With a thump, Anna sat in the dirt and shrugged out of her daypack. Hands finally free, she took her water bottle from its canvas pouch on her belt and, never taking her eyes from Bethy, drained it. She had another in her pack.
Immediately a modicum of strength and sanity flowed back. In grade school she’d learned the human body was 60 percent water. Until she’d known extreme thirst she’d never really appreciated that fact.
“Can I have a drink?” Bethy begged.
“Maybe.” Anna eyed her coldly. “If you tell me what is going on with you and Regis.”
“We’re in love,” Bethy said smugly.
Very deliberately Anna rose, crossed to where Bethy’s pack lay, took out her water bottle, uncapped it and took a long swallow.
“Bitch,” Bethy cried. Anna took another.
“You were doing everything you could to make my
“Why would he tell you?” Anna asked suspiciously.
“Because I was the first uniform he saw, stupid. Visitors don’t know law enforcement from interp,” Bethy told her with scorn.
“And you told Regis.”
Bethy smiled a perceptive close-lipped smile. “That’s right, and he hated you and he went to kill you. Now can I have a drink of water?”
The smile bothered Anna, though why, of all the alarming upsetting things about the bad-seed-child in a woman’s body, one sneaky little smile should set off alarm bells, she was unsure.
“In a minute,” Anna said.
“Now!” Bethy screamed.
Anna just watched her. After a few minutes, she rose, walked to the bound woman, and poured a bottle’s cap full of water. Bethy tilted back her head and opened her mouth wide like a baby bird waiting for a bug.
“Don’t choke,” Anna said and tipped the teaspoon of water in.
“More,” Bethy demanded.
Anna ignored her. Sitting down again, sun like molten lead on her head and shoulders, earth nearly as hot beneath her, she studied Bethy. The sneaky smile was what poker players called a “tell.” Anna’d seen it before. Bethy did it before she lied.
“You didn’t tell Regis, did you?” Anna asked.
“I did, too,” Bethy insisted.
No sneaky smile.
“But not right away.”
“You won’t give me water and I’ll die.”
For a second Anna thought she was going to burst into tears of self-pity, but she didn’t. “You came to the jar first, to make sure the kid was telling the truth, didn’t you?” Anna asked.
Bethy’s eyes narrowed to reptilian slits in her heat-reddened face.
“If you tell me I’ll let you have a real drink,” Anna offered. Bethy glared at her, hatred burning in her eyes. “Why not tell me?” Anna asked conversationally. “If Regis really is coming, and really will kill me, it won’t make any difference, will it?”
Bethy tried to spit at Anna, but her mouth was too dry.
“Regis likes me,” Anna goaded. “He didn’t come to the solution hole to kill me. He came because he loves me. Regis brought me water and food. We picnicked and made love.”
The struggle in Bethy’s face was almost comical in its intensity. Muscles bunched and brow furrowed, lips twisted until it looked as if several personalities were fighting for the same body. Fascinated and repelled, Anna watched. This was something she had to tell Molly.
Careful Bethy lost to Vicious Bethy. “You did not.
The pure vitriol smacked into Anna’s mind. For a minute, she could do nothing but stare at Bethy in revulsion. In all her years watching the best in the business play every villain from Lady Macbeth to Cruella de Vil, Anna had never seen evil. She’d seen actresses playing evil, some of them brilliantly. The real thing wasn’t merely something seen; it was a tangible wave felt on exposed skin, on the retinas and the lining of the throat.
Mental illness and evil were not the same. Molly, who dealt with all manner of nutcases on a daily basis, and knew mental illnesses for the diseases they were, also believed in evil, a darkness that transcended the malfunctioning of human brain chemistry. Crazy people, Molly insisted, were only dangerous the way abused dogs and frightened horses were dangerous. In their struggle for what they perceived as necessary for survival, other people occasionally got trampled or bitten.
Evil people hunted and hurt because they hated. Truly evil people did it because it was fun.
Poison washing over her, Anna felt a need to return to the pragmatic.
“How did you find me?” she asked. In the broken pocked landscape, riddled with basins and stones, Anna, with the help of a tracker and two rangers, had had a tough time finding the jar.
“Pizza Face said he didn’t know where you were dumped. I made him take me to his guy friends and they showed me,” Bethy said with satisfaction. “They couldn’t wait for me to see. Then they stripped you naked and raped you a bunch and I did it to you with a stick.” She smacked her lips as if the vile words tasted good to her.
Though Anna was about ninety-nine percent sure those things had not been done to her, the shame she’d worked so hard to overcome returned with a vengeance. She breathed through it. When all but the stink of it was gone, she said, “They. You said ‘they.’ All three of the boys came back with you?”
“Don’t you listen? I told you Jason Pizza Face said he hadn’t been with the other guys. He was like this big innocent, you know? Just watching and stuff.”
The rope wrapped around Bethy was loosening, not because Bethy struggled but because Anna hadn’t done a good job of tying her up. Like many other things, tying a person securely was a lot harder than it looked. Before Bethy got free, Anna was going to have to act. In a minute, she promised herself, too tired and hot and freaked out to move.
“Let me get this straight,” Anna said with a sigh. “These guys kill a woman and throw the dead and the living women in a hole and they’re all Johnny-on-the-spot, gung ho to tell the ranger all about it and lead her to the scene of the crime.” Anna pushed herself to her feet, picked up her daypack, and shoved Bethy’s half-full water bottle inside. “You’re so full of shit I can’t stand to be around you. When I get back to the Rope I’ll tell Jim Levitt where you are. If I happen to remember.” Shrugging into the pack, Anna started southwest toward where the trail led down to Dangling Rope Marina. It was longer and much farther than going by way of the slot canyon and Panther, but she had had her fill of hanging by a thread from high places.
“No!” Bethy shouted, finally sounding afraid. “No. I’ll tell you stuff. Real stuff. True and everything.”
The note of genuine panic—the first honest emotion Bethy had evinced other than fury and smugness— stopped Anna. She looked back at the filthy woman, trussed up like a cannibal’s catch, her skin beginning to burn thought the dust and the sunscreen, and felt a tickling of pity. Not for Bethy. In Anna’s opinion she deserved whatever came, as long as it was unpleasant. Pity for the person she would be if she allowed Bethy to die of thirst knowing firsthand what torture it was.
“Tell you what,” Anna relented. “I’ll split the water with you. You’ll be able to wriggle out of your ropes before you die and can drink it then. It will keep you going until somebody comes to get you.” She started to fulfill the promise by retrieving her own empty water bottle so she could share what she had.
“No! No,” Bethy cried. “Don’t leave me alone.” Her eyes, beseeching, held Anna’s. No sneaky smile. She genuinely was afraid of Anna leaving.
Anna stopped what she was doing, too rattled and weary to think and move simultaneously. Her previous adventures had taught her a little something. She’d left a note telling Jenny she was going canyoneering with Bethy Candor. Of course she hadn’t said where because she hadn’t known at the time.
