Chapter 14 #2
I fought him, panicked, as he pulled me toward the edge. “No, no, no, James, I swear! I’ll just run off into the forest. I won’t make a sound! I’ll hide somewhere. No one will ever see me or hear me, I swear to God!”
“They’ll probably have thermal imaging. They’ll find you, Sandee.”
I saw, with a flash of raw panic, that he’d knotted the end of the rope into a big loop. A noose. He was going to hang me, right off that tree, off the edge of the cliff.
I fought him harder, with a burst of frantic strength—
“Goddammit, Sandee, would you stop wiggling?” he muttered, and suddenly, he jumped—with me still clamped in his arms. Oh fuck…
We were airborne for an instant, and I saw my life in a brilliant flash. Then Jed’s feet hit a ledge on the side of the cliff, breaking our fall with a bone-rattling thud.
I hung there in his grasp, utterly confused.
The rope was looped around his huge, powerful hand.
His feet touched the ledge he’d hit, but my legs weren’t long enough to reach it.
I just dangled over the void below me, feet flailing over forty feet of nothing.
Empty space filled with swirling snowflakes. Rocks and trees, far below.
My heart thudded so hard, I could hardly breathe. My vision dimmed….
“…dee? Sandee! Hey. Babe. Talk to me. You can’t faint.” Jed’s voice was commanding. “Don’t you dare freak out on me. I need you to be tough.”
Tough. I could do tough. I blinked until I could focus. Still dangling like a spider on a thread. But alive. “What the fuck are we doing here, James?” I gasped out.
He looked relieved that I could talk in complete sentences. “Keeping you alive.”
Huh. That was heartening. Contradictory, but heartening. “Um. Okay. How?”
“Look to your left, about knee level,” he said. “You see that foothold there?”
I looked, searching for anything that could even remotely be categorized as a “foothold.” I tapped at tiny snow-frosted notch with my toe. “You mean, this?”
“Yes, excellent. Put your toe on that,” Jed encouraged. “Then reach up over my head and grab the rope. I’ll push you until your weight is on it. Go on. I’ve got you.”
He did have me. In every way that mattered. He was the difference between life and a long, horrible fall to my death. His grip was warm and reassuring. I tried not to look down at the snow-dusted treetops, swaying in the wind, far below.
It took all my nerve to release my death grip on Jed with one hand to grab the rope above his head. I felt his hand under my ass, hoisting me…and suddenly, I was draped across the slightly slanted, jagged slope of the cliff.
“It’s easier from here,” he said. “Look to your left. See the other two footholds, leading over to that space between that outcropping? Two steps, and you’re there.”
I made the steps, my legs wobbling. Jed followed along, one big warm hand still gripping me. “You see that big loop of tree root, sticking out?” he asked. “Grab it.”
“Don’t know if it’ll hold me,” I said, through chattering teeth.
“It will. It held me. Go on.”
“You’ve been down here before?”
“Just grab it, Sandee!”
I did as I was told, and grabbed the exposed loop of root. It felt solid.
“Now look up,” Jed said. “See that little overhang? It’s a tiny cave. Climb up under the overhang. That’s your spot. Where you’re going to wait this out.”
I moved my hands and legs where he told me to put them, and in a couple of minutes, he had me huddled in a shallow cave, one not deep enough to give real shelter.
“I won’t be able to get back up on my own,” I told him, teeth clacking.
“You can go up on the other side,” he said. “There’s a clear path to climb, right up over the cliff. That way’s much easier than the way we came down. You don’t even need a rope.”
“Then why didn’t we use that way down? Dude, that took years off my life!”
He grinned. “I wanted to leave virgin snow,” he said.
“No tracks to lead them to you. They won’t find you, even with thermal imaging.
Just wait them out, no matter what happens to me.
” He slid the backpack off his shoulder and set it on my lap.
“There’s a thermal blanket in there. Hot tea in the thermos.
It should stay hot all day. Take these.” He shoved a plastic bag into my pocket.
“Butter shortbreads, some trail mix. If I don’t call for you, just wait for them to get bored and leave before you come out of there. Understand? Promise me you’ll do that.”
“But…but what about you?” I whispered.
“I’ll be fine.” He pulled out a small pistol, a Walther PPK, and held it out to me. “Take this. Last resort.”
I recoiled. “Oh, no, no, no. You keep it.”
“I have other ones. Protect yourself, Sandee. You’re worth it. Be careful.”
I took the gun. “Okay,” I whispered. “Thanks.”
Jed hesitated, still clinging to the opening of the hiding place. It was too small for him to fit inside with me.
Suddenly, he leaned over, cupped my head…and kissed me. The kiss was long, hot, intense. And incredibly sweet. No one had ever kissed me like that before.
When he shifted away, my eyes swam with tears.
“Damn, Sandee,” he said roughly. “You are something else, you know that?”
“You’re quite the humdinger yourself, buddy,” I told him, sniffling.
He lunged for the rope, and twisted around to look at me again. “Don’t die,” he said. It was not a plea, or a request. It was a flat command.
“I won’t,” I told him.
He launched himself out across the cliff, and started to climb. On impulse, I leaned out. “James!” I called softly.
He turned. “Yeah?”
“Fuck them up,” I told him.
His teeth flashed. “That’s the plan,” he said.
With incredible swift grace, he scaled the cliff, and then he was gone.
The guy was giving me whiplash. I had thought he was going to murder me. But instead, he took precious time he could not afford from his defense to set me up in a hiding place. With cookies and tea and a fucking blankie. Literally.
Not quite what one would expect of a sociopath bent on destruction.