Page 67 of Into the Fire

I crouched at the pit’s edge. Wear, bad setups, and missed inspections broke equipment. Sometimes plain bad luck stepped in. So far, they were all plausible.

Dante placed orange cones around the pit. He put the last two behind me.

“Who checked this?” I asked.

“I did,” Dante said. “This morning. I checked the stations, pulleys, and hardware. The attachment was clean and tight. I’d sign off on that.”

I believed him, but Nash had rebuilt half of that rig himself. He had access to the loft, hardware, and records. He was on a list I hated to make, but he was also the man on the way to Kessler in an ambulance.

I stood. “Nobody inside the cones,” I said. “Nothing gets picked up, wiped down, or put away. The tower stays exactly like this until somebody qualified looks at it.”

***

Marty brought Nash back from Kessler that evening at half-past eight.

I heard the truck and left my office in time to watch Nash refuse help down from the cab. He had a splint on his left wrist and a walking boot on his right foot. Marty carried the discharge paperwork to my office and set it on my desk.

“Cracked ribs, two. Wrist’s a bad sprain. The ankle’s in the boot for two weeks.” He lowered his voice. “He wouldn’t take the prescription they offered, and he made me stop so he could buy aspirin like it’s 1978.” Marty looked back at the yard. “Go easy on him. He’s been chewing on something the whole drive.”

Nash didn’t head toward his truck or the bunkhouse. He went to the loft.

I gave him ten minutes and followed.

The loft office light was on. He was in his chair with the boot propped on the wastebasket and the day’s cards fanned on the desk. He didn’t look up when I entered.

“Door’s open,” he said.

I stood across the desk from him. “How’s the wrist?”

“It’s a wrist.”

“I need to walk through the morning with you,” I said.

“Then take the first step.”

I asked when he’d last looked at the letdown stations, whether anything had been out of place in the loft recently, who’d signed hardware out, and whether anyone had asked about the schedule. I asked him to tell me who knew the certification ride was happening after lunch.

He answered every question completely. When I’d finished, he shifted his leg, winced, and leaned forward.

“Ask it.”

I knew what he meant.

“Did you touch that rig, Nash?”

He was quiet for a second. Then he laughed, short and flat.

“I’m the man who climbed the tower, Boone, and you want to know if I rigged it? I took Vega’s turn because Regional can’t spell his name. I clipped into that station and stepped off like I’ve done a thousand times, and it broke. So either I’m clear, or I’m the kind of man who rigs a line and then risks my life for cover. Go ahead. Pick. Which is it?”

“I’m not picking anything.”

“That’s worse.” He pulled the walking boot off the wastebasket and stood. His breath caught halfway up. “You want somebody to blame for Dutch dying? I’ve been available for that for five years. Every chute that flies off this base has my name inside it. And the first time something breaks, you come up in here with your accident-review voice and ask if it’s me.”

“That’s not the question I’m asking.”

“Bullshit. It’s the question you’ve been asking since Carson. Did you betray us? You asked Dante five years ago, and he left the state to get away from it. Now it’s my turn.” He steadied himself on the desk. “Dutch was walking out, Boone. He was ahead of it. I went down, and he came back, and that’s the arithmetic, and you think I need you standing in my loft to make me relive it? I’ve done the arithmetic every day since.”

“That isn’t what happened.”