exactly when, her hope of finding Lee alive had quietly slipped away. Now she only wanted the truth.

T
HEY SET OUT
for Fort Garland again, with Rosa reading the map. “Las Animas de Purgatoire. That means ‘Souls Lost in Purgatory.' ”

It did not cheer anyone up.

“Northeast of here used to be the Goodnight Cattle Trail from Texas,” she continued. “They had such marvelous names for things.”

Marvelous names, but the country they were driving through was desolate.

Greg ducked to see out the front windshield and gestured at the mountains ahead of them. He was finally animated again. “That's Little Bear! Blanca Peak is just behind it.”

“Greg, that couldn't be.” Rosa pressed her finger to the map. “It's miles from here.”

“I don't know how far away it is, but I'm telling you, that's Little Bear. I've seen too many photos not to know it when I see it. Is Penitente Canyon anywhere around here?”

“Penitente?” Rosa frowned through her reading glasses.

He turned around to look at the map with her. “It's near La Garita. There!”

“But that's west of here. I wonder what
garita
means anyway.”

Fiona slumped back against her seat and closed her eyes.
So much fun traveling with you two.
It was mean to begrudge them any pleasure, but she was starting to believe that the search was hopeless. All they had to go on were hints and murmurs about mountains and “something happening.” What if the note from the receptionist had just been another Day Star ploy to send them down a wrong track?

You couldn't trust anyone.

She shifted as the motion of the road collided with her breakfast and made her nauseous. Maybe Greg was right to suggest chartering a helicopter. Even if it cost thousands of dollars, they could buzz the mountains day and night until they found something—if there was anything to find. That way they would have an outside witness and not be in any danger themselves.

“So where are these Sand Dunes?” she demanded, opening her eyes again.

Rosa looked. “They're just north of the mountains and the Fort.”

“We should be asking more people more questions.” Residents in these one-traffic-light towns would certainly be sensitive to anything unusual. Assuming the worst had happened and people had somehow died on the plane, what could an airline do with a collection of bodies? Would they take them to local funeral homes and make up a cover story—or dig a mass grave and leave them? Maybe they should be looking for a large mound of disturbed earth.

“You know what?” she said. “I think we
should
rent a helicopter and fly over the area.”

Greg shifted in his seat, resting his chin on his knuckles as if to see her better. “When I said that, you shot the idea down. Let me remind you that we already have a
plan.
Not my plan; some psychic's plan. You insisted I come along because of the mountains, and I finally agreed. The Great Sand Dunes. Little Bear. Blanca Peak. Do any of those names ring a bell?”

“Yes, Quasimodo, they do, but it's not like they're the only mountains around. Paolo Recchia didn't use any of those names. Colorado is
littered
with mountains.” She held out her hand. “Let me see that climbing book.”

“Nah.” He shook his head. “It'll just make you sad.”

“Fiona, we have to start somewhere,” Dominick said reasonably, tilting his head to try to engage her in the mirror. “This is what you suggested last night.”

“I know, but—that was before I saw how big everything is. We could spend months hiking around here.” It hadn't seemed this daunting when she had flown over it on the Day Star plane.

“You're too much, you know that?” Greg raised his head. “Now that you've had an epiphany—‘It's all so bi-ig'—you expect us to drop everything and change course. Who made you Alpha Dog?”

To her surprise, she laughed. “It's that bad?”

“Worse.”

“It is overwhelming country,” Rosa defended her.

“No, it's not that. I mean it is, but we don't know what we're looking for or even the right place to look. All we know is that people are missing and ‘something happened' between Taos and Denver. Supposedly around here.”

“Because a
psychic
said so,” Greg broke in.

Dominick turned to look at Fiona. “I say we just go on to Denver and ask questions there.”

“Wait a minute. What about the mountain? I didn't come all the way up here not to summit. I'm not just here for your delightful company,” Greg said.

“Which mountain were you thinking of?” Fiona asked. “I guess the tallest would have the best view.”

“They're all about the same, fourteen thousand feet. Blanca's the tallest. But pick one.”

“How do we get to them?”

Next to her, Rosa crinkled the map. “We go through Fort Garland and pick up 150 North.”

Fort Garland was dominated by the military post that had been built by Kit Carson as a defense against the Ute Indians. Fiona was reassured by the large American flag sticking out of the adobe. It was a reminder that even here the laws she had grown up with were still in effect. They were laws that made covering up wrongful death a crime.

They turned left. The mountains were on their right now, with flat range land in between. Fiona was chilled by the sight of so much unforgiving stone, but this time she said nothing. The tree line ended two-thirds of the way up, giving a clear view of the mountain tops. Any plane landing here would be seen from the highway.

“We want Route 150,” Greg told Dominick. “It's probably the next right. Okay,” he added, checking his guide after Dominick had made the turn, “clock about nine miles.”

Dominick shook his head but kept driving.

Most of the dirt roads they passed had swinging triangular fences with locks. Then, across the way from a sign identifying a bison ranch, Greg said, “Stop! Turn in here.”

The road sloped slightly downward, sheltered by trees. At the base of the mountain, it turned right and started to rise.
Maybe we could drive to the top
, Fiona thought hopefully. She had seen those bumper stickers, “This car climbed Mt. Washington.”

Just after the three-mile marker a dirt road cut off to the right. “This should be Lake Como Road,” Greg said.

Dominick signaled unnecessarily and turned onto it.

The road was a nightmare. Uneven and cratered, it jounced the Explorer hard. The shape of the small tan boulders along its sides reminded Fiona uncomfortably of strewn luggage. As the map slid off her lap, Rosa clutched the grip on the door and the back of the front seat to steady herself. She sucked in her breath noisily as Dominick, avoiding a boulder shaped like a hatbox, scraped the front tire against granite.

Fiona, eyes now closed, was focused on keeping her stomach calm.

“I don't think we're supposed to be driving on this,” Rosa gasped. “I've been on mountain roads in Italy, but nothing like this!”

After another few minutes of inching along, careful not to let the truck slide into the dense green underbrush, Dominick stopped. Shifting into Park, he removed the key. “This is as far as we go.”

“Are you kidding?” Greg said in protest. “This baby's a four-wheel drive.”

Dominick gave him a look. “And what happens when we slice open the radiator? Or another tire gives way? I'm not going to try to explain why we drove a rental car up this mountain!”

“Obviously they thought of that when they mined the tires,” Fiona said. “They knew we couldn't risk it with only one spare.” It would be even worse trying to back out. They never should have come in this far.

“You think the airline did that?” Greg asked skeptically.

“Well, it wasn't some cowpoke pissed off because his java was late.”

“No? I kinda thought it was. They're pretty touchy out here.” He consulted his guide. “We've got about a mile hike in to the lake, then level on a pack trail. Another two miles up the west face.”

Rosa groaned.

Greg looked up. “I guess we're not all going.”

There was a thoughtful silence.

“Only one of us has to get up high and look around,” he said finally.

“But you shouldn't go by yourself,” Fiona said.

“So come with me.”

She turned to Dominick. She was probably relying on him too much.

“Don't worry about me,” Rosa said briskly. She made a sweeping motion with her hand. “Go! I brought plenty with me to read. I'll be fine.”

As if it were just a matter of whether or not she would get bored.

“No.” Fiona remembered Paolo Recchia's warnings. “None of us should be alone.”

“I'll stay,” said Dominick. “I'm no climber.”

Later, Fiona would be haunted by how casually they had made the decision of who would go up the mountain and who would stay behind.

“H
AND ME MY
pack,” Greg commanded and Fiona reached into the luggage well behind her. She wrested the red backpack up to him, shocked by how heavy it was. When they got outside, she said, “You're bringing this whole thing?”

“I always do.”

“But why?”

“It's got what I need.” Flipping back the top, he loosened the drawstring and tilted the pack so she could peer in. “Rope, runners, chalk bag, harness, hammer, chocks, and 'biners. Climbing boots, camera. Clothes for heavy dates in Santa Fe.”

“I don't see the boots.”

He pulled out something that looked like laced dance slippers, with black rubber covering the top and far up the heel.

“But I don't have anything like that!”

“You won't need it for here. You've got on sneakers, and that's fine.”

So why are you taking
your
fancy shoes along?
But she realized it was a matter of security, to prevent possible loss if he left them behind.
As if you could prevent losing anything
, she thought, shaken by sudden fury.

The noon sun burned as if radiating off metal. As soon as she and Greg started along the path, she had to strip away her sweatshirt. But that gave more territory to the tiny irritants that buzzed her face annoyingly. Maybe once they reached the snow on the mountain it would be cooler and insect free.

Greg reached out to a low bush and pulled off a needle. Cracking it open, he handed it to her. “Smell.”

She did. It was fragrant and fruity.

“Pinion.” He started to move again. “You've never climbed?”

“No.”

“Scared of heights?”

“No.”

“Good.”

She swiped at the insects nearest her eyes and said, “Sounds like you do this a lot.”

“Whenever I can. Climbing's the only thing that matters to me. Besides pizza and beer. And fucking. Two out of three on this trip ain't bad.”

“But what about your job?”

“It pays for my trips. Money means climbing. Period.”

“Is that why you're so cheap?”

He laughed. “When Dimitri and this other guy from Oregon and I go, we're
really
cheap. We take a tub of peanut butter and some loaves of day-old bread. And lots of apples. Chocolate too; it tightens you up. But none of this fancy freeze-dried shit.” He hitched up his pack to even it.

“You have a steady girlfriend?” Fiona asked him, more to pass the time than caring.

Greg gave her a grin. “She thinks so. But I don't need anyone telling me what to do, how to spend my money. My college girlfriend—when we got engaged, she wanted me to give up climbing. ‘Too dangerous.' ” He imitated a querulous soprano. “Like I'm ever going to do
that.
I might as well be dead.”

“So you gave her up instead.”

“Damn straight.”

Nearly stumbling on a rock and then righting herself, Fiona asked, “Have you ever had any accidents?”

He turned on her, their rapport instantly gone. “Why? Why do you ask that?”

Taken aback, she said, “Just curious. I wondered why she was so worried. Accidents do happen.”

“Not if you're any good, they don't.”

They went on in silence until, ascending a small rise, Fiona stumbled against a hidden boulder and started to fall.

Hearing the scrape of her shoe on dirt, Greg turned around and steadied her. “Want to go first?”

“No, I'll be okay.”

“This guy you're looking for—you been with him long?”

“About six months.”

“That's good. That it's not that long, I mean. Like I'm not expecting Dimitri to jump off this mountain any minute yelling, ‘Hey, dude!' ”

A preposterous image. “I haven't given up hope yet.”

He made a noncommittal sound.

F
INALLY THEY WERE
approaching water. Fiona was thinking about how unusual it seemed to find a lake on a mountain when her left foot caught in a root, and she stumbled. She clutched at a stand of tall green plants—Indian pipes?—but could not right herself and landed hard on her knees.

Greg, ahead of her, didn't see what had happened. When he finally sensed her absence, he turned around and came back. “You okay?”

“I think so.”

She let him pull her up, but her ankle was unexpectedly sore, and she felt unable to put her full weight on her foot. She tapped her foot once or twice experimentally on the path, feeling a pain shoot up her calf. “I'll be okay.”

He squinted up at the peak doubtfully. “I don't know, Fiona. This mountain, it's like a kindergarten outing. Rosa could probably do it. But no way am I going to have your ankle giving way and you sliding off a ledge. And me getting blamed.”

“I'll be okay! Just—why don't you go ahead? I'll catch up.” She lowered herself to the ground to inspect her ankle and felt hard stalks of grass pressing against her jeans. Inside her shirt, lines of sweat pooled and meandered down her back. “I just need to rest for a minute.”

“Catch you on the way back. I'll tell you one thing, though.”

“What's that?”

“If I ever settled down—and I'm so not ready to do that—I'd look for someone like you.”

Before she could say anything, he was gone.

T
HE BEST THING
was that it was always faster going alone. But it was weird that there were no other climbers. No voices, nothing but the back-and-forth calls of a few birds. And, of course, the usual constant cracklings in the underbrush. He had relied on Dimitri to identify the rustlings of everything out here, to tell the difference between foxes and bobcats, jackrabbits and snakes. Dimitri wasn't even spooked by rattlers. Greg reminded himself that they usually nested in flatter, hotter areas, not on mountains.

Why the hell had Fiona asked him about accidents; did he have some kind of mark of Cain on his forehead? Only one accident in his whole life, and that had been years ago with the Outing Club. He'd been a kid then, showing off a little, but even when the report was made, no one blamed him. It was understood that rock climbing was dangerous.

He caught sight of the aspens that signaled more water and wondered if it was potable. He had filled up his canteen back in Santa Fe, but only had the one with him. Not that the hike up would take very long, but he was already sweating like a sumo wrestler. He reached back and eased the pack away from his shoulders to let the air circulate under his soaked shirt.

It had been a fall day when the accident happened, the trees that brilliant New England rust though the sky was overcast. He couldn't even remember the name of the mountain now. Although they were belaying, he had used very few chocks, trying to impress Dimitri by depending on his own hand holds and his own balance. And it would have been fine if Ben hadn't slipped and panicked, hadn't ripped them all off the mountain like someone peeling away a Band-Aid.

Overhead a hawk wheeled slowly as if keeping an eye on his progress to report back. Ben had punctured the wrong part of his spine on some jagged edge—every climber's nightmare—and wasn't able to walk anymore. Dimitri had complained of headaches afterward and that he couldn't concentrate on anything. Was that when his failing at everything started? Still, if the data-compression program was as good as he claimed it was, it would make up for years of failure.

A droning began somewhere above his head and it only took Greg a moment to realize that it was not an insect, but man-made. Instinctively he pressed himself into the shade. When he and Dimitri climbed on Navajo land, on monuments like Spider Rock in Canyon de Chelly, they had been alert for aircraft or jeeps on the canyon floor. The Indians got picky about outsiders on their sacred land.

The noise turned staccato as the copter swooped lower and then moved away. Surveillance, but so what? This wasn't private land. As he paused on the climbing trail, something black overhead caught his eye. Squatting, he let his pack slip off to one side, then rooted around for his camera. He didn't carry binoculars; the telephoto lens usually brought things close enough.

Bringing his Nikon out, he focused up on the dark glint, then caught his breath. There was definitely something up there, something that did not belong. The trouble was, it was hard to see. Hints of color gleamed in some places, but they looked more like reflections on plastic. No, not plastic. What was the thing it reminded him of? Rainbows—rainbow slicks on oil.

Straightening, he leaned back to assess how to get up there.

It was tempting to leave the trail and go straight up the mountain. But he was alone, and pulling out his equipment was a hassle. For a moment he did nothing. Wiping the sweat away with his fist, he wondered if he should go back and tell Fiona. But what could she do? No, that would take too long. He would check it out, snap some photos, and then get the hell out of Dodge.

A shadow crossed the ledge before he actually heard—or saw—the helicopter again. It passed over him, then continued to the top of the peak. He let out his breath. It was painted a rich blue with yellow trim. Probably some kind of ranger patrol.

He raised the camera again. A breeze must have rippled the black cover, because he could now see glinting silver edges like the frosting on Rosa's black hair. He replaced the pack firmly on his shoulders and started to move again.