Kiss the Sky

by MK Schiller

  She’d found some antiseptic in the huge bathroom on the ground floor. As she suspected, the bullet had grazed him. Thank God. He winced as the cloth touched his shoulder. She almost laughed. She’d seen this man use the pads of his fingers to scale up the side of a rock and here he winced over a little sting.

  “I think you might need stitches.”

  “Just slap a bandage on it. I’ll be good to go.”

  “I don’t think—”

  He grabbed her wrist and kissed the underside. “Please Farah. We need to protect ourselves and figure out what’s going on. If it incapacitated me, I would go, but this… This I can handle.”

  “Okay,” she agreed with reluctance. “What about the police? Should we call them?”

  “I thought of that. But we have no idea how to explain what’s happening. We survived the Savage, and now random people are trying to kill us. Well… I don’t think it’s random.”

  “Maybe it has something to do with the body? Edelweiss’s grandfather?”

  “That’s what I was thinking. You’re the history buff. What do you think?”

  She took the seat next to him. “It’s plausible, but if the year is correct, the war was still going on.”

  “It’s not as if Edelweiss is a trusted source. But it makes sense him and Malcolm were working together. They knew each other.”

  She chewed on her bottom lip. “I think he was telling the truth about the year. I understand he wasn’t the most reliable person, but I don’t think he’d fake the date. I remember the way he looked when he spoke about his grandfather. The man may have been part of a horrible cause, but Edelweiss loved him.”

  “Okay, let’s say Grandpa E did climb the mountain at that time. Maybe he wasn’t commissioned by Hitler. He could have been a deserter too. What better place to go than where no one can find you? He might as well have been on Mars.”

  “That’s true, but why would anyone want to track down a deserter now? Especially, a dead one.”

  Her head needed a breather, a chance to catch up to all that had happened. She started at the wall of windows in front of her. They overlooked Manhattan, and casted long, luminous shadows across the marble floors. “Whose apartment is this?”

  “Liam Montgomery. He’s in India for business.” Tristan laughed. “It has to be three in the morning there. I woke him up. Anyway, he said we could make ourselves at home. The security here is really good, and I doubt anyone will track us back here. Not many people know that we’re friends.”

  “Liam Montgomery? He has the same name as the hotel mogul.”

  “That’s because he is the hotel mogul.”

  She searched around the room again, struck silent by its luxury. “How do you know him?”

  “Boarding school.”

  “You went to boarding school?”

  “Sure did. Had the blue blazer with red elbow patches and a paisley tie and everything.”

  As tense as she was, her lips curved into a smile. She couldn’t imagine strong, rugged, outdoorsman, Tristan Sinclair, wearing a…suit.

  “I went to boarding school too. Mr. Jat sent me after my mother died.” He was her father, yet she still could not bring herself to refer to him that way. After all, he’d never publicly acknowledged her as his daughter.

  He pulled her into his lap. “We have a lot in common, milady, even if we do hail from different corners of this world.”

  “Did you enjoy boarding school?’

  “It’s a Sinclair family tradition. But not one I enjoyed. It was just an expectation like everything else in my life.”

  Tristan’s phone rang. He ignored the call.

  “Who is it?”

  “Elliot. He’s called twice. I really don’t have much to say to him right now. I do think we need to tell him what we know. He can probably help, but right now, I just want to gather our thoughts.”

  Her stomach groaned.

  “Hungry?” he asked.

  “A little.”

  “A little? Sounds like your body would disagree.”

  He headed to the kitchen. He looked through the cabinets and fridge. He closed the last one. “Nada.”

  “I don’t think we should go out right now.”

  “We don’t have to.” He picked up a phone. “There are perks to being rich.” He paused before he dialed, an amused smile on his face. “Funny, I know you prefer step-in, lever-lock crampons, yet I have no idea if you like Chinese food.”

  She smiled. “I do.”

  He ordered them a feast fit for ten people, not two. She would have objected except her stomach whined again.

  “General Tso makes better chicken than Colonel Sanders.”

  She flipped through her photos and laid out a picture of each man. “You know he was an actual general, right?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes. During the Qing Dynasty.”

  “I bet you were that girl who had all the answers in class.”

  “Wish I had some answers right now.”

  “Me too.” He studied the photos. Were they all pawns in someone else’s plot?

  “First, we think it has something to do with Malcolm and Edelweiss.” She counted off with her fingers. “Second, we don’t think we have the right history regarding Edelweiss’s grandfather. And third, we’ve been shot at twice now, but everyone who could be involved is dead.” She shivered again and flattened her hands against her lap. “And why? Because we saw something we shouldn’t have? Like a dead Nazi?”

  “Doesn’t really make sense,” Tristan agreed.

  “It’s like you said, the man at the hospital could have killed you but he didn’t.”

  “The man today could have done it when we arrived in Albany or last night at the hotel. He didn’t have to lure us to that house.”

  She swallowed. “Do you think he did something to the people who lived in that house? The ones in the photographs?”

  Tristan was quiet for a moment. “We can place an anonymous phone call to the police. We’ll just say we’re a neighbor and saw a stranger lurking in there. There’s nothing more we can do right now besides that.”

  He was right. She thought back to the short exchange at the house. The man claiming to be David Ball had a strange disposition. Really, the only remark he’d made was to ask about the pack. Malcolm’s pack. The one he had in his lap when they visited him in the hospital. “Maybe it’s not something we saw. Maybe it’s something we have.”

  He shifted his gaze to the black canvas pack, clearly coming up with the same conclusion. The old, battered bag looked out of place on the opulent shiny floor. But she felt a small prickle of relief as if a huge awkward puzzle piece finally fell into place. Farah bent down and unzipped it. “The shooter could have grabbed it. It was in the room.”

  “Maybe he didn’t know what he was looking for.”

  “The police checked it out before handing it over to us.”

  She nodded. “True, but here we are.”

  “Security at the airport looked through it too.”

  “Yes, but they didn’t know what they were looking for. We don’t either, but we have a clue.”

  “We looked through it ourselves, and it just has the souvenirs.”

  “The pack isn’t obvious…and yet it is. Let’s go through it one more time.”

  She carefully removed each of the objects, turning them over to examine them in the light. Inside there were a pair of gloves, goggles, ice screws, extra rope, and a few novels. Nothing stood out. There was no journal, no photos, no documents or clues to explain why they were being chased. Farah wondered for the hundredth time if her love of fiction books was causing her to create an intricate plotline where none existed.

  Yet, they had almost been killed. Three times now. Once on the mountain by nature. And twice on the ground. Or was t
he mountain even an accident?

  Tristan took the bag and flipped it over, shaking it. Tiny grains of dirt littered the shiny marble floor. He felt along the fabric for any hidden compartments. “There is nothing here.”

  Farah sighed. “I’ll get a dustpan,” she said, heading to the kitchen.

  “The Purloined Letter.”

  “What?” she asked, turning around.

  Tristan was holding the snow globe, staring at the pink crystals inside. “The damn purloined letter. Hidden in plain sight.”

  Chapter 33

  Her eyes widened before she shook her head. “They’re just crystals,” she said.

  He begged to differ. There was something here. They just had to find it. “Maybe. But you said you don’t remember them from before. That has to mean something.”

  “I only glanced at it for a minute before Malcolm grabbed it from me.”

  “That means something too. Whatever this thing is, he was very protective of it.” Tristan rifled through drawers until he found a small hammer. He laid out a towel. “Close your eyes.” He swung the hammer up.

  “Wait,” she said. “Maybe we don’t need to crack it. If there is something inside, then he must have had an easy way to get it in there. Therefore, there has to be a simpler way to get it out.” She took the object in her hand and studied it from every angle. “I’ve always been really good at puzzles.” She felt around the rim of the metal base and across the glass top. She held it under the light in all directions.

  “Farah, we don’t have time for this,” Tristan said after the third time she spun it around, his voice ripe with frustration.

  “I feel a latch. I need something to pry it open.”

  Tristan ruffled through a few more drawers until he found a flat-head screwdriver. She pried the latch loose. Inside was a compartment with three screws. She held the globe while he removed each of the tiny little screws. When the last one fell, the globe spun apart from its base like a jar lid. He covered a large bowl with several towels. “Do it slowly,” he said.

  She released the water. She tried to control the spill, but the water sloshed a bit. Pink jewels fell onto the towel, splashing up with the water. He picked one up and held it against the light. It sparkled and glinted. It appeared much larger outside of the globe. They discovered another little compartment on the side with even more pink jewels. She took out a dry white porcelain bowl. They gathered the pink jewels into the bowl. Plink, plink, plink they went, one by one.

  When they were done, there were sixty, perfectly polished pink gems. They had been carrying around a fucking fortune with them. Well…if they were real.

  “I think they’re diamonds,” she said.

  “Pink diamonds?”

  “Diamonds have different colors. The Hope Diamond is blue. These…sparkle.”

  The doorbell rang, causing her to jerk. She threw a kitchen towel over the jewels. He would have laughed except the tension suffocated him too. He placed a hand on her shoulder. “It’s our food.” At least he thought it was, but probably best not to add that. Instead, he told her to stay hidden in the kitchen while he checked the door. On his way, he grabbed a small sharp knife from the kitchen. It was most likely the best weapon available to him at this point.

  He exhaled when he saw a doorman with plastic bags in his hand. He retrieved the food and left a generous tip. He was so relieved he wanted to thank the delivery man for not trying to kill them. When he returned, she was staring at the diamonds.

  He set down the bags. Grasping her waist, he whispered to her. “Farah, we have to eat. We’re both starving. If we’re going to make any sense out of this, we’ll need nourishment.”

  “You’re right.”

  Tristan set everything up. There was a fancy mahogany dining table in the other room and a glass table in the kitchen and probably a hundred other dining areas in this behemoth of an apartment, but neither of them thought of those areas. Instead, they sat cross-legged on the kitchen floor, surrounded by containers of delicious-smelling Chinese food, the plate of pink diamonds between them. Just a casual romantic dinner.

  He pushed the plate toward her. “This is better than a pebble, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I prefer the pebble.” She speared a piece of broccoli with her chopsticks and popped it into her mouth. “We should take them to the police. At least we know what they are after now.”

  Tristan dragged a hand through his hair. “It’s not as simple as that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we don’t know a goddamn thing about these diamonds, if they are diamonds. And if they are, they could be blood diamonds, and we broke a million laws by transporting them to this country.”

  “You think they’re from Africa?”

  “Maybe. We don’t know what Malcolm was into.”

  Farah was quiet for a moment.

  “What are you thinking?” Tristan asked her.

  “What if these were on Edelweiss’s grandfather’s body? Maybe that was the reason he wanted to find the body in the first place. I remember Edelweiss taking the man’s pack. Plus, he didn’t even help with the burial. He seemed more interested in the actual pack. I don’t think these are blood diamonds, but I bet they are stolen just the same.”

  “That’s true, except at that elevation, people’s minds don’t work the same as they do down here. So we really can’t trust our guts.”

  “But let’s say I’m right.”

  “And you think Malcolm stole them from Edelweiss? He had the snow globe before we left, remember?”

  “That’s what makes it stand out. He was protective of it, and I don’t remember the pink stones. He said he got it in one of the shops at Hunza. I’ve been to most of the souvenir shops in Hunza and never seen anything like this. He had ample opportunity to take the pouch from Edelweiss and place the real diamonds inside the snow globe. They both shared a tent. They could have been working together too.”

  “You’re missing a very crucial angle.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why would Grandpa E take the diamonds up the mountain in the first place? The changing topography would make the mountain one of the worse places to hide something. Where the hell would he even get the diamonds from?” Tristan picked up one of the gems. It was roughly the size of a pistachio. God, if this was a real diamond, it had to be worth quite a bit, and they had sixty of them.

  “I don’t know, except in that story Edelweiss suggested his grandfather was superstitious. Remember how he referred to K2 as Koh-i-Noor. The actual diamond, Koh-i-Noor, is said to have very bad luck for any man possessing it. That’s why only the queen can wear it. A lot of diamonds in history have that type of curse associated with them.”

  Tristan dropped the diamond back onto the plate. “Well, guess that trend has held so far. These diamonds must be cursed too. At least for Edelweiss and Malcolm. Let’s hope I fare better.”

  Her lower lip quivered. “It’s not funny.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to do.” He took her hand. “Look. If Edelweiss wanted the diamonds, then why climb the mountain once the diamonds were in his hand? He could have just faked an injury and gone back to camp.”

  “I don’t know, except Edelweiss and Malcolm both seemed like real climbers to me. Plus, the higher we got, the more exhausted we all were. Like you said, people don’t think clearly at those elevations. If that’s all true, then maybe Malcolm was looking for an opportunity to get rid of Edelweiss? Does it sound crazy?”

  “Insane…but true too.”

  “It wasn’t our ice screws.”

  “Maybe you want to believe that so badly you’ll make up a terrific story.”

  “Fuck you, Tristan.”

  “I’m sorry.” He cupped her face. “There is one thing that I remember clearly. I mentioned a few times that Edelweiss should
not go on, but Malcolm would argue every time.”

  “Tristan, that night we descended, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, but Malcolm was below me. It was taking him a while to move. We were all exhausted, but he’s a very fast climber. When I looked down, he was next to the rope, but he wasn’t using it anymore. It’s as if he knew the screws wouldn’t hold. Plus, if you think about our climbing positions, he insisted he lead on the way down. I thought Ahmed and him might even fight about it, right there on the summit.”

  “So?”

  “Why would he use the ropes on the way up, but not the way down?”

  “You think he loosened the screws on his way down?”

  “Maybe. He definitely had the opportunity. I think he somehow got tangled in the rope when the others fell.”

  What she said made complete sense, but some part of him didn’t want to rationalize that Malcolm had killed four men in cold blood. His anger was threatening to spill out. Malcolm had almost killed Farah. They had come within an inch of losing their own lives to save that bastard.

  This was beginning to sound like an Agatha Christie novel, but her theory had merit. Killing men at eight thousand meters would mean a clean getaway. After all, accidents like that happened all the time. No one would question it. There would be no one to examine the bodies or perform forensic testing. And most of all, there would be no witnesses…well, except for Farah and him. That’s probably why Malcolm wanted them to head down in a certain order. They would be clipped to the ropes, and when the screws came loose, all of them would have tumbled into the abyss.

  “The only reason I didn’t descend in that order is because I wanted to spread Drew’s ashes,” Tristan said.

  Her voice was as soft as a whisper. “The only reason I didn’t is because I wanted to stand on top of the world with you for one moment longer.”