Scattered Graves

He pushed her again and pulled her back. This time Diane dropped to her knees.

‘‘Better watch out,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s a long, long way down.’’ He laughed.

‘‘Please stop this. Please, you’re scaring me,’’ she said.

Diane had seen a possible weapon on the ground, and now it was under her hand while she was on her knees begging for her life. A hard piece of quartzite. Jagged edges. He pulled her to her feet.

‘‘Please, please, please,’’ he mocked her. ‘‘Come on, beg me, you damn bitch. I want to hear you beg some more.’’

Diane struck his gun hand as hard as she could with the jagged rock. She struck and struck again and slashed in quick succession—three times before the gun slipped out of his hand, bounced off his foot, and dis appeared over the edge and into the gorge.

Chapter 5

The gun was gone, but Harve Delamore still held her arm tight in his grip. He was stunned and in pain, and he was furious. Diane was quick. Before he could hit her with his free hand, she slammed the rock down on the wrist of the hand that held her arm. He yelled and let go of her, but pushed her backward in anger. She had expected that, though; she fell to her knees immediately to keep herself upright as she slid over the edge of the cliff.

She dropped in a free fall through the air, preparing herself for what she knew was below. Eight feet or more down the side of the cliff, she landed solidly on a sloped ledge where the rock protruded from the sheer face of the cliff. The momentum caused by Harve’s push sent her scrambling to find purchase. She shifted her weight forward and fell to her hands, not hard, but enough to let her grab the rock and stop her descent as she slid toward the edge.

‘‘I guess you’re in trouble now, bitch. That’ll teach you to mess with me,’’ Harve yelled down at her. ‘‘What’s going to happen to you now, huh? There’s nobody gonna come to your rescue.’’

Diane ignored him. She pulled herself back on the ledge and took the time to scuff the soles of her shoes on the rock to dislodge any detritus and loose pebbles that had accumulated from her trek through the woods. Thank God she didn’t have on heels or leather-bottom shoes. She rubbed her hands on the surface of the rock and then on her clothes, trying to remove the sweat. More episodes like this and she would need to start carrying a chalk bag in her pocket, she thought wryly. She took off her jacket to give herself more range of motion. It dropped into the ravine.

She started climbing down, looking first for places to plant both feet before she moved. She’d climbed this very spot many times before. She knew where the footholds and handholds were, and that helped her to go more quickly.

But Mike told them never to get cocky with rock. ‘‘It can change from weathering, microschisms. You still have to test your holds. Don’t expect them to be stable because they were the last time you climbed.’’

She wasn’t being cocky with the rock, but it was critical that she hurry. Delamore would do something. She found her footing and descended inch by inch as fast as her level of confidence let her. Rock climbing was slow work—at least for her—and she could hurry only so much. Her first goal was to get space between the top of the cliff and herself in case Harve decided to climb down after her. But surely he won’t, she thought. With her luck, though, he would probably turn out to be a closet climber.

‘‘Where do you think you’re going?’’ yelled Harve. The slope of the rock changed at the bottom of the ledge. She braced her feet against the rock face, lo cated her handholds, and gently swung down under the ledge, catching the vertical surface with the balls of her feet, bracing herself, then moving each hand. Rock climbing has a rhythm to it. To Diane it was not so different from music. Each change in slope of rock, each fissure, horn, corner, handhold, foothold, and overhang had its own cycle of movement. A twist in the hips could make the difference in a successful grip. When all the pieces were taken together, it was almost a dance.

‘‘Hey, you talk to me, you damn bitch. Where do you think you’re going?’’ he yelled again. He sounded genuinely puzzled, as if she had taken flight or some thing equally unexpected and impossible. ‘‘You come back here,’’ he demanded.

Yeah, right, thought Diane.

She rarely climbed solo, certainly not on a rock face this high. It was dangerous without the safety of rope. Diane was good with rope. She liked it; she knew how to manipulate it, tie it. Rope was good. Hanging with her bare hands on the side of a cliff, she wasn’t so sure about. But she had judged Harve Delamore to be more dangerous than the rocks. She kept the level of the risk from her thoughts, reminding herself that she had climbed this face many times—albeit on rope—and she had never fallen. She was lucky he’d dragged her to this section of the gorge. There were other places on the cliff face that she could not climb.

Diane continued inching her way down, always being careful. You feel the full weight of the laws of physics on the side of a rock face. Concepts like grav ity and equal and opposite reaction suddenly become very real.

A rock the size of a melon bounced off the slope beside her. Harve was throwing boulders at her. Well, shit. She glanced up. She could see him grinning even from a distance.

She climbed to her rock would give her a harder climb, but she rock. Another one the size of her head bounced near her, breaking on impact. At least he wasn’t a good shot. Diane braced her feet and found her handholds. She slowly moved to a safer place as the rocks rained around her from above. He was throwing anything he could find, as if he suddenly did believe there was a possibility she might get away from him.

Diane found a place under a ledge where she could stop and rest. She heard him yelling but couldn’t un derstand what he was saying, though she did hear the word bitch a couple of times. She looked for footholds. They were harder to find in this route, and her shoes weren’t the best for climbing, but they did hold trac right, where the slope of the measure of shelter. It was a couldn’t survive a hit from a tion better than she had expected. Her muscles felt good at the moment—the stretching and exertion al ways felt good. She’d been afraid Harve had sprained her arm, jerking her around the way he had, but other than being sore, it seemed fine. This would work after all. She started moving again, putting one hand in a crack and another on a protrusion of rock. She pushed on the rock with one foot, finding a toehold with the other.

As she moved along, she began hearing scraping sounds overhead. What now? she thought. She turned her head and looked up, but her view was obstructed by an overhang. She stopped and listened. He was climbing down. The crazy bastard was climbing down the rocks.

She started descending again. After several feet, Harve came into sight. He was making his way down a large crevice between the ledge she had climbed down from and the adjacent rock. It looked to the untrained eye like an easier route, but it was decep tive. It was difficult to prevent your feet from becom ing wedged in the crevice.

‘‘Are you nuts?’’ Diane yelled at him. ‘‘You can’t climb down here.’’

‘‘Scared, little girl?’’ he shouted.

‘‘You should be scared. You’re not a rock climber,’’ she yelled back.