Tahoe Heat

by Todd Borg

  Ryan saw me.

  “HE TOOK LILY!” He screamed. “She had to go inside to use the bathroom. We each took one of her hands. Smithy was here to guard. We ran inside, then back out to the car to leave. But he rode out of the dark on a horse. He bent down and yanked her up into the air! Jerked her out of our hands! LILY SCREAMED. BUT HE GALLOPED AWAY INTO THE FOREST!”

  FIFTY-THREE

  “Carol!” I shouted.

  She turned and looked at me, her head bent and shaking.

  “Go inside and get some towels. Put them on Ryan’s wounds to stop the bleeding!”

  She tried to say something, but her speech was gibberish.

  “CAROL! GO NOW!”

  She turned and ran, stumbling, jerky, toward the house.

  Again I got Diamond on the phone, and explained.

  “Which way did he go?” Diamond asked.

  “I don’t know. Lana said the words Cave Rock. It would be the ultimate way to destroy Ryan.”

  I hung up and sprinted for the Jeep, backed out of Ryan’s drive, my headlights shining on Ryan’s wavering form.

  I shot out of his driveway, up his road, blasted out onto the highway, accelerator floored, skidding and swerving.

  A mile north, I turned off the highway and drove up the steep pitch of Cave Rock Road. I didn’t follow the switchback that climbed to the houses on the cliff. Instead, I headed toward an open area off the road, thinking it was a potential trail to the back side of Cave Rock, the easy way to get to the top. I hit the brakes at the switchback, skidded to a stop, jumped out into the darkness, and let Spot out.

  I sprinted toward the dark forest. Spot ran ahead.

  A sudden glow came through the trees from a vehicle down on the highway. The glow grew brighter, then shut off as a vehicle clicked from high beams to low beams. But before the light disappeared I saw that there was a path.

  I had my little flashlight and turned it on, but the beam was feeble, the batteries low.

  Lightning flashed from out on the lake. The storms I’d seen earlier were tracking east. Again, the light flashed, silhouetting the black shape of Cave Rock up above us on the left. Thunder followed a few seconds later.

  In the distance came a siren. It was joined by a second siren keening in the background. Farther off came the whine of a small engine, revving like a chainsaw. Over the cacophony of sirens and engine whine came the terrifying scream of a child.

  Lily.

  I ran on up the path. I sensed a split in the trail, and I went to the left. A sudden bright flash lit the sky, directly over our heads, followed in an instant by a deafening thunder crack. Spot veered over next to me.

  One of the sirens down below on the highway turned off, then the other, leaving the chainsaw whine sounding lonely.

  The flashing of the cop car lights pulsed up from the highway into the night, eerie blue and red strobes that lit the clouds. The small engine whine receded, and I heard the soft clippity-clop of horse hooves ahead on the trail. Then the clink of a rock bouncing on another rock. From the same direction came a tiny whimper.

  Despite the storm above, no rain had fallen, and I choked on the horse’s dust cloud. Spot showed no concern for the darkness or the steep rock. The trail pitched down, then began to climb again, steeper than before.

  Lightning flashed, pulsing three, four times, highlighting the black hulking form of Cave Rock above me. The clouds and trees and the trail and rocks flashed a staccato blue gray. Then the blackness returned, and I could see nothing.

  The rock was steep. I had no idea how to get up it in the dark. Lightning flashed again. I saw a small ravine in the rock face, like a miniature crevasse. I ran forward. Spot understood my intentions and ran ahead of me, his white fur just visible in the night as a light arc of movement. He jumped up into the narrow V in the rock and climbed in leaps. I followed.

  I clawed at the rock, trying to keep my center of gravity forward. That the rider above me had gotten Paint to make the same climb was amazing.

  Another siren arose over my labored breathing. The chainsaw whine was louder than before. The siren quit, and I had the sudden vision that there would be a crowd of cops to watch Lily fall from the sky above.

  Into the silence came the pistol crack of a bullwhip.

  Lily screamed.

  I charged up the rocks, trying to suck air. An outcropping turned me to the left. A wall of bushes slapped me back to the right. Spot pushed on through. I followed. I saw no trail, just rock that stretched up another thirty feet above us. To the left was nothing. If we went the wrong direction, we’d plunge to the highway below.

  The dark sky grew wide as we came out onto the summit.

  The top was a broad, rounded hump about fifty feet in diameter. I couldn’t see anything but shapes in the dark. I sensed the horse and rider near the edge of the drop-off. I couldn’t tell where Lily was.

  From below shined the headlights of cars lined up behind the road block the cops had set up. I felt disoriented. The chainsaw seemed behind me.

  The horseman turned on a big flashlight. He held it with his left hand. Something else hung from his left hand, but I couldn’t tell what it was. I still couldn’t see Lily. The light beam shined on Spot, standing about ten feet in front of Paint. The rider made a throwing motion with his other hand, and the whip sounded like a gun. Spot jumped. Lily screamed from out of the darkness.

  Lightning flashed and I saw the horseman’s red cap.

  The rider made Paint leap toward me.

  I backed up, stumbled, fell to my hands and knees. My left knee ground into a sharp rock. The pain was excruciating. I pushed up, my hands on my knees, warm, sticky blood oozing through the rip in my jeans. I got to my feet. The powerful light beam turned toward me. Before I could look away, it shined into my eyes, then went out, leaving me blind.

  “Let the girl go, Travis. Monty,” I said. “She is innocent.”

  Travis’s scornful laugh rose in the night.

  “What matters if she’s innocent? She’s a tool, a pawn. My pawn. I don’t need to hurt her. But I will. Tossing the little Washoe girl off the big sacred Washoe rock will teach Ryan the final lesson, won’t it?” His voice got louder with each word. “He sent me to prison. My life as Monty Wales was destroyed.”

  Lightning pulsed. Travis and Paint were silhouetted against the sky, his red cap looking purple in the blue-white flash. They had moved to the edge of the precipice, facing south. A rope wrapped around his left shoulder and down his left arm. At the end of the rope was Lily, tied under her arms and around her chest. She looked tiny and fragile. Travis swung her back and forth. If he let go on the backswing, she would land hard on the rock behind. If he let go on the forward swing, she would fall over the same edge where Eli had fallen to the highway below.

  The pulsing lightning quit, and rain began to pour down. Travis flashed the light in my eyes, blinding me again.

  I wanted to run up and snatch Lily out of the air, but I knew it was unlikely I could pull it off in the dark. I’d miss. The rock was becoming slick with rain. Travis would sense me coming and let her fly through space. I needed to delay him.

  “This is a sacred rock, Travis. The Washoe shamans are the only people who can come here without repercussions. If you let Lily go, you can leave. But if you don’t, you’re performing the ultimate evil. The spirits will come for you. You’ll never survive.”

  “If you believe that bullshit, you’re crazier than the Washoe. I won’t survive, anyway. Me and this little girl were in the same chemo program. We’re both dying. I’m just going to speed up the process.”

  “You can walk out of here,” I said. “I’ll call off my dog. Lower Lily to the ground and you can go.”

  He didn’t respond. The only sound above the pouring rain and the vehicles down below was a moaning cry from Lily, swinging from the rope next to Travis’s left leg.

  “When I played football,” Travis said, “I was king. King for a game, king for a season, king for a yea
r. I was unstoppable. And Carol was my girl, smart and beautiful. Everyone talked about Carol Pumpernickel and Monty Wales. But she didn’t go with me because I was captain of the team. She went with me because she thought I had a future.” He shifted, and his grip on the rope jerked Lily back and forth. She cried louder.

  “Shut up!” he shouted at her. He cracked the whip in the air. Paint reared up. Lily screamed.

  He resumed talking, his voice thin and soft and unnaturally high. “Carol and I used to drive up to the Mt. Rose overlook above Incline. We’d sit in the car in the dark and look at the circle of lights around Tahoe. One of those lights on the shore would be ours someday. Carol was going to be an actress, and I was going to own a horse stable, run trail rides for the tourists, use my riding skills to build a business.

  “But Ryan Lear ruined it all. I went to prison. He got the house on the lake. Carol left me and ended up with a billionaire who owned a horse ranch.

  “So I found another woman who had the ambition to start a business in LA. Carol even helped us find a place to stay. But it all blew up when the landlords kicked us out. And guess who turned out to be the landlords? Ryan and his buddies. My girlfriend died. Because of him, my life wasn’t worth living. It was that stress that gave me cancer. I’m dying because of Ryan.”

  “You stole horses again, Travis. This time, one got away. You screwed yourself.”

  I heard footsteps to the side. Sensed a movement. Travis heard it, too. He flipped on the flashlight, swung it around.

  Ryan ran out of the dark, leaped up onto Paint’s rump, grabbed at Travis, got his arms around Travis’s waist.

  Travis’s flashlight fell and bounced behind a shrub, its beam shining at wet, dark rock. I didn’t think the skinny kid could hold Travis for more than a moment before Travis flung him off into the night. I sprinted through the dark, my knee burning, aiming toward the front of Paint. I grabbed at where I thought Lily and the rope would be and felt air. Lily screamed again, and her arcing form hit me hard on my left shoulder. I grabbed her before she fell to the ground.

  “Spot! Come!” I said. I held Lily in my arms. I ran with her ten steps away to the far side of the little Cave Rock summit. I set her down and jerked the rope hard. It pulled Travis off of the horse. I ran backward with the rope. Travis rolled on the ground, and the rope came free from his shoulder.

  I tried to slip the rope off Lily’s body, but it was wrapped well, and the knots were tight.

  “Lily, stay here. Do you understand? Don’t move. Spot! Guard her.” I put my arm around Spot’s neck and held his head to Lily. “Guard her.”

  I turned back to the edge of the cliff.

  In the dim glow of the flashlight on the ground, I could see Travis and Ryan standing facing each other, fifteen feet apart.

  “I’m not afraid of you!” Ryan shouted, his voice filled with terror. He hurled himself toward Travis. Travis cracked the bullwhip. It sounded like a gunshot. Ryan screamed, falling to the ground, holding his face.

  I ran in an arc, coming up behind Travis. He rotated and shot the bullwhip toward me. It caught the side of my neck, lacerating the skin near my jugular vein. I reeled, but kept up my run. He shot the whip again. It wrapped my right ankle, and I went down. He stepped to the side, shot the bullwhip at my face. I saw his arm move, tucked my chin to my chest. The whip cut across the back of my head. I pushed up to my knees. Before I could stand, he shot the whip out and cut my shoulder.

  Paint neighed his terror from across the little summit.

  I tucked my shoulder, rolled across sharp rocks to get away. Travis ran after me. He raised the hard butt end of the whip to stab it down onto the side of my head. I rolled. His missed my head and hit the base of my left trapezius muscle. My left arm and upper chest went numb. I kept rolling into the dark.

  I heard a high-pitched yell. Ryan leaped out of the dark and struck Travis in a flying tackle. They both went down, sliding toward the cliff.

  Travis stood up, shaking Ryan off onto the ground like a bear shaking off a small dog.

  But Ryan clamped onto Travis’s leg.

  Travis used his leg to drag Ryan down a short slope to the edge of the precipice, 80 feet above the exit of the southbound tunnel.

  I pushed up, my left side still numb. I did a fast, sideways crab crawl toward them.

  Before I could reach them, Ryan twisted and swung his fist up into Travis’s groin. Travis bent forward, stumbled back, then kicked at Ryan’s head. He missed, and Ryan grabbed Travis’s foot.

  Travis went down, pushed up onto his hands and knees. Ryan was up, took a quick step toward him, stomped on one of Travis’s hands, then jumped back.

  This time it was Travis who roared. In his anger, he stood up tall, a long dark shape in the dull glow of the flashlight, silhouetted by the blue and red strobes below. His foot rolled on the tiny pebbles that littered the rock slope like ball bearings. He stepped back with his other foot to regain his balance, but he stepped too far. His foot was on the edge, his body movement still going backward. His arms went out, wavered and circled as he teetered.

  Before he would have toppled backward off the cliff, he stepped backward into the air, shifting his center of gravity so that he could catch the top of the cliff with his hands as he fell. His hands swept the rock, didn’t find a hold, but got the rope that snaked over to Lily.

  Travis fell out of sight. The rope jerked tight and Lily was yanked from where she sat. She screamed. I dove for the rope as she shot across the ground. My hand grabbed rock and air.

  Spot grabbed the rope just below Lily. He stumbled, went down on his side. The two of them slid toward the edge. She was pointing head-first, down the slope. Spot hung on. His paws clawed at the slick rock.

  I dove for the rope where it stretched below Spot. It was tight against the rock. I dug my fingers under it, got a good grip, lifted it up.

  Spot scrambled, got himself righted, his feet out and braced, his front paws on the rock next to me. The rope went under my arm. I felt Spot’s nose just behind my armpit, his teeth locked onto the rope, pulling like tug-of-war.

  I braced myself, sitting on the ground, pulling back at the unyielding rope. I could hold Travis’s weight as he hung from the rope below the cliff. But I couldn’t stop sliding down the wet, grit-covered rock. The slope was too steep.

  “I have a jackknife!” I yelled to Ryan. “Right front pocket.”

  He dropped to his knees at my side, felt the fabric with panicked hands. He found the pocket opening, got the knife out, pulled the blade open.

  Spot and I stayed clamped onto the rope as Ryan sawed. His motions made little oscillations. Travis jerked from below us. I slid, pulling Spot and Lily behind me.

  The rain pounded harder.

  Ryan shifted to keep the knife at the same place on the rope. But the rope kept moving over the edge as Travis’s weight pulled from below. Soon, Ryan’s cutting location reached the edge of the rock and snaked over and down. He dropped to his belly at the edge of the cliff. He tried to keep the knife in the same cut mark. We slid farther.

  My heels got to the edge of the cliff. I tried to dig them into the wet rock, tried not to bump Ryan over the edge.

  Ryan lay on the ground sideways on the edge of the cliff, reaching over the edge, sawing furiously. I leaned back. My knees bent more. My butt came closer to the edge. Directly below us were multiple patrol cars, bathed in blue and red staccato flashing. A blinding spotlight shined up toward us, no doubt illuminating Travis, hanging from the rope, just below my feet. The rain increased to a downpour.

  A voice crackled over a loud speaker, but I couldn’t hear the words over the roar of rain. I only heard the repeating words in my head, Lily’s words when Herman died, her voice tiny.

  Life is too short.

  Ryan grunted, furious panting breaths. He reached farther down as the wet rope slid. His left hand clamped onto my pants. He sawed faster. His grunts rose to high-pitched cries with each sawing motion. He was about to fal
l over the edge.

  The rope went slack.

  Ryan collapsed, his head down on the rock, arm dangling over the edge of the cliff.

  Voices yelled from below.

  I picked up Lily. I scooted back up the rock, set Lily upright, told her not to move, and went back to the cliff edge to help Ryan.

  EPILOGUE

  Three days later, Spot and I drove up to Preston’s gate at 10 a.m. I had bandages on my neck, my face, my head. My bruises from being dragged under the Santa Monica Pier had darkened to a purple gray.

  The guard named Joe walked out. His broken right arm was in a cast. Nevertheless, he did the big-guy waddle like I was going to be intimidated by his bulk. My patience was at ebb-tide.

  I got out of my Jeep and walked up to him.

  “Here to see Preston,” I said.

  “You don’t have an appointment, so get out of here.” He made an awkward move with his left hand, reaching for his gun.

  I kneed him in the groin. He stumbled back. I stepped up close, bending my right arm. I rotated from my feet, swung my arm hard, and gave him a crushing elbow blow to his nose. As he staggered, I stayed with him and pounded him a second time on the backswing.

  He stumbled back and hit the gatehouse wall with a thump. His good hand went to his bloody face.

  I pulled his gun out of his holster and tossed it into the woods. Then I turned him around, propelled him into the gatehouse, sat him down on the desk chair.

  “Open the gate.”

  He hesitated. Maybe stubborn. Maybe unconscious.

  I took hold of the hair on the back of his head, aimed at the green button with the word OPEN on it, and punched his forehead onto the button.

  The gate opened.

  I got back into the Jeep and drove into the estate.

  Spot and I found Preston sitting on one of the saddle-barstools in the racehorse room on the third floor. He had a glass full of amber on the bar, a half-empty bottle of bourbon nearby.

  He looked up. Showed no surprise.