Deb looked at him. “Can you? Can you really? I was on my belly, face pressed against the mountain, arms and legs spread out, trying to find some sort of grip, some kind of toe hold, so I wouldn’t slide over the edge. But the rock face was shear. As flat and smooth as glass. I skidded down it slowly—even slower than a child on a park slide. But I couldn’t slow down, couldn’t stop my gradual descent. You know, six seconds is usually nothing. Hell, I’ve been talking longer than six seconds. But as I was sliding, heading toward the edge, I had time to think. I had time to actually think about my own death. About what it would mean.”
Mal leaned in closer. “What would it mean?”
Deb stared ahead, into the blackness of the open road, and felt herself shiver.
“It would mean nothing. I was going to die for no reason at all.” She let out a clipped, humorless laugh. “The whole point of my life was to be a cautionary tale for other rock climbers to make sure you use pinions.”
“You weren’t using pinions?”
“I was hammering my first pinion in when… the rock gave way.”
Mal wrote something down.
“Can you talk about what happened after the fall?”
The memory was hazy, like trying to recall a dream, or a hallucination. But parts of it stuck out. Parts of it felt like they’d been burned into her head with a branding iron.
“It didn’t hurt at first. I remember waking up, confused about where I was. Then I saw my legs, both of them bent backwards. It looked like I had two extra knees, and the bones were jutting out the front of my shins. You know, I actually tried to pull one out? I thought I’d landed on a stick, and it was poking out of me. Instead, it was my tibia. I tried to yank out my own tibia.”
Mal cleared his throat. “That’s… horrible.”
“I was in shock, and I still wasn’t feeling any pain. But then I started crawling. That’s when it really got horrible.”
“Because the pain hit?”
“It hit. Hard. As I was pulling myself to my car, dragging my legs behind me, I kept catching my tibia bones on things. Rocks. Branches. I actually got snagged on a dead squirrel, and pulled that along with me for about a hundred yards.”
Deb could remember the crawling. The pain. The horror. The desperation. Because she knew, if she got to the car, the worst was yet to come. She hoped he wouldn’t ask about that part.
“I was also losing blood, getting dizzy. I’d tied my shirt around my knees to stop the bleeding, but I was still leaving a trail. And some local wildlife took notice.”
Mal looked up from his notepad. “A coyote? Bear?”
Deb shivered again. It was really getting cold. “Cougar.”
“I didn’t think there were mountain lions in West Virginia.”
“It followed me. I saw it up close. At first I thought I was hallucinating. But I wasn’t. Had to be close to two hundred pounds.”
Deb could remember how it stared at her. How it snarled. How it smelled. She would never forget its musky, pungent scent. Or its broken tail, bent in several places like a zigzag.
“Did it attack?”
She subconsciously touched the scars on her side. The cat had pounced on her, batting her with its massive paw, the claws hooking into her flesh. It did this several times. Playing with her. Taking its time. It even lazily groomed itself between strikes, its merciless yellow eyes following her as she tried to scrabble away.
“It treated me like I was a mouse. I would crawl a few feet, and it would drag me back. Like it was all a game.”
“How did you get away?”
“It was futile. Eventually I stopped trying, and just closed my eyes and waited for it to kill me. But it didn’t. Maybe it had already eaten. When I looked for it, it was gone. Then I continued on, to the car.”
“How did you drive? I mean, you couldn’t use your legs, right?”
So much for him not asking.
“Cell phones don’t always work in the mountains. Mine didn’t. And I couldn’t put any weight at all on my legs, but I couldn’t press the pedals with my hands and still see where I was going. So...” Deb let her voice trail off.
“So?”
“What would you have done?”
“I dunno. Looked for a tree branch, something long to press the gas.”
“There was a mountain lion outside the car.”
“Tire iron?”
“In the trunk. I could barely get myself into the driver’s seat. I couldn’t have pulled myself into my trunk.”
“I give up. What did you do?”
“I put my foot over the gas, grabbed my tibia, and pressed down on it.”
Mal set his writing pad in his lap. “That’s... that’s just...”
“Disgusting? Repulsive? The most terrible thing you’ve ever heard?”
“That’s the bravest thing I’ve ever heard. You’re one helluva woman, Deb Novachek.”
Deb looked at Mal. He was beaming at her. Then she opened her window a crack, because it had gotten kind of warm in the car.
“Look for a dirt road, on your right,” she said, happy to change the subject. “According to my GPS, it should be coming up.”
After a few hundred yards, Mal said, “Is that it?”
Deb squeezed the brake bar and peered where Mal was pointing. Rather than a road, there were two faint tire tracks that led into the woods.
“It can’t be.”
“There’s a sign. On that tree.”
The sign was half the size of a pizza box, painted green with a large white arrow. It read RUSHMORE INN ¼ MILE. Deb didn’t mind quaint and rustic. But backwoods and hidden weren’t a good match.
“You’re kidding me.” She frowned. “How is anyone supposed to see that?”
“Maybe they like their privacy.”
“Maybe they don’t like guests. It’s not even permanent. It’s hanging on a rope.”
And it was swinging, even though the wind had stopped.
Almost like it was hung there just a moment ago.
“The weeds are tamped down,” Mal said. “Looks like someone drove down there recently.”
“Never to be seen again.”
“Are you actually nervous about this?”
Deb didn’t answer.
“Come on. How bad can it be?”
“You’re asking the wrong girl.”
Mal shrugged. “Well, I’m tired and I need a shower, and there’s no place else to go, so let’s give it a shot. What do you say?”
Deb didn’t like it. She didn’t like the fact that it wasn’t on the map. She didn’t like the creepy manager who suggested the place. And she didn’t like Mal’s sudden enthusiasm for driving off the main road and into the woods.
What do I know about Mal anyway?
She hadn’t asked him for ID or credentials. He smooth-talked his way into her car, and now he had her out here, all alone, in the middle of bumblefuck. Hell, maybe there was no inn at all. Maybe this was some scheme Mal cooked up with that manager guy.
Then a very bad thought hit her.
What if that strange man who slapped the hood hadn’t done that to the deer?
What if Mal had done it?
Mal was covered in blood. And he had a few minutes from the time he left the car to the time she saw him...
“You look freaked out,” Mal said. He reached out to touch her arm, and she flinched away.
“Let’s keep our hands to ourselves, okay?”
He backed off, fast. “No problem. Do you want me to hike over there, check it out first?”
If this was all part of his plan to abduct her, what was to stop him from lying and saying everything was fine?
She stared at him. Hard. He was cute, charming, and seemed to be bending over backwards to accommodate her.
Of course, all of those same things could have been said about Ted Bundy.