The Mountains Bow Down (16 page)

My legs felt like stone. I watched Claire's neon-yellow sweatshirt moving away, down the path where they'd all come from, like some tropical parrot blown off course into an evergreen forest. “Nadine!” she called out. “Raleigh's here. Come see for yourself.”

Jack stood at my side, watching her go. “Did she do what I think she did?”

I couldn't breathe.

“Are you okay?”

The trees blurred. Forest and faces and nausea swept over me.

“Webb—” Jack turned. “He's running again!”

My feet refused to move. I watched Jack race down the trail and thought,
She told her. She told her I'm an FBI agent
.

“Look, I don't know what's going on,” the guide said. “I need some questions answered.”

I kicked through the ferns, running around the crowd now moving back to the wildlife center. When I came out of the forest, I heard something like a hawk's screech. One of the leashed eagles beat its brown wings frantically. The guide struggled to calm the bird, its chain clanking against the metal wrist cuff.

Jack was tailing Webb as the director ran toward the lynx cage. A large muscular guide stood with yet another tour group, but Webb barged right in, turning to point at Jack in pursuit. Then Webb took off again.

“Hey!” the guide yelled.

When Jack raced by, the guide grabbed him. Jack threw him off and the guide threw himself like a linebacker, taking Jack to the ground. Webb stood behind the cage, watching the men wrestling on the ground, and it gave me just enough time to gain on him. By the time he saw me, the gap was closing.

Switching directions, he circled behind the lynx cage.

Jack and the guide were still tussling, neither one giving in, and I walked around the side of the lynx cage. Webb's black Nike shoes were visible, standing behind the cage.

You are going down, creep
.

At first, I thought the sound was the cat. Or a wounded bird. But it was the cage. Tilting forward, I heard screws and nails ripping from the wooden timber. The frightened cat leaped inside, releasing a bloodcurdling howl as the cage plunged to the rocky ground.

The crowd was screaming. Birds screeched. Jack and the guide lay still, staring at the cage where the cat continued its agonized yowls. When I looked for Webb, he was running for the tram's wheelhouse. The silver cables glinted against the blue sky and the red car waited, its door open.

Only more disturbing: At the turnstile that led to the tram, a woman wearing pink tennis shoes pushed frantically against the metal bar blocking her path. Her black curls shook in the sunlight.

My mother.

I ran. But my feet seemed weighed down. And the harder I ran, the slower it felt. I saw my mother hand the clerk her ticket. Webb was right behind her, bouncing on his toes, and when she passed through the turnstile, he threw his ticket at the girl and banged though the gate. He leaped into the red car ahead of her.

She moved like someone afraid, like someone who feels the earth shaking under her feet.

I panted to the turnstile.

“Ticket?” the girl said.

Webb watched from the open door, his clever eyes calculating. But my mother kept her face to the window, looking out at the empty sky and distant mountains. My heart beat so fast it hurt. I stepped forward, pushing on the turnstile.

The girl said, “I need to see your ticket.”

“That man.” I pointed at Webb. “You need to hold him.”

“Do you have a ticket or not?” she demanded.

“You don't understand—”

“No,
you
don't understand. I need proof you paid to come up here. Otherwise you're not getting in there. This isn't some free ride.”

The door slid shut. Above the car, the giant iron wheel shifted. The car lurched forward on the steel cable. My mother's head was shaking, she was talking to herself, staring out the window as the shell cracked.

And I watched the tram swing off the platform and fall into thin air.

Chapter Twelve

R
unning down the forest trail, I pulled out my cell phone and hit redial. The spruce trees bled into green waterfalls on either side, and when Geert answered, I didn't give him the chance to say even hello.

“I need your security team right away. Martin Webb took off.”

“What does this mean, took off?”

My feet ached, sharp rocks jamming into the soles of my shoes. “I can explain later. Right now I need your help.”

“You made problems,” he said.

“Webb demolished one of the cages up at the wildlife center, then ran.” I heard muttering, but no rebuttals. “Get your men to hold Webb at the bottom of the tram. We're coming down the trail now.”

Deciding his silence was some Netherlandish version of agreement, I closed the phone and extended my stride. My mind flipped through the images. My mother's face. Webb's smirk. The door closing.

And Claire's words.

Jack thundered down the trail behind me.

“Call the Dutchman back, ask his men to help your mom get back to the ship.”

I couldn't answer, because I didn't
have
an answer. If Claire told her I was an FBI agent, the sudden appearance of Geert and his Ninjas wasn't going to soothe her paranoid mind. As I sped through the switchbacks, my heart ached for my dad. He would know what to do; he could bring her back. “Everything depends on how we love her, Raleigh,” he once told me. “Everything.”

“Forget Webb,” Jack called out. “I'll take care of him. Tell that crazy Dutchman to help your mom.”

But she would see them as people coming to take her away. Lock her up. Her greatest fear, my dad said, sitting me down one day. I was in the seventh grade. One day I came home from school and strange words were on our bathroom mirrors. Written in soap, the desperate pleas scared me.
Someone is killing me
. And
Tell them to stop
. But the worst was the word on my mirror.
Help
. “Your mother hears voices,” he told me. “Not all the time. But when she was a girl, your grandmother put her in an asylum.” Which explained why we never went to see her.

“Raleigh—” Jack persisted.

I shook my head and we dropped down another switchback. I could hear my own breath, on the edge of crying, and when the trail ended, I peeled out of the forest and ran downhill past the small cottages overlooking the water. I glanced at my watch, sprinting down South Franklin. Nineteen minutes had gone by since we left the summit, no way could we beat the tram.

“The Dutchman,” Jack said, pointing.

Geert's bald pate gleamed outside the tram station. I searched the faces for my mother but didn't see her.

“You find Webb?” Jack asked Geert.

Geert nodded his head toward the station. “He is hiding in there. But he won't get past. My men are waiting.”

“He can take the tram back up,” Jack said.

“Neen.” Geert calmly twirled the white handlebar. “He can't get the ticket.”

“You're sure?”

“When we say no ticket, it is no ticket. These people want our passengers to come here.” He turned to me. “The wildlife people are looking for you. They are not happy.”

“I didn't touch the cage,” I insisted. But Jack pulled me aside. I kept searching the faces, the crowd streaming around us with excited chatter.

“Go find her.”

“Jack, I can't leave—”

“You can. If Claire just let the cat out of the bag, it's dangerous. Am I right?”

I nodded.

“Go on.”

“Thank you.”

“You're welcome. Now give me your gun.”

“Excuse me?”

“You can't get it on board. The Dutchman's here with his men. And what if your mom's at the gangway?”

I turned my back to the crowd, opened the fanny pack, and waited for Jack to lift his shirt. His stomach was a tan six-pack, and he shoved the flat barrel into the waistband of his pants.

“Now run,” he said.

I stood outside our cabin door, panting. My fingers shook as I slid the keycard into the electronic slot. Holding the brass handle, I closed my eyes and whispered the world's briefest prayer.

Please
.

The room was full of smoke. Clouds billowing toward the open door. I rushed inside, waving my arms and gasping. But suddenly I tasted chlorine on my lips and felt my fingertips, warm and damp. Mist. Water vapor. Not smoke.

I waved my arms again, clearing the air, and saw her small dark figure. She stood with her back to the window, the blinds pulled tight against the sun, though the light refused to obey and leaked into the room. I moved closer. She was wearing her bathrobe, clutching the collar closed at her throat.

“Mom?”

I was close enough now to see her jasper eyes quivering, the green and brown colors kicking up the sands of suspicion.

“Somebody drilled holes in the beaks,” she said. “The wings were broken. Twisted.”

“It's a rehabilitation center.” I spoke calmly. But it wasn't real. I knew where this was headed.
Oh, God
. I knew. “They're not experimenting on those animals. Nobody tortured them.” I couldn't bring myself to say what she was thinking.
It's not some asylum
.

Her mouth was almost white. And hardened into a line of distrust.

“Did you see how many animals were missing eyes?”

“It's a rehabilitation center,” I repeated, already tired of saying the words. Yet unable to stop. I could feel something hovering on the edge of this moment, a gate that swung back and forth, its path leading to a dark country where facts could fluctuate wildly. As I stared into her distressed eyes, my lungs seemed to tighten, struggling for air.

“Those people are helping the animals get well.”

She didn't reply and I walked to the bathroom, turning off the shower. My skin was lacquered with condensation. I pulled a towel off the rack and buried my face in it, murmuring another prayer. Longer than
please
. But even more desperate.

She seemed fixed in place, like a boxed doll. I forced my smile.

“Did you know that steam from the shower can trigger the sprinkler system?” I pointed to the metal cones protruding from the ceiling. “We need to keep the bathroom door closed when we shower.”

“I was cleaning the air.”

I smiled harder.

“There's evil in the air and that's what made that woman hang herself.”

“Pardon?”

She tightened her grip on the robe's collar, shivering. “We're too close to the North Pole, Claire says. Even the rocks are changing.”

“Stay away from her. Don't listen to her. She's . . .” I was going to use the word
crazy
.

“Claire's been very nice, Raleigh. I was afraid to go in the helicopter with Aunt Charlotte and the rest of them, and she offered to stay with me.”

“This is the same person you didn't like when we lived with Aunt Charlotte. Remember? You thought she was dangerous. And you were right. She's dangerous.”

“She told me you work for the FBI.”

“See what I mean?” I laughed and felt something unctuous slither down my spine, settling in my soul. “Claire probably meant my friend Jack.”

“The glacier man?”

“Right.
He
works for the FBI.”

God, please. Forgive me
.

“Does DeMott know about him?”

I drew a deep breath, tasting the still-damp air. “I was just going to call DeMott. Would you like to say hello?”

“Somebody else is going to die. Claire told me.”

“She's got it all wrong.” My heart thumped. “Somebody
died
. It's over. Now we're fine.”

“I was looking at those birds and a voice said somebody wanted to hurt me.”

I once had a dream, years ago, but it was still vivid in my mind. In the dream, I was my mother and every time the phone rang, or there was a knock on the door, a sudden spike of fear would paralyze me. I knew people were out to hurt me, kill me, and in every word spoken, I heard veiled threats. Paranoia wasn't just suspicion; it was self-convinced knowledge, the knowing that can't be swayed. And when I woke up from that dream, clammy with sweat, I'd never felt so afraid, or so tired. Now, looking at her grayish skin, I realized how selfish I'd been. I wanted to get away, to take a vacation. But for her, this trip was a steady stream of incoming threats, a strain that accumulated more of itself daily.

“You must be so tired,” I said, feeling the weight of what I'd done.

She looked at her bed. Our steward had pulled the covers to hotel-perfection, the pillows fluffed. When I pulled back the downfilled duvet, she hesitated.

“It's safe,” I said.

Still wearing her robe, she climbed into bed. Around the edge of the curtains, sunlight pressed forward like some irrepressible secret begging to be told. I sat on the bed, taking her hand. Her fingers felt chilled, and I spoke to her as if she was a fevered child who insisted monsters lived under the bed waiting to grab her ankles.