Zero-Degree Murder (A Search and Rescue Mystery) (20 page)

CHAPTER

G
RACIE
climbed up the side of the mountain, her body falling into a natural rhythm to conserve energy. Breathing in through her nose, she planted the end of her ice axe, kicked a step in the snow and placed her foot until her crampons grabbed. Then, while breathing out through her mouth, she pushed up, straightening her leg and momentarily resting the muscle. Then she took another breath and another step. Another breath. Another step.

Every few minutes, she stopped to catch her breath or unzip the underarm zippers of her parka. She glanced around, squinting her eyes against the blowing snow, taking note of landmarks—an oddly shaped boulder, a fallen log, a tangle of manzanita—anything that would help her negotiate her way back to the shelter. Before she had left the shelter, she had set her GPS to track. But she never relied solely on technology. Technology often failed. The thought of not being able to find her way back to Rob chilled her bones in a way the weather couldn’t.

The wind grew even more ferocious as she worked her way up. It pelted her face with icy slivers and whipped the air from her lungs. Her breathing grew more labored. Gradually all thought ceased until nothing existed but: Breathe in. Plant the ice axe. Step right. Straighten the leg. Breathe out. Plant the ice axe. Step left. Straighten. Breathe in.

She stopped again, chest heaving, the exposed skin on her face burning with the cold. She could see not far above her head, the jumble of boulders that formed the base of the rock promontory.

Thank Almighty God.

Gracie turned around in a circle, eyes half-closed against the wind, searching the hillside for any sign of Rob’s knapsack. But no blue cloth stood out against the snow.

Gracie climbed up past the rock outcropping and hauled herself up onto the trail. As she straightened, a freight train of wind slammed into her, almost tipping her over. She staggered to regain her footing and braced herself against the wind as if against a solid wall. Then she tottered, zombielike with arms outstretched, across the trail and wedged herself into a narrow crack in the rock to catch her breath.

Gracie’s body was sweating even as her cheeks and fingers stung with cold. Any moisture on her skin would quickly sap away the heat her body produced and she would soon be shivering. She unzipped her parka a couple of inches, flapped freezing air inside onto her bare skin, then zipped it back up.

Her eye caught on a streamer of neon orange flagging tape whipping crazily in the wind a few feet up the trail from where she stood. Was that there the first night? She didn’t remember seeing it when she had aimed her flashlight up the trail. Flagging tape was the kind of thing she would have noticed. She hadn’t walked very far past the point where the prints had left the trail. Cashman had, but she was confident he hadn’t tied it there.

The only logical explanation for the orange tape was that a search team had hiked up the trail, marking their progress along the way.

Gracie’s spirits hit bottom.

The search team had bypassed the rock outcropping and continued on up the trail. They hadn’t known Gracie and Rob were down in the canyon, which meant they hadn’t received the GPS coordinates of the bivouac. The possibility was zero that Cashman had reached the CP and told someone where she and Rob were.

Cashman had never made it back to the Command Post.

No one knew where they were.

Another thought slammed into her. She leaned out from the crack in the rock and looked down the trail, searching for a flash of the neon green flagging tape Cashman had tied when they first descended into the canyon. The wind bit at her face and whipped tears from the corners of her eyes back into her hair. She squinted so her eyelashes blocked most of the blowing snow. No neon green stood out against the white surroundings.

Gracie ducked back into the shelter of the crack.

There was no question in her mind that Cashman had flagged the spot where they left the trail. She distinctly remembered him tying several lengths. A quick check of her GPS confirmed she was in the right place.

Flagging tape was tough. It required a concerted, deliberate effort to remove it. A search team bypassing the outcropping without blowing whistles or shouting or following their trail down the side of the hill meant only one thing—someone had removed the green tape with the express purpose of preventing the searchers from finding her and Rob.

The hair on Gracie’s arms prickled as she was struck by the feeling that someone was watching her.

Get off the trail! Go down! Now!

CHAPTER

G
RACIE
could barely see her feet in the gusting snow.

The feeling of eyes watching her had disappeared as soon as she had thrown herself down on the edge of the trail and pushed off the side.

Now she concentrated on working her way down the steep slope past the giant up-thrust of rock that formed the outcropping. She fought the impulse to hurry, firmly planting her ice axe, and then each boot onto the steps she had made on the way up. Stepping with her knees bent, she leaned forward on her ice axe so her feet wouldn’t fly out from under her. One false step, one misplacement of her ice axe, one caught crampon, and, courtesy of her slick, waterproof parka and pants, Gracie would find herself on an E-ticket ride to the bottom. Or worse—face-planting into a tree trunk along the way. The old adage “It’s not the fall that’ll kill you. It’s the sudden stop at the bottom” almost made her smile beneath her balaclava.

At the base of the outcropping, she stopped in the shelter of the tumbled boulders to drink deeply from her water bottle and look around again for Rob’s knapsack. As she twisted the cap back on, she scanned the mountainside below her. What she could see of the pines and firs, bushes and rocks appeared undisturbed by anything other than nature’s fury.

She looked down at the ground around her feet. Beneath the snow, she recognized the signs of a second path diverting from the main track and running along the bottom of the outcropping.

Was that something she and Cashman had missed in the dark when they descended what seemed like weeks ago? Or had it been made after that? Her consternation grew when she remembered that Cashman had passed that way three more times, twice on the first night, the third time the previous morning and had noticed nothing. At least he had made no mention of it to her.

She resigned herself to the fact that she was probably expending valuable energy for nothing when she was already running below empty and trudged along the base of the promontory.

Fifty feet in, she stopped and looked up.

The body had been shoved up beneath a protective lip of granite where no snow had been able to accumulate. What was visible was thankfully not the face, but the back of the head, the torso, the lower portions of both legs, and one arm with a bare hand.

Bright red jacket. Bright yellow shirt. White-blond hair. Reeboks.

Gracie’s brain plucked the details from the Lost Person Questionnaire.

She had found Tristan Chambers.

CHAPTER

T
HERE
was no need to check for signs of life. The body had been wedged back into the rocky crevice with the arms and legs tucked around it like so much limp spaghetti. Portions of the shirt and jacket appeared black, and the hair was matted with what was probably dried blood.

The body was confirmation that what Rob remembered about someone dying was, in actuality, fact. At least as far as Tristan was concerned, there was no more uncertainty. No more speculation. No more what-ifs and maybes.

Gracie felt the noose tighten around her neck.

She needed to get out of there. Fast. She needed to get back to where Rob waited alone, unsuspecting, unprotected.

Conscious the area was a crime scene, Gracie touched nothing on the corpse itself. She planted her feet firmly in the snow, pulled out her GPS again, and took a waypoint, labeling it DB. Dead Body.

Death was never pretty. Gracie never got used to it. The smell of fresh blood or decomposing flesh always made her insides roil. Tristan’s body was frozen solid. At least there was no discernible smell. She took in deep, frigid breaths to keep down what little food she had eaten that day.

But as soon as she turned to make her way back along the base of the rock outcropping, her mouth filled with saliva and the familiar metallic taste. She dropped to her hands and knees, and vomited into the snow.

Gracie’s body shook uncontrollably and her teeth chattered so violently she couldn’t keep her mouth closed. Her head hung almost to the ground. She took in deep, heavy breaths to the bottom of her lungs, willing back the vomit that threatened to rise again in her throat. Tears dripped unheeded onto the snow.

Get going. Put your feet under you and stand up.

She spat out the sour taste and wiped off her mouth with a handful of snow. Then, leaning on her ice axe to steady herself, Gracie stood and looked up right into a pair of deep-set blue eyes.

CHAPTER

G
RACIE
yelped and stumbled backward.

The man lunged forward, grabbed the front of her parka, and lifted her off the ground as effortlessly as if she were a hummingbird. “Where is he?” he rasped, his face so close she inhaled his foul breath into her lungs.

Fear shot adrenaline through Gracie’s body. She grabbed at the man’s hands, trying to peel back his fingers. Her hands slipped. She grabbed on to his forearms and tried to twist free.

The man tightened his grip and locked his elbows together so that his fists pressed up under her chin. His knuckles dug into her larynx.

She couldn’t breathe.

She opened her mouth and tried to speak, but no words came out.

She was strangling. Her vision dimmed. Her world shrank into the all-consuming need to free herself and take in a breath.

“Where is he?” the man growled again and shook her until her teeth rattled.

Gracie’s feet flailed around trying to gain purchase on something, anything, so she could push herself up and draw breath.

Do something or you’re dead!

Gracie swung her foot back and kicked the man squarely in the shin with the steel points of her crampon.

The man grunted and bent forward.

Gracie’s feet hit the ground. She coughed and sucked air into her lungs. Then she lifted her foot and stomped down onto his with all of her weight. Steel crampon talons plunged through boot leather, crunched bones, and sank deep.

The man roared with pain and fell back in the snow.

Gracie fell away from him onto her back and wrenched her foot free.

Go! GO!

Gracie plunged down the mountain in giant leaps. Propelled by adrenaline, she jumped, slid, fell, shoved herself back to her feet, jumped again. Twenty feet down. Thirty. Forty.

She was out of breath.

A split-second glance over her shoulder told her the man wasn’t following. Not yet. She slowed a fraction and sucked more air into her lungs.

The man wanted Rob, no doubt to kill him. He would follow her to get to him. At all costs she had to keep him from doing just that.

She glanced back over her shoulder again. The trail she was leaving in the snow would be as easy to follow as a bulldozer’s.

And there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it.

CHAPTER

“R
OB!
Get up!” Gracie dived into the shelter and began stuffing her sleeping bag into her pack. “We have to get out of here! Now!”

Rob sat up in his bag, groggily wiping his face with his hands. “Good. You’re back. Did you find the rucksack?”

“Get up!” Gracie yelled. “We have to get out of here!” She tossed his boots over to him. “See if you can get these on.”

When Rob hesitated, she bellowed, “Move, dammit! We have to get outta here!”

That did it. Without another word Rob kicked his way out of the sleeping bag.

• • •

GRACIE AND ROB
abandoned the plastic shelter and raced down the hillside—a minefield of fallen logs and loose rocks lying in wait beneath the snow to capture feet and snap ankles. At the creek, they scrambled along the steep, frozen embankment where no snow had been able to grab hold and leave obvious sign of their passing. For a tedious, painstaking quarter mile, they paralleled the water, sliding down, grabbing on to roots and branches to haul themselves back up and continue on.

When the embankment grew too steep to traverse, they dropped down to the creek itself and moved from rock to rock to rock, a finger pointing, a foot stepping, slipping, grabbing, then stepping again.

Throughout it all, if Rob’s ankle pained him, he kept silent.

Adrenaline spent, Gracie’s arms and legs trembled like warm jelly. She willed back the nausea churning her stomach
.

Not yet. Don’t crash yet.

Her eyes darted behind them, down to her feet, over to Rob’s, then behind them again, scanning the creek bed, peering through the gloom of falling snow for any sign of the hunter.