Anna Pigeon - Blind Descent Part 22

She waited for the noises that would set her again to running till she was gunned down, could no longer lift one foot after another, or a better idea came to her. Reprising Brent's act with the stone was her first choice, but every rock in her cubbyhole was firmly attached.

The evil Tinkerbell light never came back. Laymon's scritching and sc.r.a.ping grew fainter. Anna took her hands from her mouth and breathed cautiously. Her legs were cramping, her feet beginning to tingle, but she was afraid to move. Playing possum wasn't exactly an innovative tactic. If she could think of it, so could he. He might be waiting not twenty feet away, light out, breath hushed, invisible.

Paralyzed by the idea, she stayed where she was. Utter darkness and exhaustion conspired against her. Morpheus wanted her. Minutes crept by, and she became less able to tell the difference between unconsciousness and sensory deprivation. Bodily aches and pains were apparently shared by both the waking and the sleeping states. She could not afford to fall asleep. The mental picture of waking alone padlocked in Lechuguilla spurred her to movement.

Switching on her light she waited a moment to see if it brought any response. It didn't. Two choices: go up, attempt to retrace Brent's trail, and emerge high on the wall above Tinker's h.e.l.l, or go back and take the more familiar trail Frieda had blazed. The first carried the risk of becoming lost, the second of stumbling into an ambush.

Anna opted for ambush. If one had to go down, it was cleaner to go down fighting than whimpering in the dark.

No Laymon.

No tape.

Anna blessed her paranoia. She'd not only left line but, in honor of Sondra and Hansel and Gretel, she'd continued to shove an inconspicuous sc.r.a.p of flagging into a crack at each junction. Expecting every moment to have a rock crash on her or a hand shoot from a crevice to clutch at ankle or throat, she climbed, crawled, and wriggled through.

Sticking her head up into Tinker's required courage. Feeling slightly foolish, she reverted to the old cowboy trick of a hat on a stick. Lechuguilla having nothing in the way of vegetation, her arm took the place of the stick. She pushed her hard hat, lamp on, above floor level and rotated it as one would turn one's head. No shots were fired or stones thrown. She repeated the exercise with her head in the helmet. Near as the brownish orb could tell her, Laymon did not lie in wait, at least not in the immediate vicinity.

Several yards away, over more or less flat terrain, was a big friendly rock. Anna switched off her lamp, levered her body out of the hole, and crawled across the floor. Three yards-less than twice the length of her body-was an eternity. Mere seconds pa.s.sed before disorientation set in. She banged body parts with painful results. Light on, she was a sitting duck. Light off, she was as good as dead. Her vision of night, of darkness, was shaped by a world aboveground. There, even indoors, there was light. It had occurred to her to sneak through Tinker's in darkness, the way she might slip through a midnight field or an unlit gymnasium. That was not a viable option. No light. None. No faint outlines. No lighter places. No rational angles and planes to follow. No architects or interior decorators to second guess. You traveled with your own light source, or you died.

She could wait Laymon out. If the falling pebble had tipped him off to the fact she was behind him, and he'd stopped short of the far wall, he could no more negotiate the remaining distance without giving himself away than she could. But if he'd made the exit, and, though Anna couldn't be sure, she guessed enough time had elapsed that it was possible, he could turn his back on Tinker's and walk away undetected, leaving her to wait till h.e.l.l froze over. Anywhere along the way, at his leisure, he could stop again, rest, eat, drink some water, and wait. Anna would never know where until his bullet dropped her.

Already she was missing her pack. Thirst was nagging. Each time she moved, the lacerations on her feet made themselves felt. Suffocating darkness seeped into the crevices in her brain. If this was a waiting game, Laymon won; Anna had to go on.

The hat trick was the only one left in her depleted bag. She put it to use one more time. Having unbuckled her helmet, she turned on the lamp and held it away from her. Aimed at the light, Laymon's first shot should go wide. On some level she craved gunfire. It would let her know she wasn't alone.

The shot didn't come. She crossed Tinker's, drawing on reserves of strength she didn't know she had, climbing over an endless parade of table-sized boulders. Sweat no longer poured from her. Thirst was constant, and she chose not to think about it. From the way her feet hurt, she suspected she left b.l.o.o.d.y footprints. She didn't dwell too long on that either.

Reaching the far side, she rested, her lamp extinguished. There was no sound other than that of the life coursing through her body. Twice she turned on the lamp and waved her hard hat, fis.h.i.+ng for Laymon. Nothing. Once she hollered his name but got only echoes in reply.

The conviction grew that he had heard the pebble, had known she was behind him; that he never intended to waste time lying in wait. He didn't need to. He only needed to leave her behind. The cave would do the rest. Numbing fear washed over her. She forced herself up on trembling legs. Caution was gone. Pus.h.i.+ng as hard as her worn muscles would allow, she entered the twisting nest of pa.s.sages that led from Tinker's to the relatively simple and open s.p.a.ces beyond.

Her guess had been right. Laymon had already pa.s.sed this way. The surveyor's tape she'd laid to mark the route was taken up. Not so the paranoid flags hidden at the junctions. As batteries dimmed and eyes fogged with weariness the flags became harder to find, but knowing they existed kept her from giving up. The last of these sc.r.a.ps was laid at the entrance to the area where she and Curt had stopped to seek the source of the crying.

Laymon couldn't have known it, but this was the one room in Lechuguilla with which Anna was intimate. On her first try she located the shadow-camouflaged exit. From there on, the route was less confusing. Within ten minutes she heard the unbelievably beautiful sound of human voices. Curt and Sondra were still alive. George and his two incognizant captives were waiting to descend into the spiky gullet of the c.o.c.ktail Lounge. Without gear, Anna doubted she could make a descent of nearly a hundred feet. She knew for a fact she could not free-climb ninety feet up the far side. Along with bullets, burial, and bruised feet, that bit of information had been relegated to the dump reserved for things she wasn't thinking about.

Shrouding herself again in perfect darkness, she took off her hard hat and carefully set it down. Nothing else was left that might clank or jingle. A spill of light from ahead indicated direction. On hands and knees, she followed. The pa.s.sage opened sufficiently that she could have walked on her hind legs, bent over simian-fas.h.i.+on. Afraid an overused body would fail her and she'd stumble, she settled for the less evolved form of locomotion.

Above the Lounge was a recess where ancient waters pooled, releasing acids that ate away rock till the water could trickle down to form the pit. This subterranean aerie was oval, perhaps seven feet high and twenty across at the widest point. Pillars of limestone divided the room. On Anna's right a deep trough had been carved, a natural drainage. A low, ridged formation spiked by embryonic stalagmites separated it from the main body of the room.

Curt, Sondra, and George Laymon sat in the chamber's center, where flat s.p.a.ce afforded them a modic.u.m of comfort. Curt's lamp was off, Sondra's gleaming. The woman would probably sleep with a night-light for the rest of her natural life. Laymon's lamp had been extinguished, and Anna saw him only when Sondra turned in his direction. Packs were off: Laymon's close by his side, Curt's near Sondra. Hers was back ten or fifteen feet as if she'd shed it precipitately on entering the rest stop. George and Curt were arguing. The heat of the words but not their meaning reached Anna.

Surrept.i.tiously, she slunk into the trough. A painful inching process that seemed to wear on for hours and produce racket equivalent to that of gravel trucks speeding over railroad trestles brought her midway into the room. Raising herself up on her elbows, she hazarded a peek over the serrated bulwark of stone. Directly in front of her, less than ten feet away, was Laymon's broad back. Curt sat cross-legged to his left, his face visible in profile. Sondra was masked by her own light, merely a beacon teetering on a vaguely human form.

Laymon was talking, low, logical, intense. It was by Curt that the heat had been generated.

"She broke it all right, and maybe her collarbone as well. I left her with plenty of water and batteries. Anna will be better served by a quick rescue than by you getting yourself hurt and adding to the rescue effort."

George Laymon was one h.e.l.l of an actor. Many people the Screen Actor's Guild would never hear of were brilliant pract.i.tioners of the art. Without lights and cameras, it was called lying. Laymon's lie was superb. He captured all the elements: drama, pathos, credibility, and tied it up neatly with an appeal to the listeners' better selves.

Anna had pushed on alone. An irresponsible act. Anna had injured herself and so, by her stupidity, would prove costly and dangerous to those who must bail her out.

Somebody to blame. Most people love to believe the worst of others. The rest worry, deep down, that it might be true.

Laymon had found her, made her comfortable, traveled out at a grueling pace to procure her safety. A hero. But only enough heroics to enhance credibility: he'd not added any spectacular flourishes to spark jealousy in other men or distrust in women.

And the final implication that whosoever disagreed with him was no better than, and would suffer the same fate as, the foolish and willful Anna.

"I don't like the idea of leaving her," Curt said. Anna was touched by his obstinacy. Given a performance the caliber of Laymon's, she'd have been the first in the audience on her feet yelling "Bravo!"

"I don't like it much either," Laymon said with just the right touch of sadness. "But it won't be for long. Oscar and the others went on down the North Rift in case that was the direction you two had taken. We're meeting this side of Glacier Bay in a couple of hours. We'll get Mrs. McCarty out of here. Oscar can go out with her and set the carry-out team in motion. You and I will come back to where Anna's resting. She shouldn't be alone for more than five hours. Six at the outside. She's prepared for it. I told her to meditate on her sins. This whole escapade is out of line. If I have any say about it, she will be billed for her rescue. The taxpayer shouldn't have to carry the burden for criminal negligence."

That last bit, reluctant sympathy tinged with righteous indignation, was stellar. Anna wondered if he intended to use his ill-gotten gains to finance a career in state politics. New Mexico wouldn't have a chance. In other circ.u.mstances, she would have voted for him herself and bragged to her friends of having met him once.

"Who all is with Oscar?" Curt asked. A barely discernible insecurity tinged the words. Anna heard it and had no doubt that Laymon did. It was the first step in capitulation. Anna was relieved. A falling-out now would end with two bullets and two more dead bodies. Without any warning, Curt's musculature and youthful reflexes would not save him.

"A can of worms," Laymon said regretfully. The big head nodded in a halo of light. "Anna told me her suspicions regarding Oscar. Frankly, I'm not sold. But we'll look into Oscar's activities. Send a team into Tinker's to find this mysterious secret. That's all I can do. And that's for later. Right now we need to concentrate on getting Mrs. McCarty home safe and getting a crew in to bring Anna out. G.o.d, what a day. I hope I don't have another like it anytime real soon."

Throughout this performance Sondra was unresponsive. Occasionally her light moved from face to face as the players entered the game, but always a beat or two late. Over the years Anna had been exposed to a number of mental aberrations fomented by stress and exposure. Burial alive was beyond her experience. Sondra's body was tight, muscles squeezing on bone, yet her movements were languid, as if she were in viscous liquid. She spoke now, and her voice projected the same lackl.u.s.ter r.e.t.a.r.dation. It took Anna a second to realize what was missing: vibrato. Her voice was absolutely flat, like that of the most skilled medieval chanters. "I have to go to the bathroom." The words were as dead as a computer-generated warning. She looked only at Curt. For her, Laymon hardly existed, a mere ripple on the surface of her consciousness.

"You can go," Curt said. "It's all right." Patience blotted out the confusion he must have been feeling, and Anna was proud. He was what her mother would have called a natural husbandman. He took care of things: cars, cats, people, and did it in such a way it went unnoticed and unsung.

Sondra stared through him, a pained expression lending a spark of animation to her dirty face. All of them were so streaked with mud they resembled commandos in a B movie. Half a minute ticked by. By the spill of light from the lamp, Anna studied Laymon. The audience otherwise occupied, he'd dropped out of character. Behind eyes dark with shadow, she could sense an exceedingly busy mind. Curt and Sondra had to be disposed of.

His hand stole toward his pack. Anna pulled her feet under her to spring. Walled in stone, the only exit a one-hundred-foot drop, people would die regardless of the action taken. Shouting would only precipitate a ma.s.sacre. Crouched on legs weak with fatigue, she hoped she had one good pounce left.

Curt broke the silence. "Do you want me to go with you?" he asked Sondra.

"I'm embarra.s.sed." Same lifeless tone. Considering the content of the words, it was chilling. An emotional declaration made without emotion.

"Tell you what," Curt said. "I'll go with you. Then you go behind a rock or whatever, and I'll hold on to one end of Anna's hanky, and you hold the other, I'll be there but I won't be there, if you see what I mean."

Sondra thought it over, then nodded.

"Bottle or bag?" Curt asked in the offhand manner of a kindergarten teacher asking, "Number one or number two?"

"Bag," Sondra mumbled.

Good. They'd be a while. It would give Anna a few precious moments to figure out what in the h.e.l.l she was going to do.

Murmuring ba.n.a.l encouragements, Curt followed Sondra, stoop-walking out the pa.s.sage Anna'd crawled in. When they'd gone, their words an indistinguishable mutter, Laymon turned on his lamp and pulled his pack between his knees. As he reached in, Anna decided not to leap. Whether the decision was sp.a.w.ned by cowardice or good judgment, she would never know. She knew only that her little weight and exhausted efforts against his considerable bulk would end badly. Before she had time to consider whether the sacrifice could have saved Curt, Laymon drew his hand from the pack. He held not the antic.i.p.ated handgun but a long, narrow package wrapped in brown waxy paper, and a coil of coa.r.s.e gray wire.

Dynamite.

Anna found herself remembering the pistol with something akin to affection.

23.

Meticulously, Laymon checked the sticks of explosives and the fuse wire, stowed them back in the pack, and began removing climbing gear. There was no need to shoot anyone. Laymon was the de facto head of the group. Curt and Sondra would do as they were told. Curt, Anna guessed, was not entirely comfortable with the way things were shaping up. Discomfort and suspicions would not be enough to start a mutiny. Not where there was a crazy woman to be looked after.

Laymon would descend first, then the weak link, Sondra, then Curt, taking up the guard position. They would cross the Lounge. Laymon would climb the ninety feet to the narrow aperture that led to Razor Blade Run and on to Lake Rapunzel. In less time than it would take to tell it, he could cut the line, leaving Curt and Sondra marooned in a pit deeper and darker than Edgar Allan Poe ever imagined.

Safe from pursuit and unseemly interference, Laymon would continue on to Katie's Pigtail. In the slide area he would lay the dynamite and a good, long fuse. He'd be well clear when it closed off this wing of Lechuguilla permanently. Evidence and witnesses buried. The rockfall written off to natural causes. Laymon hailed as an insightful manager for closing an unstable part of the cavern before anyone else got hurt.

Sondra McCarty? She'd disappeared some time ago, something to do with a bad marriage. Anna and Curt? Laymon wouldn't need to explain. What had they to do with him? Given sufficient warning, the Blacktail would close up shop before Holden had a chance to investigate. Holden would tell of their entering Lechuguilla and why. A dig through the slide in the Pigtail would be considered, then rejected as too dangerous and costly. If anybody had to take a fall, Oscar Iverson would be chosen. Laymon, with Anna's invaluable a.s.sistance, had set him up.

As if he felt the menace behind him, Laymon stood suddenly and crossed to the far side of the room. Anna watched as he put the pack with the gun between his feet and sat on a ledge. The time for pouncing had been frittered away in indecision. Anna had deliberated too long. A minute ticked by to the unsuspecting murmur of Curt's voice down the pa.s.sageway. Muttering harmless nothings to a.s.sure Sondra he was still there.

The mother of invention brought an idea. Though it promised little in the way of success, Anna embraced the opportunity to take action. Laymon guarded his pack with care. Curt's was closer but, gone missing, would cause alarm. Anna was counting on the fact that distraught women are never believed, even by the most well-meaning men. Unless they'd seen Sondra drop it themselves, they would a.s.sume she'd left her pack behind, lost it in one of the hiding places Lechuguilla offered in such abundance. Squelching a desire to rush, Anna weaseled quietly back the way she had come. Sondra's pack lay out in the room, only partially s.h.i.+elded from view by a formation. Laymon had his light on, but unless he trained it in that direction, she could maneuver the pack into her trough unnoticed.

As she dragged it, the pack made a faint grinding sound. Light streaked toward the back of the room. A s.n.a.t.c.h, and the pack was clutched under Anna's chest. The light poked, preyed, faltered, then returned to Laymon's feet.

Scuttling backward with her prize, like an alligator with a Pekinese, Anna vanished into the trough. The water, she drank. The webbed belt, she wriggled into, graceless as a supine woman donning a wet girdle. Safety and rack were tethered to the webbed climbing belt. She was sliding the pack over her shoulder when she heard Curt and Sondra coming back from the ladies' room. Burrito bundle in hand, Sondra emerged first. Trusting the noise of their return to mask that of her crawl, Anna moved through the trough on elbows and knees. The pilfered water sloshed in her stomach, then was manifested as salt sweat in her eyes.

"Time to move out, kiddos," Laymon said. "The sooner we get to Glacier Bay, the sooner we can get back to your Miss Anna."

Belly flat against the rock, Miss Anna dropped onto an eighteen inch ledge used as a jumping-off point for the descent. Two yards ahead she could see the rope, red and inviting, where it crossed the step and vanished into the pit.

"Suit up," Laymon said jovially. To others it might have seemed he strove to maintain morale. To Anna's ear the good cheer was that of a man who very soon would have the solution to all of his problems.

Gear grated, nylon rustled, carabiners clinked; then came a thin wail. "I can't find my stuff!" Sondra'd discovered the theft.

"Oh for Chrissake," Anna heard Laymon groan just above her. He rose to his feet and stalked back into the chamber. Anna dared one quick peek. He'd taken his pack with him.

Blessing the timely diversion, she scrabbled along the step and grabbed the rope. Ignoring her safety, she laced the rope through the rack. No mean feat without light.

"You two keep looking," Laymon said. He was returning to his former position. "I'll head down. If you don't come up with it, I'll send my gear back up and we'll sort of piggy-back from here on."

Anna's rigging was probably imperfect, possibly deadly, but it would have to do. With an unvoiced prayer to an unknown G.o.d that looked remarkably like her older sister, she swung over the edge. The rope was snug through the rack. Nothing snapped loose or flew open. Almost falling for the first few seconds, she descended rapidly. Without light she had no way of knowing where the bottom was.

When she found it, she wished she'd had the good sense to go more slowly. Her tailbone smacked into rock, sending a paralyzing jolt up her spine and down both legs. What a bad joke, to be lying crippled when Laymon dropped on her. Luck held. Everything worked. It hurt, but it worked. Daring one flick of her lamp, she sighted the ascension rope on the far side of the pit. Between the looming crusted tables, a red snakey tongue licked dead-white stone.

Hidden by darkness, she crawled in the direction she'd aimed herself. The crack of her helmet against the wall let her know she'd arrived.

"Did you hear something?" Curt, sounding hollow as he looked down into the dry well that was the c.o.c.ktail Lounge. Lamps appeared, weak and watery searchlights, scouring the pit. Anna lined herself up behind one of the flat-topped formations that gave the place its name. If they saw her the game was up. Shooting fish in a barrel.

Every cloud, and all that: Anna found a silver lining. In the light from the search and under cover of sound from conversation, she opened Sondra's pack and fished out her ascenders. Ascenders were complicated, made to go over boots, not rubber socks. Until they were properly attached to the rope, the angular devices of metal dragged on the ground, clattering at every step. Gloves in her teeth, Anna worked so fast her fingers fumbled one into the other, but she was rigged by the time she heard Laymon say, "Must've been Hodags," and the lights were s.n.a.t.c.hed back from the deep.

Holding an ascender in each hand to m.u.f.fle their noise, she knee-walked awkwardly along the wall till the elbow she skinned over the stone brushed against the rope. Working by feel, she wrestled the metal chest harness over her head and cinched it tight above her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The fit wasn't bad. For so tall a woman, Sondra was small-boned. Taking the pin from the ascender on her right foot, she threaded rope through it, replaced the pin, and tugged on it to a.s.sure herself it was rigged solidly. The left foot went into a stirrup, the ascender at the knee. Anna threaded it, then double-looped the stirrup around her foot so it would stay in place without the rigidity of a boot for support.

Ready as she would ever be, she stretched the elastic line from her shoulder into the hook on the ascender and pulled herself upright on the rope.

The ascender wouldn't catch. Rope flailed impotently between her legs. Panic stopped her breath, and she heard the freight-train roar of blood behind her eardrums.

Easy does it. One step at a time. Walk before you run. Her mind chanted aphorisms to keep her body in touch with her brain. An ascender grabbed. She rope-walked up twelve inches. The other caught, the left, and the noose she'd tied around her foot tightened over the fine bones. Pain was bad; damage could be considerable. There was no time to rethink the plan.

Another few inches gained. By taking as much weight as she could with her arms, she eased the coils around her instep. Ten more inches. Maybe eight.

Step and step and do not scream. Behind her, scarcely ten yards across and thirty up, she could hear the others as clearly as over a good AT&T connection. Any minute, surely, one of them would turn their light on her and the shooting would begin.

A step, a lift, a grinding of bones. A step and another. With every lift of her feet, rope dragged across her ankles. Where once there had been leather there was only thin cotton. Her trousers were no match for the heft of rope and body. Skin was abraded away one thin slice at a time. Twenty-seven steps. Seventy-three left to go. Would seventy three layers of flesh take the rope down to bone? Anna pondered that conundrum for eight more pulls in hopes the grisly picture would serve to block out the cutting.

Ascenders were designed to allow climbers to use thighs and b.u.t.ts rather than relying on the weaker muscles of the upper body. Trying to bull her way up with her biceps to keep the weight off her strangled foot, Anna burned out arms and shoulders. Each pull became feebler. Aching was replaced by sharp stabs of pain.

Fifty steps. Maybe. Anna lost count. Tears streamed down her face. She would have been tempted to stop had hanging not been nearly as painful as climbing, and the thought of Laymon winning more painful than both.

"On-rope." Laymon. Whirring followed as he dropped easily into the pit.

Eyes squeezed against salt sting, teeth clamped, Anna stepped and stepped again. Rock grated over her knuckles. She jammed her feet into the rope noose and shoved.

"Off-rope." Laymon was down and free of the line. Had she been able to hear over the pounding of her heart, she knew there'd be the crunch of boots as he crossed the Lounge.

A reprieve was granted. "Rack and seat sling on-line. Pull it up." Laymon was carrying through the charade. Curt and Sondra were to be allowed to descend. It made sense. Had Laymon gone on, Curt would have known something was wrong. He could descend in a fraction of the time it would take Laymon to climb the other side. With an angry man messing with one's rope, a climb would be seriously compromised. Younger and stronger, Curt might even be able to catch him before he reached the top.

Dimly, Anna was aware of Sondra descending, of talk back and forth. These things meant little to her. She'd entered her own world of hard pain and harder work. Her life was fighting this rope, easing the breaking hold on her foot, accepting the searing across her ankles. Other lives, other people, diminished to a memory, a dream of another life.

"On-rope." Curt Schatz. His voice penetrated Anna's red fog. He was close, over her shoulder, on the opposite side of the Lounge. She must be nearly to the top. With a last burst of strength she pushed herself up. The line curved. Air was mashed from her lungs. Her belly sc.r.a.ped over the lip. Locked at the knees, her legs poked over the pit. Gear tied her belly-down on the ledge near the anchor. Pulling gloves off, she jerked the quick-release pin from her chest wheel and felt some give. The buckle beneath her arm was yanked open. The metal-and-web harness let go, freeing her upper body. Crumpled facedown on the ground, she welcomed the cooling water on her face. A drip puddle edged the drop, and she had crawled into it. So drenched was she in sweat she could not feel wetness, only coolness.

The need to lie still, to lick her wounds, was as powerful as a drug. Bankrupt of fuel, her body was shutting down. Forcing herself to a sitting position, she pulled the pin from the ascender on her knee and shook the rope out.

"On-rope." Laymon.

The rope jerked, dragging Anna toward the edge of the cliff. Water, so recently her friend, reduced friction, and she slid easily over the slick rock.

"What's the problem?" Curt's voice floated up.

"The rope is snagged on something," Laymon said.

"Let me give you a hand."

Anna lurched for her right foot where the rope held it out over the pit. Grasping the ascender's release, she yanked, desperate as a man pulling the pin of a hand grenade.

"Now."

Her leg yanked painfully down. Throwing herself back from the edge, she clung to the anchor. Another jerk and the rope tore free of her foot. She reeled the leg in. Systems weren't working, limbs rebelled. She'd gotten ahead of Laymon, between him and the flawed exit from Katie's Pigtail, but she was spent. In a wrestling match with a b.u.t.terfly, she would have come out the loser.

The rope twitched: Laymon climbed. s.h.i.+elding her light lest she lose the one playable card she held-surprise-Anna searched for a weapon. In a wonderland of rock there wasn't a stone to throw. Nothing bigger than a marble. His moment of greatest vulnerability would be when he floundered over the lip. She could kick him. Feet were bare and broken. Laymon's cranium was protected by a hard hat, his body secured to the rock face with rope and carabiner. All he'd have to do was catch hold of some part of her. A little leverage and she'd go over the edge like laundry down a chute.

Cupping her headlamp between her hands, she crawled away from the cliff. Tucked around a curtain of flowstone, behind the formation used as an anchor, she hid. Light off, she couldn't even tell if her eyes were tracking. She must catch her breath. Then she must think. The last of Sondra's water was sucked down, making her feel more alive. That was not necessarily a good thing.

Grating. Grunts. Laymon was up. Time had come to do something. Unable to think what, Anna stayed in her hole.

Metallic sounds followed. Laymon taking himself off-rope. He wouldn't bother to derig for the short journey through Razor Blade Run. The ascenders would be needed again to climb out of Lake Rapunzel. It no longer mattered that they could destroy a few million-year-old crystal formations in the Run. No one would ever know.