Charlie looked at his right palm. Blood trickled toward his wrist. He checked his left, and saw it was bleeding, too. Sliced by cable. He wiped them on his pants and got shakily to his feet. “Remember what that Māori man said to you? About grave danger? Guess he was right.”

  Alexa rose as well, keeping a hand on the rock wall to steady herself. “That’s stupid.” But is it? This whole experience is a curse. Her words evaporated as she looked up at the riverbank, and then at the sky. Between trees she spotted one star, and it gave her hope. She found a foothold, clutched the cliff edge, and boosted herself up. Charlie followed with a grunt. “Good thing this is granite and not limestone.”

  When they were back to the beginning, at the foot of the listing swing bridge, where she watched her only sibling fly into the air, she asked why.

  “A limestone ledge might have crumbled from our weight. You can count on granite.”

  She remembered something whizzing by her face. “What happened to the bridge?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it had to do with the quake. I’m lucky the whole thing didn’t collapse.”

  She took his arm. “I’m sorry, Charlie. For all the times I wouldn’t play with you when we were little. For not building LEGO forts.”

  He met her eyes in the almost-dark. “Where did that come from?”

  “I was a crappy sister. I never read to you or played with you.” Her throat swelled. She couldn’t go on.

  “You weren’t responsible for me.” His voice quavered, too. “You were just a kid. A little kid who lost her mother. Benny wouldn’t suddenly take care of Noah if something happened to me or Mel.” He went quiet, probably aware that what he said had almost come true.

  She stayed quiet, too, amid the symphony of nature, wondering if her guilt would lift.

  “Come on.” Charlie broke the silence. “We’ve got to take a look. See if we can help her.”

  She recoiled. “I’m not going down there. It’s too dangerous. You nearly died.”

  But she knew he was right and followed him as he glided along the cliff above the river, fifteen or twenty feet past the crippled swing bridge. He leaned over, moved down a few more feet, and leaned again. “Look.”

  She looked, following his finger downward. In the waning light she spotted a log—twenty or twenty-five feet below—wedged between two shoreline boulders. She fumbled in her jacket pocket, past a balled sock, for her Maglite and turned it on. The powerful beam, designed for first responders, turned the log into a human form. She swept the light back and forth, and made out legs, one bent backward. This was definitely a body. She directed the beam past the boulder hiding the torso, and made out a face—pallid and still. She looked for movement while Charlie screamed, “Diana.”

  The figure was not responsive to light or voice. Charlie screamed again.

  “I think it’s the woman we heard talking with her sister yesterday,” Alexa told him. “When we were behind the rocks.”

  “Damn,” Charlie said. “She must have fallen off the bridge.”

  “How in the world did you see her?”

  “I don’t know. The mist cleared and there she was.”

  Alexa wondered if Diana could have survived. Falls are the second-most common cause of injury-related death after traffic accidents. Height of fall and type of ground were the main mortality factors. Twenty or so feet from here to there, Alexa guessed, with a crash landing on boulders. Her blood went icy. “We need a helicopter to lift her out. Use the radio.”

  Charlie patted his pockets. “Crap. The radio is gone. I was holding it on the bridge. I dropped it.”

  Alexa didn’t know what to do.

  “I’ll stay,” Charlie said. “You go back to the lodge and get someone.”

  The track was separating them again. “Are you sure?”

  “It’s the right thing to do. I don’t want her to be alone.”

  I don’t want to be alone either.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The dark hovered. Alexa pocketed the Maglite, tightened the Velcro on her Tevas, and let her eyes adjust to the grays of the trail and blacks of the trees. She flew down the track like it was noon in Raleigh’s Umstead State Park where she’d jogged for years. Cardio combined with yoga kept her burn scars from causing muscle and joint limitation. The payoff was this moment, gliding to the lodge.

  But a thought bullied its way in. Up-current. With each stride she wondered why—if Diana had fallen off that evil bridge—her body was up-current.

  By the time she arrived, night was true. Pompolona Lodge looked like a golden snow globe against an inky curtain. The massive mountains beyond the lodge were invisible hulks, guardians of secrets, their presence felt, not seen. She pounced up the steps and yanked the door open. Luxers, relaxing in chairs and on sofas, gazed at her in alarm. She panted heavily in the lobby like a wild thing. She had déjà vu about wanting to scream for help.

  Silas hadn’t noticed her. He held a poster of a white-faced owl. “Some believe the laughing owl is extinct, but if you leave your window cracked, its laugh might…”

  The dozen or so Luxers stared at her instead of at the owl.

  “Did you find her?” Cassandra called.

  Alexa pretended not to hear. She wove through the lounge, dodging couches and armchairs. Debbie, the friendly American, sprang from a love seat and intercepted her. “Your dinner is waiting in the kitchen. I told the chef to keep it warm.”

  A droplet of sweat ran into Alexa’s eye. “Okay. Thanks.” She pushed past, bumping a footstool. A clatter made her turn. Stead and Rosie had arrived. They must have been trailing her on the track. That gave her the willies. The way someone could be behind you, and you not know. Rosie scanned the gathering.

  “She’s still not here,” Cassandra said.

  “We’re a bit shook,” Stead announced. “A tremor, eh?”

  Silas laughed. “Just a wee one. It’s all good.”

  Alexa beckoned to Stead. He followed her, lugging his rescue pack. Rosie stayed behind. The door to Vince’s office was wide open. He shot out of his chair when he saw them. “Where’s Kathy?”

  “She’s not back yet?” Stead asked.

  Alexa closed the door. “My brother and I…spotted a body in the gorge…near the swing bridge.” She leaned her hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath. “I guess it’s her. I don’t know if she’s alive.”

  “Why didn’t you radio the lodge?” Stead snapped.

  “Charlie lost the radio. In the river.”

  “Bloody irresponsible,” Stead said.

  Just then Kathy opened the door. She pushed into the small room, followed by the guide Clint, and Larry. “No luck.”

  “Miss Glock has some disturbing news,” Vince said, making room for Kathy to stand next to him in the overcrowded office.

  Alexa straightened and repeated her story.

  “Ah, no,” Larry said, his face ashen. “Diana can’t be dead.”

  “We couldn’t reach her—she’s like twenty feet straight down.”

  Words from Silas’s lecture floated into the office: “Dismal…” “Shrieks…” “Nocturnal…” Stead shut the door. Alexa circumnavigated a desk and sat in a swivel chair. She planted her feet firmly, stilling it. “The swing bridge bucked my brother off.” She gazed at Stead. “That’s why he dropped the radio. He nearly died. The bridge is still spanning the creek, but something is wrong. It needs to be closed.”

  “Bucked him off?” Clint said.

  “What else can go wrong?” Vince said.

  “Sounds like those backpackers who were crossing the Whanganui Bridge last year,” Stead said. “It flipped them in the river.”

  “All the rain, then the tremor,” Clint said. “A cable must have broken loose.”

  Alexa felt destabilized. “My brother is still there, waiting for us to help.” She would need her camera and the caution tape. No—wait. She had used the tape up with the skeleton.

  “Does Rosie know?” Kathy asked.

  “No. She’s in the lounge with the guests,” Stead said. “We need to go.” He ripped off his knit hat and used it to wipe his forehead. “Larry and Clint, come with me. I have a rescue stretcher. With Charlie, that will make four of us to haul her back.” He instructed Vince to call SAR. “Apprise them of the situation.”

  Kathy twisted her wedding band. “This is tragic. It will make the news.”

  “I’m coming, too,” Alexa said. “I’ll meet you on the porch.”

  “It’s not necessary,” Stead said. “You can wait here.”

  Her hackles stood quicker than she did. Her brother was involved, and there might be a death. She was definitely going. “If the doctor is dead, there will need to be an inquest. I’m qualified to investigate.”

  Stead opened his mouth, saw the look on Alexa’s face, and closed it.

  Vince cracked a knuckle. “Would you use the side porch? It’s at the end of this hall. I don’t want to further alarm our guests.”

  Alexa hurried to her room. Her clean, dry hiking boots, like old friends, awaited her arrival. She unlocked the door and noted Charlie’s backpack and hiking poles on the second luggage rack. It made her uneasy that someone had entered. She changed from Tevas to boots, grabbed her camera, debated whether to grab her poles and decided not to—the ground between here and the bridge was flat—and flew to the side entrance porch. The three men were waiting in rocking chairs. Alexa almost laughed. Rocking on the porch was for holidaymakers, not body hunters.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  They set off on what felt like a death march. Alexa’s thoughts drifted from one horror to another. The horror of the bulk bag crashing toward her head. The horror of Charlie hanging over the river. His escape made her want to sink to her knees and kiss the earth.

  The periphery was soot black. She didn’t like it and walked in front of Larry and Clint, and behind Stead. She didn’t want to be picked off, like in some horror movie.

  When they arrived twenty minutes later, Charlie jumped up from the steps leading to the swing bridge. “You were gone forever,” he shouted at Alexa. She hoped he was shouting so his voice could be heard over the waterfall. She gave him a quick hug, which he shook off.

  “Show us then, eh?” Stead said.

  Charlie walked a few yards up the bank and shone his light on the body below. The others crowded around on the verge.

  Alexa directed her Maglite at the body, and Stead did the same.

  “Eh, I thought she’d be wearing her yellow rain jacket,” Clint yelled over the din. “Every client gets one.”

  With the added light, Alexa could see a pale moon face, craned toward them.

  “It might have washed off when the river was higher, ” Stead called. “The water was up to those boulders earlier. She might have been submerged.”

  “I’ve been calling her name,” Charlie said.

  “What?” Stead shouted.

  “I’ve called out her name, but she hasn’t moved.”

  Alexa didn’t harbor much hope that Diana—if it was her—was alive.

  “No more gawking. Let’s follow the bank upstream,” Stead said. “The water level is down. We’ll be able to get to her.”

  The steep ledge subsided after a hundred meters. Stead directed them to climb down an embankment and follow the shoreline back to the body.

  “What’s your plan?” Charlie asked, slipping up to Stead.

  Stead held one flashlight in his hand, and had another on a headlamp. “I’ve got a litter.”

  “A what?”

  “Rescue litter. A collapsible stretcher. We’ll get her to the lodge.”

  The bank below the berm was a mixture of sand, shingle, and rock. White froth pitched and hurtled alongside them. The temperature plummeted. They forged the shoreline by flashlight. Mere steps from mayhem, Alexa thought, sidestepping a log. Larry stumbled, but Clint caught him. “You right, mate?” he shouted.

  Alexa couldn’t hear Larry’s reply. She felt hemmed in by river on one side and steep bank on the other. Charlie’s broad back was a comfort, though his recoil from her hug smarted. Maybe she’d embarrassed him.

  The sight of the body stopped them. The woman looked like flotsam tossed by a tempest. Her torso, clad in a thin gray pullover, was sandwiched between large boulders. Her head rested on another rock, and her legs jutted from the other end, one bent backward. Larry dashed to her and knelt near her head. “Diana. Diana. Can you hear me?” he yelled, nudging her shoulder. No response. He bent close to her mouth. Alexa knew he was feeling for breath. Then he fingered her carotid artery for a pulse.

  Time slowed as Alexa awaited the verdict. The swing bridge, intangible in darkness, bridged this world to the next. Had Diana crossed over? Larry shook his head, then opened his arms as if to scoop the broken body up.

  “Don’t move her,” Alexa shouted. “Let me take photographs first.” Larry backed up as she turned on the camera and flash. The low battery light flickered. Shit. She had a spare battery in her backpack, but not here. She prayed for juice as she moved in, scrunching over pebble and shingle, snapping mid-range and close-up photographs of Diana, then of the area. She was standing in for the pathologist. She needed to capture the scene with the body in situ, but it was hard without proper equipment. She missed the portable spotlight in her full crime kit. She knew the flash wouldn’t penetrate the darkness. Again she thought of the pole she had found earlier, embedded.

  The camera shut itself down. She was thankful she’d had enough juice to photograph the body.

  The men stood shoulder to shoulder. She could feel their eyes watching as she checked if Diana was wearing a watch. A watch might have broken due to the fall, and mark time of death. She felt up the sleeve of Diana’s left wrist. It was bare. She checked the right wrist and felt a slinky band—maybe a bracelet—but no watch.

  “It’s okay to move her now.” Diana was wedged tightly. Alexa, holding her beam steady so the men could see, held her breath until they pulled the body free. As Stead strapped her on the rescue stretcher, Larry hung his head.

  Alexa shone her beam around. “Where’s her backpack?”

  “What?” Stead yelled. His headlamp gave him a cyclops appearance.

  “Her backpack!”

  “Probably fell off, washed away,” he answered.

  “So she was here, all this time, when we crossed that bridge?” Larry sputtered.

  “Might have been,” Stead said. “She’d have been hard to see, jammed between those rocks.”

  That means I passed by, too, Alexa realized. What if she had been alive?

  The men headed back upriver with their awkward cargo. Alexa lingered, nosing around with the beam of her Maglite, searching for any of Diana’s belongings. The boulder where Diana’s head had rested was stained dark. Alexa figured Diana’s skull had cracked. It made her own head throb.

  It took forty minutes to reach the lodge. “Let’s put her down,” Stead said. “A frickin’ hard yakka, that.”

  “Couldn’t see a thing,” Charlie said.

  The men lowered the stretcher onto the side porch. Larry volunteered to break the news to Rosie. Then he turned to Alexa, his eyes downcast. “I’d rather not examine her. She’s my friend and colleague.”

  Alexa was taken aback. Using one’s professional abilities was a better way to honor a friend than bowing out. “I’ll handle it. Her. If I get some calories in me, I’m good to go.” The litter was in shadows. “Why is the lodge dark?”

  “The generator goes off at ten,” Clint said.

  “They need to override the system. This is an emergency,” she snapped.

  “Electricity isn’t going to help her, Lexi,” Charlie said quietly.

  He was right, but light would help her examine the body. She and Charlie let Stead and Clint deal with where to put the body, and entered the lodge.

  Kathy had been hovering near the porch and ushered them to the kitchen by lantern light. “So it’s her? The doctor?”

  Alexa nodded.

  “And she’s…dead?”

  “Yes.”

  Alexa excused herself to run through the dark hallway to her room, switch camera batteries, and wash her hands.

  Back in the kitchen, Kathy made a tsk sound and pulled on an oven mitt. She pulled open a warming drawer below the seven-burner stove. “Here you go, luvs,” she said like a mother. “Sit. Sit here. I’ve kept your mains warm.”

  Alexa swallowed back a lump. Being mothered always made her teary.

  Kathy sat the covered plates at a small counter and arranged cutlery and napkins. She turned on a second lantern. “Tomato sauce? Cocoa?” As soon as they had everything they needed, Kathy said she’d check in with Rosie.

  “I don’t envy her,” Charlie said after she left.

  They ate by lantern light. The salmon was dry, but the sweet potato fries were moist and delicious. Alexa relished the interlude with her brother. “How are your hands?”

  Charlie set his fork down and grimaced as he studied his palms. The flesh was raw and leaky. “Carrying that stretcher was rough.”

  “I’ve got antibiotic cream in my backpack. Wash them good and spread it on.”

  Stead popped into the kitchen. “Diana is in Ruru, and the generator is coming back on any minute. I’ll see you folks in the morning.”

  “Ruru? What’s that?” Charlie said.

  “All the rooms are named after birds,” Alexa explained. She waited until Stead shut the door. “He sure knew what he was doing out there.”

  Charlie wiped his mouth with his napkin. “He went above and beyond to help. Some vacation he’s having.”

  Vacation. This jaunt in the woods was anything but. “I still don’t get how he got to Mintaro Hut.”

  “He came by helicopter. I saw him get dropped off.”

  Alexa stopped chewing. “What color was the copter?”

 

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