schnapps.
Des felt a clutch in her chest. It was pure, animal anguish. She very nearly went over herself. Because she did not want to live. But she held back, standing there frozen, unable to believe, to think, to breathe. Until at last she drew in her breath in big ragged gulps and called his name out into the black void below her. “MITCH!!” she cried in helpless desperation. “MITCH!!”
“D-Des…”
She barely heard it over the roar of the falls. It was the weakest of gasps.
“D-Des…”
From below her. It came from right below her.
She inched her way over to the very edge and shined her light straight downward-directly into the two poached eggs that were Mitch Berger ’s terrified eyes. The man was swinging there in midair ten feet below her, clinging by his white-knuckled hands to a spindly little cedar that grew out of a crevice between the rocks. It was the very same tree that Tito had snapped when he fell.
“You came!” he groaned. “I-I knew you would…”
“I knew that you knew,” she called down to him, trying to keep her voice calm. “Where’s Will?”
“Dead!”
“That’s not going to happen to you, baby. I won’t let it, hear me? Just hold on. I got you. Just hold on…”
She had no rope. And no time to run back to her car for one. He’d be dead in a matter of seconds. Swiftly, she whipped off her black leather garrison belt, jettisoned her holstered SIG-Sauer and cell phone, and knotted the tongue around her wrist, yanking it tight. She propped the flashlight up against a stone, pointing downward, and edged her way as far down the sheer granite face as she could without losing solid hold.
Bracing herself, Des dangled the belt buckle out to him. “Reach for it!”
He tried, waving an arm in feverish desperation at the belt buckle as it wavered there in the air above him.
But it was no use-the other end of the belt was still a good two feet shy of him. If only she had a fifty-inch waist. But she didn’t. That left her with one last option. It wasn’t a good one, but it was the only one she had.
She had to surrender her solid hold. Climb her way down that bare, vertical granite toward him, fingers and toes searching for crevices and holds in the slick stone. “Hang on, baby!” she called to him as she edged down closer, inch by precarious inch. “I’m here!”
“Des, my arms are g-getting…”
“I am not hearing that!” She dangled the belt out to him once more. Damn, still another foot to go. And not a thing to grab on to. “You can hold on. Just one more minute. One minute. Say you’ll hang on for me. Come on, say it!”
“I’ll… I’ll hang on…”
She edged lower, clinging to the side of the cliff by her fingers, clawing at the moss with her nails as the river tore on by her, pelting her with cold spray. She could not even think about how she was going to climb back up there with him. One impossibility at a time. “Hang on, I got you,” she told him, keeping her voice steady. “You’re taking me dancing, remember? I’ve been waiting for this. Think I’m going to let you weasel out now?” Reaching her belt down to him. Damn, still six more inches. Edging lower, surrendering a halfway decent toehold for no toehold, seeing him real clearly now in the flashlight’s beam, his hair glistening from the spray, his hands trembling around the branch that was the only thing between him and death. The branch that was bending and straining against his weight. “What was the name of that place again?”
“What place?”! He was panting wildly, as if he’d been running all out for miles. It was exhaustion and it was panic.
“Where you’re taking me dancing.”
“T-Tavern… The Tavern.”
One more good foothold was all she needed. One more. She reached down with her foot, poking blindly, kicking, until finally she made contact with the base of the tree that Mitch clung to. Her shoe was right next to his hand, bracing her there. “They got them a DJ?”
“Just a jukebox… Des, I c-can’t…”
“It’s okay, we’re all good now,” she said, her voice brimming with confidence. “I’ve got you. Here we go…” Des readied herself, breathing in and out, realizing with a shocking degree of clarity that it was for this singular moment in her life that she had done all of that work. Every weight she had lifted. Every mile she had run and hiked and biked. The four years of iron-willed training at WestPoint. All of that was preparation for this moment, this mountain, right here, right now. And she would need all she could bring. Every bit of strength. Every bit of heart. It all.
Because she was about to take on two-hundred pounds of man.
With her left arm, Des dangled the belt out to him. “Grab it, Mitch.”
“I can’t! We’ll both go down!”
“No, we won’t.”
“We will!” he cried out, panting. “I’ll p-pull you right down with me. Kill us both. Just let me go…”
“I can’t let you go!” she sobbed, the tears beginning to stream down her face. She could not stop them from coming. She did not even try. “I don’t want to be alive unless you are, too. Then I will die, don’t you get it? Now give me your damned hand, you fat son of a bitch!”
He made an angry lunge for the belt and grabbed hold, the suddenness of his weight very nearly yanking her right off the mountainside. But she held on, wet fingers clinging to wet granite, fingernails breaking, her shoulder feeling as if it were about to pop out of its socket.
But she had him. Now all she had to do was tow him back up one-handed. Nothing to it. Cherry pie. Great big slab of it, a la mode.
Slowly, Des began the agonizing climb back up that sheer cliff to safety, the veins in her neck bulging as she reached up with her right arm, grabbing an uncertain fingerhold, and pulled him up along with her by her left, the muscles in her legs and lower back powering them upward, inch by precious inch. An animal groan of pain coming out of her as she willed them back up. The pain in her shoulder growing so intense that she was positive she could not hold him one second longer, that she had to let him go. Or die. She was beginning to feel light-headed now, almost delirious. The mountain was starting to waver and shift on her, like a ship at sea.
“What’s our… song?” she panted, terrified she was about to pass out.
“Our… what?”
“Got to have… song… How’s Aretha?”
“Fine… by me…” he answered, kicking wildly against the side of the cliff. Somehow, he found a toehold in a crevice, freeing some of his weight from both of their shoulders for a precious moment.
Gasping, she clung there, soaking wet, every muscle in her body quivering, knowing she had to keep moving. Forcing herself to keep moving. “Here we go, baby. One more time.” Climbing upward again. Gaining a fingerhold, losing it, slipping back down, grabbing on to the wet granite for dear life. And trying it all over again. “Your favorite Aretha…?”
“Has to be… ‘Respect.’ ”
“Me, too. Oh, God!” she groaned, as the pain in her shoulder grew even more unbearable. “Tell me about… the food.”
“Des, we can’t…”
“We can!” she screamed, inching farther upward toward the dim glow that was her flashlight’s beam. “Tell me… what we’ll eat.”
“Spinach… fettuccine.”
“Love me… I love me the pasta. Must be part Italian.”
“No, can’t be. You’re already… part Jewish. Bella said so.”
One inch, then another. Until at last he could finally swing a leg up over that branch he’d been hanging from. He straddled it, his chest heaving.
She clung there, her face hugging the cold granite as if it were a goose-down pillow. Her shoulder felt dead now. She felt dead- ready to surrender to the black void below. She had nothing left. Not one bit of energy. She couldn’t make it. They couldn’t make it.
Mitch worked his foot up under himself, bracing it against the base of the little tree. Then he knotted the belt
