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“Now step down with the right foot, get your footing, disconnect the right carabiner, and reconnect to the eyelet below.”
Javier went first, then Patrick.
“We do that all the way down. Got it?”
A gust of wind cut through the canyon. Patrick was glad to have both carabiners fastened.
“Got it,” said Patrick.
They started slowly. Step down with the left foot, unclip, reclip. Step down with the right, unclip, reclip. Patrick was finding his rhythm, though his legs were painfully reminding him of how far they had to go—at least another four hundred feet.
Javier quickened the pace. Patrick kept up, step for step, clip for clip. With three hundred fifty feet to go, Javier bumped up the pace anotch. Patrick responded, but he was feeling rushed, not entirely comfortable. At three hundred feet, Javier had him working so furiously that he was breaking a sweat, despite the cold. Patrick wasn’t sure he could sustain this pace, and he prayed it didn’t get any quicker, though his mind flashed with the disturbing image of Javier and his knife back at camp, thetap-tap-tapbetween outstretched fingers that built to a wild frenzy all the way down.
Clip, clip, clip.
Patrick glanced over at Javier. He showed no sign of slowing down, but of greater concern was how shiny and new Javier’s pitons were compared to Patrick’s, which were discolored and much older. At two hundred fifty feet, Patrick was having difficulty clipping onto them, the eyelets were so rusted. The pace quickened. Patrick unclipped the left carabiner, and before he could reattach to the piton below it, the weight of his body snapped the rusty right piton from the rock. Patrick was exactly where no climber ever wanted to be, both carabiners disconnected at the top of the Y, hiking out from the cliff with nowhere to go but straight down.
“Javier!”
Javier grabbed him by the wrist. Patrick had just one foothold on the cliff, his left leg dangling, his body hanging off the sheer face of the mountain at a fifty-degree angle.
“Pull me in!”
Javier didn’t. Not only that, but he seemed to resist Patrick’s efforts to pull himself up.
“This isn’t funny! Pull me in!”
Patrick worked from his core, as if trying to do a sit-up in midair. But Javier’s elbow was locked in place, making it impossible for Patrick to save himself.
“Help me!”
Javier’s arm only stiffened. Patrick tried to plant another foot on the cliff face, but he couldn’t get traction. His left leg was shaking, weakening, as Patrick came to the terrifying realization that there were nottwo columns of pitons to allow side-by-side climbing; there was only oneusablecolumn of new pitons, which had replaced the old one. He locked eyes with Javier, and could see that no help was forthcoming. Javier said something in Spanish, but what Patrick thought he heard made no sense in the moment.
“Boss’s orders.”
Then he didn’t just let go of Patrick’s wrist. He pushed off, as if ejecting Patrick from his only foothold.
Patrick felt as though he were flying, but only for an instant. Gravity grabbed him, his body falling at incomprehensible speed, arms and legs flailing, as the jungle canopy below rushed toward him.
Chapter 18
Kate exited the law school’s main lecture hall at 3:00 p.m., her final class of the day.
Cyber Law was the hottest course at American University, so high in demand that it was virtually impossible for all but third-year students to enroll. Most of her classmates dreamed of landing with the NSA or other government agency, or snagging a high-paying job in the cyber department of a Washington megafirm. A few wanted to go straight to Silicon Valley, not necessarily to practice law, or to companies like Buck Technologies. Kate guessed that she was the only one writing a dramatic play.
Kate’s cellphone rang as she was heading down the stairway to the student lounge. It was her father’s assistant.
“Mr. Gamble requests that you stop by the house after class,” she said. “It’s very important.”
Kate said she could “be there in twenty,” grabbed a green iced tea from the café, and started the scenic walk across campus toward Georgetown.
Kate and her father were in agreement that his next residence should be nothing like the penthouse in Tysons Tower, and he’d settled on a classic Italianate-style house on Cooke’s Row on Q Street. Georgetown architecture was often associated with Federal-style town houses, but the Italianate style prevailed from the 1840s to the 1880s, and the finest remaining examples evoked the romantic ideal of an Italian villa. It would be Kate’s first visit to her father’s new address, and she fully anticipated the most secure Italianate-style villa on the East Coast since Al Capone’s dream villa in Miami Beach, and definitely the mosttech-smart. True to form, there was no bell to ring outside the stone wall. Kate peered into the retinal scanner, and the iron gate swung open. She continued across the courtyard, between the north and south towers, to a grand set of entrance doors that, in classic Italianate style, formed an upside-down U. Kate entered and found her father in the first-floor study. He was on the telephone but quickly wrapped up the call upon seeing her.
Kate immediately saw the concern in his eyes.
“What’s wrong?” she asked with trepidation.
“I don’t have many details, so there’s no reason to assume the worst. But this could make the news, and I wanted you to hear it from me first. Patrick Battle has gone missing.”