Page 9 of Disappearance at Angel's Landing
“If he escaped down Scout Lookout, why bother inspecting his gear and anchor points?” Branch picked up the pace as he hauled himself up the thin rocks layered one on top of the other. Like melted chocolate. His muscles still protested against yesterday’s ascent while Lila looked as though she could run a marathon straight up the damn mountain. In reality, there was no best way to get straight to the base of Angel’s Landing from here. They’d have to climb either way.
“A climber’s routine can tell you a lot about a person. Fitness level, climbing experience, discipline, how often they need to rest. A good majority of free climbers make national parks their Everest. They want to tick as many as possible off the list, sometimes even forgoing the legal route in order to conquer a mountain. Like Yosemite. It’s illegal to climb certain parks, in which case there might be an arrest record. We can take all that information and compare it to past permits at the other parks, too, to get an ID on our suspect.” She attacked the rise in elevation without so much as a change in her breathing, as if Mattel’s CEO was personally waiting for her at the top with a new Barbie. “I imagine Sarah Lantos’s killer didn’t bother filing for a permit to make the hike, so we’ll have to use other ways to locate a suspect. Don’t you think?”
Okay. He hadn’t thought of that, either. He’d worked a homicide as a law enforcement ranger in Grand Canyon for years before landing in Zion, but the rest frequency and climbing experiences of solo climbers were beyond his scope. “You were a climbing ranger.”
Though not here in Zion. She had to have worked for one of the other parks. Joshua Tree. Arches. Maybe Red Rock. Except then why would Risner keep her as an entry-level ranger if she had that kind of experience?
“No. Climbing for me was a form of therapy. You know, the kind of therapy that shuts off your brain because you have to focus on not dying, and you don’t have to give up your secrets to a stranger. Way better than that psychotherapy crap, in my opinion.”
“Can’t say I don’t disagree.” Despite his insistence on attending marriage counseling and family therapy in the months leading up to the end of his marriage, Branch had realized too late he and his ex-wife had passed the stage of help. There’d been nothing left to save. “What else do you use as therapy?”
What the hell did he care? It wasn’t like they were partners. They were barely more than acquaintances. Professionals. Nothing more. And yet, he’d somehow deemed it necessary to surprise her at her house in the middle of the night to inform her of her ongoing involvement in this case.
“Lots of things.” She easily kept pace ahead of him by a few feet. “Yoga, playing violin, ice-skating lessons. Oh, I ran a marathon a couple years ago, but I wouldn’t do it again.”
“And now?” Branch wanted to punch himself in the face. He’d spent the past four months keeping his distance and setting the parameters of their working relationship. But since witnessing her slip yesterday on this very trail, the harder he tried to gain back that coldness, the faster it trickled through his fingers. The need to figure out the puzzle she presented called to him on a primal level, and it seemed there was nothing he could do about it until he got his answer. That was all this was: a puzzle he wanted to solve.
They were moving into the switchbacks, making great time, but there was still a matter of four hours between their position and the end of the trail.
“Now I’m kind of lost.” Her voice had dropped, away from the pitch only canines could hear. It’d only been hours since he’d left her in that run-down house the government deemed safe, and he was already craving another glimpse of the woman Ranger Barbie tried to suffocate. “And I’m tired.”
Living two separate lives birthed an exhaustion that had the tendency to sink bone-deep and refuse to let up until enough time without pressure passed. He’d felt it while pretending his marriage still had a chance. Showing the world one person—a man happily married and in love with his wife—as reality sucked the life from him.
He wasn’t sure how long Lila had been trying to hold it together, but it’d only taken a few months before he succumbedto the crushing fatigue. Life sure as hell hadn’t asked his permission before it decided to blow up in his face, and now he was stuck.
Just like Lila.
Chapter Seven
The killer had known exactly what he was doing. He was experienced and knew his route up the side of Scout Lookout better than the rangers who practically lived in this park. The bolts he’d drilled into the cliffside for his anchors were doing a masterful job of remaining in place despite Branch’s dangling weight.
Their killer was experienced, but he would’ve been better off taking his rope with him during his escape to avoid potential DNA testing. So why hadn’t he? Had he needed a quick getaway and couldn’t afford the extra weight? Or had he left it on purpose?
Lila touched down at the base of Angel’s Landing first, her harness digging between her thighs and around her hips. Hands dusted with chalk, she brushed the excess on her uniform slacks. That was really going to piss Risner off.
Having her descend the killer’s route had been the most efficient use of their draining energy after four hours of hiking vertically. Using the killer’s anchors and carabiners, she’d secured her own rope to the cliff face as Branch lowered her at an excruciatingly slow pace as though afraid he might drop her at any moment. Which had been a possibility, but a part of her trusted him more than she trusted herself.
She couldn’t make out his features from six thousand feet below, but she could imagine him using his best grizzly bearimpression to scare people off. Unholstering the radio at her hip, she pressed the push-to-talk button with little hope her signal would escape the surrounding mountains. “Ranger Jordan to Ranger Thompson. Your turn. Over.”
Static crackled through the speaker. One second. Two. The high whistle of the wind cutting through all these surrounding peaks and valleys cut through her concentration as she stared up at his outline.
“I’m good.” A man of few words and even less humor. She couldn’t get enough.
Lila allowed herself to relive the gravel in his voice. Was that nerves? Damn, he was killing her down here. She studied him while opening the channel. “I promise not to drop you. If I wanted you dead, I would’ve used the candles I lit last night as part of a sacrificial ritual in your honor.”
“You’re not funny.” Another crackle from the radio. Or was that a crack in his voice?
Widening her legs to take more of his weight—because she was going to get him off this mountain come hell or high water—she locked the end of the rope near her dominant hip. She couldn’t stop the laugh bursting from her chest. She’d never thought there would be a day when the great Branch Thompson showed vulnerability. She was pretty sure the man did anything he could to avoid it, and he sure as hell wouldn’t want that vulnerability made public. “I’m pretty funny.”
No answer to that.
She kept her squinting gaze on him, noting the position of the sun. Shade bathed her in cooler temperatures, but time hadn’t been on their side since Sarah Lantos’s murder. “How do you plan to get down here if you don’t trust me to take your weight? Maybe you shouldn’t have eaten my Ben & Jerry’s last night.”
Okay. Now she was just poking the bear, but she couldn’t resist getting under that guarded man’s skin. Just felt right in the moment.
“You shouldn’t shame people for their food choices.” The rope tugged in her hand.
“All right. How about this.” Why did she suddenly feel like a hostage negotiator? Maybe that should be her next area of study. Something new to keep her mind busy while she tried to figure out how to get this black abyss out of the middle of her chest. “I will buy you your own pint of Cherry Garcia that you can eat in the dark with no one else around. I’ll even lend you my DVD of the movie we watched last night.”
