The same could not be said about Lindsay, who’d clashed with Georgia as long as I could remember. Or Mike Kittleman, kicked off the biathlon team by Georgia.
I fled my brother’s room.
The hallway light was dazzling, painful. I found the switch and flipped it off, saving my father a penny or two, then took the two flights of stairs down to the garage.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I was on my way to the lab, at the intersection of Canyon and Minaret, when a blue Blazer passed heading east.
Other than my Subaru and the Blazer, the roads were deserted. It was nearly midnight. A gibbous moon irradiated the night, and if Adrian Krom had looked my way he could have recognized me and my car.
I waited until the tail lights disappeared, as the Blazer followed Minaret’s bend. The slug in my pocket pressed into my thigh, which argued for a left turn toward the lab. Instead, I turned right and headed east on Minaret.
It’s the unexpected that shakes faith. A lame lie. A frog sacrifice.
For all my worry, I couldn’t figure the frog. Everything was working for Krom — I got Carow out to the creek, Krom got his monitor on the record. The place was clearly dangerous. He could have just gone with that, playing the hero and making Lindsay the fool. Maybe he thought he needed the frog for dramatic effect. Maybe, but it gave me the creeps.
We wound along Minaret, me keeping my distance, pacing him.
I followed Adrian Krom, I guess, because he was beyond my reckoning and I wanted to know where was going at midnight in January.
Minaret intersected Highway 203 and Krom turned left and then I knew we were heading out of town.
And then, partway down 203, he stopped. I hit my own brakes. Looked like he’d stopped right about where the road arches over a streambed. Road humps there, bridging the culvert, and I thought maybe it’s that little rise in elevation that gave him a new angle in his rearview, gave him a new line of sight that revealed my identity.
I didn’t know what to do. Turn around and go back? Drive on and say hi, where you going? And then he asks, where are you going all alone at midnight on a Saturday night?
He started up again and I followed suit.
He took 203 to the intersection with 395 and turned south, as did I. We accelerated to sixty. We had the highway to ourselves. We slowed as we approached the Hot Creek turnoff, and he took it.
I didn’t have the guts to follow him there.
I continued on 395 the five miles or so to the McGee Canyon exit and doubled back, thinking I was going to head straight to town and the lab. But then as I approached the Hot Creek turnoff and peered along that road and didn’t spot any tail lights I thought, I can do this without being seen.
I knew what I used to do at Hot Creek at midnight, but he didn’t have a date.
I took the turnoff.
No barricade. No skull and crossbones. I stopped dead in the road. No tail lights ahead. I checked the rearview. Nobody coming up from some hiding place to say boo, either.
I nudged the gas. Warp speed, into the unknown. The Subaru did about five miles per hour, undulating over the snowplowed bumps. A few yards short of the Hot Creek parking lot, I did a U-turn and parked by the snowbank. I grabbed my parka, got out, locked the car, and started to walk.
I went back and got a lug wrench from my tool kit, then started off again.
The Blazer was alone in the parking lot. About twelve hours ago, Krom had driven Carow and me here. Now, Krom’s Blazer was empty. He must have gone down.
I wondered why.
The trail down the gorge switchbacks several times and it is possible, by hugging the cliff wall, to avoid looking down. Which means anyone down there looking up doesn’t have the line of sight to see me. At least most of the way. I inched down, my boots making the faintest squeak on the packed snow. I hoped that the creek would be making enough noise below to mask my approach.
At the bottom, there was no immediate cover. I came the final steps in a crouch, gripping the wrench.
It was a beautiful night, moonlight bleaching the snow whiter, moonlight silvering the water. Cold enough to shiver when you stop, which made the heat emanating from the creek all the more inviting. I’ve soaked out here under just such a moon as this, with a beer banked in the snow for when I’d cooked enough.
I listened. Rush of creek water. Hiss of hot water hitting a cold pocket.
I scanned the creek and banks and saw nothing I hadn’t seen here before. I sprinted to a tall boulder and crouched there.
He must have gone downstream.
There came another sound, from the creek. I’ve heard this sound before — I’ve made it. It’s when you accidentally hit a cold spot and the shock of it pulls a hnnnh from you and you madly paddle away. I sat still, still as Coyote when he first learns he has entered the giant’s belly.
And now came a cry — part coyote, part exhilaration.
I’ve made that sound too but only when I was out here alone.
I peeked around the boulder just enough to gain a line of sight on the creek, and now I saw him.
He was bronzed by the moonlight.
Nude as a Greek god. I could see him down to the thighs. He stood thigh-deep in the middle of the creek. He had to be standing on one of those sandbars that abruptly change the water’s depth. His body was better than I’d thought. I’d thought that under his loose-fitting clothes some of his bulk was fat, but he was solid.
He crouched, then, cupping his hands to dip water and I thought, I’ve done that, dousing my face with the water to cool off, but he didn’t splash his face, he drank. God. Hadn’t he read Lindsay’s sign? This water’s not fit to drink. Even when I was a kid out here we didn’t drink it. Sure, we’d get some in our mouths inadvertently, and we’d spit it out. The taste is bitter. We’d accuse each other of peeing in the creek. My brother would needle me — Cassie drinks water fish screw in, ha ha ha — and I’d swear up and down I didn’t drink any such thing. But Krom drank.
He straightened.
No one swims in Hot Creek anymore. Except Krom.
He raised his arms, showing muscle, and gave a long stretch. The move turned his inner arms outward, my way. The skin there was a shade lighter. There was something on his inside right arm, covering half the forearm. Dark, mottled, with a whitish background. If I had to guess I’d say it was a tattoo.
I realized I’d never seen him with his shirt sleeves rolled up.
He dove into the water and went under and I held my breath along with him and nearly burst before he came up, farther downstream. Now just his head was visible, wet and brown and slick. He had surfaced a few feet, at most, from where the steam gathers above the water.
That was risky.
The knees of my jeans were wet from the snow. I shivered, planning. Get out before he does. If he goes first he’ll pass the Subaru and he’ll know — assuming he didn’t already know. And that’s assuming he doesn’t see me pressed against the boulder on his way to the trail. Where were his clothes? I’d have put mine on the boulder so they’d stay dry. Maybe he’d gone in downstream. Maybe he was heading back that way to get dressed.
I was right.
He came out of the water downstream, rising so smooth and fast that the water sheeted off him. He stopped at the bank, feet still in water. One more step and he’s walking barefoot in snow.
There came a sound. I’ve made that sound here too. Laughter.
But it scared the bejesus out of me.
His laugh was rich. He was having a good full-throated laugh at something. He threw his head back, baring his throat like he was going into that coyote exhilaration cry again but he just went silent and stared up into the night.