A Branch Too Far (The Leafy Hollow Mysteries Book 3)

by Rickie Blair

  “It’s fine, Emy,” I said. “I’ve rappelled before. It’s easy. The only hard part is coming back up, and Lorne will take care of that.”

  She hesitated.

  “I’m not going far,” I added.

  Emy turned to Lorne. “You’re certain you can pull her up?”

  “Scout’s honor.”

  He helped me with the harness, checked the connections, and tied me in. Lorne reviewed a few safety rules—most of which I recalled from my Outward Bound excursion.

  I walked backward until my heels hung over the rim and the rope was taut.

  “Okay,” Lorne said. “Here we go.”

  I stepped off the edge.

  At first it was exhilarating to slide down the cliff, my feet bouncing off the rock face. A breeze ruffled my hair, and crisp night air filled my lungs.

  Within seconds, my feet connected with the solid heft of the ledge twenty feet down. “I’m here,” I called.

  Lorne tightened the line while I bent my head to light up my surroundings with the lamp. The light shone on pieces of fence railing—several with signs of a fresh break—nestled in a few shrubs growing on the ledge. I leaned over to reach for the nearest one, but the taut rope held me back.

  “More slack please, Lorne,” I yelled.

  He complied. This time when I bent, I could tickle the end of the railing with my fingers. Grunting, I stretched as far as I could and closed my hand around it.

  “Got it!” I hollered. With another grunt of effort, I drew the railing up against my chest and grabbed it with my other arm. The movement pulled my torso away from the rock face. Which made my feet slip. And then my entire body was twirling in midair, my feet flapping.

  As I swung helplessly out from the cliff, still clasping the fence railing, I looked down. My lamp lit up the first fifty feet or so of the vertical rock that plunged beneath me. The rest was in blackness.

  I hung for a second in mid-air, my chest heaving in ragged gusts. When I tried to speak, nothing came out.

  Then I swung back, hitting the rock face with a thud. As my feet regained the ledge, I flattened my right arm against the cliff and tensed my grip against it, clinging to the rough rock as if my fingertips had suction cups on them.

  I gulped in air until my breathing gradually slowed.

  With my left hand, I inched the fence piece higher until it was nestled under my chin. Then I slapped my left arm, too, flat against the cliff, sighing deeply as my fingertips gripped the rock.

  I closed my eyes.

  “Are you all right, Verity?” Lorne called. “I’m going to haul you up now. Hang on.”

  My fingers wouldn’t release their hold on the rock.

  “No,” I said feebly. “Not yet.”

  “What?” Lorne called. “We can’t hear you.”

  “I said…” The words caught in my throat, and I raised my voice. “Not yet.”

  Emy’s face, white in the moonlight, appeared over the edge. “Did you find something else?”

  “No.”

  “Lorne’s ready to pull you up.”

  “Please don’t.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Give me a minute,” I hollered in what I hoped was a cheerful tone. I nudged the piece of railing a fraction of an inch down my chest. Tentatively, I lifted the fingertips of my left hand away from the rock. Carefully, I slid that hand toward my chest.

  I swayed, and the rope creaked above me. I slapped my hand back flat against the cliff.

  With my face smooshed against the rock face, I closed my eyes and tried to stave off the anxiety attack that threatened to close my throat. I tried to concentrate on breathing, but my reptilian brain was running in circles, hollering, You’re going to die! Forget the stupid breathing exercises!

  I resorted to gasping for air.

  Much better.

  “Verity? Are you ready now?” Emy called.

  “I can’t,” I wailed. “I’m sorry.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t? We have to get out of here.”

  “Go without me,” I mumbled, wondering if dawn would illuminate my desiccated body, still clinging to the rock.

  “What did you say?”

  I opened my eyes, anchored my feet on the ledge, and angled my head to the side to look down.

  Big mistake.

  The floor of the valley rushed up, all rocks and branches and terror. A wave of vertigo swept over me. With a gasp, I slapped my cheek against the cliff and closed my eyes again.

  “Verity?” Lorne called.

  “I think she’s stuck,” Emy said, her voice rising. “Lorne, do something.”

  The voices overhead were muffled, but then Lorne called again. I assumed he was leaning over the edge, but there was no way I was going to look.

  “You can’t fall, Verity, you’re tied to the rope. And it’s tied to the pitons.”

  Sure, I thought. Unless the rock cracks and those pitons slip out and… I fought the urge to look down again.

  Physically, I was rigid. Mentally, I was slapping myself silly. Rappelling is fun, you said. I’ve done it before, you said. Are you a complete idiot?

  Lorne’s voice interrupted my inner lecturer.

  “The line is taut, Verity. I’m pulling you up.”

  “No!” I screamed. I swallowed hard and attempted to modulate that response. “Just give a minute or two,” I yelled cheerily. “I’ll be fine.” Even to my ears, my optimism sounded forced.

  More muffled conversation above me, followed by the rustle of equipment and the snaps of a climbing harness being adjusted.

  Then Emy called, “I’m coming down, Verity. Hang on.”

  “Please don’t,” I mumbled. “Not a good idea.”

  A rope slapped against the cliff. Emy rappelled down and stopped beside me.

  “Why did you do that?” I wailed with my cheek flattened against the rock and pebbles permanently embedded in my face. “Now we’ll both die.”

  Emy gave my shoulder a reassuring pat. “We’re not going to die, Verity. Lorne is going to pull me up, and you’ll see how easy it is.”

  A gust of wind dropped a clump of soggy leaves on my head.

  “I’m sorry to be so much trouble,” I said as a pebble followed the leaves to bounce off my forehead.

  “Verity?”

  “Yes?” I croaked.

  “You’re hyperventilating. Take a deep breath.” Emy gave her rope a tug. “Ready, Lorne.”

  Emy’s rope went taut. The toes of her running shoes started up the cliff face, one step at a time. “See?” she said, swiveling her head to face me. “It’s easy.” Her expression changed. “Wait, Lorne…” Emy tried to pull up her trailing foot. It was trapped in a shrub. “Oh, crackers.” She yanked her leg. Her foot still didn’t move.

  The rope creaked above her, growing tauter.

  “Stop, Lorne,” she called. “My foot’s stuck.”

  He must not have heard her over the wind, because the rope continued to drag her upward until her legs were far apart. One foot was stuck in the shrub, and the other had almost reached her head. As a teenager, Emy had been a gymnast—but there are limits.

  “Stop!” I screamed, trying to swivel my gaze upward without prying my cheek from the cliff.

  Emy joined in. “Lorne! Stop!”

  Lorne stuck his head over the edge. When he saw Emy’s contorted figure, he panicked. “I’ll be right there,” he yelled.

  “No. Don’t do that…”

  Emy’s voice was lost in the wind. Within seconds, Lorne had flung another rope over the edge and rappelled down. Gently, he pulled Emy’s captured foot free.

  Emy rappelled back down to the ledge, followed by Lorne.

  The three of us stood there, hundreds of feet above the valley. Pine trees creaked and moaned around us. An owl hooted. A cool breeze ruffled our hair.

  “Good job, Lorne,” Emy said.

  I winced, recognizing that tone.

  “No problem.” He hadn’t caught on
yet.

  “How are we going to get out of here now?” She thumped him with her elbow.

  At Lorne’s surprised “Oof,” the owl burst from its perch, wings flapping, to soar over the valley.

  With my one eye—the one that wasn’t glued to the cliff—I watched the owl glide past the full moon and into the velvet blue beyond. “At least it’s dry tonight,” I said.

  The words were barely out of my mouth when a whoosh rattled the branches above us and a cold wind sliced across our faces.

  “Uh-oh,” I said, wincing. “I think it’s going to—”

  Rain pelted down.

  I shivered as water ran down my neck and under my collar.

  “Well, Lorne?” Emy asked, wiping water from her face. “Now what?”

  Before he could answer, a muffled “Hallo!” drifted from the rim above. “Anybody down there?”

  Still gripping the rock face—now slippery from the rain—I swiveled my head far enough to make out two faces peering over the edge. They wore identical helmets with white monogrammed patches on the fronts.

  Firefighters.

  Someone had seen our flashlights and reported us. No chance of a low-key escape now. I groaned and smooshed my face even tighter against the cliff.

  Despite my terror, my mood lightened. Not only was I not going to die, but I was about to fulfill a lifelong dream of being rescued by firefighters. Wait till Patty heard about this.

  “We’ll have you out of there in a jiff,” the first man called. He pointed to Lorne. “We’ll bring you up first, son, and you can help us rescue the others.”

  Lorne looked grim as he was hauled up the rock face. When he disappeared over the top, I said to Emy—out of the side of my mouth—“Don’t be too hard on him. He panicked because he thought you were in trouble.”

  She winced. “It’s not that. Lately, he’s been a bit… standoffish.”

  “What do you mean?” Given that one side of my face was flattened against a cliff, I thought this heart-to-heart could have waited, but—

  “He goes off somewhere and he won’t tell me where. He makes up excuses, and they’re pretty feeble. A couple of times, he even said he was working with you when he wasn’t.”

  “And you know this because…”

  “I may have checked up on him. Once or twice. But don’t tell him,” she whispered. Emy’s rope tightened. “You’d tell me, wouldn’t you? I mean, if Lorne was…” The rest of her sentence was lost in the wind. Soon she was also at the top. More muffled conversation followed.

  A firefighter rappelled down to the ledge, landed lightly, and turned to me with a smile. “Now then, Verity. My name is Bob. You and I will go up together, nice and slow. If you get nervous, you just let me know and I’ll signal them to stop hauling on your rope. Okay?”

  The wrinkles around his eyes and the gray in his hair assured me this was a veteran, well able to save my embarrassed butt. Still…

  “You’ve done this before, right?” I asked.

  “Many times,” he assured me. “Are you ready?”

  I scrunched my eyes closed. At least with the rain, my face was already wet so no one would notice if any tears of gratitude welled up.

  “I’m good.”

  “One last thing,” he said.

  I opened my eyes. “Yes?”

  He grinned. “Don’t look down.”

  Our ascent was a blur, probably because I kept my eyes closed the entire time.

  Once I was back on the rim and several yards from the edge, I turned to my rescuer. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it. We don’t get called out that much. Haven’t had a good blaze in weeks.”

  His firefighter buddy, reeling in the last of the ropes, looked up. “Well, there was that big brush fire near the racetrack.”

  “Oh, I forgot about that. But no house fires, thank goodness. And this is only our third rescue this summer. It’s good practice. We don’t usually get called out at night for these though.”

  “That’s not true, Cap’n. Remember those teenagers last month?”

  “Oh—right again. But they’d been drinking.”

  “True.” They turned to look at me.

  I shook my head vigorously. “We weren’t drinking. Not a drop.”

  I whirled at a man’s deep voice behind me. “Who wasn’t drinking?”

  Jeff arched his eyebrows at me. His shirt was untucked on one side, his cap was nowhere in evidence, and he was panting slightly, as if he’d been running. After scanning me with a head-to-toe sweep—checking to see if I’d lost any body parts, maybe—he turned to the firefighters. “What happened?”

  They told him.

  Jeff ran his hands through his hair and let out a long breath before replying. “Thanks, guys.”

  “No problem.” They headed down the escarpment trail, carrying their equipment. “Take it easy, Verity,” the captain called over his shoulder.

  I turned to face Jeff.

  Lorne and Emy tried to melt into the underbrush. When I glared at them, they stopped backing up, looking sheepish.

  “Before you say anything…” I looked around for the broken fence railing I’d dropped at the top and found it near the edge. After I retrieved it, I handed it over.

  “That’s a fresh break,” I said while Jeff examined the railing under the light of my helmet lamp. “Lucy was pushed through that fence. It wasn’t suicide.”

  “I know,” he said, shading his eyes from the light. “You can turn that off now.”

  “Sorry.” I switched off my lamp. “What do you mean?”

  “When the coroner examined her body, he found bruises that he believes could have been inflicted before she fell.”

  A memory of swinging on a rope hundreds of feet above the valley flashed through my mind, along with a wave of fear. I sank onto the nearest boulder and rested my hands on my knees. “So…” I swallowed back my renewed panic attack, “We did this for nothing?”

  “That’s right.” Jeff swiveled on Lorne and Emy, who straightened up. “You two can leave. I need a word alone with Verity.”

  They gathered the equipment, backed up until they hit the trail, and vanished down it without a word.

  I snorted. All for one, eh?

  Jeff said nothing for a while. Then he sat heavily on the rock beside me and heaved a sigh. “Verity… I can’t do it.”

  My throat tightened. “What do you mean?”

  “Dinner. Friday night.”

  I let out a sigh of relief. “Did something come up? That’s okay. We can go another time.”

  He clasped his hands before him, not looking at me. Moonlight shone on his face, but not bright enough that I could make out his expression.

  “No… we can’t,” he said.

  I considered sliding closer, but something in his voice dissuaded me. “Why?” I asked.

  He drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “You get into too much trouble, Verity. I can’t deal with it.”

  For a moment, I thought he was kidding.

  When he added, “I’m sorry,” I knew he was serious.

  Jeff rose and extended his hand to help me up. I clasped it, but he let go as soon as I’d regained my feet. He picked up the fence railing and started walking. I followed him down the trail. Neither of us spoke.

  Hoots and bird calls erupted in the surrounding trees, but I didn’t try to identify them. Any woodcocks or night herons or whip-poor-wills were on their own.

  Emy and Lorne were waiting in the cab of the truck. I climbed in behind the wheel. Lorne handed me the keys, and I revved the engine. Emy put a hand on my arm, but I shrugged it off.

  While I drove through the parking lot to the exit, I glanced in the rearview mirror. Jeff leaned against his cruiser, watching me. I gunned the accelerator and sped off down the road.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The next day, sitting at the bakery table with Patty, I glumly contemplated the maple-bacon cupcake on my plate. This time, no amount of ba
ked goods, not even Emy’s signature concoction, could erase the sting of defeat. Miserably, I reviewed my lack of progress.

  I had failed to clear Thérèse.

  I had embarrassed myself in front of the entire village, judging by the comments of the residents Patty and I passed on our way to the bakery: “Verity! Drop in any time,” and “Verity, you’re looking a bit Peaked.” Followed by gales of laughter. That’s Leafy Hollow for you—comedy central.

  I could no longer flatter myself that my panic attacks were under control—unless sheer terror was an improvement over ordinary anxiety. I’d have to check the Ninja Guide on that one.

  But worst of all, I’d driven away the only man I’d been interested in since Matthew died. That knowledge weighted the pit of my stomach like an entire bushel of sunchokes.

  Maybe the cupcake would help. I raised it to my mouth and took a big bite of maple goodness. I chewed, mumbling under my breath. Nope. Not working.

  “What’s that, hon?” Patty asked. “I couldn’t hear you.” She was rummaging around in a tote bag at her feet, pulling out oblong Tupperware containers with bright red lids. She resurfaced and placed them on the table. “Did you say something?”

  I paused mid-mumble to blink at the plastic boxes. “Patty?” I said, my voice rising a little. “What are those?”

  “Ah.” She patted the top lid fondly. “Last night, when you were out with your friends on your secret mission”—she flexed her eyebrows conspiratorially, looking delighted—“I whipped up a few things to help out. I knew Emy would be too tired this morning to bake much.”

  I dropped the cupcake on my plate, my gaze riveted by the red plastic.

  Uh-oh.

  I swiveled my head to check out Emy’s glass-fronted counter, full to bursting with freshly baked butter tarts, scones, and cupcakes.

  “Really?” I said weakly. “That was nice of you.”

  The faint tinkle of the doorbell in Emy’s vegan shop next door announced the departure of her latest customer, no doubt bearing a barbecued sweet potato sandwich, or her ever-popular avocado and grilled faux-cheese. No mention was ever made over there of the bacon-maple specialties that lay only a few feet away.

  Emy appeared in the doorway that linked her two shops. She rubbed the heels of her hands into her eyes before staring blearily at us.