Becker tried to pause to ease his aching muscles, but it required more energy to hang there on three fingers and a toe than to keep moving upwards. Meanwhile, the part of his mind not concentrating on the climb was racing. If Lamont was the man from the motel, and Becker was convinced that he was, then the woman who was with him, the nurse, was involved too. His idea of searching for the uniform left in a laundry was not a bad one, after all. He remembered the motorist’s description of the woman who had been driving the car from which Lamont emerged. “Charming,” the man had called her. A woman who could make a man think she was charming after a few seconds of talk at a roadblock. The woman at the motel had worked like that, leaping into a conversation without preamble, as if she had known a man all her life. It had to be the same woman, and she conned us both. Bicker realized. Diverted us both, took our minds off of our business almost immediately. She did it to me by flirting, Becker thought, remembering his sexual reaction to brushing against her in the motel room. And she distracted Karen by using Jack, by both flattering her and suggesting she was an unfit mother all at once. She put us both off balance and kept us there. Mentally, he cursed himself. Karen had to be told; she had to be warned whom she was looking for-and how dangerous she was. But there was no way to do it now.
His left arm began to go into spasm, the bicep jerking wildly from the unremitting strain. Becker released the fingers of that hand, letting the arm hang at his side as he pressed closer to the rock, trying to merge with it so that he could cling with face and chest and hip.
“We have to go now,” Ash said. He had been peering down the mountain toward his invisible pursuers for the last several minutes, his face thrust forward as if he could see them that much sooner.
“I can’t,” Jack said, still panting.
“We have to,” Ash said.
“I’m too tired,” Jack insisted, shaking his head, then dropping it between his knees. “I just can’t. Honest.”
Ash looked back down the mountain, bewildered. The climbers had become silent, but he knew they were getting close.
“We have to,” Ash repeated.
“Can’t… ”
Ash grabbed Jack under the arm and pulled the boy to his feet. Jack sat again as if his legs could not hold him. With a trace of annoyance. Ash lifted the boy again and swung him around so that he rode piggyback, leaving Ash’s arms free. Ash took his first tentative steps along the crest of the mountain with the boy on his back.
Becker was falling, but his body hadn’t submitted to gravity yet. He had reached the top. He could see it even with his face against the rock, the horizon hovering tauntingly just one more reach above him. But it was a reach he could not make. As he lifted his left foot to hip level to give himself the purchase to push up for the final grasp, the thin ridge of rock crumbled under his weight and his left leg swung down uselessly. His bloody fingers were barely holding on as it was and his feet had no way to move higher to relieve the weight. He hung two feet from safety, clinging to sheer stone with two fingers on one hand, three on the other, and a toehold for his right foot that was more wish than security. There was no way to change position without falling, no way to ascend without plummeting down forty feet to the waiting granite below. His fingers began to dance with cramps, then his biceps. It was a matter of seconds, Becker realized, before the spasming of his own muscles jerked him right off the mountain.
It was then he saw the foot before his face. Lamont stood above him along the crest, staring down, his mouth open in wonder.
“Who are you?” Lamont asked.
“Help me,” Becker said.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to fall. Help me.”
Jack’s head appeared over the big man’s shoulder and he gaped wide-eyed.
“Help him,” Jack said.
“We have to go,” said Lamont.
“Please!” Becker cried. His right foot slipped off its tiny ridge, forced back by the twist of his body as he looked straight up at Lamont. Both arms and fingers were jerking wildly.
Jack slid off Ash’s back and reached down for Becker, but his arm was too short. Jack tugged at Ash’s pant leg, imploring him to help. Slowly, uncertain what to do. Ash knelt and reached down and grabbed Becker’s shirt collar. He pulled him upwards, then caught one of his flailing arms and lifted him onto the crest of the mountain.
Becker sprawled forward onto the ground, his arms splayed out to either side. Still spasming, they flopped like landed fish.
“You hurt yourself,” Ash said, looking at Becker’s bleeding fingers.
“My arms,” Becker moaned. “Rub my arms.”
“We have to help him,” Jack said. The boy began massaging one of Becker’s twitching biceps.
“Harder,” Becker said, gritting his teeth against the pain.
“We have to go,” Ash said, but he took the other arm, watched what Jack was doing, and imitated it.
“Harder, harder.”
Becker’s whole body began to jerk as the tension of the climb took its toll on his legs and his back as well as his hands and arms. The spasms rocked him, doubled him in pain, made him convulse so violently he threatened to roll back over the cliff.
Jack sat on his back, digging his hands into his bicep, then his leg. Ash followed the boy’s lead, trying to bring the spasms under control.
A voice rang out from below them, startling in its clarity and closeness. The pursuers were coming on. Ash stared down the mountain. He still could not see them, but the nearness of the voices frightened him.
“We have to go,” Ash said. He lifted Jack to his feet. “Come on. Tommy.”
“Help me,” Becker said, but the big man ignored him this time. Jack tried to pull away, but Ash lifted him off the ground and held him to his chest.
“Taylor. Leave the boy with me,” Becker said. He managed to flex the toes of both feet toward his body and gradually the cramps in his calves eased.
“She said to leave him with me, Taylor,” Becker continued.
“Who said?” Ash asked, still holding Jack off the ground.
Becker struggled to remember the woman’s name. He bent his wrists and forearms backwards, pronating them as far as he could to counteract the convulsing biceps muscles. The woman’s name wouldn’t come to him.
“It was Dee,” Jack said quickly. “Dee said.”
“Dee said?”
“That’s right, it was Dee,” Becker said. “She wanted you to give the boy to me.”
Ash hesitated. Becker managed to bring himself to his hands and knees and move closer to the big man.
“She never told me,” Ash said.
“You had already gone. I just spoke to her; she sent me to get the boy.”
“That’s right,” Jack said. “Honest.”
Ash tried to understand. Dee didn’t trust anyone but Ash, he knew it, she told him all the time. She never let anyone else take care of the Tommys, never. Why would she want him to give Tommy to this man who was crawling toward him? She knew that Ash could take care of Tommy better than anybody.
“Dee said give him to me,” Becker said again. He managed to crawl another step closer, willing his muscles to hold off, just hold off another minute. A few more feet and he would be close enough to get the man’s leg. If he could just get him off balance, bring him down, he had some sort of a chance. But he couldn’t do it as long as the man was holding Jack. He was too close to the edge; they could both go over if Becker made a lunge.
“Dee said.” Jack struggled vainly in the man’s arms. Becker was amazed at how calm the boy had remained. If he stayed that way, they had a chance.
“Give him to me, Taylor.”
“How come you know my name?” Ash asked. No one had called him Taylor in years. Not since the hospital. His mother was the only one who had ever used his given name. His mother, and strangers.
“We’ve met. Dee introduced us.” Becker inched closer.