I heard Kit panting lightly beside me, and I was glad I wasn't looking into his blue eyes right now.
Last night, I'd kissed him with my heart full of sentiment and the rest of me high on sixty-dollar brandy. There was something so different about him, a sensitivity I didn't see in most of the men I knew, and which I hadn't allowed myself to see at first.
Maybe what had happened to his wife and two children started it, but I kind of thought Kit had always been that way. On the other hand, as he'd said himself - you don't know who I am.
"What do you think?" he asked, when we reached an elevated point in the trail. "Which way do we head? You have any idea?"
Sure, I was full of ideas. "I vote for the southern slope of that hill," I said. "If I were a runaway, maybe I'd hide where I could get a good view of the valley."
"That slope?" he asked and rolled his eyes.
"It's only two or three miles from here," I told him.
He mouthed, "Only two or three?"
Cute. Funny. He definitely was that, but he had a serious side that I liked even more. The night before he had told me that he wasn't a hunter, but I didn't know much about what he was, did I?
"We can be there in a couple of hours if we put some real energy into it," I said. "You'll be surprised."
"Aye, aye, Captain. Whatever you say."
"That's the spirit, Kit Carson. That's how the West was won."
After another two hours of slip-sliding and hoisting ourselves up and down rocky inclines, we finally arrived on the leeward side of the slope the town is named for: Bear Bluff.
"Let's take a short break," I said to the perspiring man alongside me.
Actually, Kit looked even better with a sheen of sweat covering his body.
I think he knew it, too. He was that rare person who was mildly cocky without being obnoxious. He was confident in himself, but there was also a touch of humility that I liked.
"You don't have to coddle me," he said and grinned. "I'm in decent enough shape - for a city boy."
I laughed at his humor. Yes, you certainly are in fine shape, I was thinking to myself City boy or not.
I eased out of my backpack and looked at my watch. It was a little before five in the afternoon. I dug a couple of navel oranges out of my pack and tossed him one. It was a wild throw but he caught it, anyway.
"Good hands," I said, grinning like the fern village idiot. I kind of liked being goofy with him, though. I realized that I already trusted him enough to be my goofy self.
While we devoured the sweet juicy oranges, I looked around. I saw nothing too unusual, though. Some flattened grass where deer had probably slept. A shallow cave, too small to shelter a human. Turkey vultures circling above us turkeys.
What was I expecting to find up here?
A downy little bird-girl nest with a four-poster bed and an extensive Barbie doll collection?
Kit came up behind me. I smelled oranges and sweat. "Frannie," he said softly. He really did have a nice voice. A smooth baritone. I could listen to him for hours, and I had just the night before.
"Yeah?"
He was pointing toward the steepest part of the slope. "Look. Up there.
Isn't that something?"
I turned my head in the direction of Kit's pointing finger.
Just over a clump of fir trees and boulders halfway up the slope above us was a large flying thing.
Not a hawk. Not a turkey buzzard.
It was something, all right.
The girl with wings!
She was soaring high above us, like a majestic eagle, only better.
"Oh God," Kit couldn't stop repeating as he watched her fly in slow, wide circles above us. "She's for real."
Chapter 47
KIT WAS ALREADY in shock, and flat-out awe, and maybe even in denial at what he had seen. He and Frannie started after her - a young girl, who looked normal in almost every way, except that she had wings and she could fly.
She was flying, and she was up about five hundred feet above them.
They climbed the hills after her.
They crawled up rocky inclines at times.
And they quickly found out that the shortest distance between any two points is - to fly.
Kit stared up at the sheer face of the cliff and wondered how Frannie was able to find usable toeholds when he saw nothing but slick rock and possible death, or at least major broken bones. He had put his T-shirt back on, as if that would protect him if he fell.
He was no Neanderthal. It didn't bother him when a woman did things better than he did, but this was getting a little ridiculous. Frannie wasn't just in good shape - she was in great shape. She was nearly Olympic-quality at this climbing hill-and-dale-and-mountain thing.
He appreciated that she wasn't rubbing it in too much. Actually, she was helpful and encouraging most of the time.
"Don't look down," she said to him. "Look at me."
"I can do that," he said. "I like doing that. Thanks for the tip. That actually helps some. Look -at Frannie. Do as Frannie does. See?
Frannie isn't falling to her death. You shouldn't either."
He pulled himself up the ledge toward where she stood above him. His hand found a thick root and he grabbed it. His toe found a narrow crack and wedged in. He was doing okay.
Then he slipped.
He slid down several feet toward a rocky chasm. Oh no, Jesus no.
He grabbed at a whip of a tree, bent the sucker almost double.
It held, thank God.
"C'mon, L. L. Bean, you can do this," Frannie called to him from above. "Just be careful. Don't lose your focus."
Panting, afraid of becoming a bleeding pile of flesh and shattered bones, he slowly inched his way back up again. That was the thing about Kit... he didn't give up easily. He heaved himself over the lip of the rocky ledge. Normally, he'd have managed a snappy comeback, but he didn't have enough wind left in him to answer her.
"What'd you just call me?" he gasped eventually.
"What do you mean?"
Kit achieved a crawling position, then stood up. He lurched over to where Frannie was sitting on a rock, massaging her toes. Nice toes, long and lean and very flexible.
"Why'd you call me "L. L. Bean'?"
She squinted up at him, shrugged her shoulders. "Your clothes, I guess. They're brand-spanking-new, city boy. L. L. Bean-type."
"You're hurting my feelings."
That cracked Frannie up. She bent at the waist and hugged her sides and laughed hard. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. Kit looked at her and started laughing, which only compounded his wheezy, exhausted whoops into hysterics.
"It wasn't that funny," said Frannie, when she could finally speak again.
"I know," he managed to say. "It wasn't half that funny. But it is. Look at the two of us."
Which sent them both into hysterical laughter again.
It was Frannie who recovered first. She wiped her face with the back of her hand. Then she hunted around in her pack, pulled out a first-aid kit, and tossed it to him.
"Your stomach. There's blood on your shirt. Ooohh. I can't stand the sight of blood," she kidded.
He doused the abrasion on his belly with alcohol without wincing.
Frannie watched him. A cool expression on her face. After he was finished with the alcohol, he said, "Ouch," and grinned.
Kit looked around, searched the surrounding hills with his eyes. "Well, we sure didn't catch up to her. She's gone again."
"I keep wondering who her parents are," Frannie said. "Where the heck did she come from? Where does she live?"
There was no comment from Kit. Only dead silence.
Frannie stared hard at him.
"Wait a minute. You already know something about her, don't you?"
Kit blew out air. "I knew something was going on. I uh, I am an FBI agent, Frannie. I told you that last night. That's also why I'm here in Colorado. I've been working on this case for three years."
Frannie
turned pale and stumbled over her words. "What? What case is that? Am I part of a case now?"
"Don't go crazy, stay calm. Listen to me. It started in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at least I think that's where it started. A doctor named Anthony Peyser was performing experiments, trying to speed up human development, or so we believe."
"You mean he was trying to effect human evolution, Kit? Is that what you're trying to say?"
"Something on that order. We don't know for sure. I don't know for sure. Peyser and a team of students he handpicked were into something important. There was a breakthrough of some kind. Then they got in serious trouble in Boston. They were accused of experimenting on humans-vagrants, street people, occasionally a student who needed extra cash. The end justifies the means sort of thing. You've probably read about small labs, even university research centers, accused of the same thing recently. The army has done some pretty bad things."
"Yeah, I have heard about it. Who hasn't? So you knew about this outlaw group of doctors all along. That's why you believed me about the girl, isn't it?"
"I trust you - period. That's why I believed you. How about trusting me a little now?" he finally said. "Deal?"
"We'll camp here for the night," Frannie answered.
She was tough when she had to be. But he sort of liked it.
Chapter 48
I NEEDED TO THINK about it some more, but I already suspected I was all right with what Kit had told me so far. Basically, I did trust him. I liked what I saw in his eyes.
"I'm going to the grocery store," I told him, as I started back into the woods near our camp. "Want anything?"
"Denver Post, M&Ms with peanuts, Prozac," he joked.
"You're in charge of the fire."
Kit nodded, made a grunting cavernan sound, then gave me another of his patented smiles. I continued to be a little amazed at how well we were getting along.
There was a stream less than a hundred yards from camp. I strung a line on the portable fishing rod I carry in my pack. The stream was bubbling and boiling down the rocks. It eddied into a little pool I knew from another time up here. Maybe a hike with David.
Worms were thick in the leaf mold near the stream. I hooked one, tossed the line out onto the dark water. Waited for dinner to swim along.
It took only a few minutes for me to catch a good-sized rainbow trout.
I cut and tied my line, left the fish in the water, then restrung the pole.
The fish was only about fourteen inches, but a half hour later I hadn't caught another, and it would be dark soon.
One medium-sized trout would have to do for dinner. I'd brought along a couple of tomatoes and potatoes, so it wouldn't be too bad.
I had an eerie, sixth sense that the girl was close by. When she'd shown herself before, it almost seemed as if she were teasing us, maybe even leading us up here. Why? Did she want to be found? Or maybe show us something? What, though? Where she lived? How she lived? Some other secret she needed to share?
I took the trout out of the cold stream, killed it quickly with a rock, refilled the canteen, and headed back.
I found Kit at the campsite. The FBI agent. Out here on a big case that he wouldn't talk very much about. Well, somebody could definitely hide a lab up here. Stoned-out hippies had been hiding in these hills for years.
"Nice fire," I said. It was a beauty.
"No Match-light either."
He'd taken the potatoes out of the pack and they were already baking in the coals. A domesticated man - what fun! I handed him the canteen of water and showed him the fish. He whistled his approval. A frontier woman - what fun!
I was gutting the fish on a flat rock with a Swiss Army knife and Kit was licking his handsome chops when I said, "I might be willing to share my trout with you - on one condition."
I had his attention. Also, his smile was turned on again. At least I amused him.
"You tell me, no crap, more of what's going on, and you get to eat."
"Fine," he said. "You win, Dr. O'Neill. But I want to see half of that fish on my plate before I talk."
"Deal," I said.
I put the trout fillet into a pan. Set the pan onto the red-hot coals. The aroma was incredible, mouthwatering.
I walked over to where Kit was sitting and hunkered down next to him so that I could see the view. As if on cue, the sun set. Great brush strokes of salmon and plum and whiskey colored the sky.
"Damn," he whispered. "They don't make them like this anywhere around Boston."
I felt as strangely pleased as if I'd painted the sunset myself. For the moment at least, this was a really great adventure, a truly amazing one.
Everything about it was appealing.
The fish was done in no time. I took the potatoes out of the coals, and sliced the tomato. Kit put everything on plates.
He and I ate and watched the breathtaking scene from our dinner table in the sky, talking quietly, but pretty much nonstop. The fish bones were in the ashes and we were sipping hot coffee. Kit, as he had promised, began to tell me what he knew.
He repeated what he had already told me, adding some information.
He still kept it a little sketchy, which he said he had to do. The current crisis emanated from an outlaw biology lab. It had started with MIT students and a few professors in the late 1980s. It had definitely involved experiments with humans back then. The man who ran the radical group was named Anthony Peyser. I told Kit that I'd never heard of him; I'd have remembered the name. Besides that, I didn't think I knew anyone who fit the description Kit gave me.
"There were charges in Boston, but the police couldn't prove anything significant. The group moved to San Francisco, then to New Jersey, a short stint in England, maybe to get European financing. Then back to Boston again.
"The second time they came to Boston I nailed them, at least I thought I had. They were experimenting on homeless people with fatal diseases, or so they convinced them. They helped a couple of them die sooner than they would have. Somehow, everyone involved managed to get bail and then they disappeared off the face of the earth."
"Until now?"
"Somebody in the group contacted a couple of past associates. Maybe they'd been in contact all along. I think that whoever it was might have been having attacks of morality and ethics. I wonder why. Anyway, Dr. James Kim in San Francisco and Dr. Heekin in Cambridge, Massachusetts, were contacted, and then ended up dead. They really don't like witnesses, Frannie. They're thorough, too, as you might expect scientists to be."
I didn't like the sound of that, but I sure got the point.
Kit stopped talking abruptly. He just stared out as the sun finally slipped below the horizon. I knew there had to be more to his story.
It struck me as funny, peculiar, strange, but I knew it was all over for me. Just like that! I liked looking at his strong face, the hard-chiseled cheekbones and chin. I liked the softness I saw in his eyes, too. It had never happened to me like this before, not even with David. I could intellectualize about it all I wanted to, but I was falling for Kit Harrison.
Falling, or flying? I wondered.
"And that's all you know?" I asked him. "You swear it is?"
"That's what I know for sure, Frannie. It's what you get for half a trout dinner."
"All right, I guess that's fair. How's that scrape on your stomach?" I asked.
"I used to play rugby at Holy Cross, then in the Boston and D.C. beer leagues. I think I'll pull through."
I frowned a little at the tough guy posturing. "Did you put antibacterial gunk on it?"
"It's not that bad, Doc. It's a scratch, a scrape."
Fireflies flashed intermittently in the gathering dark. Once upon a time I knew a lot about fireflies, but I couldn't remember any of it now. I was thinking about the tufts of gold hair on Bean's chest and the abrasion roughing up his perfect skin. I was remembering the softness of his lips, and his gentle touch.
I was turning myself on. He was turning me on. Oh boy I There were no s
ick animals to distract me, nothing to clean or jump up and do. I wished for a cigarette, although I don't smoke. I could have used a drink.
"I think I ought to take a look at it," I finally said. I don't know why, but I spoke in a whisper.
James Patterson - When the Wind Blows Page 12