"What time was that?"
"Next morning. First light, a bicyclist called our office."
"Was the vehicle recovered?"
The sheriff shook his head. "No way. Two of my deputies and I had to rappel down just to recover the bodies."
A shiver trembled through Addison at the mention of her parents' bodies. She hated thinking of them in such ghastly terms.
"What were the causes of death?" Randall asked.
"Trauma. Autopsy reports are there, too." The sheriff rose from his desk and reached for the file. "Let me make you a copy of this. You folks can take it with you." He lumbered over to a desktop copier that groaned out two copies of each report.
Randall sent a concerned look to Addison. "Are you all right?"
"I just want to get this over with." She'd made it over the first hurdle. She wondered how many more she would have to leap before the day was over.
The sheriff handed the stapled copies to Randall. "If you have any more questions or need any more information about this accident, feel free to give me a call."
"We'll do that."
Ten minutes later, Addison and Randall were back in his Jeep heading south on Highway 9 toward Hoosier Pass. In the half hour they'd spent with Sheriff White, the afternoon sky had gone from a crisp, flawless blue to charcoal gray. Ominous clouds billowed like smoke on the western horizon.
Addison pored over the accident report, trying to make sense of the handwriting and abbreviations. "This report lists icy road conditions and excessive speed as the cause."
Randall glanced over at her.
"My father was a cautious driver," she said. "He didn't speed. Not on a mountain road at night, especially if the roads were icy."
''The roads weren't icy that night. The report says they hit an icy patch."
Frustrated, she looked down at the report. Her eyes skimmed down to the bottom of the page where the sheriff had written a short summary, including another theory that the driver may have fallen asleep at the wheel.
"This isn't right," she said. ''There's no way my father fell asleep at the wheel."
"How do you know?"
"For one thing, my mother could talk a hundred miles an hour. She never stopped talking, especially if she had my father captive in the car." The memory made her smile. "Besides, I served coffee after dinner that night. Haitian Bleu, if my memory serves me. My father loved the dark grinds and drank it by the gallon. The man had enough caffeine in his system to keep the city of Denver awake for a week."
"The report says it was late, Addison. Well after midnight."
"My father was a night bird. He was retired and liked to stay up late and sleep late. I'm telling you he wasn't tired when he left my apartment."
"Are you sure he was driving?"
"My mother was blind as a bat at night. She never drove after dark."
For the first time since they'd left the sheriff's office, Randall gave her his full attention. "All the more reason to take a look at the vehicle."
Until now, she'd assumed he was only interested in seeing the scene of the accident, not the vehicle itself. ''The car rolled over two hundred feet." She glanced through the passenger window, realizing how physically grueling a trek into a ravine would be. "How are we going to reach it?"
The look he gave her wasn't friendly. "Don't take this personally, Ace, but you're not going with me. You're going to keep that cute little butt of yours in the truck and make sure I make it back in one piece."
The reference to her backside annoyed her, but not nearly as much as him telling her she wasn't going with him into the ravine. "Don't take this personally, tough guy, but I'll damn well go into the ravine with you if I feel it's necessary and I just happen to feel it's necessary."
"Dammit, Addison, I'm not kidding around." He pointed toward the horizon. “There's a front coming in, and I don't want to be here when it dumps two feet of snow. It's great for skiers, but hell on drivers."
She'd been too preoccupied to notice the line of steel gray clouds building in the west. "I'm fully aware of the weather, but I don't see what it has to do with me taking a look at my parents’ car."
"If that ravine's as rugged as I think it is, it's going to take me a while to rappel down. I don't need you slowing me down. I want to get in and out as quickly and as safely as possible. Then we've got to get down this mountain before heavy weather sets in. By the looks of those clouds, I'd say we have another couple of hours of decent driving left."
She hated it when he made more sense than she did. Granted, she was no rock climber, but it was going to be difficult to sit back and let him go into that ravine alone.
She was about to concede when he suddenly slowed the Jeep and pulled onto the narrow shoulder. To her right, Addison saw nothing but the tops of aspens and clear mountain air. She'd never been afraid of heights, but the sight of the drop sent a shiver through her.
"What mile marker does it say on the report?" he asked.
She paged through the report and found the mile marker number circled. "Forty feet south of mile marker thirty-five."
"This is it." Not giving her time to protest, he swung open the door and stepped out of the Jeep. "Stay put."
She shot him the best go-to-hell look she could muster.
He grinned and slammed the door.
Too restless to sit in the truck, Addison got out and walked to the rear of the Jeep. "I'm-going with you."
Randall removed a nylon rappelling harness, a coil of rope, and a pair of worn leather gloves from the bed. A small disposable camera hung around his neck. But he didn't look like a tourist. He looked fit and determined and very capable.
"Shouldn't take me any longer than forty-five minutes to rappel down, take a few pictures, then climb back up." His eyes swept down to hers, looking as dark and dangerous as the approaching storm. "Wait in the truck."
The wind had kicked up to a cutting speed, whistling through the treetops, accentuating the quiet and the fact that they were totally alone. "I've every right to go--"
"Forget it, Ace. The terrain's too rough." He started for the ravine.
He looked like a seasoned rock climber in his faded Levi's, cleated hiking boots, and parka. Addison watched him loop the rope around the base of an aspen, clip it onto his safety harness, .and test it with a yank. She couldn't help but notice his well-muscled thighs or the way the harness accentuated his male attributes. With a cavalier wave, he started into the ravine.
Addison waited until he was out of sight before venturing off the shoulder. While she stood shivering in the bitter wind, she noticed a path cut into the trees. Easing closer to the edge of the ravine, she saw the broken trunks and realized the sapling aspen and pine had been clipped close to the ground ten months earlier when her parents' Lincoln had plummeted over the edge.
She tried not to imagine the terror they must have felt in the seconds, before their deaths. Had the roll into the ravine killed them? she wondered. Or had they suffered with broken bodies and the brutal elements? Had they died together? Or had one of them been forced to watch the other in the throes of death? They were excruciating questions. Questions that left her heart raw and a new bitterness in the pit of her stomach. Suddenly Addison knew she couldn't sit in the truck and do nothing. As painful as the thought was, she wanted to see the car. She wanted to touch it. And she desperately needed to know if her parents had been murdered.
Shivering, she edged closer to the drop-off and looked into the ravine. "Fox, you're insane," she said, grasping the nylon rope. Mimicking Randall's form, she began an awkward descent down the steep incline.
She'd only traveled a dozen feet when she realized her mittens hadn't been designed to stand up against the rough surface of a braided nylon rope. By the time she'd traveled fifty feet, a hole had worn into the palm and the rope bit into her skin with the .fervor of a hungry rat. By the time she'd traveled a hundred feet, she realized how foolish it had been for her to attempt the climb.
"A
dmit it, Fox," she said to herself through clenched teeth, "the Neanderthal was right." A branch from a sapling scraped against her face hard enough to open the skin and yank the muffs from her ears.
"Ouch!" She brought her only remaining mitten to her face, cursing when it came away red. Looking up, she spotted her earmuffs banging from a branch like a cheap Christmas tree ornament. The Jeep was no longer in sight and, to her dismay, the climb back up looked worse than the climb down. "Oh, this is just peachy," she muttered.
Returning her attention to the ravine, she wondered how Randall had managed to get so far ahead of her so quickly. Simple, she thought. He does this all the time. Weekend warrior stuff. If he could do it, she certainly could.
Feeling like a fool, she resumed her descent. Early on, there had been no doubt in her mind that she could make it to the ravine floor. It was just a little hill, after all. But faced with the rugged terrain and rocks the size of Volkswagens, her confidence withered. Her mittens no longer protected her hands and, somehow, she'd lost the bow keeping her hair out of her face. He arms were beginning to ache and, to her utter horror, her grip seemed to be waning. She considered retreating, but couldn't bring herself to admit defeat—not that she thought she could climb back up. But, dammit, the last thing she wanted was to give Randall the chance to say I told you so.
After fifteen minutes of struggling with the rope, she settled into a rhythm, easing down a couple of feet at a time, sliding her left foot, then her right. Despite the fact that her arms were aching and her legs felt like overcooked spaghetti, she thought she could make it.
With just over thirty feet to go, she took her right hand off the rope to shove the hair out of her eyes. When she reached for the rope, she missed. Adrenaline skittered through her when she felt her other mitten slip off. The last thing she saw was her hiking boots as they went over her head. Then she was tumbling backward.
Tree branches clawed at her face and hair while the heavier trunks punched her in all the wrong places. Something hard and sharp cut into her shoulder as she flipped end over end. She heard branches breaking, heard herself cry out as they bit through her sweatshirt. Then her body went still as suddenly as it had cartwheeled out of control.
The first thing she became aware of was the wind humming through the pines above her, the sound of footsteps, and pain.
"Addison!" Randall's voice pounded into her brain.
She moaned.
"What the bloody hell are you doing?"
She opened her eyes. He crouched over her, his expression as furious as it was concerned. Damp, dark hair fell across his forehead. A grimace tightened his jaw. "Are you hurt?"
"My mitten slipped off," she said, mentally tallying her injuries. It was the rock in the shoulder that had really done her in. Jesus, that hurt. She lifted her hand to her face where the branch had cut her.
"Lie still, dammit."
"I feel like I hit a land mine."
"What the devil were you thinking?"
"I wasn't." An involuntary groan escaped her as she shifted her weight. "Am I dead?"
"Don't give me any ideas." He leaned close to her, his hands pressing her down. "Hell, I might just leave your ass here for the coyotes."
"Stop talking about my ass, Talbot. You're going to tick me off again." She tried to move, wincing when her knee protested.
"Hold still."
"God, you're a bully. Even when I'm hurt, you can't be nice to me."
"Can you move your toes?"
She closed her eyes against the pain, wiggled first her right and then her left toes. "Yeah."
"What about your fingers?"
"Check." Raising her hand, she looked at her once-perfect nails and groaned. "I broke three nails on just one hand. I don't even want to look at the other one."
"You're lucky you didn't break your neck," he growled.
"You didn't warn me that rappelling was so painful."
"Any pain in your back?"
"No. Just my shoulder. The right one. Jesus, I hate rocks. I should have dodged the rocks. I guess I just wasn't quick enough, huh, Talbot?"
"You have to be smarter than the rock."
"Kick a girl when she's down why don't you?"
One side of his mouth quirked. Sliding his hands beneath her shoulders, he eased her to a sitting position. "Dizzy?"
"No. My shoulder hurts."
"Lucky you had that sweatshirt on."
"I don't feel very lucky."
"They always say God looks out for idiots and children."
"Stop yelling at me. I've been punished enough." She said the last word through her teeth as the pain in her shoulder clamped down on her like a vise. "Ouch. It hurts."
Without preamble, he lifted the sweatshirt up and over her shoulder. "Lean forward."
Addison obeyed without complaint, wincing only a little when the cold wind whispered over her bare back. Then she felt the warmth of his hand as he probed, and did her best to ignore the tingle of pleasure that followed. "It's getting a little breezy back there, Talbot. What's the prognosis?"
"Nice bra," he commented. "Front closure?"
Despite the pain, she smiled. "Let me know your size and I'll pick one up for you next time I'm at Victoria's Secret."
His laughter echoed through the trees. A rare, pleasant sound that made her stomach feel jittery. "Nothing's broken, but you're going to have one hell of a bruise."
"I'm going to have bruises over ninety percent of my body."
"It's such a shame to mar that lovely back of yours."
His mouth was so close to her ear she could feel the warmth of his breath. Trying to ignore the blood that had climbed into her face, she tugged the sweatshirt down. "I'm really glad I wore my good bra today, Talbot. Had I worn my sports bra you probably would have left me for the coyotes."
"I don't have anything against any form of lingerie, Ace." He rose and extended his hand to her. "But I've always been partial to pink lace."
"I can't see you in pink." Realizing she was still too shaky to rise of her own power, Addison accepted his hand, trying not to wince as he pulled her to her feet.
"That was an incredibly stupid thing to do." He glared down at her with an intensity that made her look away. "I'm going to have to make time for a manicure now. Think we can squeeze one into our schedule between shootouts this week?"
He didn't look amused. He was standing too close again, intimidating her with that nasty scowl and those dark, angry eyes. "I told you to stay in the damn truck. You could have gotten yourself killed."
Addison didn't want to think about death in a place where two people she loved dearly had perished. A powerful shiver went through her. “Think we could waive the lecture?"
He reached out and clamped his hand around her forearm, forcing her around to face him. "You're cut." He raised his hand and touched her cheek. "I've got a first aid kit in the truck.”
"I don't think it's deep," she said, looking anywhere but into his eyes. She knew what resided in those murky depths. And it was much more than she wanted to deal with at the moment.
Giving herself a mental shake, she turned her face away from his hand. As if sensing her need for space, Randall released her and stepped away.
"Did you find the car?" she asked.
He pointed to a mass of skeletal vines and saplings. “There,” he said with a grimace.
Addison looked past him. Then she was moving, on legs that no longer felt pain, on feet that were beyond cold. The mangled Lincoln was sitting at a sharp angle against an outcropping of rock. The car bad once been silver, but ten months of mountain extremes had turned the crumpled metal to rust. As she drew nearer, she noticed the windshield was completely gone, perhaps in the crash, perhaps at the hands of the men who had come down the mountain to remove her parents' bodies.
Hesitantly, she peered through the windshield. The front seat was intact. The once plush leather was badly weathered and covered with dirt and moss. A bird had nested at some point on the
dash, leaving a pile of dried grass and twigs atop the cracked vinyl.
Addison reached out and ran her hand over a small area of silver paint that was still as flawless as the day her father had bought the car. For an instant, she felt close to them. The way she felt when she went to the cemetery. When she held her favorite picture of them against her heart.
A vivid burst of memory flashed through her mind. Mom and Dad at Christmas last year. They'd given her luggage, she remembered. A new espresso maker that matched her kitchen. That ugly-as-sin vase she now treasured. God, how she missed them.
"Addison."