Free Fall (17 page)

"Vili?"

"Come down now, Darby."

She almost leaned her head over the edge to see if there was enough light to make out his features, but then remembered the gunshot that couldn't have come from anyone but him.

"You shot at me, Vili."

"Just to scare you." His voice was calm and even, but obviously forced.

"The men I am with hired me to help them find you. To bring you to the police for what you did to Tristan."

"I didn't do anything to Tristan. You know that."

"Of course I do. Come down, we will take you to your police. You can tell them."

Whoever the people after her were, they were smart. It had only been three days since she'd escaped from the old farmhouse and they'd already found the perfect person to track her. Vili had been a professional climber for years he knew the ins and outs of her lifestyle and probably most of her friends. But more, he hated her with a burning passion that she would never understand.

It had been three years ago on Ama Dablam in the Himalaya. She'd gone there to attempt a solo ascent of a new route on the west face of the mountain. But he'd sneaked in a week before, with a map she'd drawn, to try to steal the ascent out from under her.

She'd found him about halfway up it, his leg broken and half frozen.

She'd almost died about ten times getting him down. He hadn't even tried to help; he'd just lain there and whimpered while she dragged him along the steep slopes in subzero temperatures and blinding snow. A week after he'd been evacuated by helicopter, she'd completed the route, and worse, made the cover of Climbing magazine.

She hadn't really been looking for gratitude and she hadn't gotten any.

Apparently embarrassed by his behavior and for being saved by a woman, he'd somehow managed to convince himself that his accident had been her fault and that she'd stolen the climb from him.

"Why are you doing this, Vili?"

A shout from below floated up, but he didn't answer it.

"To show the world who you really are, Darby. What you did to me."

"You would have died up there."

"You say!" His voice suddenly went from a whisper to a scream.

"You forced me down. You took that climb from me!"

It occurred to her again just how pointless Tristan's death had been. He was the victim of the stunted, adolescent egos of supposedly full-grown men.

Politicians searched for power, captains of industry pursued money. For climbers, it was glory. But it was all an illusion. No matter how much they amassed, they would still grow old and weak and die. Tristan should have known better.

Darby stood and looked up the pitch-black chimney cut into the rock behind her. She closed her eyes and tried to remember the most difficult sections that she had passed on her way down and project how hard they'd be in the dark and with the extra weight in her pack.

She calculated a one-in-three chance of making it to the top alive.

That could be improved to fifty-fifty if she took her time, but the men below would undoubtedly take the same dirt road up the back that she had and try to be there to meet her.

"Wait!" Vili yelled when he heard Darby start up the chimney.

"Darby! Wait!"

She continued on, picking up her pace when she heard him step around the edge of the cave and start the climb to the alcove. She found a spot that she could comfortably stand for a moment and looked down into the blackness.

"There's a lot of loose rock up here, Vili."

She heard his progress come to a sudden halt. The meaning of her statement was clear if he continued up behind her, she'd kick off enough debris to ensure that he took the express to the ground.

"Wait, Darby! Wait!" He switched to his native language, speaking slowly and deliberately, enunciating every word very carefully. Her Slovenian was horrible self-taught during a six-month climbing trip there a few years back.

He repeated himself, even slower this time, and she struggled to trans late. She couldn't nail every word, but the gist was that if she threw the file down he'd let her go and lead the men who had hired him away from her.

Darby reached up and tested a small flake in the rock that was just big enough for her to get her fingers behind.

"Don't follow me, Vili. You won't make it," she said, pulling herself up a few more feet. He screamed something she couldn't translate and she heard the crack of another gun shot. She continued on, satisfied that there was no way he could hit her from where he was standing, and that he wouldn't follow. In the end, Vili Marcek was a coward.

Mark Beamon stared down at his coffee table--or more specifically, the half-eaten Big Mac resting on it. He reached out for the hamburger, but a slight cramping in his stomach redirected his hand to the cup full of Coke next to it. This was really pathetic. Not only had he grown accustomed to the no-fat, whole-grain, tree-hugger food that Carrie insisted on cooking day in and day out, he'd actually come to rely on it. His constitution had been so weakened by the endless procession of salads, bran muffins, and granola that he couldn't even drown his sorrows in a good fast food burger anymore.

Beamon pressed a button on the remote lying next to him on the sofa before he could start thinking about her again. Breaking off their relationship had been one of the hardest things he'd ever done--but he'd had no choice. As difficult as it was going to be to adjust to living without her and Emory, he knew he'd done the right thing. He had no right to drag them along behind him through this thing.

The television came to life, and the craggy yet earnest face of Robert Taylor, the Republican excuse for a presidential candidate, appeared onscreen.

As always, he was talking in grand concepts: tradition, morality, ingenuity, family. The morality part seemed to be the focus tonight--or more specifically, the importance of bringing it back to a scandal besieged political system. The confident words of a man too goddamn old and tedious to do anything that the papers would find even remotely provocative.

Beamon's eyes narrowed as Taylor started in on the meaning of integrity.

Undoubtedly that old son of a bitch had spent his week shoveling the crap that Beamon was about to drown in making deals that would save the Grand Old Party and destroy a certain hapless, former FBI agent. Nothing happened in Washington without the old man's knowledge and approval.

Beamon jabbed at the channel button and the screen flickered over to a group of well-dressed women, once again, discussing the presidential race. There didn't seem to be any escaping it. Politics was everything.

A few more jabs landed him a few more political saps. One last click and the imposing figure of David Hallorin sitting across from Larry King appeared on the screen. Beamon paused for a moment, remembering his meeting with Hallorin. He still wasn't sure exactly what had happened, or what Hallorin had hoped to accomplish.

Beamon more or less agreed with the man's politics, as much as he could agree with anyone's, and Hallorin had been reasonably pleasant in their meeting, but there was something else there; something at the edge of his perception. Maybe it was the fearful reaction of Hallorin's employees whenever Hallorin came within ten feet of them. More likely, though, it was just Beamon's all-encompassing distaste for anyone in Hallorin's line of work.

"Okay, Larry. You win," Hallorin said through the television's speakers "Two minutes of complete, concise, honesty. That's all you can ask of a politician." King took the challenge and said, simply, "Abortion."

Beamon laid the remote down next to him and watched Hallorin feign surprise at the directness of the question.

"Starting with the tough stuff. Okay. I'm pro-choice. It's an intangible moral argument that's impossible to win by either side. In that kind of situation, a free country has to leave the decision to the individual."

He looked into the camera.

"Based on what we've seen lately, America's government officials can't keep their own houses in order. Do you want these men and women making choices for you about your family and health?"

"Prayer in school," King said, keeping him to his promise to be concise "Irrelevant!"

Beamon frowned deeply. That indignant utterance was becoming the catch phrase of Hallorin's campaign. It was showing up on bumper stickers with nearly the frequency of the "I Found It" slogan of the seventies, or the eighties' "Where's the Beef?"

Hallorin placed his large hands flat on the desk in front of him.

"Children can get up early and pray at home, they can pray at lunch, they can pray after school." He shrugged.

"If they want to, they can pray during class. The entire issue is ridiculous invented by politicians to distract Americans from the problems the government has caused and is afraid to address."

Beamon watched Hallorin's eyes flash behind his probably clear glass spectacles. His handlers had obviously been trying to soften him, but the man still had an edge when he got riled.

"Family values."

Hallorin gave a little laugh through his nose.

"I'm for them."

There was a silence too long for TV that it didn't look like Hallorin was going to fill, so King piped up.

"Would you care to expand on that, Senator?" Hallorin sighed.

"As I've said before, I like and respect Robert Taylor, and I share his sense of nostalgia ..."

Beamon went for another French fry during Hallorin's dramatic pause.

He had to grudgingly admit that he respected the fact that Hallorin simply would not go negative on the Republican candidate who was kicking his ass in the polls. In fact, he seemed to be trying to make himself out to be a fan of Taylor's, only with a different spin on the world.

"... I don't, however, share his fervor for this particular subject,"

Hallorin continued.

"It's an issue that is simply beyond the government's control. What could I possibly do to reverse the trends of the last thirty five years?

Outlaw divorce? Legislate how much time you spend with your kids? I want a return to family values as much as anyone, but there's nothing I can do to bring it about. And no one else can either."

There was a knock at Beamon's door just as Larry King brought up the subject of capital punishment. Beamon hit the mute button but didn't get up. Other than Carrie, who was clearly giving him a wide berth, hardly anyone ever knocked on his door. Besides, he just wasn't in the mood for visitors at this particular moment.

After a few seconds it came again, with the forcefulness of a person who knew someone was home and had business more important than handing out a free copy of The Watchtower.

Beamon sighed quietly as he kicked his feet off the table and walked over to the door, yanking it open in one quick motion.

"You're not here to serve me a subpoena are you?" he said to the man standing on his stoop.

"Because if you are, I'm going to shoot you."

It wasn't that he really thought a man with a manicure and a two thousand-dollar suit was working for that end of the court system, it was just that sometimes you felt like threatening somebody.

"That's not a figure of speech, I have a gun."

The man's eyes widened and he stepped back, reaching into his silky wool jacket with comic slowness.

"Are you Mark Beamon?"

Beamon didn't answer.

"I'm Christian Humbolt," he said, his hand reappearing from inside his jacket holding a business card. It identified him as a partner at Reynolds, Trent, and Layman a law firm with New York, L. A." and D. C. "I was hoping I could have a moment of your time. I have a business proposal I'd like you to consider."

Beamon didn't move out of the doorway. He looked like he was telling the truth, but then, you could never tell with lawyers. More often than not, they themselves weren't sure.

"Okay," he said finally.

"You can come in. But not for long."

It occurred to Beamon that his tiny condo looked like it had been inhabited by a family of orangutans for the last month. And to add to the air of quiet dignity, he was wearing a pair of old slacks that he'd purchased when he was fifty pounds heavier and a stained Chicago Bulls Tshirt, perfectly complemented by his five o'clock shadow.

Beamon decided that he might as well complete the near perfect illusion of a paranoid schizophrenic ex-cop.

"Have a seat. You can have the rest of that burger if you want it," he said as he continued into the kitchen.

At least he hoped it was only an illusion. He suddenly realized that he hadn't been outside since he'd returned from D. C. "Uh, thanks," Humbolt said, examining the chair across from the sofa before he committed to sitting on it.

"I just ate."

"How about a beer then?" Beamon opened the fridge and reached into the back as the immaculately groomed attorney considered the offer with a worried expression.

"Sure," he said, more to himself than to Beamon.

"Yeah. A beer would probably be okay."

"So what is it I can do for you, Mr. Humbolt?" Beamon said, handing him an open can of Miller Lite and dropping back onto the sofa.