At The Edge

by David Dun

  "I killed him."

  He stroked her forehead. "Good for you." He chuckled.

  It was sincere praise. Once again she felt the desire to please and hatred simultaneously. She went on to recite every detail.

  "You are an amazing woman."

  Then she told him about Kim Lee. Everything.

  "You are so brilliant, the way you handle people. If you hadn't scared him to death, he would have told you everything. He would have held nothing back. It is a tribute to your powers of persuasion."

  He put a hand on her shoulder, but it felt fatherly, not sexual.

  "There was a transmitter in the briefcase you gave us. We talked about that."

  The recollection of it and the shock of it helped bring her even further out of her fog.

  "I don't know anything about a transmitter. It's like I said."

  "You're sure?"

  ''I should have taken the money and dropped the briefcase. It was stupid."

  "So either Maria Fischer and her group put it there or Dan Young and his group."

  "Yes," she said.

  "Working together, you and I, we will be far too clever to make a mistake like that again."

  "Yes," she said, starting to believe it.

  "You will get better soon. We were careful not to do any permanent damage." He stroked her head, then bent down and gave her a chaste kiss on the forehead. When he walked out, he shut the door quietly.

  She lay there for perhaps two hours, dozing off and on, before she crawled on her hands and knees back to the shower. The thought of standing made her nauseous and dizzy. She managed over the course of about ten minutes to wriggle from her clothes and to once again crawl into the shower where she let the water beat down on her while she tried to survey the bruises that were running together on her torso, turning her a vibrant black and blue. Somewhere she recalled that hot water might make things worse, but she didn't care.

  After that, the German called her frequently. Sometimes they would talk for the better part of an hour. There was something about his inner strength and deep voice that drew her. But it also made her restless. She dreamed deep, vivid, wild dreams, and often she was burning her father's body and crying.

  14

  Dan stood on the tarmac in the cool dawn, wishing he hadn't been so obvious in attempting to leave Maria behind. But there was nothing he could do now. Taking the best precautions he could, he had explained to Jason, the pilot, that he wanted to avoid the northeast corner of the Highlands Forest. It was the area nearest civilization and the location where Anderson was logging for Otran-right next to the main body of the Highlands in a small isthmus of old growth that protruded from the Highlands like a finger into the second-growth forest.

  "Hey," he said with perhaps too much enthusiasm when Maria arrived.

  "You seem awfully cheerful for this hour."

  "Just anxious to take a look."

  "You two can sit in back and talk over an intercom, if you like, with headsets," Jason said. "If you want to talk to me, you can switch the intercom but you need to listen to make sure I'm not talking to air-traffic control."

  Dan helped Maria into the Cessna 182. They shoved the passenger-side front seat all the way forward in the small plane to give Dan maximum legroom. The bench seat in back, which was to accommodate Dan and Maria, was fairly roomy in this plane. Maria sat next to Dan directly behind Jason. Because it was a high-wing aircraft, they would have excellent ground visibility.

  As Jason went through the checklist strapped to his knee, Dan and Maria put on the headphones and figured out the intercom.

  "I doubt we'll see much," Maria said. "We overfly the Highlands a lot."

  "Those buildings seemed pretty large."

  "The trees crowning above them were pretty big, and those buildings were just modular units that go on wheels, I think."

  "I mainly want a picture of that helicopter."

  "You don't fool me. You want to look and take pictures because you think you're going back in."

  The plane took off and the ground fell away. It would only take minutes to reach the Highlands from the Palmer airport.

  "Nothing is happening. The police are doing nothing," Dan said. "It's time to quit losing and make some progress."

  "They all seem to buy Amada's story."

  "Exactly, and it's bullshit. Some now-departed yew-tree scientist was interested in bats? We stole photos pertaining to the guy's hobby? And this is rich-the vaultlike file room with the microfiche is really a break room that previously was a storage area."

  "Well, if we can find out what those equations mean, we may wipe the smirk off their faces."

  "Will we ever meet these professors that Patty's lining up?"

  "We will, but we have to do it carefully. You know we could be jeopardizing whoever talks to us." She pointed at the ground. ''We're over the Highlands, the back end. Why'd we fly the long way around?"

  Dan shrugged and tapped the pilot on the shoulder rather than switch the headset. Jason pulled off one side of his headphone.

  "Can we go lower?" Dan shouted above the drone. Jason nodded and began to descend.

  Below, they could see the long, winding access road, and a small, unimproved clearing next to a natural pond, complete with helicopter. Barely visible amongst the trees was a tiny portion of what looked like the main building.

  "Unless you knew right where to look, and you have this angled view, you wouldn't see the building," Maria said.

  "Doesn't that look like the helicopter we saw, except for the colors? I'm thinking it's the same bird."

  "The one we saw was all white."

  "I think they masked the numbers and the colored trim by spraying it with wash-off paint. Yeah. Accident-reconstruction people, car thieves, movie makers, they all have a water-soluble paint that can change the color of a car or truck temporarily."

  "I guess it could be the one we saw," Maria said.

  "It's the same." I'll be darned. They gave half the money and have all of it back, Dan thought. What would Otran think of this? From an altitude of 600 feet, Dan shot photos with a large-bore 300mm lens.

  Clearly visible was a clearing with a large, round structure that looked like a swimming pool. A pipe ran from it to the side of the mountain. On the steep rock hillside there were boards, like a shack. Dan snapped pictures furiously and marked the spot on a handheld sat-nav global positioning system (GPS) device.

  After a couple of passes Jason motioned to Dan. Dan switched the intercom to the pilot position.

  "Somebody on the ground has a Unicom radio for the copter pad and they're telling us we're too low. Technically, you have to maintain one thousand feet over a populated area. I guess they consider their pad and their buildings a development."

  "Nervous, aren't they?" Maria said. "Let's fly back over the lower part of the forest."

  She tapped Jason.

  "Let's go back that way. I'd like to look at the rest of the Highlands."

  David Dun

  At The Edge

  Jason looked at Dan, and Maria followed his gaze.

  "What's going on?" Maria asked.

  "Nothing. Jason, do you want to go back that way?"

  "Tell me where to go, Dan," Jason said.

  Dan groaned to himself at Jason's show of reluctance. The situation was deteriorating. "Go just where Maria wants," Dan said, hoping that somehow Jason would still be able to miss Otran's area or that the harvesting wouldn't be obvious.

  "More that way," Maria said with uncanny accuracy.

  "Your boyfriend is a state biologist, isn't he?" Dan had planned this topic for a completely different occasion, but hoped it would bring her mind and her eyes back inside the plane.

  "Why?"

  "I need to get into that compound and snoop around."

  "What does that have to do with Ross?"

  "He might be able to create a diversion. Make it so they can't have the dogs running around eating people."

  "And when might
that be?"

  "When representatives of the Department of Fish and Game inspect timber-harvesting areas to determine effects on wildlife."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "We know that the wildlife guys let people like you tag along with them on private property when they are doing an inspection of timber-harvesting activity. They dress your kind up in green uniforms, or at least let you come with them in your civvies."

  "Where did you get this idea?"

  "Save your breath. I know it's a closely guarded secret. With the right story you could get the state to go looking around and you could even go with them if they were sure you wouldn't be recognized."

  "OK. Just hypothetically, what if we could do that?"

  "You would never have to admit anything to me. Just tell me when you're going and that's when I'll go through the fence. You know they won't have those guard dogs loose with state inspectors in there."

  "It's too dangerous."

  "The state can demand to look at the fence, the fallen trees."

  "It's legal to cut trees if they are not sold for commercial purposes. You said so yourself."

  "You know they'll let the state inspect. We've got to do something. They took the money. They shot at us. They broke into my house. They may have killed that senator's wife and made it look like rape."

  "And they'll kill you too. This is not some B movie. This is real life, Dan. And real death. You have a little boy to think about. So just for once, don't listen to your testosterone. Let's do the research. Talk to the professors. Do all that we can do without getting killed in the process."

  Her eyes went back to the window.

  "Hey, over there," she said. "Fly over there."

  Dan looked. Anderson was clearing a large log landing. They had felled an amazing number of trees for so early in the morning. There were cars back on the county road. Lots of them. Protesters.

  ''They're cutting right at the edge of the Highlands. God, they're cutting in the old growth!" She whipped around to Dan.

  Dan opened his mouth but didn't speak.

  "You knew," she said. "You knew. Well, answer me. You didn't want me to go. You didn't want to fly over here. You were hiding it."

  "Now, let's just talk about this and-"

  "Don't talk to me in that insipid tone of voice. You are treacherously deceitful."

  "I can't disclose client confidences," Dan said.

  He knew he shouldn't have said it the instant the words came out. Rage filled Maria's eyes and she looked away from him. Then she took off her headset and threw it on the seat, meaning that to communicate he would be reduced to talking in an unnaturally loud voice. Other than tapping Jason on the shoulder and asking him to circle the log landing that was being cleared by Anderson logging, no more words were spoken until they landed. Dan waited until they had thanked Jason and then walked her to her car before trying to redeem himself.

  "I still think we should talk about this," Dan said.

  She stopped and turned to him.

  "So you can feed me more bullshit."

  "It's obvious your people found it anyway."

  "No thanks to you."

  Dan knew that whatever he said next could affect his relationship with Maria for a long time to come.

  "Answer me this," she continued. "Given what's happened in the last few days, the sort of trust that I thought maybe we were building, weren't you being deceitful this morning? Lying actually?"

  Instantly he knew she was right. He knew it without analysis. But for some reason he felt compelled to analyze it. So he hesitated.

  "Well?"

  "You're probably right."

  "You have insect-sized morals. You thought up every word you said this morning, hoping I wouldn't come, making it sound like it would interfere with my meetings. And if that wasn't enough, you schemed with the pilot behind my back."

  "There are times when a lawyer has to-"

  "That's it. I'm outta here."

  While she angrily fumbled with her keys, he tried to think of something to keep her there. Nothing came.

  "Damn it," he said under his breath as she pulled away.

  When Dan called his cell-phone message center, there was a 6:00 a.m. message from Otran's vice president of natural resources.

  ''You know that THP we talked about that we were gonna start this weekend."

  "We joked about bringing out a huge crew and dropping everything," Dan said.

  "You and I were joking. Anderson went and tried it."

  "We told him to do a normal operation."

  "That's what we told him, but he didn't listen."

  "What has he done?" Dan asked, not indicating that he already had a good idea of the corrupted timber harvest plan (THP).

  "The asshole didn't follow instructions. Instead of doing as he's told, Anderson sends in a thirty-man falling crew on Friday and they go nuts. I guess they hatched this brilliant plot at the bar, and got out every faller they could find. Most of 'em never even worked for Anderson a day in their lives. They start dropping every tree in sight and tried to fall a major chunk of the clear-cut portion in three days. It's dangerous, and it's nuts. We found out first thing this morning when the media was called out by a bunch of hysterical enviros. We have our forester going out now to shut them down."

  "We'll be in court first thing Monday morning and the judge will no doubt eat me for breakfast."

  "I know," the vice president said. "I know."

  Patty McCafferty sat in a lavender love seat in a small sitting area at one end of her large office. Maria seated herself in a matching love seat on the far side of a brass-and-glass coffee table.

  "Dan Young is a class-A jerk," Maria began. "I'm so mad at him I could spit. He was hiding Anderson's logging. Not just hiding, trying to deceive me. And for no reason. Our people had already found the loggers."

  "Which reminds me. We need a restraining order on that."

  "Oh, I intend to get one first thing tomorrow morning. For this, I think we can get right to a judge."

  "Did you know they were doing accelerated cutting?"

  "What do you mean accelerated? I saw a lot of trees down."

  "They brought in way more fallers than usual on Friday, Saturday, and this morning when you flew over. They're dropping all the trees first, then yarding them. They girdled trees they couldn't cut to make sure they would die. That way, no matter what the court decides, those trees would have to go."

  It was like someone had hit her in the gut. She had been twice betrayed. Hiding Saturday- and Sunday-morning harvesting was one thing. Girdling trees with a plan to drop everything in sight before she could get a court order was another thing entirely. It bordered on criminal.

  "I… I… don't know what to say."

  "Can you take a case like this against Dan Young?" Patty asked.

  "I certainly can. I'll gut him."

  Patty nodded but didn't look entirely convinced. "What about working with him on the Highlands compound and the money?"

  "I don't know what I'm going to do about that. Dan's on some kind of holy war. When they broke into his house… well, he's pissed. According to him, it's about the money they stole, the Highlands compound, bats, even the death of Catherine Swanson. But most of all, it's about his wife dying and what has happened to his life since then. I'm not sure he knows that."

  "Well, I've sent those equations and the bat picture to the people at the university. Do you want to meet with them?"

  "Definitely."

  "Rumor has it that you are fond of Mr. Young."

  Maria felt herself blush. "Right now I'd say that we are just survivors of a major trauma mat in an odd way has drawn us together. That includes his housekeeper Pepacita and his little boy. We all got a little bit close. But it was nothing romantic. And it ended with this latest episode."

  Patty's steely eyes locked with Maria's.

  "Really," Maria said. "He's lost his wife. He's in no condition to be romantic." Still, Patty said n
othing. "Oh God, listen to me. Now I'm implying the only problem is his dead wife when I don't mean that at all."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean there is absolutely nothing between us. He's a liar. I could never trust him. And I can't imagine anything in the future."

  "Your love life is your business. But you do have excitable clients-"

  ''You don't have to explain.'' Maria rose and came around the coffee table, sitting beside Patty. "You know I wouldn't keep it from you if I thought I was falling in love."

  The older woman reached out and took Maria's hands. "I guess I value your work and your company so much that I selfishly didn't want you getting involved with this industry fellow."

  "You haven't a thing to worry about. Now when can I get to those experts?"

  "Ready when you are. So do you take Dan?"

  "I don't know yet. I just don't know."

  Walking down the hall to her office, Maria took out Dan's card and punched his home number into the phone. Only then did she realize how odd it was that her secretary had come in on Sunday.

  It took a minute to talk to Nate and for those few moments she managed to stuff her anger. Then Dan came on.

  "Just give me a straight answer, Dan, and I mean it. Did you know that Anderson was furiously chopping down trees with a huge crew, dropping everything and girdling the ones he couldn't cut-all over the weekend to avoid a court order?"

  There was a long pause.

  "Maria, believe me, I'd like to answer all of your questions on this, but attorney-client privilege-"

  "Did you know?"

  "I would never, ever condone girdling or this accelerated cutting you're talking about."

  "I didn't ask if you condoned it, Dan." She felt on the verge of hurling the phone across the room. "I asked what you knew. And if you have to assert the privilege, then you knew."

  "It's not what you think."

  She hung up.

  15

  Night-vision goggles on, able to see in only the faintest glimmer of starlight, Corey moved through the darkness like a cat. After she completed a steep uphill hike, steam rose from her body into the chilly mountain air. In her pack she carried sugar, to mix with soil on-site, and a small arsenal- a relatively light incendiary bomb, a stun grenade, the. 300 Weatherby, a can of military-strength pepper spray, handcuffs, and a razor-sharp stiletto.