Desolation Point (16 page)

“You not hungry, Nate?”

Except for this one.

Merrick tasted the over-sweetened, over-salted, lukewarm cereal. He forced himself to swallow it and then to smile.

“Just thinking, babe,” he said.

This deal had been valuable enough to force Nicholas into taking an unprecedented risk, that of organizing the jailbreak that would enable Merrick to see it through to its completion. Nicholas’s motives were his own. For Merrick, the outcome would be far simpler: the opportunity to leave the country and retire in luxury on an absolute fortune.

He finished the last of his breakfast and washed the taste away with a mouthful of water. He was tired of living like an animal, tired of the shitty food and wearing the same stinking clothes. As he kicked the smoldering ashes to extinguish the fire, he thought of the girl who had caused him so much trouble and wondered whether today would be the day they caught up with her.

“She better fucking run,” he said to no one in particular, but he saw Beth cringe away from the tone of his voice. “She better fucking run.”

*

“I love my love with an F, because she is fabulous…” Sarah took hold of the hand Alex offered to her and stepped onto the wobbly rock in the center of the fast-flowing stream. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure, ma’am.” Alex gave a little bow and kept her steady as they made the next step together. “One more,” she murmured, tilting her head to one side to weigh their options. “That one doesn’t look too bad.”

“Yep. You going first?”

Alex smiled. “You mean, are you going
in
first?”

“Well, yes, of course that’s what I mean.” Sarah’s tired eyes flashed with amusement.

With the sigh of one long accustomed to being tormented, Alex hopped onto the rock and then quickly onto the bank. “It’s fine, not slippery at all.” She held her arms out regardless for Sarah to grab on to, but Sarah landed without incident.

“Okay then.” Alex made an onward gesture. “So why do you hate fabulous Freda?”

For the last hour, they had been distracting themselves from their myriad aches and pains by playing silly word games. They had already been through the alphabet naming candies and desserts, and this latest was one that Sarah’s sister had taught her.

“Hey!” Sarah protested. “I’d not even given her a name yet.” She shrugged. “But I suppose Freda’s as good as any. Okay, I hate my love with an F because she is…”

Alex glanced over her shoulder in time to catch Sarah furrow her brow in contemplation and then start to giggle.

“Because she is flatulent,” she concluded. Her shoulders shook as she laughed.

“Oh my God.” Alex stopped in her tracks and turned to face her properly. “Please tell me you’ve never had a Flatulent Freda as a girlfriend.”

“Hell no.” Sarah sounded appalled. “Although Ash did once set me up with someone whose main selling point was her ability to burp ‘God Save the Queen.’”

“You’re shitting me.”

She shook her head with exaggerated sorrow. “I only wish that I was.”

“And I thought I’d had it tough with Meg,” Alex said, surprising herself with her ability to mention that disaster of a relationship with such equanimity. But then she found Sarah incredibly easy to talk to. In spite of the exertion, the discomfort, and the constant fear, there had been many occasions during the past two days where she had forgotten all of it and just enjoyed Sarah’s company. It had been a long time since she felt comfortable enough with anyone to lower those barriers that she had firmly established since Meg, but she had quickly become that comfortable with Sarah. She chanced a surreptitious look behind her, but Sarah caught her peeking and waved at her.

“I’m still here,” Sarah said, sounding only slightly out of breath. “We’re up to G and it’s your turn.”

Alex turned back hurriedly in an attempt to hide her guilty smile. Sarah’s face had been flushed with effort and sweat was sticking her hair to her forehead. She was streaked with dirt, and at some point during the day, something had scratched her cheek and scored an angry red mark across it. And yet, right at that moment, Alex wanted nothing more than to kiss her long and hard, and then see what happened next.

“I’m going to hell,” she muttered beneath her breath. She clenched her fingers and attempted to slow her rapid pulse. “Okay,” she said, once she was sure she could speak without giving the game away entirely. “I love my love with a G because she is gorgeous…”

Twenty minutes later, as Sarah struggled to find a suitably positive adjective beginning with Z, Alex stopped walking.

“Jesus.” She made a grab for Sarah’s jacket and wrapped the material in her fist to hold on to it tightly. The force of her effort made Sarah stagger, and she let out a small squeak of protest before she looked up.

“Oh shit,” she whispered.

Without needing to be prompted, she stepped back cautiously at the same time Alex did.

A yard in front of them, the mountainside had simply fallen away. Torrents of storm water had eroded the fragile infrastructure of snow-worn rock and crumbling dirt. The force of the landslide had uprooted trees and vegetation and smashed them into pieces. Alex could see where the trail resumed on the other side of the devastated slope, but there was a vast impassable tract between it and the point at which they stood. To either side of them, the forest clung to the mountain. The ground was steep and comprised the same unstable matter that had just collapsed beneath the force of the storm. She was afraid that their own weight on those weather-ravaged slopes would be disturbance enough to cause further slides, and she had no desire to be caught in the middle of one.

She stared down at the GPS in her hand. The red arrow they had been following pointed ahead with unswerving insistence. For hours now, she had assumed the lead, being in better physical shape than Sarah and more familiar with the terrain. Without the issue ever having been discussed, it was Alex who had navigated, who had suggested rest breaks and set their pace. For the first time, she felt the weight of that responsibility bearing down upon her.

“I don’t…” She looked up again, a sense of hopelessness gradually engulfing her. “I don’t know what we should do,” she admitted quietly. She felt Sarah’s chilled fingers entwine with her own, and she squeezed them gently, grateful for the unspoken absolution.

“Neither do I,” Sarah said, “but I don’t think we can get over that gap.”

“No.”

Even now, there was the intermittent clatter of stones as they were loosened by the water still running down the mountainside. With no protective gear, any attempt to navigate the slope would put them at risk of serious injury.

Sarah pulled Alex farther away from the edge. “Here, sit down for a minute.”

“We should keep going,” Alex muttered, even as she sat and laid her head on her folded arms.

“Yes, we should and we will,” Sarah said, “but not until we’ve figured out where.”

Alex heard a rustling noise as Sarah searched through her pockets. A series of muttered curses was punctuated by a quiet whoop of triumph, and Sarah passed her a slab of something pale brown that smelled sweetly of mint.

“I knew I hadn’t eaten it. Here, can’t walk straight if you can’t think straight.”

Alex managed a weary grin. “You want me to make the obvious gag or shall I leave it to you?” She nibbled at the edge of the candy. “What exactly am I eating here?” Whatever it was was tooth-achingly sweet and melted agreeably on her tongue.

“Kendal Mint Cake,” Sarah said. “Staple diet of English hill walkers. It’s basically sugar, glucose, and peppermint. It’ll rot your teeth, but it’s a great energy boost.” She handed Alex another piece, tucked the remainder away, and unfolded their map. It took both of them a good few minutes to cross-reference their coordinates on the GPS and work out where they were.

“That stream’s not marked,” Sarah commented absently, her finger tracing over a small grid on the map.

“What stream?”

“It was about half a mile back, cutting down through the trees. I wonder if we could go back to it and scramble downstream about three hundred yards. The stones don’t fall that far. Then we could use the GPS to work our way back toward the landslide but cross it at a safe level.”

Alex followed her logic through. “And then hope we get lucky and find another stream on the other side to climb back up and regain the trail.” It certainly sounded easier than wandering down a mountainside that was liable to collapse at the slightest encouragement.

“Yeah,” Sarah said. Her eyes were fixed on the path behind them as if she were waiting for a monster to suddenly appear. “We hope we get lucky.”

*

“It doesn’t look too bad.” Sarah peered down the course of the stream. Although swollen by the storm, it would give them a clear and relatively straight track down through the forest. The rocks that crowded in on it were slick in places, but she hoped they would be able to scramble down them if the water became too deep or too rapid to wade through.

“No, it doesn’t.” Alex nodded in agreement.

Sarah felt a small shiver of relief pass through her. She had wanted to take some of the pressure away from Alex, to lead instead of hiding behind the easy option of following, but she had been assailed by doubt as they retraced their steps. The detour she had suggested would eat into what little advantage they had over Merrick, and she knew they didn’t have time to make another one.

“Don’t know about you, but I’m putting my wet socks back on,” Alex said lightly. She was kneeling by her pack and, having pulled her socks from its depths, was now searching through it for something else. When she stood, there was a length of rope in her hands. “C’mere.”

Sarah stepped closer to her and raised her arms so Alex could loop the rope around her waist. “Wasn’t planning on running off,” she said as Alex secured a second loop around herself.

“No?” Alex grinned, testing the knots. “Just don’t want to lose you, is all.”

“So if I go arse over tits, we both go arse over tits?” Sarah asked, forgetting for a moment that the phrase might not mean a thing to Alex.

Alex laughed as they changed their socks; she didn’t seem to have had any difficulties translating that one. “You have such a charming way with words, darling.” The upper-class English accent she adopted was actually quite impressive.

“It’s part of my Northern charm,” Sarah told her with mock seriousness, but then she looked over at the stream and sighed. “So, we should probably do this before we lose the light.”

“Yeah, we should.”

Alex touched her hand to Sarah’s face. Sarah closed her eyes briefly, wishing they were anywhere but here and then wishing that Alex hadn’t already dropped her hand away. Straightening her shoulders, she walked to the edge of the stream, where she weighed up her first move. At a reassuring nod from Alex, she stepped into the water.

Even though she’d endured days of cold and miserable damp, growing somewhat accustomed to it, the water that rushed over her feet was chilled enough to take her breath away.

“Oh God, whose bloody stupid idea was this?” she muttered and heard Alex laugh shortly. The current tugged at her ankles, making her wobble. She put her arms out for balance and felt Alex’s hand on her shoulder steadying her. Pebbles turned and shifted beneath the soles of her boots, and every drenched rock was covered in a layer of filmy green lichen. She knew then, even as her heart beat faster and urged her to hurry, that this was not something they would be able to rush.

“Just take your time,” Alex said, as if she had read her mind. “We get below that point there,” she gestured toward a curve in the stream, “and we won’t be visible from the trail anymore.”

“Okay.” Sarah set off again, her feet already numb and uncooperative. A rock that had appeared to be a safe foothold capsized the instant she put weight on it and only a sharp tug from Alex on the rope around her waist prevented her from falling. “Avoid that one,” she said, altering her route to step around it.

They made painfully slow progress. Reluctant to speak because of their proximity to the trail, they waded down in near-silence, whispering warnings or advice to each other, with one ear constantly alert to any movement above them. When they finally reached the curve that Alex had indicated, Sarah began to breathe a little easier, but her relief was muted by fading daylight and the nagging sense that they simply weren’t going fast enough.

A faint, repetitive, mechanical sound made her instinctively drop low. Behind her, she heard Alex scramble to do likewise, before they simultaneously identified the source of the noise.

“Chopper,” Alex whispered. She tilted her head on one side to listen and try to gauge its whereabouts.

Sarah craned her neck back, straining to catch a glimpse of it, but she knew even before Alex spoke again that the helicopter was nowhere near them.

“I think it’s over the other side of the peak,” Alex said. “Probably heading back in before dusk.”

Sarah resumed the task of picking her way downstream. “At least they’re looking.” She tried to sound optimistic, but the obvious caveat hung unspoken between them: rescue teams wouldn’t be any help if they were searching in the wrong place.

*

Merrick heard the dry snap seconds before he heard Beth’s gasp of pain. He turned to find her sitting on the ground, her left foot twisted awkwardly behind her, her face ashen.

“Nate, I think it’s broken,” she whimpered as he walked over to her.

He could see her ankle now, offset at a strange angle and already beginning to swell. Her foot was still caught up in the tree root she had tripped over. Ignoring her cries of pain, he freed her boot and straightened her ankle.

“Can you walk?” He knew the answer even before he asked the question and was not surprised when she shook her head.

“Please don’t leave me here,” she said. Her hands grasped out for his and he knocked them away impatiently, trying to think what his options were and finding them extremely limited. Beth attempted to stand but fell back the instant she tried to put any weight on the injury.