Not that they’d get far before a bullet hit their back.
Overnight snow blanketed the slope with fresh powder that was about two feet deep, and Oliver tested each footfall for hidden holes by pushing his ice axe into the snow until it touched something solid. It was slow going, but thankfully not too taxing on his already aching muscles.
They arrived at the edge of the crevasse without incident a couple of hours later. Oliver took a moment to peer into the hole, expecting to see the helicopter wreck, but he saw nothing but blue-hued ice. He turned to the others, and a shiver ran up his spine.
Pope had the gun pointed at Holly’s head. The menace in his eyes showed Oliver he had no intentions of messing around. Oliver held up his hands. “Don’t, Pope. We’ll do whatever you want.”
“I know you will. Get in that hole. You.” He indicated to Regi. “Help him.”
Bile rose to Oliver’s throat at the fear in Holly’s eyes. But he shoved his own distress aside, undid the rope that connected him to the sled, and released the webbing to access everything else.
“Holly, can you get the ropes ready?”
Without waiting for Pope’s approval, she stepped forward to take the three loops of rope from Oliver’s outstretched hand. Working together, they set up a belay system that would lower Oliver into the crevasse.
Pope stepped up to the chasm and peered down. The temptation to run at him full pelt was so strong Oliver could picture Pope’s demise. But there were so many things that could go wrong that he managed to talk himself out of it.
Instead, Oliver stepped in close to Holly. “I have a plan,” he whispered.
Her gaze shot from Oliver to Pope and back again. She shook her head. “No, Olly—”
He nodded. “It’s okay, just be ready when I come back up.”
She bit her lip, blinking, then after a long pause, she nodded. When her jaw clenched, he saw the look of determination he’d seen on her numerous times. She’d be ready. She gave him the camera and he zipped it into his jacket pocket. “Take heaps of photos of the bodies.” She didn’t need to clarify which bodies she was talking about…Oliver knew.
A couple of minutes later, it was time to take the giant leap.
With his rope attached to the belay device on Regi’s waist, Oliver turned his back to the crevasse and planted his feet on the edge. “Climber ready.”
Holly was on her stomach, right on the edge of the hole, ready to follow his progress. A rope attached her to Pope, and as much as she’d been repulsed by it, Oliver had been able to convince her of this safety precaution. Should the crevasse give way, especially with how far she was leaning out over it, Pope would stop her fall. She turned to glance over her shoulder at Regi. They’d cleared away the loose snow to reveal the compacted ice, and Regi was seated with the spikes of his crampons driven into the ice to act as a brace. “You ready?”
“Yes.” His gloved hands clamped the rope in the downward position just as Holly had shown him. His left eye was swollen shut, but his good eye was clear and focused, and when he nodded, Oliver was confident Regi understood that their lives were in his hands.
Pope stood back, the gun slack at his side, but that was the only thing slack about him. His pupils were wired, and the two black eyes he sported after Regi’s punch in his nose made him look even crazier. Oliver was under no illusion that Pope would let them get off the mountain alive. It was something Oliver planned to change. He just didn’t know how yet.
Oliver inhaled a long deep breath, let it out in a huge gush, and then, with his eyes on Holly, he descended into the hole. Each step required effort to dig the toe spikes into the ice. The lower he went, the cooler it became, and the harder the ice was to penetrate. It was impossible not to look down, but he saw no signs of the helicopter, let alone frozen bodies.
About ten feet into the crevasse, the wall curved inward. Over the years, since the helicopter opened the original chasm, snow had fallen and hardened with the seasons. The result was a growing overhang that would one day completely cover the crevasse again.
Beneath the overhang the chasm became wider, and when Oliver looked down this time, not only did he see the ledge that he assumed Holly had fallen onto four years ago, but he also saw parts of the wreck a further hundred or so feet below.
Trouble with the overhang was that the more the wall curved inward, the harder it was to keep his feet on the wall. “Holly, I need to go free.”
She would know what that meant, and after a second’s pause, in which he assumed she instructed Regi, she called back to him, “Okay, ready.”
He released his ice axes and when he wriggled his crampon spike free and swung from the edge, Regi’s rope was the only thing stopping him from dropping into the void.
Regi gradually released the rope in a smooth motion that had Oliver spinning in slow circles as he lowered. A ledge was a further five feet down. If it was the same one Holly had fallen onto, it was a miracle she’d landed there at all. It was barely two feet wide. “Nearly there… A couple more feet… Stop.”
“Stop,” Holly repeated his command.
“I’m going to swing onto the ledge.”
“Okay.” He heard her repeat his intention to Regi.
Using his legs, he gradually worked momentum into the rope so he swung like a pendulum. With each swing back and forth he gradually got closer to the wall. His feet touched the ledge but he missed.
“Give me an inch of slack.”
He dropped a fraction, and this time when he reached the wall he pushed off of it, fast and hard so he swung out to the middle of the chasm. When he swung back, he waited till the very last second before he rammed his crampons into the ice.
It worked. “I’m here. Give me some rope.”
Once the rope slackened, Oliver eased away from the edge and glanced around. Within a second he knew he was on the same ledge Holly had fallen onto. Her blood was still there, permanently inked into the ice.
But he couldn’t see the bodies.
For a couple of thumping heartbeats, he wondered if her story had indeed been a figment of her imagination. At that time, she’d been severely wounded, lost, alone, and most likely in shock. The mind does weird things to shield a person from their tortured reality.
Desperate to believe her, he inched along the ledge as it curved around what appeared to be a giant ice pillar. And there they were. Exactly as she’d described them.
A man and a woman, frozen forever in a loving embrace. Holly was right: these two were not kidnapper and victim, as they’d been portrayed in the news. They were lovers who’d gone to great lengths to escape something or someone. Oliver now understood Holly’s determination to bring them and Frederick’s mother justice.
He removed the camera and took a series of photos, paying particular attention to their faces, the heart-shaped gold locket in her fingers, and the suitcase at their feet. After stepping back as far as he dared, he snapped a few photos of their embrace and their position in the crevasse. He photographed their icy grave, both up and down. Across the crevasse was a giant piece of metal jutting out of the ice like a spike. It took Oliver a few moments to realize it’d been one of the helicopter’s skids. The blast must’ve driven it into the ice with some serious force.
Thinking of the helicopter, he eased up to the edge, looked down, and, using the camera, zoomed in on the wreckage below and took a few photos. But when he spied a pair of legs protruding from beneath the charred wreck, he lowered the camera. Nobody needed to see that. He pocketed the camera again and reached for the suitcase.
Oliver needed to buy some time to think. “I need a shovel,” he called up.
Holly relayed his instruction, and, aware that they couldn’t see him, he knelt on the ledge, flipped the suitcase flat, and wrestled with the clasps to open it.
Years of frigid air made the locks a struggle to open. Using the
point of his axe to pry the metal clip, he prayed he didn’t damage the locks. One then the other popped up, and he opened the lid. His breath hitched.
Cash. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. All stacked up in neat bundles.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the shovel being lowered by rope. He stood, and with his feet firmly planted on the ice he used his ice axe to try to reach it. “Hold it there.” It stopped lowering, but it was still a good three feet beyond his grasp. “I can’t reach it. Can you swing the rope?”
Gradually, the shovel swung back and forth. “That’s it, keep going.”
“Got it.” He pulled the shovel over and unhooked it from the rope. He looked at the shovel as a weapon rather than a tool, and found it impossible to comprehend he was even thinking like this.
His mind raced, desperate to formulate a plan.
He turned back to the money, and that’s when an idea hit him. Oliver shut and locked the suitcase, then he stepped up to Frederick’s corpse, removed his hat, and, using a utility knife, he cut a frozen lock of hair from the body. He put it into his top zippered pocket and hooked the shovel onto his utility belt. After one final glance at the bodies, he looked upward. “Okay, I’m ready to come up.”
The rope went taut. Oliver sat back in his harness, and seconds later he left the safety of the ledge. As he dangled over the chasm with the suitcase in his hand, he prayed his plan would work.
Because the second he showed Pope the lock of hair, they were all dead.
Chapter 26
Holly was surprised when Oliver announced he was ready to come up. There was no way he’d reached the bottom of the crevasse, which also meant there was no way he’d seen Milton, or cut a portion of his hair. Her knowledge of the crevasse gave them the advantage.
Neither Pope nor Regi would know Oliver hadn’t reached the bottom.
Oliver said he had a plan. Whatever it was, she was ready to be part of it.
“About time!”
Holly turned to Pope’s gruff voice with clenched teeth. Forcing back the abuse she wanted to spray at him, she channeled her fury into something useful. Something that she’d be willing to unleash at the perfect moment. The gun was still in his hand, and Pope had done nothing but pace back and forth since Oliver had disappeared into the crevasse.
Regi, on the other hand, had done everything perfectly.
She glanced his way. The steely determination on Regi’s face confirmed he was taking his role seriously. Then again, his life did depend on Oliver succeeding. There was something else about his expression that caught her off guard, though. His squared jaw, the determination in his uninjured eye… It made him look so much like Milton that it took her breath away. It also convinced her that he was telling the truth about Milton being his father, which also meant that everything else he’d said about Milton was probably true too.
The man she’d once loved had been a fraud.
While he’d serenaded her with his gentlemanly charm, he’d been having a long-running affair with another woman. Bile rose to her throat at how stupid she’d been. But the truth did something else too: it made her hate him. Until this moment, she’d been distraught over how Milton had died. But now, with this new knowledge, she considered his frozen grave the perfect place for a man whose heart was obviously cast in stone.
The sight of Oliver’s yellow safety hat launched her from her troubling thoughts. “There he is.”
He looked up, and when their eyes locked it was obvious he was trying to tell her something. If ever there was a time she wished she could read minds, this was it. He held a suitcase out sideways, showing her, and she realized it was the one Fred had had positioned at his feet. She blinked at it a few times, trying to interpret the significance. But she had nothing.
All she knew was that she needed to be ready.
Regi continued to raise Oliver, moving his hands over and over in a movement that belied his inexperience.
“A little more; he’s nearly here,” she said.
“Hey, guys,” Oliver said once his head was above surface level. “Look what I found.” He held up the suitcase and offered it to Holly. She reached for it, placed it onto the snow on the opposite side where Pope was standing, and eased back from the edge.
“Who cares about a fucking case?” Pope snapped. “Did you get the DNA?”
Oliver crawled over the edge and didn’t answer until he was standing on solid ground. “Yeah, but you gotta check this out.”
Using his eyes, Oliver indicated for Holly to get back from Pope. She did, and Oliver bent over to unclip the locks on the case. “Look at all this money.” He flipped the lid and turned the case so Pope could see inside.
Pope stepped forward. His eyes widened at the contents. Oliver reached in, plucked a bundle from the case, and tossed it Pope’s way. The second Pope reached for it, Oliver swung the shovel, fast and hard, at Pope’s head.
The blade smashed into Pope’s already shattered nose with a sickening thud. He howled, stumbled sideways, and an inhuman noise burst from his throat as he fell into the void. The rope curled at Holly’s feet snaked into the hole. Icy terror shot through her as she realized she was still attached to Pope.
Her heart slammed in her chest. “Shit!”
Frantic, she tried to undo the knot. But blind panic rendered her gloved fingers useless. It was too late. There was no time. She turned to Oliver.
A single look said so much. Shock. Horror. Hell.
His eyes bulged wide. “No!” Screaming, he launched at her.
She reached for him, clawing through the distance.
The rope snapped like a whip and Holly shrieked as she plunged into the hole for a second time.
Tons of ice flashed before her eyes as she braced for the crunch she knew was coming. A jolt stopped her fall, whipping her backward and spinning her in crazy circles.
Oliver’s cries above confirmed she wasn’t dead. She couldn’t believe it herself, and she struggled to comprehend what’d happened. They hadn’t hit the bottom, and her rope was taut above her.
By some miracle, she’d snagged on a piece of metal in the ice wall. Pope had gone to one side and she’d gone to the other. Their weight had counterbalanced each other and then become entangled. Pope dangled about four feet below her.
“I’m okay,” she called out.
“Oh Jesus, thank god.” Oliver’s voice was frantic.
She looked down. Pope was almost doubled over backward. He swung around in lifeless circles, but other than that, he didn’t move. She thought he must’ve broken his back, but when his head came around, she saw something she wished she hadn’t. Half his face was missing. At first she thought Oliver’s hit with the shovel had done the damage, but when a drop of blood fell from the spike that’d saved her, she realized Pope must’ve hit the metal on the way down.
The icy walls began to spin. A dark fog crept in. Her stomach churned in sickening somersaults. Holly squeezed her eyes shut, desperate to eradicate the hideous image, and willed the darkness to take her from this new horror.
“I’m coming down. Stay there.”
Oliver’s shrill voice snapped her from her mental murkiness. She looked up the icy walls and saw blue sky, and seconds later Oliver appeared as he backed down over the edge. His movements were frantic. Dangerous.
“Wait, Oliver, don’t hurry, I’m fine.”
He paused, tried to look down.
“I’m fine. Trust me. But I think Pope’s dead.”
“Thank Christ,” Oliver said. Even from her distance below she could hear Regi cheer.
“I need my axes and a rope.” She glanced down at the body and realized she needed one more thing. “I need a knife too.”
Oliver climbed back up, and seconds later he edged into the crevasse again. As she dangled there, held in position by a dead man, she stared across the chasm
. The ledge—her ledge—was there. Barely visible, to the left of a giant ice pillar, she saw Frederick’s shoe. She remembered the first time she’d seen it and how it’d scared the hell out of her.
But as sad as Angel and Fred’s demise had been, Holly had no doubt their final moments hadn’t been filled with grief. Their faces didn’t indicate they were distraught—quite the opposite. Fred and Angel died in each other’s arms, a blanket of love keeping them warm. They’d accepted their fate.
Was finding their bodies her fate?
If she’d hadn’t been in that helicopter crash, or fallen onto that exact ledge, she would never have seen them. If people had believed her story, then she wouldn’t be back here trying to prove it. And if she hadn’t learnt to rock climb, she would never have met Oliver. She glanced up at him now and her heart swelled. Fred and Angel had brought Oliver to her, and for that she would be forever grateful. She owed it to the couple to give them a final chapter.
Oliver lowered to her side, and when they reached for each other he wrapped her in a bear hug. “Oh my god. I’m so sorry. I thought I’d lost you.”
“It’s okay, I’m okay. You know I’m indestructible.”
“I’m beginning to think you are.” He glanced down at Pope’s hideous injuries. “Jesus. Did I do that?”
“No, I’m pretty sure he hit that.”
Oliver glanced upward and shook his head. “I saw that before. It’s the helicopter’s landing skid. You’re one lucky woman.”
She huffed. She’d never considered herself lucky. In fact, she’d always thought she was the opposite. But despite everything life had thrown at her, she was still here, so maybe she was blessed somehow. When she looked into Oliver’s concerned eyes, she realized just how lucky she was.
He glanced down at Pope and then up to their rope, looped over the spike. “If we cut him loose, you’ll fall.”
“I know. Fix me a new rope, then climb back up, and when I cut him free, you can pull me out. Okay?”
Out of Mind Page 24