The Ascent

Chapter 6

1

TWO DAYS LATER. ANDREW SHOWED UP, HIS FACE

sunburned, his hair short, his eyes aglow with eagerness.

I spotted him when I paused to catch my breath and feel my pulse in the clearing near my cabin. I’d just come from a ten-mile run along the stretch of roadway that wound around the base of the hills. Since my arrival, I could sense tremors threatening to overtake me, like a psychic foretelling an earthquake in Asia. I hadn’t had a drink in several days, and the sharpness of the world struck me like sudden daggers.

Andrew, dressed in neon orange snow pants and a Windbreaker, stood at the opposite end of the clearing, a pair of binoculars around his neck. Grinning, he opened his arms as if to hug me, despite the fact that he was nearly twenty yards away.

I approached, still catching my breath (I was not used to running for long distances at this altitude and had suffered a minor nosebleed somewhere around the seven-mile mark), and was quickly folded into Andrew’s embrace.

“Can you believe places like this still exist in the world?” he said. “It’s enough exhilaration just standing here breathing.”

“It’s beautiful, all right.”

“The flight out was good?”

“It was horrible,” I said, “but at least they didn’t lose my luggage.”

“Did you have a chance to meet the others?”

Aside from John Petras, I’d run into Michael Hollinger, a tattooed, well-built, introverted Australian who’d received an airline ticket and an invitation from Andrew in the same cryptic fashion as both Petras and I had.

We met last night during dinner at the lodge—a meal of stewed goat and an eclectic selection of wild vegetables that I was quite certain had not yet been cataloged by mankind. I must have looked overtly American in my Gap button-down and American Eagle corduroys because he approached my table and introduced himself. I invited him to dine with me, and we ate and talked for several hours. Hollinger knew Andrew from time spent in the Australian outback. For six months in their early twenties, they’d lived together with two aboriginal women in a hut built of fronds while subsisting on marsupials hunted with bows and arrows.

“A couple of the guys,” I told Andrew. “John Petras and Michael Hollinger.”

He winked. “Good guys, yeah?”

“When did you get in?”

“This morning. I’m jet-lagged like a motherfucker.”

“Listen,” I said, “I need to talk to you about something.”

“It’ll have to wait.” He scanned the sky, one hand shielding the sun from his eyes. “I’m on the hunt.”

“For what?”

“For whatever’s out there.” Andrew placed the binoculars to his eyes and took a series of steps backward. Gravel crunched under his Timberlands. “Tonight,” he said, still examining the sky, “in the main lounge. The food’s on me. All the guys will be there. I’ll make an appearance to go over the itinerary. We’ll leave at the end of the week.”

He pivoted in the dirt and stalked toward the woods, the heavy binoculars still at his eyes. I watched him weave through a stand of spindly trees until he was nothing more than an orange neon dot getting lost in the woods.

Asshole, I thought.

Not for the first time, I wondered what the hell I was doing here. The answer I’d given Petras that first night in the lounge was true enough—that I had been slowly dying in my little apartment back home—but that didn’t necessarily mean I had to come here, did it? There were plenty of other interesting places on the planet, many I’d already witnessed. I could have gone anywhere. But now I was here in Nepal, preparing to scale a mountain. With Andrew fucking Trumbauer.

As I walked to my cabin, I couldn’t help but recall that evening in San Juan when he and I jumped off the cliff into the shocking black water below. I also remembered how Hannah had pressed her warm, little mouth against my ear after I told her where I’d been. “Oh,” she’d said, “the cliff-diving thing.” It was our honeymoon, yet I’d remained awake in bed for maybe half an hour, wondering if she’d ever gone naked cliff diving with Andrew.

“Fuck this,” I said now, not wanting to deal with those old thoughts, those old feelings. After all, it was the reason I was here.

I opened the door to my room slowly, as if anticipating a burglar, ready to split my skull with a crowbar, hiding behind the door.

For all I knew, this wasn’t too far from the truth; I was still concerned about the open window from two nights ago and the fact that someone had gone through my luggage. I’d assumed it was a robbery, but nothing had been taken … which, in a way, bothered me even more.

Why would someone break into my room and rifle through my belongings if not to steal? It made me think about James Bond movies and how bad guys always planted venomous snakes and deadly scorpions under his pillow or in the pocket of his bathrobe. At first, this notion caused me to grin, but then I thought of Shomas, the mysterious hulkwho’d materialized outside the cabin on that very same night, preaching about danger and turning back. James Bond, indeed …

But no one was here. The windows were still closed, and my luggage was just how I’d left it. While this helped calm my heartbeat, it did little to soothe the shakes I could feel rumbling up through the core of my body. I needed a drink. Bad.

I decided to shower and take my mind off my withdrawal. The water wouldn’t get hotter than lukewarm, which was fine by me, because by the time I stepped under the spray, I was sweating like a hostage.

2

ABOUT TWO HOURS LATER. I WATCHED AS A

caravan of nomads rolled through the clearing on horse-drawn carts. They reminded me of the old paintings in high school history textbooks of the carpetbaggers traversing the flatlands of a blossoming new country. There were children among them; they shouted and laughed and hopped down from the carts to sell vegetables to whomever they could.

I felt a lower eyelid tremble. The withdrawal shakes were coming, all right. Easy, I willed it. Easy now, boyo.

As I watched the caravan, a man appeared above an embankment. He was deeply tanned with feathered yellow hair and wraparound sunglasses. He carried a backpack over one shoulder, and his strides were long and well defined.

The children hurried over to him, proffering their goods. The man smiled, exposing what appeared to be—at least from what I could see while standing on my cabin porch—two rows of perfect white teeth. The man tousled the hair of the nearest child, then lightly slapped the underside of the child’s hand that held a plump, red tomato. The tomato hopped into the air, and the man snatched it before it could fall back into the child’s hand. He nodded at theyoung boy, and even though he was wearing those wraparound sunglasses, I got the distinct impression he winked at him, too.

As the children looked on, their giddy playfulness fading, the man’s two rows of perfect teeth reappeared for an encore performance before disappearing into the fat skin of the tomato. I could almost hear the snap of the bite and the patter of the juices down the man’s chin.

The caravan continued down the roadway. The children, collectively expressionless, stared at the man for several moments before catching up to the carts. I could still hear the clop of the horses’ hooves and the creaking of the wooden carts after the caravan disappeared over the embankment.

“Howdy,” the tomato thief said, tipping me a salute as he strode toward the main lodge. “You from the States?”

“Yeah.”

“You look like a Trumbauer experiment.” If this was meant as some sort of joke, I was not in the mood.

“If you’re hungry, they’ve got a pretty decent menu in the lounge downstairs,” I commented.

The man paused and slid his sunglasses halfway down the bridge of his nose. Crystal blue eyes seared me. “I’m Chad Nando. From Miami.”

“You fly out here from Miami or just steal a boat?”

Grinning, he tossed the tomato at me.

I caught it, more out of reflex than skill. My fingers sank into the juicy skin.

“This is going to be an interesting little adventure,” he promised.

Indeed, I thought and watched him walk into the lodge.

3

THERE WAS LIGHT MUSIC COMING FROM THE

lounge, something prerecorded and full of percussion, and I smelled

steamed meats before I actually entered the room.

Petras leaned against the wall outside the lounge, examining his fingernails while clinging to a pint glass of something dark and frothy.

“Please tell me that’s a beer,” I said, saddling up to him. Laughter boomed from the lounge, and I peered into the room. A group of men crowded around a single table filled with plates of steaming food. Thangkas—Tibetan scrolled paintings—hung above them from the rafters.

“No such luck,” Petras grunted. “It’s supposed to be some kind of local juice, but it tastes like motor oil. Want some?”

“I’ll pass.” Scanning the table and the rest of the lounge, I couldn’t locate Andrew. I asked Petras if he’d shown up yet.

“Haven’t seen him. Hollinger saw him earlier today. He told me to come here tonight, so I did.”

“You meet the rest of the guys?”

Petras stared at the dark liquid in his pint glass. “They all seem okay. Except maybe for that Nando guy. He’s got a big mouth and likes to hear himself put it to use.”

“I watched him wrestle a tomato from some homeless Nepalese children earlier today.”

“You okay, Tim?”

“Sure,” I said, suddenly aware of Petras’s eyes all over me. “Why?”

“You look …”

“What is it?” I urged.

He shrugged. “It’s nothing. Your hands, that’s all. They’re shaking.”

In truth, I felt like shit. A hollowed-out husk, a rubbery mockery of a man … “I’m sweating, too,” I commented nervously, thinking—for whatever bizarre reason—that this statement might lessen the tension of our conversation. It didn’t.

“You on something or coming off it?” Petras wanted to know, his voice level and baritone.

I forced a chuckle. “Are you kidding? What in the world would—?”

“Only two reasons a man shakes like that.” He seemed to consider his own words. “Well, maybe three reasons, but I wouldn’t concern you with the third. Just two reasons, and they’re both cause for alarm.”

I felt some semblance of camaraderie with Petras, so I didn’t lie to him. “I’ve just recently quit being an alcoholic, you might say.”

One of his carved-in-stone eyebrows raised. “How recent?”

“Fairly recent.” I forced a grin and felt like an imbecile. “Since I arrived in Nepal, actually.”

Petras gulped down a mouthful of the oily drink, his gaze leaving mine for a second to scale the opposite wall, which was laden with stuffed animal heads. Without looking at me, he said, “Normally I’d say I’m not your father and whatever you choose to do is your own business. As a rule, I stand by that type of thinking. But as I said, come the end of this week, my life—if you’ll permit me an overstatement—will be in your hands. I thought I was clear on this the night we met.”

“Jesus, you don’t have to worry about me. I swear to God I’m good to go.”

Petras stuck out his lower lip and nodded with the lethargy and commitment of someone acknowledging his guilt to a jury of his peers.

“Please,” I said, immediately disliking the whininess of my voice. “Please don’t make this into something it’s not.”

“No, I won’t.” His steely eyes shifted back in my direction, and I thought I felt them sear my soul with one glance. “You’ve got a good heart and a healthy spirit. And I believe you may need this journey more than me.” He cocked his head toward the doorway and added, “More than any of those guys, really.”

“Thanks.”

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get some food.”

4

WE ATE UNTIL WE WERE FULL. AND THEN WE ATE

just a little more. There were six of us in all, excluding Andrew who hadn’t shown up yet: Petras and me, of course; Michael Hollinger, the quiet Australian; the loudmouthed Chad Nando from Miami, whose voice carried a bit louder and a bit edgier than the rest; a gray-eyed, muscular black man from Ohio named Curtis Booker, who’d been in the Marines but needed to be prodded for a long time before he’d talk about it; and lastly a surprisingly flabby guy named Donald Shotsky who looked to be in his late forties and whose craggy face, replete with acne scars, resembled a tic-tac-toe board. Shotsky had the perpetually rheumy eyes of a career alcoholic, and the calculating little man inside me assumed the chunky little bastard had a bottle or two stashed in his cabin. A good friend to have, no doubt.

“First molehill I ever climbed was the Mount of the Holy Cross in Colorado,” said Chad, who had been dominating the conversation for most of the evening. “I’d just turned nineteen and was with my older brother, Alex, and some of his friends. Me being a novice, the plan was to scramble up the North Ridge—fifty-six hundred feet in over eleven miles.”

Curtis nodded. “I know it. Marked by a white cross of snow you can see for miles. Ideal for extreme skiing.”

Chad snickered and shook his head. “Yeah, well, I had no idea. Wasn’t about to punk out, you know, so after some arguing, it’s decided we’ll climb up that vertical part of the cross, the Cross Couloir route, and then ski straight down the way we came. So we get geared up—man, there must have been six of us that day—and we weren’t even an hour into the climb when I lose my footing and drop straight over a sheer face. Course, I was tied in, but that didn’t prevent me from swinging out over a ravine like a human yo-yo or some shit, the world blurring in front of my eyes. I squeezed that goddamn line so tight it cut through my gloves and caused stress fractures on the palms of my hands.”

Hollinger whistled.

“I swing out,” Chad went on, “and sure as shit, as if in slow motion, I see a fist-sized blade of rock coming right for my face. I brace my feet in front of me to catch the wall, but I’m swinging with too much force now, and I’ve got to keep some spring in my knees, not locking ‘em, otherwise I’d break my legs on impact—”

“Or push the buggers up into your rib cage,” suggested Hollinger.

“No shit. And, see, all this is going through my mind as I’m swinging toward it, which is why I say it was like in slow motion. Probably could’ve sang the whole goddamn theme song to Gilligan’s Island, seemed to be so much time.” Chad snorted and ran a hand across the top of his head. Then he pointed to a vague indentation below his left eye. “Rock struck me here, shattering my cheekbone. My eye was like jelly in the socket and filled up with blood. The force of it knocked me unconscious, too, but overall I guess I was lucky. Less than an inch higher and I’d be sporting one fancy little eye patch.”

“Jesus,” Donald Shotsky said in a breathy whisper.

“Split my pretty face like a Halloween pumpkin.” Chad shrugged. “Somehow they get me down and bring me to Alex’s truck. But Alex, who’s panicking like a son of a bitch right about now—I know this ‘cause it’s just about the time I come to, sprawled in the backseat with a blood-soaked towel holding my face together—he gets lost on the trails going back to the interstate. First town we come to is Holy Cross City itself, which is nothing more than a ghost town, an old mining town with a few dilapidated cabins and mining boilers scattered around. Not a soul in sight and certainly no hospital. Then, because God tends to fuck with the hopelessly panicked, one of the truck’s tires blows out.”

Everyone groaned, myself included.

“So we’re stranded in the middle of fucking nowhere and my face is goin’ all spongy and Alex starts slamming his hands against the steering wheel. Everyone’s looking for signs to I-70, but there’snothing but forest and run-down cabins. Then someone starts shouting out the window at some dude passing by. Figured it was one of the ATV bucketheads we’d seen cruising along Mosquito Pass earlier in the day. But this fucker turns out to be a goddamn Indian from some tribe in the Ute Mountains, scrounging for recyclable cans and bottles or whatever down here. He comes over to the truck and pops the hatchback and stares at me like I’m an alien species of wildflower he’s thinking about smoking. He’s not even wigged out by the blood, and there was a lot by now.

“Bastard climbs into the back with me and peels the bloody towel from my face. He was a big son of a bitch, and his skin looked like dried tobacco leaves. I remember thinking he was Mexican because he wore one of those wide-brimmed hats with the little cholo balls dangling from the rim. He placed his hands on either side of my face. He smelled like piss and whiskey, and for one freaky second, I thought he was simply gonna pop my head between his palms like a fucking overripe tomato.

“‘Can you see me?’ he asks. I must have responded because he then says, ‘I want you to look directly into my eyes. I want you to tell me what color are my eyes.’ So I’m looking real hard at his eyes, but I can’t for the life of me tell what color his eyes are. For a moment, one of his hands slips off my cheek, and I think I feel my head expand, ready to come apart. ‘What color are my eyes?’ he says again, and he follows this up by stuffing a foul-tasting thumb into my mouth. I’m too out of it to buck him off, so the thumb goes rooting around my mouth, and when it finally retracts, I think I can make out the color of the old Indian’s eyes. But then something weird fucking happens, and he’s no longer got two eyes but just one single eye, right smack in the center of his face. Like what do you call those fucking things …?”

“Cyclops,” Petras offered.

“Yeah, right. Cyclops. And I’m focusing on this single eye, and I can clearly see the ridge of brow above the eye, the hollow pocket it’ssitting in, the whole nine, man. I mean, the bastard morphed into some Cyclops right in front of me, and looking into that one eye was like looking at a hypnotist’s pendulum, ‘cause I’m suddenly feeling nothing but cool, calm, and relaxed. By the time Alex finds the highway and gets me to a hospital, I’m as content as an old dog after a big meal.” Finished, Chad slapped a palm on the tabletop. The plates and glasses jumped. “Now how do you boys explain something like that?”

Hollinger said, “You’d lost a lot of blood, mate. You were hallucinating.”

“Wasn’t no hallucination.”

“Peyote,” suggested Petras. “That’s why he put his thumb in your mouth.”

“Brother,” Chad said, “I’ve juggled my share of psychedelics. His eyes changed.“

“Nonetheless, it was unfortunate they couldn’t fix your face,” Hollinger said.

We all laughed, none louder than Chad, who saw it fit to bray laughter.

I crept to the bar to order another glass of the oily, black liquid we’d been imbibing all evening. It tasted like sweat wrung from gym socks, but it was all they had. And, anyway, I needed to keep pouring it down my gullet to keep my mind off the shakes.

“Speaking of psychotropic drugs,” Chad went on, “where the fuck is Trumbauer?”

“You’d think he’d show up, seeing how he put this whole thing together,” Curtis said as he leaned back in his chair, two chair legs off the floor. He’d hardly spoken all night. The sound of his voice was like the tolling of a great and distant bell.

“Oh,” howled Chad, “this is fucked up. We’ve been summoned from around the fucking world, right? Check us out. He calls and we all come running.”

“How do you know Andrew?” Petras asked Chad.

Chad’s eyes narrowed. “Any of you guys cops?”

“Go to hell,” growled Curtis.

Chad shrugged. “We met in Colorado one winter, working the slopes. I helped him move some cocaine across the country in fish.”

Michael Hollinger sat forward, smirking. “Fish?”

“Salmon.” Chad smirked back. “Cut ‘em open and pack ‘em in ice and ship ‘em all over the country. He knew a guy who knew a guy who wanted to move some powder. We packed the fish full of coke and sent them on their way. And that’s how I met Andrew Trumbauer.”

“Motherfuck,” said Shotsky. “That ain’t true.”

“Sure as shit,” Chad promised.

“How about you, Shotsky?” Hollinger said. “How do you know Andrew?”

“He saved my life,” Donald Shotsky said matter-of-factly. “Five weeks in the Bering Sea, a ship called the Kula Plate, we’re hoisting the little clawed monsters on board one pot after the next. I could see the dollar signs in my eyes, like a fucking cartoon character. I’m there and Andrew’s there and maybe eight other guys on deck, plus the engineers and the captain.

“Third week, just as a storm’s coming through, we’re bustin’ our asses to get everything pulled before we have to close up and pull everything below deck. Like an asshole, I get one of the ropes twisted around my ankle as we’re tossing one of the crab pots back overboard. And these are big fucking pots, the size of Volkswagens, heavier than shit. It goes over the side, and the line goes taut. I feel something bite into my ankle, and the next thing I know I’m on my belly, dragged across the deck and slammed into the railing. Lucky for me Andrew was close by. He cut the line before I went over. Otherwise there’d be some other fat slob sitting at this table talkin’ right now.”

“Jesus, that’s some story.” Hollinger turned to Curtis Booker. “And you?”

Booker said, “You jump out of enough planes, climb enoughmountains, you eventually hear about Andrew Trumbauer. Three years ago, I put together a climb in Alaska. Andrew was one of the guys who signed up for it. Never met him in person, but I knew who he was. I agreed to take him on—there were about fifteen of us—and thought everything was set. But he never showed up.”

“Sounds like Andrew,” remarked Chad. “Good old reliable Andrew …”

Curtis grinned. “I thought about doing the same to him on this trip, actually.”

“Why didn’t you?” I said. For some reason, the notion of screwing over Andrew appealed to me.

“Because I’m too goddamn excited to cross the Canyon of Souls. Anyway, old Andy probably made a wise decision skipping out on my little exhibition.” Curtis lowered his voice and said, “I lost two men in the death zone on that climb.”

“The death zone?” Shotsky said, his voice suddenly shaky.

“Fuck, man,” Chad interrupted. “You’ve signed up to cross the Canyon of fucking Souls, and you’ve never heard of the death zone.”

Chad was an asshole, but he was right: Donald Shotsky hadn’t done his homework. Beside me, I could almost feel Petras cringe.

“The death zone,” Curtis explained, “is the place high on a mountain where you don’t get enough oxygen. We had oxygen tanks for the summit climb, but at twenty-six thousand feet, the human body goes bad real fast.”

“Are you kidding me?” Shotsky said. Both his thick, red hands were plastered to the tabletop, and I noticed a fine glimmer of sweat breaking out along his brow. “There’s a motherfucking death zone?”

“Both guys died of edema,” said Curtis. “Was the worst climb I ever made.”

“Will we be climbing into the death zone?” Shotsky wanted to know. “I mean, how high are we going?”

“It’s in the middle of Godesh Mountain,” Petras said. “It’s adifficult climb, but the Canyon of Souls isn’t as high as twenty-six thousand.” He shot me a glance, and I waited for him to wink. “I don’t think so, anyway,” he added. The wink never came.

“You afraid your heart’s gonna give out up there, Shotsky?” Chad said, running a hand through his bleached hair.

Shotsky waved a hand at him. “Fuck off, snow bunny.”

“Because I ain’t gonna drag your rigor mortis ass back down the hill; that’s for damn sure,” Chad went on. Had they been friends, Shotsky would have most likely continued to wave Chad off. But they weren’t friends—they’d just met this evening, in fact—and it was evident Chad’s words were irritating Shotsky. “Or maybe I’ll just ride you down like a sled,” Chad added, oblivious to Shotsky’s growing agitation.

Shotsky’s face creased. His hands balled into fists on the table. “How ‘bout I ride you like a sled, fuckface?”

“Cool it,” Petras said.

“Whoa.” Chad balked, throwing his hands up in surrender. “I didn’t mean nothing by it, bro. I’m cool. Just making light of the whole thing.” His gaze swung in my direction. “Right, Shakes?”

Something snapped inside me. I sprung across the table and grabbed a fistful of Chad’s sweater. With my free hand, I struck him on the left cheek, which caused his head to jerk to the right. I refused to release the hold on his sweater even after his chair tipped and spilled him to the floor.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Petras muttered into my ear. His big hands were on my shoulders, prying me off Chad. “Ease off, Tim. Ease off.”

Finally I released my grip and allowed Petras and the others to drag me across the table.

Hollinger bent over Chad and asked if he was all right.

Chad laughed and scooted against the wall, his eyes locked on mine. I found myself praying for his nose to start gushing blood—somehow I thought that would make the scene all the more dramatic—but that

never happened.

“Nice,” he called to me, grinning. “Got a hell of a swing there. Guess this is amateur hour, huh?”

“Asshole,” was all I could muster. Petras was still holding me back.

Andrew appeared in the doorway, smiling down on us like the Creator Himself. “Very nice display,” he said, applauding. “Glad to see you boys playing nice together. I’m sure there exists a more than suitable quote about men growing up into boys or something like that, but I don’t know any.”

“He started it,” Chad barked. A second later, he must have realized how childish it had sounded, because he chuckled.

“I can’t let you ladies out of my sight for one second, can I?” Andrew said, folding his arms and leaning against the wall. “How’s the food?”

“Ain’t the food that’s the trouble,” Shotsky growled.

“Tastes like the padding of my sneakers,” Hollinger commented, perhaps in hopes of diluting the tension, “but at least it’s hot.”

“The food’s purifying,” Andrew said. “I want all of us to be cleansed and ready for the climb. No smoking joints, no alcohol, no greasy cheeseburgers.”

“God, I could use a joint,” Shotsky said.

The guys laughed. Even Chad seemed to loosen up.

“It’s the air up here. The altitude is different. Makes us act crazy, like a bunch of psychopaths. But we’ll be okay, won’t we?” When no one answered, Andrew repeated, “Won’t we?”

“Sure,” said Petras, and all heads turned to look at him. He was by far the most imposing figure among us.

“Here’s the deal. I’ve already been in your rooms. I’ve left some equipment for each of you. Everyone is responsible for their own equipment.” Andrew surveyed the group, as if in anticipation of revolt. “There’ll be a bus outside the lodge this Saturday at six in the morning to take us into town. We’ll pick up whatever else we need before heading out to the Valley of Walls. From there, we’ll have ateam of Sherpas take us through the pass to the base of the Godesh range. It’ll be a full day’s hike. We’ll climb to the first plateau and establish base camp. We’ll spend one more night there before leaving the following morning to climb. It’s a steep climb, and we’ll be going alone, just the seven of us, for several days.”

“Lucky seven,” Curtis muttered.

“You all need to be rested and prepared for strenuous conditions. If you get sick or feel you can’t make it once we’ve begun, it’ll be up to you to either establish sanctuary and wait for us to return or make it back to base camp on your own. If you wish to enlist the help of anyone else to carry your ass down to camp, just keep in mind that no one here signed up for this journey with the hope of sitting in a canvas tent for two weeks, sipping hot chocolate and listening to their iPods, while the rest of us climb. You’re all here because I have faith in each and every one of you.” A disconcerting smile crept across Andrew’s features. “We’re going to be the first team to cross the Canyon of Souls.”

This sparked an eruption of cheers and applause from the group. I couldn’t help but smile, either … while deep in the recesses of my brain I recalled the fire behind Andrew’s eyes that night in San Juan when, stark naked and pale in the moonlight, he leapt off the cliff and into the black night air.

Abruptly Andrew turned and walked out of the lounge.

“He’s leaving already?” I whispered to Petras.

“He’s a strange dude, all right,” Petras said, rolling his massive shoulders.

I hustled out of the lounge and up the winding iron stairs to the main lobby of the lodge. Andrew was zipping up his jacket and heading toward the doors.

“Hey,” I called.

He paused and swung his head in my direction.

“Got a minute?”

“What’s up, Overleigh?”

“You’re not gonna stay and chill out awhile?”

“What are we, in college or something?” Again, that curious grin of his appeared, and his eyes narrowed. “Did that sound abrupt? Goddamn, I can never tell how I’m going to sound until the words spill out.”

“Listen,” I said. “Do you know a guy named Shomas? Big guy? Local?”

“Never heard of him.”

“He stopped me outside my cabin to warn me about climbing Godesh. Said it was a canyon not meant to be crossed. He seemed pretty adamant about it.”

“Come on. It’s local superstition. He’s probably some guide who’s pissed he didn’t get the job.”

“Well, yeah, he said he was a guide …”

“Then there you go.”

“I think he broke into my room, too.”

“What are you talking about?”

“When I went back to my room, someone had gone through all my stuff. I thought maybe someone had robbed me, but nothing was taken.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

The problem is nothing was taken, I wanted to say. The problem is that big behemoth had been in my room rifling through my luggage… and didn’t take a single thing…

“What was he looking for?” I said. “If he didn’t take my money and my valuables, what the hell was he looking for?”

“Jesus, what’s wrong with you? You’re shaking like a tuning fork.”

“Forget it. I’m fine.”

“You’re sweating, too.”

“Never mind.”

“Look,” he said, placing a hand on my shoulder. Inwardly I cringed. “If you’ve got something missing, report it to the lodge. They get thousands of travelers here every year; they won’t stand fortheft scaring away the tourists. But if nothing was taken, then consider yourself fortunate that you scared the guy off before he could rip you off. Simple as that. What more do you want?”

It was a fair enough question. I had no idea what more I wanted. I wanted Hannah, and I suddenly wanted to be back in my tiny Annapolis apartment, but I couldn’t say those things to Andrew. Not at all.

“Forget it,” I said finally. “I guess I’m just exhausted.”

“Get some rest. You need to be in pristine fucking condition by Saturday.”

“Yeah.”

“And quit fighting. This ain’t boxing camp.” “Right.”

“Now get to sleep.” He squeezed my shoulder, then marched out of the lodge, turning up the collar of his jacket as he went.