The wind was really picking up, and the sheet-metal fence, though firmly planted, was rattling so loudly it was hard to talk over it. Michael had to shout at Tina and Betty just to get them to move to the right or the left, into the light or out of a shadow, and he quickly sensed he was making them uncomfortable. The ice queens weren't the kind of people, he suspected, who relished publicity or having their pictures taken. “Just one more,” he said to Betty, “with the hand drill about six inches higher.” It was obscuring the face of Sleeping Beauty.
Betty obliged, holding the drill in place while Michael hastily adjusted a light that the wind had blown out of position. The full illumination was falling on the ice, and he moved closer to pick up as much detail in the shot as possible. Whether it was from the extra wattage, or the work that Betty had been doing all morning, the face of the woman came into fuller view than ever before. Michael could see the auburn hair caught beneath the rusted chain, the glimmer of a white pin, and the emerald gleam in her eyes. Her expression was the one he remembered from the second time he'd found her underwater, and he marveled that he could have thought it had changed. Funny, what tricks the memory could play on you. He ran off a couple of shots, but his own shadow was falling into the frame, and he had to lower his shoulder and move a few inches to one side. He focused another shot, and even as he did so, he could swear that something had changed again. He had a great eye for detail-his photography teachers had always remarked on it, and so did his editors-and he knew that something in the image was different. Something tiny, something ephemeral. But as he shifted position again, he saw it happen-he saw the pupils of her eyes contract.
He lowered the camera, then looked at the digital images he had just recorded. Back and forth, from one to the other. And though the change was infinitesimal, he could still swear it was there.
“Found you!” he heard Darryl call out, over the windy rattling of the metal fence. “You've got a call on the SAT phone-someone named Karen! They're holding it for you.” Darryl took in the work that Betty and Tina had done on the ice block. “Wow! You've made a lot of progress.”
Michael nodded, and said, “Leave everything just the way it is. I'm coming back.”
“I don't think you should leave the lights on,” Betty said.
She was right. Michael tucked his camera back inside his anorak, then, before heading for the administration module, flicked them off. The block of ice instantly went from a shimmering pillar to a somber monolith.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
December 11, 3 p.m.
“I'm sorry,” Karen was saying, “did I take you away from something important?”
“No, no, I always want to hear from you. You know that.” But his heart was in his mouth every time that they did talk on the SAT phone. It was very unlikely she was bringing him good news. “What's up?”
With his foot, he pushed the door to the communications room closed, and hunkered forward on the armless computer chair.
“I just thought I'd let you know that Krissy's leaving the hospital, so you don't need to try calling there anymore.”
For a second, his spirits lifted-Kristin was going home? — but there was nothing jubilant in Karen's tone, so he asked, “Where is she going?”
“Home.”
Now he was puzzled again. That was a good sign, wasn't it? “The doctors think she's improved enough to go home?”
“No, not really, but my dad does.”
That sounded about right. Mr. Nelson was not one to let professionals get in the way.
“He thinks they're not doing enough for her-enough physical therapy enough cognitive stuff-and he's decided to hire all his own people and just have them come to the house, where he can monitor them.”
“Who's going to run the car dealerships?”
“Don't ask me. This is his big idea, and we're all just along for the ride.”
That, too, sounded like the family dynamic; Kristin had been the only one who ever actively refused to go along. And though Michael did not doubt for one minute Mr. Nelson's love for his daughter, he also saw this as a way-a final, irrefutable way-for him to gain control over her again, entirely.
“When is this happening?”
“Tomorrow. But they've been making the arrangements-for hospital beds, ventilators, round-the-clock nurses-for the past week.”
“So,” Michael said, absentmindedly rubbing his left shoulder, “she's going to be back in her old room. That might be good for her.”
“Actually, her old room is upstairs-I don't need to tell you that,” she said, with a wry laugh, “and it's too hard to get everything up there. So we're converting the family room instead.”
“Oh, right. That makes sense,” he said, a burst of static suddenly interfering with the connection. He was trying to sort through it all-was this a good idea, or just a desperate one? Even with nurses coming and going at all hours, how could her parents and her sister really oversee her recovery?
A recovery that Michael had understood, from the doctors, to be impossible.
Lord knows he had tried to believe in it. For the whole of that long, cold night in the Cascades, and for much of the next day, he had forced himself to think only optimistically; he had willed himself to believe that she would wake up and come around again, just as soon as he got her back down the mountain. At daybreak, he'd crawled out of the sleeping bag he'd shared with her all night and rubbed as much feeling back into his own limbs as he could. He had a big purple bruise on his thigh, where he'd been lying on a carabiner, and his left shoulder still ached. He unwrapped another PowerBar and wolfed it down. As he looked up at the dawn sky, he could see a private plane buzzing by overhead. For the hell of it, he waved his arms, shouted, and even blew his whistle, but the plane didn't bank its wings to signal that they'd seen him, much less return for another look. It disappeared to the west, and the only sounds remaining were the cries of birds and the rustling of the wind.
Kristin had not reacted in any way to the whistle or the shouts. He bent low over her, felt for her pulse and checked her breathing. It was low, but steady. He had two alternatives-he could wait where he was and hope that some other climbers would come by- or he could try to move her down the mountain on his own. He glanced again at the horizon. There were clouds coming in, and if they brought rain or fog, then nobody else would be climbing that day. No, he would just have to do it himself, with an elaborate system of ropes and jerry-rigged pulleys. He could lower Kristin maybe ten or fifteen yards at a time, then climb down, redo all the ropes, and try it again. If he could just make it down far enough, he might bump into some casual hikers, or even get close enough to Big Lake that the sounds of his emergency whistle would carry to some boater-provided, of course, that the wind was right.
He gathered up all the gear that hadn't fallen off the cliff, or spilled out of the backpack, and started making his plan. There was another ledge, no bigger than an ironing board, about twenty-five or thirty feet below, and he thought he could maneuver Kristin down onto it. He knew he had to be careful with her head and neck, but for the life of him he couldn't figure out a way to stabilize them; he had nothing firm to use. He would have to take his chances.
It took the better part of an hour to rig up a system and tie Kristin's limp body into it-and another hour just to get the two of them down onto the ledge. By then, Michael was soaked in sweat and covered with a thousand cuts and scratches. He sat on the ledge, one hand on Kristin's leg-if only she would show some sign of consciousness, if only she could talk to him for even a few seconds-while the other held his canteen. He drained the last few drops. A few pieces of rock, disturbed by their recent descent, crumbled down onto their precarious aerie.
The dark clouds were coming closer.
He looked down, at the tops of the pine trees and the waters of Big Lake, and he knew that this system would not work. It was taking too long, and he did not dare keep her out on the mountain for another night. He decided to go for broke. Shedding every ounce of unnecessary equipment, and stripping down to his climbing shorts and T-shirt, he strapped her to his back, with her arms dangling down at her sides, her crushed yellow helmet resting on his own shoulder, and started climbing down. Either he would make it to the bottom and carry her out of the forest below, or they would die together, falling out of the sky.
