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A silence followed, one so awkward that even through the miasma of alcohol and weirdness A
"I've already called her," Frederick said, his voice curiously devoid of expression.
At the time A
With the impact of an Old Testament revelation, A
The knowledge, accurate or not, broke on her consciousness with the force of lightning. A pit beside which Lechuguilla paled opened in A
Had Frederick Stanton been the proverbial last man on earth and Molly the recipient of the last fabled Spanish fly, there wouldn't have been an affair.
The pit closed. Sanity resurfaced.
"And?" A
"She wasn't home," Frederick admitted.
Of course she was home. It was 11:40 P.M. New York time on a Tuesday night. Molly was drinking Scotch and watching Leno. She was a woman of regular habits. Nothing short of a patient crisis or a seventy-five-percent-off sale at Bergdorf Goodman could lure her out from one of her sacred "at home" nights. She'd refused to pick up. She'd probably refused to pick up for two years.
"She'll be home for me," A
Three times she tried to dial Molly. On the third attempt her fumbling fingers pushed all the right numbers. As expected, the machine answered.
"It's me, A
A clatter of plastic followed as A
"A
"I've been drinking," A
"It happens," Molly said.
"And thinking about Zach."
"Oh, my. Sounds like you've had a real bad day."
Not alone, A
11
Her part in the rescue at an end, A
Beer and bruises had given her a fitful night's sleep. Thrashing around in Zeddie's down comforter, she stalked and was stalked by killers of all stripes. More than once she woke up in a panic, fighting a ceiling of stone that was no longer there. Around three in the morning she'd dragged her bedding out onto the back patio to feel the reassuring cold of starlight on her skin as she slept. When day finally dawned she was relieved, if not rested.
Between her first cup of coffee and her morning shower she formulated a modest plan. Or the first stumbling steps of a plan. Sondra needed to be tracked down, information on the other members of the team to be ferreted out. Bundled up in a sweater of Zeddie's and a battered leather jacket she'd inherited when Zachary died, she walked from the housing area to the cluster of neat stone buildings that housed Carlsbad's administrative offices.
Clouds hung heavy over the desert, adding a pervasive damp to winter's chill, dulling the light of the sun to a gray throb in the south. To A
That assumption couldn't have been more wrong. Once in the door she was caught up in the machinery of government.
In the wake of the failed rescue attempt and the blaring media coverage, administration was buzzing with activity. Each decision would be reviewed, all plans reconsidered in a new light that would change as the political winds changed. Blame might be assigned, selected heads might roll but, most important, a dense layer of paper would be generated. Like a frightened squid obscuring the past with ink, the NPS would muffle the incident in memos, reports, and revised operating procedures.
As A
The implication that A
Jewel was a stocky woman in her early thirties with an abundance of black hair curling down her back to bra-fastener level. Not a glint of a shine escaped the careful tangle of curls, not a thread of gray or red or brown. The hair was black as construction paper, flat and rough. Bangs and sides were cut short and teased high on the crown. Hair was molded into flying wings above each ear with industrial-strength hair spray. From the front the coif looked big, a lion's mane. From the side the effect was lost. The volume was two-dimensional; the popular style always made A
"What's up?" she asked in hopes of opening cha
The secretary was more interested in her computer screen than in gossiping with A
"Critical incident stress debriefing?"
"Something like that."
After incidents in which rangers were exposed to unusually stressful situations-the death of children or fellow employees, long rescues in which the victim died, or messy accidents with burned or mutilated bodies-the National Park Service had instituted debriefing sessions, times when the rangers involved could theoretically come to terms with their own personal trauma. Undoubtedly the idea was a sound one, but A
She eyed Laymon's office door suspiciously. Jewel had just said Brent, not a whole host of cavers. One-on-one was unusual unless it was with a bona fide psychologist. Laypeople trained to run the sessions always had all the participants in at the same time. Part of the therapy: sharing fears, inadequacies, strengths. Coming to know you weren't alone, that the bizarre things that passed through your mind weren't an indication of a character flaw. She turned her attention back to the secretary.