on the Stillwater Trail.”
“How many of you went on the climb?”
It still didn’t seem real that Vincente was here in Lia’s pink-and-white room. He was seated with his back against the closet—the one on which Beth had carefully stenciled teddies and bunnies—with his knees drawn up and his clasped hands resting loosely between them. He looked so big and masculine. That should be reassuring, right? His presence should make her feel safe and protected. Maybe it would...if it wasn’t for the contents of the envelope she held in her hands.
“There were two instructors and eight junior climbers. Although we were amateurs, the Devil’s Peak is so difficult, we had to have a high level of expertise before we could be included in the team. Although I was only eighteen, and the youngest member of the group, I had been part of the club since I was thirteen. I’d done some tricky climbs and Rick Sterling, the lead instructor, was my mentor. He had partnered me on several tricky climbs and he decided I was qualified enough to join this one.” Beth tried out a smile. “I was so excited when he said I could go along. In hindsight, I wish he’d told me to stay at home.”
“I don’t know much about these things, but I know the Devil’s Peak is a beast of a climb,” Vincente said. “I read an article not so long ago rating it one of the top ten hardest in the country.”
“It’s a killer.” Beth winced as she said the words. “Climbing the Peak was always going to involve an overnight stay. We started out hiking through the alpine meadows at the base, then it became like a rocky moonscape before we had to tackle a vertical notch known as the Keyhole. The drop-offs from there were like nothing I’d ever seen. It was vertigo-inducing. We were about halfway up when, without warning, the weather changed. We were caught in a snowstorm. The wind was lashing around us and more snow was whipping off the surrounding peaks. We were completely exposed. Halfway up a dangerous rock face with nowhere to go.”
“Surely your instructors had checked the weather conditions before you set off?” Vincente asked.
“They had. This was totally unexpected. And it was one of the recommendations that came out of the inquiry that followed. Now, climbers are warned that the weather on the Devil’s Peak can change in minutes and that forecasts are not always accurate. We didn’t have the benefit of that warning.”
“So you had to choose whether to go up or down?”
“We chose to keep going.” There had been no right or wrong choices. The only decision had been to keep moving in one direction or another. Beth recalled the tension as, blinded by the snow in their faces and buffeted by the wind, they had continued with the climb. Rick had reasoned that, once they reached the next plateau, they could set up camp as planned. “Physically, and mentally, it was the most challenging thing I’ve ever done. Clinging on to the rock while the wind tried to drag me off set every muscle screaming in agony. After a few hours, my arms and legs felt like Jell-O. My brain was mush, I can’t remember having a single coherent thought during that time. We were almost at the top when one of the group fell. His name was Cory Taylor and, after the instructors, he was probably the most experienced climber among us. It was at a point when we’d almost reached safety. He should have been okay by then.”
Beth paused, drawing a breath. It had been so long since she’d talked about it. The horrors of that day hadn’t receded in the intervening years, but she’d thought about it less over time. She supposed that was what coming to terms with it meant. It didn’t go away, but she learned to live with it. When the letter arrived, it had brought it all flooding back, of course. In the two years since then, it had resurfaced regularly.
“I know his injuries were bad.” Vincente’s voice was gentle.
“He broke his neck and his back.” She spoke bluntly. There was no other way to tell it. “We were roped together in pairs. When Cory fell, it was only the skill of Rick’s coleader, Tania Blake, that stopped him and his partner plummeting off the rock face and into oblivion.”
She paused, taking a moment to collect her thoughts. Leaning forward, Vincente placed a hand on her knee, and his touch ricocheted through her like a streak of lightning. It was good and bad. Good because it grounded her, reassured her and brought her back to normality. Bad because she felt a resurgence of all the old feelings tingle through her nerve endings...and how wrong was it to feel like that in this situation?
“Between us, we got Cory to the top of the Keyhole. By that time, we were in a full-blown storm. We had no way of getting medical help for Cory. No radio or cell phone signal. Nothing.” Beth covered her face with her hands at the memory. “It was awful. He was in so much pain. I can still hear his screams, still hear him pleading with us to let him die. He kept saying it was what he wanted. It was the most awful sound I’ve ever heard. And we were so helpless. There was nothing we could do. One of the team, Peter Sharp, was a paramedic. He gave Cory painkillers, but they couldn’t even touch the pain he was in. We had pod tents that we were able to get up in spite of the snow, and we took turns to sit with him during the night. I was the one who was with Cory when it happened.”
“When he died?” Vincente asked.
“When he was murdered.”
* * *
Lia woke up right at the point when Vincente was going to suggest Beth needed to take a break anyway. Telling the ten-year-old story was clearly taking its toll on her. Although Vincente had heard a watered-down account from Beth herself several years ago, and had endured the town gossips’ version of events now and then, hearing the details was harrowing. He still wasn’t sure what the “Murder on the Devil’s Peak,” as it had become known in Stillwater folklore, had to do with Beth’s current problems, but he guessed she was leading up to that.
Worry continued to play in a loop as he observed Beth and thought about what she was telling him. Either the incident on the mountainside had some connection to her current state of mind or her problems were out of control. Either way, he was concerned about her.
The story she had told him was worse than he had imagined. He knew she had been on a climb that had ended in danger and the death of one of her companions, but he hadn’t paid attention to the details. That hadn’t been because he was uncaring. It had been because he had believed Beth wanted to put the whole episode behind her. Now he knew she hadn’t done so. He had been shocked by what she’d told him. Beth had lived through a nightmare. Had she ever really recovered from that?
Beth carried Lia down to the kitchen and handed her to Vincente while she fixed her formula. “Although this still feel weird, you have no idea how useful an extra pair of hands is.” After the drama of the last few hours, he was pleased to see her make an attempt at a joke.
“Why didn’t you get yourself a proper guard dog?” he asked as she opened the door and Melon bundled excitedly into the room.
“Melon is a guard dog.” Beth seemed offended on behalf of her pet.
Melon brought Vincente a chewed-up tennis ball and dropped it at his feet in an invitation to a game. When Vincente ignored him, the dog pushed the toy closer with his nose. “I hate to be the one to break this to you, but that is not a guard dog.”
Beth brought the bottle of milk over, and Lia reached out eager hands for it. “She’ll do all the work if you sit down with her,” Beth said.
They moved to sit at the table. “Are you ready to tell me the rest of it?” Vincente asked as Lia leaned contentedly back against his arm, making little gulping noises as she drank the milk.
Her
