the sound of him gaining on her: heavy foot falls, limbs breaking, grunts and curses. She pushed her self to the limit.
He was close behind her. His breathing was heavy. He was getting out of breath. Good. She tried a sharp turn to throw him off balance, slow him down. It didn’t work. He knocked her to the ground, then pulled her up by her arm, breathing hard. He had his gun in his hand. He laid the barrel against her temple.
‘‘I’ve got you now, bitch, and there’s no help. This is a dead end for you.’’
Diane kicked and hit at him as he dragged her through the woods. He turned abruptly and hit the side of her head with the barrel of his gun. Diane literally saw stars. Disoriented, she felt herself dragged deeper into the woods, away from the highway. She tried to keep her bearings. She heard rock crunching under foot and felt her pants snagging. She tried to right herself, but he jerked on her arm and she fell again. He was enjoying dragging her over the rough terrain.
She tried to calm her fear, clear her head, think of a plan. She didn’t fight. If he knocked her out, she was done for. If he jerked her arm out of the socket, she was done for. She thought she knew where she was, and that could be either good or bad. Harve came to an abrupt stop. Chances were, he knew where he was too, and apparently he thought it was good for his purposes.
They were at Chulagee Gorge. It was a gouged-out drop of more than five hundred feet formed by a river that had dried up eons ago. Mike, Diane’s geology curator and caving partner, used the cliff face to teach rock climbing to members of the caving club. He said that a half billion years ago, the quartzite rock here was a sandy beach on the coast of Laurentia in the Iapetus Ocean, which sounded to Diane like a place of fantasy or science fiction. She’d liked it.
Mike insisted that if you climb a rock face or ex plore a cave you should know what it’s made of and where it came from. Sometimes the caving club mem bers’ eyes glazed over as they listened to the petrogen esis of the rocks they were waiting to climb. But one thing Diane remembered from his lectures was that quartzite is very hard.
She had climbed parts of the cliff face many times— but always with safety ropes because of the great height. It wasn’t a particularly difficult climb. There were plenty of handholds and footholds in the quartzite and schist formations. But it was nearly impossible if you had never climbed before.
Harve Delamore didn’t strike Diane as a rock climber. Rock climbing, like caving and scuba diving, is a way of life. You have to do it a lot if you do it at all. It’s dangerous to let yourself get out of shape or out of practice. Diane was also betting that, like many bullies, Harve was a coward. She was betting her life on it.
There was the gun to contend with. He had been holding it in his free hand while he dragged her. She watched for an opportunity and tried to think of a way to take it. Getting in a wrestling match with him for it was a last recourse, but it might come to that. She would lose most likely, but with no other options, she would still try if it came to that.
Her arm and shoulder ached from being gripped and dragged, and her head hurt. She pushed the pain to the back of her mind. She’d had a lot of practice doing that—pushing pain back until it was just an an noyance. Not even to mention the times she had been beat up, stabbed, and shot, she’d done some difficult caves and wrenched her muscles more than once. But you have to keep going. You can’t stop.
Diane had practice putting fear in the back of her mind too. Every caver has moments of panic while caught in too tight a squeeze, or becoming lost— discovering new passages, they call it—or trapped on unstable ground. You learned to control the panic, make the surge of adrenaline work for you.
But the fear a maniac generates in you is something different. Diane found humans far more terrifying than anything nature had in store. It was a struggle to keep the dread in this moment from overwhelming her.
Delamore pulled her to the very edge of the preci pice. Her fear redoubled as she realized his intent. He was going to throw her into the gorge—perhaps after beating her or shooting her, or God knew what he had in mind.
She struggled. He slapped her across the cheek. She stood with her back to the drop-off, her heels at the edge. She could hear the wind whistling up from the depths below. This wasn’t the plan she had in mind.
With a devilishly evil look in his eyes, he gave her a sudden push backward. She was off balance; she couldn’t stop herself. She was going to fall. This was it.
He grabbed her wrist and pulled her back to him. It was so quick, it made her reel. She grabbed at him with both hands. He laughed.
‘‘Oops, almost fell. Be careful,’’ he said. His voice dripped with mock concern.
He pushed again. And again pulled her back.
‘‘Uh-oh, you’re going to fall.’’
Again his shove pitched Diane out over the chasm with only her feet on the edge and his hand around her wrist, her other hand grabbing on to his arm. He pulled her back.
‘‘It’s a long drop down. Sure you’re up to it?’’ He laughed.
It was clear he intended to torture her with fear. But one of these times he was going to let go or mis calculate, and she would be gone.
Diane had an idea, but she had to put it in motion before he tired of his game. If he pushed hard enough and she couldn’t grab on to him or on to something, she would die. No chance of catching hold of some thing on the way down. What would make him con tinue the game?
Ross Kingsley, her FBI profiler friend, said positive reinforcement—a reward—will continue a behavior. But the catch is, what does the perp consider positive reinforcement? She knew immediately what Delamore wanted, and she loathed the thought of giving it to him. Harve Delamore wanted to hear fear, to hear her begging. That would be his reinforcer.
‘‘Look, please stop this,’’ she said. ‘‘Please.’’
It rather shocked Diane that she was having a hard time pleading, even for her life. What on earth did that say about her priorities? She inched to her left and pleaded again.
‘‘Not such a big deal now, are you?’’ he said.
