Free Fall (43 page)

"He did. They almost got to it before I did."

It took a moment for that to compute.

"What did you say?"

"Yeah. I barely made the descent down this cliff in Utah. And Vili Marcek shot at me on the way back up."

"Are you telling me you have the file?" Beamon said, his mouth suddenly feeling a little dry.

"The file's here?"

She shook her head.

"It's back in the States. I didn't want it this close to me."

Beamon dropped his clubs on the grass and signaled the Thais guarding them to move further back.

"Okay, Darby," Beamon said, speaking slowly. What is in the file?

Taylor? Hallorin?"

"The presidential candidates? I don't know. I never looked at it."

"What the hell do you mean you never looked at it?" he said, suddenly aware that he was speaking too loudly. He lowered his voice.

"What do you mean you never looked at it?"

She shrugged, suddenly looking a little intimidated.

"Like you said, if I knew what was in that file, I'd never have a chance at getting my life back."

The logic was sound, but made Beamon want to pull out what was left of his hair.

"All I know," Darby continued, "is that the word "Prodigy' is written across the outside of it."

Beamon leaned forward and put his face in his hands, trying to concentrate It looked like he was right about the contents of the file.

In the time before randomly generated operational names, it was often possible to glean information from what a project was called. Prodigy.

Tracking young talents before they gained power.

"Okay, Darby," he said, voice muffled slightly by the hands still in front of his mouth.

"Where's the file now?"

She hesitated for a moment and then decided that it was too late to turn back.

"In an old forest service lookout tower about twenty miles from that house in Wyoming where you came looking for me."

"Lori Jaspers's house?" Beamon thought about that for a moment, then ran at the two surprised-looking Thai guards standing fifty yards away.

"Give me a phone!"

They looked at each other in confusion.

"A phone! A goddamn phone!" he shouted, as though speaking the words louder would help them understand. He was about to grab one of them and start going through his pockets when Darby jogged up next to him.

"Toh-rah-sahp!" she said.

"Is there something wrong, Mark?"

Beamon ignored her, snatching the cell phone produced by one of the guards.

"Lori's phone number in Wyoming what is it?"

"Mark! Is there something wrong?"

He looked directly into her worried face, not really wanting to tell her.

"Darby ... If you were them and you didn't turn up the file at your friend Sam's house, where would you go next? You're traveling on Lori's pass port."

Mark Beamon jerked awake for what must have been the tenth time and felt a fog instantly descend into his mind. He fumbled around in the dark next to him, finding the expensive transistor radio he'd purchased and clicked it off. The hiss of static that had been there when he'd first fallen asleep faded out of the earphones, replaced by the sickly hum of Darby Moore's pickup truck.

It was cold.

He wriggled toward the truck's tailgate on the foam pad beneath him and pulled the sleeping bag up around his neck. The night outside was dead black. He leaned up on one elbow and peered through the small window between the makeshift bed in the back of the pickup and the cab. All he could see was the shadow of Darby Moore's head and the dizzying swirl of snow as it rushed the windshield. He let out a breath that shimmered for a moment in the reflected light and sunk back under the sleeping bag.

Darby had slept through all but the eating and layover portions of their trip back from Thailand. A trick unique to climbers, he supposed.

When the stress was too much and there was nothing to be done, it was best to just shut down, rest, and wait for your chance.

Unfortunately, he didn't have the same ability. The wheels in his mind had spent the last twenty-four hours grinding themselves to pieces.

And what had he figured out in all that time? Not much that would be useful. Mostly dazzlingly useless conjecture.

According to NPR, David Hallorin had closed to within seven points of Taylor. A hell of an improvement, but still not exactly what anyone would call striking distance. And that had to be where Prodigy came in.

Beamon had considered the problem as carefully as his sleep-deprived brain could and concluded that there was nothing on Hallorin in the file.

When Hallorin had decided that finger-pointing would be the corner stone of his political career, his life had come under intense scrutiny by those he targeted. With any kind of skeleton in his closet, it was unlikely that his career could have survived.

And that brought Beamon around to Robert Taylor and Hallorin's classy and honorable unwillingness to go negative on the man in his campaign.

There seemed to be a three-part strategy at work: first you set yourself up as squeaky clean and can-do if somewhat self-righteous and unsympathetic. Second, you shatter the negative part of that image with an act of unparalleled bravery and compassion. Third, you get the guy beating you to drop out of the race and throw his support to you.

Hallorin had already forced enough of an illusion of grudging respect between him and Taylor to make it all palatable to the voters.

Beamon kicked the window between him and the cab and waited for Darby to look back at him. He pantomimed steering a car, but she just shook her head and turned her attention back to the snowy road. Her face was drawn and paper-white in the reflected headlight, further robbing her of the healthy glow that had been so obvious in the pictures he'd seen of her.

The interesting contradictions in her face the slightly crooked nose perched in the middle of the perfect cheekbones and mouth, the sun-enhanced crow's-feet at the edges of her clear, youthful eyes had seemed so unique and beautiful before. Now they combined to make her look a decade older than she was. As though her youth had been stolen by the recent sacrifice of her friends on the altar of David Hallorin's presidential aspirations.

He'd called Lori Jaspers' house no less than twenty times since they'd returned to the States and at least five times from Thailand. The machine had picked up each time. He'd called the local police, but even with a shameful amount of name-dropping, had been unable to get them interested enough to go out to her house. The cops seemed to think of Lori Jaspers and her friends as itinerants who for all intents and purposes existed outside their jurisdiction.

Beamon rolled over on his stomach and buried himself deeper in the thick sleeping bag, trying to let the darkness and gentle rocking of the truck lull him back to sleep. He tried to let his mind go blank to force out thoughts of Hallorin, Lori Jaspers, himself. There was no point to it now, he was caught up in the current and the best he could hope to do was keep his and Darby's heads above water.

"Wake up, Mark!" Darby said in a loud whisper.

"We're here."

The sound of the truck's back gate dropping was followed very quickly by a less than gentle gust of frozen air. Beamon opened his eyes to a dirty white sky and the cold of snowflakes dropping onto his skin, melting, and then running down his cheeks.

"Jesus," Beamon said, not moving.

"You drove straight through?"

She reached into the truck and pulled the sleeping bag off him. The air instantly penetrated the light clothes he'd traveled in. Luggage hadn't been an option.

Beamon struggled out of the truck with Darby's help, breaking through the crusty snow on the ground when he slid from the tailgate.

"Where the hell are we?"

"We're here."

When he looked up, he saw that they were parked directly in front of Lori Jaspers' barn.

"Shit!" he said under his breath, diving into the back of the truck and retrieving the .357 he'd managed to con a Nevada gun dealer into selling him. He dragged Darby behind the truck and aimed the pistol over the hood in the general direction of the buildings.

"Jesus Christ, Darby! I told you to wake me up before we got to town.

Maybe I wasn't completely clear on the concept of a stealthy approach."

She slid down the side of the truck and into the snow.

"I'm sorry I ... I thought..."

He knew exactly what she thought. She thought that her friend was in danger and that he would have been overly cautious in his approach. She was terrified that something had happened to Lori and that it would be her fault.

Beamon looked around him uselessly. The house and barn were closed up and there were no cars in sight--but that didn't prove anything. There could be fifty men in either structure and another five hundred secreted in the empty, snow-covered tundra that surrounded them.

"Well," Beamon said, standing up from behind the truck, "if there's anybody waiting for us, we might as well go meet them. At least it'll be warmer in the house."

That's what Darby had been waiting to hear. She jumped to her feet and started to run around the truck, but Beamon caught her by the back of her sweatshirt before she got out of range.

"No point in being complete idiots, though. Nice and easy."

The tension in Beamon's stomach increased to an almost unbearable point as they walked past the barn. The platoon of Navy SEALS he half-expected to come charging out of it didn't materialize, though, and so far he hadn't noticed any suspicious red dots of light on any vital parts of their bodies.

The front door of Lori Jaspers' house was locked, so Beamon struggled through a deep snowdrift next to the porch and peeked in a window.

There were no lights on inside, but he could see well enough to note that it was much neater than last time he'd been there. The mattress on the floor was made up with blankets, and the dirty dishes and climbing gear that had been so evident a week before were all gone.

"Looks like nobody's home. Like maybe they went out of town." He turned to Darby, who was looking more and more panicked. She moved through the deep snow at a seemingly impossible speed, forcing him to chase her around to the back door. When he finally arrived, she was desperately yanking on the locked doorknob.

"Looks like they tidied up and hit the road, Darby." He wrapped his arms around himself against the cold.

"Maybe they headed south?"

Darby gave the doorknob another violent tug and then kicked the door in frustration.

"Lori doesn't have a key."

"What do you mean?"

"The farmer she bought the house from lost them years ago." Darby swept her arm around at the nothingness surrounding them.

"It's not exactly a high-crime area."

"Let's see if we can change that," Beamon said, gently pushing her aside and slamming his shoulder into the door. The old wood cracked loudly and gave way on his second try. He let his .357 lead as he stepped slowly inside.

"This is all wrong," Darby said after they'd made a quick turn through the house.

"It's never been this neat in here."

Beamon made another circuit through the house, looking for any thing that might tell him its owner's whereabouts. Why would they take her?

She made sense as a hostage only if her kidnappers left some kind of calling card or had a way to communicate with Darby. Neither was the case.

Beamon rejoined Darby in the small living room where she seemed to be wandering around lost.

"Let's try the barn," he suggested.

It was similarly empty. They climbed up into the hayloft and found Darby's stash of clothes and equipment strewn out across it.

"No," Darby said in a barely audible whisper as she picked up a ski boot half buried in the hay. She stood there looking at it for a moment and then threw it powerfully against the wall.

"I killed her! I killed her too, didn't I?"

"Take it easy, Darby. We don't know what happened." He kicked around her things for a moment, finding nothing, as he knew he would.

"Help me out here, Darby. Why? Why would anyone be interested in Lori?

You said you didn't tell her anything about the file or what had happened to you." He decided not to think about the possibility that they tortured her to death trying to confirm that she didn't know any thing and then dumped the body. It was possible, but too goddamn depressing.

"I don't know." Darby dropped into the hay and buried her head in her knees.

"Why would they kill Tristan? Why kill Sam? Because we don't mean anything to them. We don't have money or power or important jobs." She looked up at him with eyes that just couldn't understand what they'd seen over the last few weeks.

"A man in Texas once stopped by a place I was camping to tell me that I was a waste of skin. That's what we are to these people. A waste of skin."