The Bright Silver Star (34 page)

“No, that’s a Victorian myth, same as thinking you can be ‘cured’ of being gay. Just because you’ve killed once doesn’t mean that you’ve gone over to the dark side, Mitch. I hated what I did, and I’ll be haunted by it for as long as I live.” Will looked up at him now, blinking in the torchlight. “Quite honestly, I don’t think the third time will be any easier either.”

It happened so fast.

Will lunged at him with such sudden ferocity that Mitch’s flashlight went clattering to the rocks and rolled right over the cliff, plunging them back into darkness as they wrestled with each other there on the slick granite ledge, slipping and sliding. Will trying with all of his might to push Mitch over the edge. Mitch trying with all of his own might to stop him.

“Will, don’t do this!” he gasped, struggling to dig his heels in. He did have heft on his side, and a lower center of gravity. But Will had a distinct advantage of his own—he was insane. “You
have
to turn yourself in.”

“Never,” he gasped back at him.

They fell to the ledge now, rolling around there on the narrow shelf of rock, punching and kicking and clawing for their very lives. And there was only them and the roaring water and the blackness of certain death a hundred feet below.

Will was back up on his feet, kicking blindly at Mitch in the dark, smashing him in his ribs, his shoulder, his neck.

Mitch scrambled away, groping desperately in the dark for a stone, a weapon. His fingers found the schnapps bottle—but Will’s powerful hands found his throat. And Will was choking him and choking him. And Mitch was fighting for breath as he raised the bottle high over his head, gasping, gagging, until with the very last bit of power that was left in his body Mitch smashed Will Durslag hard in the face, shattering the bottle and pitching the taller man over backward, right over the cliff.

Which would have been fine by Mitch except for one thing—Will was still holding on to him by his shirt.

And so as he went over Mitch went over, too, his own legs flailing wildly in space as Will hung there in midair, clutching on to him for dear life. Mitch tried in vain to grab on to the moss, to the wet stone, something, anything. Feeling Will’s weight pulling him down, down the sheer edge of the cliff, moss coming away in his fingers, bare stone refusing to yield him even the merest finger or toehold as he slid and he slid and he—

Until with a sudden rip Mitch’s shirt gave way in Will’s hand and Will was gone, screaming, into the blackness of the night, his roar and the roar of the waterfall merging into one.

Freed of Will’s weight, Mitch clung there to the sheer side of the cliff for a brief, gravity-defying instant. But now he could feel himself falling again, scrabbling, kicking, trying to put on the brakes. Except there was nothing to hold on to and it was all happening too fast and he was going and he was going—until his hand
just
wrapped itself around a spindly tree branch, halting his fall.

And now he was hanging there by one arm, his body swinging free in the air, and there was only enough time for one final realization.

I am never going to see Desiree Mitry again. I am going to die. I am going to die. I am going to . . .

C
HAPTER 14

D
ES HAD TO BE
so damned careful.

As much as she wanted to floor it straight for the falls, she didn’t dare. Couldn’t take the chance that Will Durslag would spot her cruiser at the gate and wig out. Because there was absolutely no telling what that man was liable to do to him. Assuming that Mitch was right and it
was
Will who’d killed Tito and Donna. Maybe Mitch was totally wrong about his walking buddy. Maybe Will could convince him of this. Maybe he and Will would have a perfectly pleasant conversation, shake hands, and go their separate ways.

Then again, maybe not.

She used an entrance that was way over on the other side of the park, at Witch Meadow. Kathleen Moloney drove over from her cabin to raise the gate for Des. The young ranger had to wonder why Des needed to get into the park at one o’clock in the morning. But she was too sleepy to act genuinely interested, and she did not offer to tag along.

Des made do with her parking lights as she sped through the fog-shrouded park on a narrow service road, asking herself why she was letting herself get dragged into this fool gambit of Mitch’s after all. Even though she’d sworn up and down that she wouldn’t. Even though his impulsive desire to make things right sometimes seemed as if it came straight out of those old Hollywood movies of his, as opposed to the real world. Even though not one bit of this was smart or sane.

Why, damn it?

Because he was her boy, that’s why, and he was what he was. She could not change him. She could only love him, even when he acted crazy. And if
anything
happened to that pudgy pink butthead tonight
because she wasn’t up there watching his back she would never forgive herself.

She would just die.

She left her cruiser a quarter mile up the service road from the river, hearing the roar of the falls now. She made it the rest of the way on foot, stumbling her way along the footpath in the darkness. She did make sparing use of her flashlight, holding it low to the ground, pointed straight down. But once she’d reached the guardrail she did not dare use it at all. Plunging herself into utter blackness, she climbed over the rail and crept slowly out onto slick bare granite, the river roaring as it raced by her, her eyes and ears straining for some sign of human life. But it was no use. She was blind and she was deaf. It was straight out of a nightmare.

Except this was no nightmare. This was real.

All she needed was a hint of where they were. One hint. A breath of a voice. A trace of movement. But as she crept slowly forward in her crablike crouch, there was nothing. Not one thing . . . Wait, was that the sound of glass breaking? No, her ears were playing tricks on her. It was nothing. She couldn’t even be sure they were here at all.

Not until she heard a man’s bloodcurdling scream.

It came from very close to her—no more than ten feet away. And now all bets were off and she was up on her feet with her flashlight out, charging toward the edge of the cliff, waving her beam around the granite promontory.

Except there was no one.

They were gone. Both gone.

She was all alone up there—just her and a broken liquor bottle that glistened on the granite. Peppermint schnapps.

Des felt a clutch in her chest. It was pure, animal anguish. She very nearly went over herself. Because she did not want to live. But she held back, standing there frozen, unable to believe, to think, to
breathe.
Until at last she drew in her breath in big ragged gulps and called his name out into the black void below her.
“MITCH!!”
she cried in helpless desperation.
“MITCH!!”

“D-Des
. . .”

She barely heard it over the roar of the falls. It was the weakest of gasps.

“D-Des .
. .”

From below her. It came from right below her.

She inched her way over to the very edge and shined her light straight downward—directly into the two poached eggs that were Mitch Berger ’s terrified eyes. The man was swinging there in midair ten feet below her, clinging by his white-knuckled hands to a spindly little cedar that grew out of a crevice between the rocks. It was the very same tree that Tito had snapped when he fell.

“You
came!”
he groaned. “I-I knew you would. ...”

“I knew that you knew,” she called down to him, trying to keep her voice calm. “Where’s Will?”

“Dead!”

“That’s not going to happen to you, baby. I won’t let it, hear me? Just hold on. I got you. Just hold on. . .”

She had no rope. And no time to run back to her car for one. He’d be dead in a matter of seconds. Swiftly, she whipped off her black leather garrison belt, jettisoned her holstered SIG-Sauer and cell phone, and knotted the tongue around her wrist, yanking it tight. She propped the flashlight up against a stone, pointing downward, and edged her way as far down the sheer granite face as she could without losing solid hold.

Bracing herself, Des dangled the belt buckle out to him. “Reach for it!”

He tried, waving an arm in feverish desperation at the belt buckle as it wavered there in the air above him.

But it was no use—the other end of the belt was still a good two feet shy of him. If only she had a fifty-inch waist. But she didn’t. That left her with one last option. It wasn’t a good one, but it was the only one she had.

She had to surrender her solid hold. Climb her way down that bare, vertical granite toward him, fingers and toes searching for crevices and holds in the slick stone. “Hang on, baby!” she called to him as she edged down closer, inch by precarious inch. “I’m here!”

“Des, my arms are g-getting . . .”

“I am
not
hearing that!” She dangled the belt out to him once more. Damn, still another foot to go. And not a thing to grab on to. “You
can
hold on. Just one more minute. One minute. Say you’ll hang on for me. Come on, say it!”

“I’ll. . . I’ll hang on. . . .”

She edged lower, clinging to the side of the cliff by her fingers, clawing at the moss with her nails as the river tore on by her, pelting her with cold spray. She could not even think about how she was going to climb back up there with him. One impossibility at a time. “Hang on, I got you,” she told him, keeping her voice steady. “You’re taking me dancing, remember? I’ve been waiting for this. Think I’m going to let you weasel out now?” Reaching her belt down to him.
Damn,
still six more inches. Edging lower, surrendering a halfway decent toehold for
no
toehold, seeing him real clearly now in the flashlight’s beam, his hair glistening from the spray, his hands trembling around the branch that was the only thing between him and death. The branch that was bending and straining against his weight. “What was the name of that place again?”

“What
place?”! He was panting wildly, as if he’d been running all out for miles. It was exhaustion and it was panic.

“Where you’re taking me dancing.”

“T-Tavern . . . The Tavern.”

One more good foothold was all she needed. One more. She reached down with her foot, poking blindly, kicking, until finally she made contact with the base of the tree that Mitch clung to. Her shoe was right next to his hand, bracing her there. “They got them a DJ?”

“Just a jukebox . . . Des, I c-can’t. . .”

“It’s okay, we’re all good now,” she said, her voice brimming with confidence. “I’ve got you. Here we go. . . .” Des readied herself, breathing in and out, realizing with a shocking degree of clarity that it was for this singular moment in her life that she had done all of that work. Every weight she had lifted. Every mile she had run and hiked and biked. The four years of iron-willed training at West
Point. All of that was preparation for this moment, this mountain, right here, right now. And she would need all she could bring. Every bit of strength. Every bit of heart. It all.

Because she was about to take on two-hundred pounds of man.

With her left arm, Des dangled the belt out to him. “Grab it, Mitch.”

“I
can’t!
We’ll both go down!”

“No, we won’t.”

“We
will!”
he cried out, panting. “I’ll p-pull you right down with me. Kill us both. Just let me go. . . .”

“I
can’t
let you go!” she sobbed, the tears beginning to stream down her face. She could not stop them from coming. She did not even try. “I don’t want to be alive unless you are, too. Then I
will
die, don’t you get it? Now give me your damned hand, you fat son of a bitch!”

He made an angry lunge for the belt and grabbed hold, the suddenness of his weight very nearly yanking her right off the mountainside. But she held on, wet fingers clinging to wet granite, fingernails breaking, her shoulder feeling as if it were about to pop out of its socket.

But she had him. Now all she had to do was tow him back up one-handed. Nothing to it. Cherry pie. Great big slab of it, à la mode.

Slowly, Des began the agonizing climb back up that sheer cliff to safety, the veins in her neck bulging as she reached up with her right arm, grabbing an uncertain fingerhold, and pulled him up along with her by her left, the muscles in her legs and lower back powering them upward, inch by precious inch. An animal groan of pain coming out of her as she willed them back up. The pain in her shoulder growing so intense that she was positive she could not hold him one second longer, that she
had
to let him go. Or die. She was beginning to feel light-headed now, almost delirious. The mountain was starting to waver and shift on her, like a ship at sea.

“What’s our . . . song?” she panted, terrified she was about to pass out.

“Our . . .
what?”

“Got to have . . . song . . . How’s Aretha?”

“Fine . . . by me . . .” he answered, kicking wildly against the side of the cliff. Somehow, he found a toehold in a crevice, freeing some of his weight from both of their shoulders for a precious moment.

Gasping, she clung there, soaking wet, every muscle in her body quivering, knowing she had to keep moving. Forcing herself to keep moving. “Here we go, baby. One more time.” Climbing upward again. Gaining a fingerhold, losing it, slipping back down, grabbing on to the wet granite for dear life. And trying it all over again. “Your favorite Aretha . . . ?”

“Has to be . . . ‘Respect.’ ”

“Me, too. Oh, God!” she groaned, as the pain in her shoulder grew even more unbearable. “Tell me about.. . the food.”

“Des, we can’t.. ..”

“We
can!”
she screamed, inching farther upward toward the dim glow that was her flashlight’s beam. “Tell me . .. what we’ll eat.”

“Spinach . . . fettuccine.”

“Love me . . . I love me the pasta. Must be part Italian.”

“No, can’t be. You’re already . . . part Jewish. Bella said so.”

One inch, then another. Until at last he could finally swing a leg up over that branch he’d been hanging from. He straddled it, his chest heaving.