Borderline: A Novel Part 10

"Good thing we have all those chocolate-covered cherries to live on," Steve said.

"Those are mine," came predictably from the ether. Steve and Cyril joined in on the "mine" to keep Chrissie company.

For a time n.o.body said anything. Helena's breathing, soft and tiny and regular, comforted Anna in an odd way. The baby was a cradle of life and Anna had, by lucky timing and an old jackknife, been able to preserve that life. It didn't make up for the rest of the mess the world was in but she treasured it anyway.

The silence went from active and listening for dangers from above to empty as thought drained out of brains and it became clear to the Kesslers, to Lori, maybe even to the quiescent Chrissie in her private condo that their leader was dead or dying and that Anna and Paul had no miracles to produce on their behalf.

Unable to remain torpid for long, Anna was the first to rouse. "I've got to find Carmen. She may not be dead."

"Correction," Paul said. "We've got to find Carmen."

"We've got to find Carmen," Anna amended. Using the inclusive form of the verb was still new to her.

"I'm getting wet all over again," Chrissie wailed. She was a few feet closer to the river than the rest of them. Steve, closest to the exit of their miniature fortress, leaned out.

"River's at the doorstep," he said.

"We could float down feetfirst, like you showed us with Easter," Cyril said.

"Baby," Anna replied.

"Where did we leave our life jackets?" Paul asked. It was a rhetorical question. Glad to be on solid ground, they'd all doffed their vests and dumped them by the water's edge. They'd be long gone by now.

The day had worn on; the sun was no longer in the canyon. In the not too distant future it would no longer be in Texas. Darkness might protect them from the rifleman, a.s.suming he was still on the rim, but it would not protect them from the river, and climbing in the dark was not an option.

"We all go," she said. "Paul and I will go first, see if we attract any undue attention from our hateful buddy, and get as close to where we saw Carmen go down as we can. Lori, you take care of Helena for the time being." Anna did not intend to let the plumpish, distracted young woman go boulder hopping with her baby if she could help it. "The four of you come behind us as far as there's cover of some kind. Everybody got that?"

"Easter . . ." Cyril made one last try.

Anna drew her finger across her throat from ear to ear and the younger woman desisted.

Chrissie hurtled into their creva.s.se, sprawling onto her knees and nearly knocking Cyril over. "It's way wet back there," she said as she bulldozed a place for herself between the twins.

Anna suppressed the urge to deal with Chrissie the way she'd threatened to deal with the cow. "How does that sound to you, Paul?" She wasn't asking her husband to be polite. She-they-needed all the help they could get.

"We need to get the bottled water for the baby," he said. It meant a trip into the open.

"I'll do it," Steve said.

"We should wait here," Chrissie said. "Somebody will come get us. No way I'm going to climb up there and get shot to death."

"I'm afraid of heights," Lori confessed in a rush.

"I've heard drowning is one of the nicest ways to die," Steve said. "Be sure and come back from the Other Side and let me know if it's true."

For once Chrissie had nothing to say.

The faces of the college kids looked pale and drawn. The four of them were tired and scared, hungry and thirsty and in a situation they had never been trained to deal with. The twins were resilient but Lori and Chrissie had not been taught to face adversity. They were products of the Barney generation where everybody always wins, trophies are given all around regardless of which tea ss oy wm wins and playground insults are dealt with by the courts. They had been trained to pa.s.sivity and ent.i.tlement, skills that were useless in the present situation. Had they also been trained to obedience it would have helped, but in Barney's world everyone was a leader, regardless of ability.

Anna didn't have any trophies to hand out for not being drowned or shot yet, but she could offer them comfort. She hoped it would be enough to motivate them to climb.

"With luck, when we find Carmen, we'll find her sat phone," Anna said. "Then, when we get to the top, we'll just call park headquarters and they'll send a helicopter for us." Anna doubted Big Bend had a helicopter on tap to rescue people but she thought it would sound spiffier than a three-hour wait while the rangers hiked in or came on horseback. There were backcountry roads in Big Bend but Anna couldn't remember one that ran along the edge of Santa Elena.

That lightened the mood somewhat, and Anna decided to move before the mini-cheer winked out. "Paul, shall we?"

"Let's." He stood, and they chicken-walked over the knees and ankles of the four college kids to the mouth of their personal canyon. Paul was ahead of Anna and stepped out first. He stopped for a moment and she knew he was purposely trapping her in safety behind him in case there was more gunfire.

She poked him in the ribs. "Enough of that, Father Davidson," she said with a laugh.

"Can't blame a man for trying," he said. There was no gunfire, only the sound of rushing water and the deepening of the shadows as the sun traveled farther west. Staying close to the rabble of rocks, Paul walked quickly the few yards to where the ascent began. Anna looked back at the Rio Grande. It had devoured most of the land.

"Steve, Cyril, come ahead," Anna said. "You're inches from getting your b.u.t.ts wet if you stay where you are."

Steve emerged first. He didn't stop and block the way Paul had. Gender equality must have been inculcated in the womb. Cyril emerged from behind him and, as if Easter knew her savior was about to abandon her, she lowed plaintively. The water would have reached her Bermuda gra.s.s dining room, Anna guessed. Cyril's lips thinned but she said nothing and she stopped short of giving Anna a dirty look, for which Anna was grateful. Lori, with Helena in her arms, was next.

The baby was so good, Anna thought. Or so weak. Anna chose good because there was nothing she could do about the other. Chrissie was last. No surprise there. She'd be first to the dinner table, first to line up for dessert, but leave the honor to others when lining up to possibly take a bullet. Clever girl.

Seeing the way she tried to shrink into herself, to surrept.i.tiously shield herself behind the others, Anna almost felt sorry for her. Almost. It was good she'd never gone into teaching or motherhood. She most definitely had her favorites and very little compunction about showing it.

Paul had worked his way up the slide, climbing between boulders on the route Carmen had taken. It shad"jucould not be called a trail, but was doable with effort. The waters were not going to allow Anna her plan of leaving her rafting mates on the beach while she and Paul reconnoitered. The river was rising steadily and more quickly than before. Maybe it would continue this civilized inundation. Maybe it was heralding a flash flood, the buildup of too much rain in too little time at higher elevations.

They would have to go together.

"I'll take the tail," Anna called to Paul, invisible between the huge rocks. "I'll also take Helena," she said to Lori as she filed past to follow the others into the ascending maze. Lori stopped and with a sigh the size of what a three-week-old kitten might heave, she handed the bundle down to Anna.

There was a crack as if the cliff was breaking in two and Lori fell forward. Blood came out of her throat in a gush. There would be no stopping it. The soft flesh of her throat was blown away, flesh and bone and cartilage splattering the pale gold of the shale, the crumpled body nearly beheaded by the blast.

THIRTEEN.

The bullet that killed Lori smashed into the shale by Anna's shoulder and splinters of stone pierced her back. Blood blinded her, dripped down her forehead and into her eyes, ran warm and dead over the backs of her hands. Chunks of Lori's flesh adhered to Helena's makeshift swaddling cloth. Clutching the baby tight to her breast, Anna spun around the corpse and into the rock pile. This shot had come from the American side. Lori had fallen into Anna; the exit wound was in the front of the throat, not the back. Paul and the others were climbing into a death trap. She didn't shout for them to come back. In a minute more there would be no back to come to, only the river, and it seemed as vicious as the man with the gun.

Retching pulled Anna back into the moment. Chrissie, her face gray beneath her tan, eyes so wide the whites showed around the pupils, was vomiting, the bile running down her front because there was no room to bend over.

"It's okay, it's okay," Anna was saying.

"You've got blood all over you," Chrissie screamed, as if it was Anna's fault, as if she was doing it to scare and hara.s.s her. "And . . . and . . ." She puked again.

"I'll buy you a new one," Anna promised the baby as she used the brief respite to try to wipe her face clean with a corner of the down bag Helena was wrapped in.

When Lori's throat exploded out, Anna and the baby had been hosed down with the final pump of her carotid. The human body contained about six quarts of blood. It felt as if half of that had been poured over her face and hair.

Eyes cleared, Anna saw Chrissie again staring at her, trembling, her mouth starting to go soft and stupid.

"Snap out of it," Anna said. "Now. Lori is dead. If you don't get past that you're going to be dead too. You got that, Chrissie? Do I have to slap some sense into you?"

Chrissie's sense of self overcame her horror. "b.i.t.c.h," she hissed at Anna, and turned abruptly to begin the climb.

"Keep your head down," Anna called after her.

Chrissie didn't look back, just raised one hand and flipped Anna the bird.

Anna wished everyone was as easy to manipulate as Christine At.w.a.ter. Life would be a lot less pleasant but a good deal easier.

"She's not dead," she heard Chrissie saying. "She's a b.i.t.c.h."

Given the choice between the two, Anna delighted with b.i.t.c.h.

"Anna?" Paul was in front of Chrissie, too little room to get around her; he held her shoulders between his hands and looked past her. "My G.o.d," he said when he got a clear look at her face.

"None of the blood is mine or Helena's," Anna said quickly. "Lori's dead."

The twins had come back with Paul. Cyril perched like a praying mantis one boulder up from Paul, her head below the line of sight from the canyon rim. Steve stood in front of her, his hand resting on one of her sandaled feet.

"I thought he was done," Cyril said. "Why didn't he shoot at us when we were strolling along after you made me leave Easter?"

"He could have shot me when we came out of our cubby," Steve said. "Easier even when I went and retrieved the baby's water."

"Why now? Why Lori?" Cyril finished her and her brother's common thought.

"Why don't you quit yakking and do something about it?" Chrissie demanded.

"I'm sorry," Anna said. "I don't know why Lori or why now or why at all. What I do know is he's not going to kill anybody else. We know where he is and what he is capable of. Don't worry. We're going to be just fine."

"Fine," Paul echoed in his light, warm voice and he smiled his slow, safe smile. Anna knew he didn't have any better idea of what to do than she did, knew he was as aware of the gravity of their situation as she was. Still the smile and the word settled her nerves as it settled the nerves of the others.

Water coiled cold and dirty around Anna's ankles. "It's coming fast," she told Paul. "Let's see how far up the slide we can get before we've got to show ourselves. Maybe we'll find a spot high enough we can wait this out."

Paul and the Kesslers began a careful ascent up between the boulders. Chrissie didn't move. Anna didn't know if fear or spite or hatred or fatigue glued her feet to the ground. "Maybe we'll find Carmen's sat phone," Anna said. "You could call home on it."

The offer of electronics and contact with civilization did what flood and gore failed to. With a huff that sounded so much like the word harrumph Anna had seen in books over the years that she almost smiled, Chrissie began hauling herself up after the others.

Before following, Anna set Helena down on a flat ledge. The little girl opened her eyes the merest slit. "h.e.l.lo, little girl," Anna said, and believed she saw intelligence and trust in the infant's eyes. Whether or not it was true or only a trick of the light, she couldn't know. It would be a cruel twist if, after all the baby had gone through, fate chose to snuff out that wee spark.

Anna ripped her long shirttail from hem to armpits and fashioned a rude sling. Immodesty was the least of her worries at the moment and, should a flash of breast offend anyone, they would have to avert their eyes. She needed both hands free. Baby and the sc.r.a.p of down sleeping bag were stuffed into the makeshift Snugli, then Anna began the scramble up the rock face, leaving water that had risen to her knees.

Shadows had claimed the low places and the maze of rock and scree was dusky in the blue light. Good for the fishes, Anna thought. The closer they hugged the American bank and the deeper they were in shadow, the more difficult they would be to kill. No shots followed the one that killed Lori. Before, Anna had read the shooter's lack of action as his losing interest or being frightened by the carnage and running away. This time she read it as stark professionalism. The guy wasn't going to waste bullets on targets he could not hit.

Whoever it was had shot Carmen, then tried for Anna or Paul or Steve. They'd been so closely grouped there was no way to tell who the bullet was meant for. Then he'd stopped. Anna had been exposed, Cyril, too, and he'd not shot at them. Steve had been an excellent target when he made the short run to get Helena's water before they began the ascent. The rifleman had not fired. Then he'd killed Lori, the most harmless and least interesting of individuals.

It was possible the bullet that killed Lori was meant for Anna, but she'd been a far better target when she and Cyril were returning from the cow side of the beach. If the shooter had a method to his madness, Anna could not see it. She could only see the madness.

As she climbed, she wondered if Easter was drowned, if the cow was struggling to keep horns above water as the flood washed her farther downstream, if she had once again taken to a ledge and was working her way up as she had the first time she'd found herself in this predicament and future rafters would snap pictures of a Mexican cow trapped hundreds of feet above the water and marvel at how she got there. A darker thought intruded and in her mind Anna could hear future generations of river guides pointing out the slide above the rapids and recounting the awful slaughter that had taken place there for the ghoulish delight of their patrons.

It wasn't long before she caught up with Chrissie and had to slow her ascent and suffer the view of the young woman's backside. Chrissie was gasping for breath and emitting little grunts each time she had to pull herself up a step more than a foot high. Scratches marked her arms and one elbow was oozing blood where the shale had sc.r.a.ped off the skin. Anna was proud of her for keeping on. Chrissie might be a sel {migow fish little twit, but she wasn't abdicating. Once the choice between climbing or drowning had been given to her, she hadn't crumpled but instead fueled herself with anger at Anna and at the unfairness of the situation and climbed.

Abdicators became as dead weight. Like Lori. Dead weight.

Without any conscious thought on Anna's part the girl's death replayed itself in her mind, the image so real the rocky escarpment before her vanished, replaced by the gout of blood and the woman falling. Anna's foot slipped and she toppled sideways. Sudden movement and fear for Helena brought her back from that black hole where horrors lived on as real and horrific as the moment they had transpired.

"Watch it!" Chrissie snapped, Anna's thud startling her. Maybe under the surliness was a thread of concern. Maybe it was even for somebody besides herself.

"Wow," Anna said as she righted herself, one arm clamped around Helena.

"What now?" Chrissie demanded between gasps.

"Nothing," Anna said.

The baby began to whimper. The pathetic little cries made Anna feel more helpless than the raging Rio Grande and a gunman on the rim of the canyon. "It's okay," she murmured. Helena knew otherwise. Okay was milk and Mom.

The ascent was no more than that of a small building in New York, twenty or thirty flights of stairs at most, had they been able to simply go up. With the twists and turns, dead ends and stops where Paul had to boost and pull people up, the baby pa.s.sed up like a watermelon from hand to hand, Chrissie heaved up by Anna's shoulder under her b.u.t.t, and the twins, both tiring and neither with any upper-body strength in their long thin arms, drawn up like bony bits of rope, it was nearly dark by the time they neared the place fifty yards from the top where Carmen had turned and waved and died.

Paul stopped on a wide flat boulder top, adjacent to the slope where Carmen had left blood as she hit the shale. Desert evenings were long and sweet and there was enough light to see the darker smear on the light-colored rock. Cyril and Steve sat, backs to a rock, knees drawn up, taking the opportunity to rest, as Paul strong-armed Chrissie up the last climb to where they waited. Helena was pa.s.sed up and Anna followed. They tucked themselves tight to the rock with Steve and Cyril, too close in for the killer to get a bead on them.

"I think we should stop here," Paul said. "It's getting hard to see and one of us is going to break a leg if we keep going." He didn't bother to whisper. The racket they made on the climb would have kept their whereabouts broadcast to any listener.

Anna nodded. "I think so too. How much water do we have?"

Chrissie's half-liter water bottle was clothed in a lovely pink nylon carrying case with a Velcro closure for securing it to one's belt. Steve had strapped it to his when he'd retrieved it. Twice during the climb it had been pa.s.sed around and they all drank sparingly. Afte {parappr Lori was shot, there'd been no recurrence of the "It's mine" theme. On both occasions, Anna had tried to get Helena to take water but she screwed her face up and refused to do more than suck a drop or two from Anna's little finger. In the last half hour she had ceased crying and Anna missed it. Though it had stricken her to the bone, it signified the mite had strength to protest her situation. Now she lay so quiet Anna found herself resting her forefinger on the tiny wrist to see if she could feel a pulse.

Steve shook the water bottle. "Maybe a cup or so," he said. "Want to see if the baby will drink some?"

This ordinary statement was anything but ordinary. Anna was so thirsty she had to wiggle her tongue around to keep it from sticking to various places in her mouth. Steve had to be as thirsty or more. To offer the gift of water in the desert as if merely pa.s.sing the salt at the dinner table was a form of grace that Anna couldn't help but admire. She'd never wanted children but, if she could have ordered a pair like the Kessler twins to be delivered fully baked, she might have given it another thought.

"You try and see if she will drink," she said, untangling Helena from the mess of down and ripped linen that had been her home for the past few hours. "We need to find Carmen while there's still a little light."

Steve took the baby with such confidence Anna guessed there were smaller Kesslers in the world.

Anna didn't bother to get to her feet but rolled onto hands and knees and crept to the edge of their platform to peer into the darkening cracks between the boulders under the bloodstain. "Carmen!" she called.

There was no answer and she'd expected none. Fortunately, there were not many places the body could have landed. A couple of yards beneath the ledge they inhabited and beneath the stain on the shale were three enormous blocks of shale, each the size of a mobile home standing on end. They'd sheared from the cliff along fault lines, straight as a die, leaving them as square and neat as if a mason had cut them. They leaned against one another, forming V-shaped crevices twenty or thirty feet deep. Carmen could only be in one or the other of them.

Anna stretched out flat on her belly and stared into the inky bottoms of the two natural shafts. A change of what little light remained in the day made her look back. Paul was standing astraddle her, between her and where the shooter was presumed to be.

"Hey," he said when she looked at him. "This way we go together. For better or worse," he said, and smiled.

Anna had nothing to say to that and turned her eyes back to the dark below.

Carmen had dark hair and wore a dark long-sleeved shirt and black silk long johns; not a great ensemble for being discovered at the bottom of wells or rock falls. Anna crabbed across the ledge to where she could see into the second of the crevices.

"Could that be an arm?" she asked Paul. He knelt beside her. Like a lot of men, Paul was strong but not supple; he couldn't coil up and snake { uprm?around the way Anna and Cyril could.

He stared into the crack. Then he went and looked down into the crack Anna had first studied. "I think it's our best bet. Too bad we didn't save any rope. That's a ways down and those rocks don't promise anything in the way of foot- or handholds."