But she also wanted to get to the bottom of this crazy mystery, and so far they’d made a great team. So she’d play along, learn about her ancestor, and then if necessary run screaming for the cops.
Well, it was a plan.
Barrow was certainly fit. Not unusual in this part of the nation, but he soon had her panting as he chugged up the trail with the determination of the Little Engine That Could. Rominy had done her share of hiking-guys saw it as a cheap date-but her idea of alpine adventure was driving to the parking lot at Paradise on Mount Rainier and meandering with the mob through the wildflower meadows until pavement ended. If God had wanted people to walk on dirt trails, why had he provided asphalt? This path seemed to be made of equal parts mud, rock, roots, and brush, and was empty for good reason. There was no view, just monotonously steep forest rising above the Cascade River Valley. It was shadowy and still. Few birds lived in these deep woods.
“Did you bring a flashlight?” she finally remembered to ask.
“I’ve got two, plus GPS, working compass, climbing rope, Swiss army knife, and food for two days. We could invade Afghanistan.”
“You seem awfully prepared.”
“I was an Eagle Scout, remember.”
“Why aren’t I surprised?”
“Ski Patrol, lifeguard training, CPR, and ballroom dancing.”
She didn’t know if he was kidding. “Ballroom dancing, really?”
“I took some lessons.”
Intriguing. “I thought newspaper reporters hung around bars and stayed up late and ate bad food.”
“I do eat bad food. Haven’t you noticed?”
“But you know about wine and you have all this outdoor gear.”
“I’m a backpacker and camper, and I knew about Hood’s cabin. I just couldn’t get to it without your help. I’ve been preparing this for a long time, Rominy. I didn’t expect the car bomb. Or how clever you’d be.”
“I don’t feel clever. I feel bewildered.”
“Or how pretty.”
Male bullshit, but she liked it. Even now, huffing and sweaty, she felt a kind of satisfied tingle from their lovemaking. Why wasn’t anything ever simple? “What do you think we’ll really find? Did Hood come back from Tibet with some kind of treasure? Is that why he hid out here?”
“I hope so. Not for the money but for the story. I’ve already got a good story, of course: you, the bomb, the ancestor, and the safety deposit box. But I’ve got a hunch I still don’t have the whole story. And why are those skinhead goons after you? What happened to your relatives? Why did Ben Hood make this a game of Clue? I hope we’re hiking up to all the answers.”
“Each answer just seems like it poses new questions.”
“Kind of like life, isn’t it? Too many questions, and then you die.”
After two hours of steady climbing, Jake took a reading from his GPS, consulted his contour map, and announced it was time to leave the trail and strike due east-still up-on their own.
“Just make sure we can find our way back.”
“I’ve got a satellite to guide me. But if worse comes to worst, just head downhill. Eventually you should hit the Cascade River Road, if you don’t starve or get eaten by a cougar or a bear.”
“Thanks for that, Jake.”
Fortunately, the trees had already shrunk in size at a mile in altitude, so the downed logs were more hurdles than walls. It was slow going through huckleberry and silver fir, Jake shouting once in a while to warn any bears away from their plowing. Slowly they broke out into heather meadows with a view to higher peaks. Rominy caught her breath. A great rampart of rock and snow, glaciers hanging, loomed above a densely forested valley. Alpine meadows were a bright Irish green between the dark trees and the snow.
Jake looked from his Survey map to the horizon. “Dorado Needle, Triad, Mount Torment, Forbidden Peak.”
“Cheery.”
“And that one is Eldorado. Appropriate when looking for a gold mine, no?”
“Except El Dorado didn’t exist.”
“Or Oz, Shangri-la, or Camelot. Or did they?” He smiled, fetchingly.
“Lead on, Dorothy.”
Jake would stop periodically to take readings from his GPS and then plot their position on their two maps, his USGS green contour one and Hood’s fingerprint chart. They steadily closed in on their target. The entire idea of using satellites in outer space to plot their position in the Cascade Mountains struck Rominy as little less than magic, and using clues from a petrified finger as little more than weird. The entire day was fantastical, the air crisp, the sun bright, the distant glaciers gleaming, and this new man beside her who’d come out of nowhere and seemed able to do anything and everything. Her heart beat faster just watching him move. His mystery made him frightening and fascinating.
What wasn’t magical is how the coordinates forced them to work in and out of ravines, scramble across downed timber, and get clawed at by underbrush. The morning dragged into hard work, only the excitement of a treasure hunt preventing the bushwhacking from getting dispiriting.
And then they were there, supposedly.
It was a steep mountainside in a stand of alpine firs twenty to thirty feet high, dropping off below to a cliff that fell down to the forested gulf between them and Eldorado. There was no striking outcrop, no “ X marks the spot,” no gleam of gold or skull. The spot seemed utterly unremarkable.
“I don’t get it,” Rominy said.
Jake squatted, studying his GPS and his maps. “If we guessed right in the cabin, we should be here.” He peered up at the sky as if the satellites might give him a different answer. “Maybe we figured the clues wrong.”
“Great.” She looked around with her hands on her hips. “All that sweat for nothing.” She felt dirty and uneasy.
“Maybe your great-grandfather miscalculated a little. He didn’t have our instruments, after all.”
“Maybe my great-grandfather was crazy as a loon. Well, let’s check around. Could be we’re just off by a hundred yards, though it looks to me it’s more likely a hundred miles. You go back up, I’ll go down.”
“Just don’t step off that cliff.”
They began scouting in opposite directions. It was just more trees and brush. Rominy grazed on huckleberries as she moved cautiously down the slope. She and Jake would shout, “Hey, bear!” once in a while to keep each other in earshot.
Suddenly she slipped on something slick, soil or wood, and fell on her butt, sliding down. She panicked a moment because it was in the direction of the lip of the cliff, but heather and huckleberries quickly braked her. Now all she could see was leaves. She stood up to look back toward Jake but he was hidden. She was in some kind of hollow. More important, she wasn’t near him, and he had the maps, GPS, and compass. Not to mention her money. “Jake?”
No answer.
“Jake!”
“What?” He sounded too far away, and she wanted him closer.
“I think I found something!”
After a while she could hear him thrashing toward her. Meanwhile she inspected her position, since she’d have to justify calling him over. It was a depression, like an old crater, about a dozen feet wide and three feet deep.
“What is it?” Jake looked down at her from the lip of the hollow, poking up out of the huckleberries like a bear himself. He was sweaty.
“It’s a kind of pit, like where people dug.”
He looked skeptical but clambered down to join her. “Maybe just a hole where a tree went over, its root ball pulling out of the ground.”
“Trees don’t grow that big up here, and where’s the log?”
“True.” He looked around, considering.
And then, with an ominous crack, the ground around them split and the hollow caved in.