Free Fall (38 page)

The quote was exact. Precisely the one he'd read from that notepad in Roland Peck's office before their meeting, a full day before the explosion.

The one he'd taken for an economic metaphor."

Beamon felt the sweat start to break across his forehead. Hallorin had blown up his own manufacturing plant as a publicity stunt. He'd run into the chaos, knowing that the fire wouldn't spread, that the smoke wasn't noxious, that the building was still structurally sound. He'd killed those people that little girl for nothing more than a fucking photo opportunity. And like all things political, his reaction had been carefully considered and written out for him beforehand.

Beamon pulled out his cell phone and dialed Roland Peck's home number.

It rang a couple of times before Peck's irritating voice came on the line.

"Hello?"

"Roland. Mark Beamon. I've decided not to take your job offer."

"Mark, let's ta " Beamon pressed the off button on the phone and stuffed it back in his jacket.

C'mon Darby," Sam said, still trying to mask the worried expression he'd had since she arrived. He took a few more steps away from the trees and out onto the white sand.

"Hello!" he yelled at the top of his lungs.

"Can anybody hear me?"

There was no answer, just the soft breeze and the quiet slosh of the waves as they gently folded over one another behind him. Darby adjusted her position slightly so that she could see through a hole in the dense foliage, mindful of the deadly snakes that liked to snooze in the leaves that she was standing on. As her friend had promised, the beach was deserted.

The last time she'd been there--two or so years ago--it had been packed with young Europeans and Americans sunbathing on the soft sand, drinking cheap beer in open air bars, and climbing the limestone monoliths that littered this part of southern Thailand.

Darby sidestepped again, putting herself in a narrow band of sunlight that burned into her. It was only seven in the morning, but the heat was already nearly unbearable, with humidity levels that kept everything just slightly damp all the time.

Sam motioned dramatically up the beach in the direction of a particularly impressive orange-brown cliff face that jutted some six hundred feet :, into the blue sky.

"I'm telling you, Darby, I haven't seen a single square ; inch of Caucasian skin in two months. Shit, even the Thais don't come here anymore. No tourists means no money, and no money means you can't get here."

Darby kept her eyes moving along the shoreline but knew he was right.

The normal clutter of long-tailed boats and their loud, pushy captains was completely gone. If Sam hadn't come to get her in his own boat, it would have taken her nine hours of bushwhacking through snake-infested jungles and over sheer cliffs to get there. It was a remote corner of the world made livable only by high-tech communications and transportation two things that had completely broken down along with everything else in Asia. Railei Beach had, once again, become the middle of nowhere and a perfect place to hide.

"It's anarchy, Darb. There's no one in control." Sam pointed behind her in the direction of a small enclave of houses set up on stilts.

"If any one was, they'd have probably nationalized my house by now. Come on, let's go. You can tell me what the hell's going on on the way."

The plan that had seemed so right sitting in Wyoming wasn't as perfect now that she was in Thailand. The relief she'd expected to feel when she arrived at the nearly empty Phuket Thailand airport hadn't materialized The normally friendly Thais seemed dangerous now, their eyes lingering on her longer than they should, wondering who she was and what she was doing in a country that had been all but abandoned and in their minds destroyed by the West. It really was chaos. Buses didn't run anymore, traffic drove over sidewalks and median strips unchallenged.

Groups of unemployed men stood on street corners looking for opportunities. Any opportunities.

The customs agent who cleared her and her gear had lingered for almost a minute over her passport, the suspicion obvious on his face.

After only about twenty seconds she'd wanted to break and run. But to where? Back to the safety of the States? It had turned out that all he'd wanted was ten American dollars. She'd parted with it grudgingly because she had no other option. Her funds were dwindling quickly.

She'd hoped that getting out of the immediate path of the men who were so efficiently tracking her would clear her mind, give her time to work things out. But it hadn't. She still felt like everything was out of control. Her normally unshakable calm had completely failed her in the face of the unfamiliarity of it all. She'd come to terms with the mountains trying to kill her long ago. It was just the balance of things; there was no malice involved. But this was something completely different. She felt herself getting paranoid.

She looked down the beach again, searching for any sign of life in the boarded-up bars and restaurants, but there was none. She looked up at her friend, and suddenly realized how ridiculous she must look, cowering in a bush. A stupid bush.

Darby stepped out on the beach and started toward a rocky path uncovered by the low tide.

"Let's go."

He followed a few feet behind, silent until they left the sand and began scrambling over the jagged boulders to gain the beach to the north.

"So, what happened, Darby? What happened to Tristan?" Sam's voice was hesitant.

The cool water splashed up on her as the waves collided with the rocks, mingling with the sweat that had already drenched her. She tried to concentrate on that feeling and let everything else go.

"Do you think I killed him?"

"No. Hell, no." Sam forced a smile.

"I mean, I only met the guy once, but he just didn't seem that irritating."

"He wasn't. He wasn't irritating at all." She bent over to start down the other side of the boulder they were on, but stopped when she felt Sam's hand on her shoulder.

"Look, Darby. Have you thought this through? If you didn't do it, and I know you didn't, is running to Southeast Asia the right thing to do?

It makes you look guilty. Have you thought about maybe going back and turning yourself in? Telling your side of the story? My dad knows some pretty heavy-hitting lawyers, maybe I could " Darby put her hand on his, silencing him.

"Thanks, Sam, but it's more complicated than that. I'm just going to have to work this out myself, okay?"

He didn't immediately follow her down to the sand.

"I'm leaving next week, Darb," he said finally, jumping off the tall boulder and landing next to her.

"This is as much my home as anywhere, but it's getting too creepy, even for me."

Darby nodded and started up the beach without saying anything.

They continued in silence for another ten minutes and then cut right onto a steep, narrow trail rising into the jungle.

"You can stay at my place as long as you want," Sam said.

Darby stopped and looked back down the trail at him, wiping the sweat from her forehead with an equally wet forearm.

"Sam, I appreciate you letting me stop here, but I don't want to "

"Doesn't matter," he said.

"Look around you Railei is a ghost town.

It's either you or a family of macaques. And you know how I feel about monkeys. Just promise me one thing."

"What?"

"You'll think about what I said."

"I'll think about it," she said truthfully. That's what she'd come here for to think. So far, though, every strategy she dreamed up was a losing one. And worse, she was finding it impossible to let go of Tristan's memory, to separate her growing anger from her logic. As much as she wanted all this to go away to make a deal, or to just keep running she also wanted the men who had killed Tristan to pay for what they'd done.

"That's it. Right there," she heard Sam say from behind her. She picked up her pace a bit, hopping from rock to rock until she came to the base of the cliff. She craned her neck upwards, following the line of shiny bolts with her eyes, mapping each hole, divot and ledge in the rock face, calculating the optimal body position for each move.

Normally, her mind worked through these kinds of sequences automatically, but now she had to concentrate. To try to block everything else out.

"I don't know, Sam. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. I'm not really in the mood "

"Come on, Darby. This is exactly what you need." Sam dropped his pack and began pulling a rope and a pair of shoes from the top.

"It'll take your mind off your problems for a few hours. Clear your head."

When she didn't move, he let his shoes fall to the ground and crossed his arms in front of his chest self-consciously.

"Okay, the truth is, I've got fifty-two tries on this route and I'm within two feet of doing it. If I don't get it before I leave, I'm afraid my elbows will be too old when it's finally safe to come back."

It was the least she could do for all the help he was giving her, for never questioning her innocence. In the grand scheme of things, another two hours weren't going to make a whole lot of difference.

"You first," Sam said as she slid her pack off and dumped the contents on the ground.

"What?"

He held a handful of quick draws out toward her.

"I don't want to tire myself out putting these up. You don't mind, do you?"

She shook her head and clipped the 'draws to her harness before sliding it on and tying into the rope.

"Great. Thanks. You're on belay, Darb. Whenever you're ready."

She laid her hands against the cliff and closed her eyes, trying to fill her mind with the texture of the rock. Trying to tell herself that she was safe now, back on the fringes of the real world where she belonged.

She took a deep breath and reached up for a door jamb-sized edge, pulling herself up onto it and bringing her feet up onto two similar ledges beneath her.

She felt out of balance. As she continued up, moves that should have flowed effortlessly turned into wild throws for the tiny holds that dotted the route. Each time she latched onto one, gravity grabbed hold of her and her body sagged dangerously toward the ground.

She barely made it to the first bolt, clipped a quick draw into it, and snapped the rope through the other end. Her arms and shoulders already felt like they were on fire and there was a stream of blood running from the edge of one of her nails down the sweat-soaked back of her hand.

This was usually the best part the burning of lactic acid in her muscles, the unavoidable cuts opened by the jagged rock. It had always felt like life to her. Now it just felt like pain.

"I'm going to hang," she called down. Sam took the slack out of the rope and she sat back in her harness, gently swinging in the damp breeze.

There was no joy in it anymore. The harder she tried to fall into the unconscious alignment of mind and body that had always been such a high for her, the further it seemed to slip away.

"Are you all right, Darby?" Sam called up.

"Hey, if you don't want to finish it, come down. I'll do it."

She slammed a hand into the rock face, setting her to swinging violently.

"NO! I'm going to finish it."

She shoved two fingers into a small pocket so hard that she felt another cut open up. Ignoring it, she abandoned any attempt at technique or grace, just grabbing holds as fast and powerfully as she could.

She made it another thirty feet and latched onto a hold big enough to fit both of her hands. Breathing hard, she could feel the sweat running down her back so thick that it was actually trapping the heat to her body.

"What do you want?"

It was Sam's voice, but it didn't seem to be directed at her.

She managed to find a foothold just large enough to allow her to twist her body around and look down to the ground.

Sam was trying to back away, letting rope out to compensate for his increasing distance from the cliff. He had to stop after ten feet, though, when he reached the edge of a forty-foot drop-off. Five uniformed Thai men had more or less surrounded him and began speaking in rapid-fire Thai as they examined the rope he was holding.

"What do you want?" Sam repeated in Thai, fear edging into his voice.

"What you want?" one of the men mimicked. His companions laughed as he stepped forward and grabbed the rope that Darby was tied into, giving it a firm tug. She felt the sudden downward pull in her harness and her feet skittered off the rock, leaving her hanging from the cliff by her sweat-soaked hands.

"Get the fuck off that!" she heard Sam yell as he pushed the man away.

Darby brought her feet up again quickly, trying to take some of the weight off her exhausted arms. She looked down again, spotting the last bolt she had clipped about fifteen feet below her, then staring down at the ground forty feet below that.

Sam played out a few more feet of slack as the Thais started inching toward him again, then hit the ground hard when one of them drove a foot into his side. The additional rope that he'd let out kept him from pulling her off when he fell, but based on the position of her last bolt and the amount of slack, she was no longer certain that she wouldn't hit the ground if she came off.