Slowed first, and then stopped.
“Come back down!”
Joanna had been scrabbling along behind Holly, picking her way as best she could over and around the huge boulders, trying not to dislodge anything, and trying not to think about what would happen if one of those huge stones came loose and rolled back down the steeply angled incline.
They were only a third of the way up the slope now. Joanna had seen no sign of a weapon on Amy Baxter’s person, but Holly’s fear was palpable absolutely real and overwhelmingly contagious. Joanna didn’t have to see a gun to understand they were both in terrible danger, that they had to get away.
“Come on, Holly,” Joanna urged, overtaking the no-longer-moving woman. “Don’t stop now.” But Holly was already making the first hesitant motions toward retracing her steps.
“Don’t you want to see what’s up here?” Joanna taunted, trying her best to counter the almost magnetic effect Amy Baxter’s voice seemed to have on Holly Patterson.
“She already kept you from doing this once,” Joanna continued. “You’re not going to let her take it away from you again, are you? Not when you’re this close.”
Holly looked at Joanna, as though trying to make sense of what she was saying, but now she stopped and didn’t move in either direction. Joanna dared to look back down, wondering why Amy’s shouting had suddenly stopped. On the far side of the fence, Amy Baxter and Rex Rogers seemed to be standing and arguing.
“Come on, Holly,” Joanna urged again, knowing the respite wouldn’t last long. “Why won’t she let you climb up here? What’s Amy Baxter afraid of?”
And then, miraculously, Holly was moving in the right direction again, climbing slowly uphill with Joanna scrambling along at her side. Off in the distance, she could hear the sound of a wailing siren, of some siren, but Joanna didn’t know the sounds well enough to differentiate between one emergency vehicle and another. She couldn’t tell whether what was coming was a police car of some kind or one of Bisbee’s fire trucks.
And even if it was a police vehicle, Joanna thought despairingly, it wouldn’t be coming for her. How could it? She had told Kristin where she was going, but she hadn’t expected this kind of difficulty.
“Holly!” Amy was shouting again. “Are you listening to me?”
Joanna looked down. Rex Rogers was no longer visible, but Amy was. She had crawled through the fence and even now was at the base of the dump and starting to climb.
“Holly,” she ordered. “I told you to stop! Come back! I want to talk to you.”
Holly slowed once more. “Don’t listen to her,” Joanna urged. “Shut her out! Sing something.”
Already, Holly’s eyes were starting to glaze over. The pull of Amy Baxter’s voice was so strong as to be almost irresistible. In desperation, Joanna Brady began to sing the only song she could remember at a moment’s notice. A hiking song, from her days in the Girl Scouts. She sang it at the top of her panting, air-starved lungs.
“Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, Ninety-nine bottles of beer. You take one down and pass it around, Ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall.”
And to her amazement, Holly Patterson miraculously began to climb once more.
By then Joanna was slightly in the lead, and by then the top of the dump was only a few feet away. Joanna was first over the top, pulling herself up over a steep lip and then falling down the far side into what was evidently a rough roadway.
On the other side of the road was a raised ridge, a bern, that formed an inner boundary along the entire length of road as far as the eye could see.
Staying low and slipping her automatic out of the shoulder holster, Joanna belly-crawled back to the edge and looked down. Holly had stopped again, cowering in an eroded dip behind a precariously perched boulder only inches from the top.
Below them Amy Baxter was climbing steadily.
“Come on down, Holly,” Amy was grunting between breaths. “I won’t hurt you.”
“She’s lying,” Joanna yelled. “Don’t listen to her. Come on! Up here!”
But once more Holly seemed frozen, unable to move.
“Give me your hand!” Joanna ordered. “Now!”
When Holly failed to budge, Joanna reached down and grasped Holly’s wrist. With a surge of strength Joanna had no idea she possessed, she hauled Holly up and over the edge. She tumbled down the lip and landed with a breathless thump.
Joanna tumbled after her and lifted the fallen woman to her feet.
“Go,” Joanna urged, pointing toward the ridge and drawing the Colt. She wasn’t sure whether or not Amy was armed but if there was a possibility weapons would be involved, Joanna wanted Holly behind her, out of the line of fire. The ridge on the other side of the road seemed to offer the only possible cover. But Holly seemed incapable of in dependent action. She stared at Joanna uncomprehendingly and didn’t move.
“Come on, then,” Joanna said, grabbing Holly’s hand again and dragging her forward. As they started up and over the side of the bern, there was a clatter of dislodged rock from the side of the dump. At that critical instant, Joanna glanced back over her shoulder.
Rather than being just a bern, the ridge was actually the outside of a retaining wall for one of the series of rectangular copper leaching ponds that covered most of the surface of the dump. On the outside, the retaining wall was simply a rocky ridge, but the inside was covered with a slick layer of slimy, greaselike silt.
In desperation to reach safety and to protect the seemingly helpless woman who was now in her charge, Joanna had been moving as fast as possible. Now, as they topped the bern, there was nothing at all to break their forward momentum.
