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I craned my neck to see. There was an outcropping roughly fifteen feet down and a few feet over. It angled away, not readily visible from above. If I could make it down there, it’d be a good vantage point from which to scan for some clue that might’ve lodged in the rocks and brush.
I sat on my butt, scootching past the spot marking Trinity’s final footprint. What lay between me and that plateau couldn’t have been called a trail, but it was horizontal enough to shimmy and slide down if I used the rocks and roots as handholds. I inched some more, tentatively scrabbling down like a crab—a lame, clumsy crab.
My boots met flat rock, and I pushed with my legs, testing the support. It was solid. It gave me a spurt of confidence. I inched to the left, over to where I thought I’d spotted the rock shelf below.
“Here goes nothing,” I muttered as I eased onto my side. I had the sensation of being almost vertical now, and it felt more secure to have so much of my body pressed against the granite. I guess somewhere in my reptilian brain I also figured that if I started to slide, maybe I’d be able to stop myself using hands and legs and belly.
It took me about thirty seconds to realize my reptilian brain was a total idiot.
Getting down to the next tier was less a thoughtful descent than it was a controlled fall. I slid, and rocks scattered loose, clacking down the side of the cliff in a shower of gravel.
“Crap. ” I picked up speed and careened past the next tier without stopping. Rocks cut into my belly and punched hard along my rib cage as I bounced and slid down the face. “Ohhhh crap. ”
Panic choked me as the mottled brown, gray, and green of the cliff angled steeper, rolled by faster. I grabbed for all of it. Flailing now, I swatted for rocks, dirt, the tufts of grass that poked from between the cracks.
My feet slammed into something, and the impact reverberated up my body. The plateau. Relief.
But I’d hit it too hard. Time slowed as I felt my body propelling forward, like I was about to swan dive from a platform.
Carden appeared in my mind’s eye, a vision of him diving from the Needle, all power and grace.
Power and grace. I could be that, too.
I refused to die this way. I’d see this through. I’d see him again.
I made a split-second decision. It was me or my knees.
It took a conscious effort to let go, to render myself limp as a rag doll, but I did, forcibly turning my legs to jelly beneath me. They buckled and I slammed hard onto my knees. I gripped the ledge, stopping myself before I tumbled from the outcropping.
I winced, immediately flopping back onto my butt, half cradling my bruised legs while skittering away from the ledge at the same time. Made it. And I refused to think on why, in my moment of near death, my mind had gone to Carden.
I dusted off my legs. I was here to investigate, to get my mind off the bond. I sat all the way up, and punishing wind instantly whipped the hair into my face, bringing tears to my eyes.
I squinted. Looking around, I saw how it wasn’t just a shelf I’d landed on, but there was a little niche, too. Not big enough to be called a cave, but deep enough to shelter me from the wind howling off the sea, lashing the rock face. I pressed my body into it, feeling like a creature in a seashell, and let myself take a moment to gather my wits and pick the bloody bits of grit and rock from my tattered palms.
I was busily panting and catching my breath, so I didn’t hear it at first. But as my heart slowed, I began to discern an alarming sound from above: men’s voices. Two of them.
I mouthed a curse, instantly pressing as far into my little shelter as I could. Had the killer—or killers?—returned to the scene of the crime?
I curled in more tightly. If I was discovered, I’d be dead meat. Literally.
I tucked my legs, grimacing through the pain as I bent them. I quickly reeled my bag in, too, and clutched it close to my side, grateful that I hadn’t stowed it at the top or anything stupid like that.
My sweaty undershirt clung to me, and I became instantly chilled leaning against the damp, hard rock. But I hunched closer, turning my back to the voices, praying that, if they happened to walk to the edge and look down, the gray of my Acari uniform would act as camouflage.
I huddled and stared at the rock wall, and that was when I saw it. Simple carvings. Old runes, like graffiti.
The sight made me smile despite myself. Viking carvings could be found all over the islands in the North Sea. It was amazing—the graffiti was thousands of years old and yet it was as unremarkable as the stuff you’d find in the bathroom stall at Applebee’s. Magnus red-legs was here, that sort of thing.
I used my thumbnail to scrape away the fine layer of moss, peering at the letters.
I imagined it was Icelandic, or Old Norse maybe. I could stare till I went blind and it still wouldn’t make any sense. But it cheered me just a little. It was such a peculiar reminder of my humanity.
I wriggled heat into my fingers and toes, forcing my mind back into the moment. The men were still there, closer now.
Angling my head as far as I dared, I tuned my ear, trying to make sense of their conversation in the keening wind. Their words echoed down the bluffs, bouncing into my shallow crevice. German, I realized. They were speaking German. I didn’t recognize the voices, but I could tell that one speaker was more deferential than the other.
The wind shifted, bringing me a phrase. Hat er unter Kontrolle? “Is he in control?”
