Rant of Ravens Read online

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  Rachel forced her fingers to relax, lifted the binoculars, and panned the rock face. “I’m not so sure Lower Owl isn’t climbable without ropes.”

  “Right, and Rowdy was a gentle mule.”

  Rachel grinned at Lark’s reference to a past fiasco that had her name written on it. “That was fifteen years ago, Lark.”

  “My tailbone doesn’t remember it that way.”

  Rachel had dared her to climb on a mule that Uncle William was boarding in a pasture near the barn. “He didn’t buck you off until you kicked him.”

  “That’s how you get a horse to move.”

  “He was a mule.”

  “I broke my tush.”

  Rachel laughed. “I’m just glad Uncle William didn’t break mine to match. Anyway, this isn’t the same.” The more she studied the Lower Owl formation, the more convinced she was she could climb the rock, with or without help.

  Suddenly, something black moved against the cliff. A bird hopped twice, then rose from a crack on the Lower Owl.

  “There it is.” She pointed. “Do you see it?”

  The bird floated on the thermals, swooping and soaring; a lone, raspy kaw echoed softly from the rocks, breaking the stillness.

  “Let me have the binoculars.”

  “It came from that crack on the right side of the rock.”

  “What crack? I see fifty cracks.”

  “No, this one’s obvious. You see the Lower Owl formation?”

  “Duh.”

  “Follow a line parallel to the top and join the bottom of the vee, making a triangle. There’s a hole on that line, about two-thirds of the way across, that looks like a cave. Imagine it’s the pom-pom on a clown’s hat. The brim of the hat is the crevice the bird flew out of.”

  Lark burst out laughing.

  “Just shut up and try it.” Rachel watched Lark scan the cliff face. She stopped panning, swung the binoculars back, and moved her gaze down a fraction.

  “I think I’ve got it.”

  “Now all we have to do is climb up there and—”

  “I already told you, I’m not going up there. I don’t do heights.”

  “Lark, it’s dangerous to climb alone, and Eric’s nowhere around. Harry’s in Boulder. That leaves the other EPOCH members, and I can’t picture Gertie climbing up there.”

  Lark grinned, then pulled her mouth into a hard line. “The mountain is off-limits for a reason.”

  “But this could be the clue we need to find Aunt Miriam.”

  “What about the peregrines and golden eagles? They have nests on the buttresses. If we disturb them, they might abandon their young.”

  “Then we’ll be careful.” Rachel pushed herself out of the chair. “Fine, if you won’t go with me, I’ll go by myself.”

  “What about EPOCH ethics? You took an oath when you joined the group.”

  “Aunt Miriam signed me up.” Rachel held up her right hand. “I swear, if we see any nesting peregrines, we’ll steer clear, go the other way. Besides, Harry told me most of the birds have fledged.”

  Rachel started to walk away. Lark grabbed her arm. “Everyone in Elk Park can see Twin Owls. We’ll be arrested before we can climb halfway to that crack, provided we don’t fall and kill ourselves first.”

  “We don’t have to climb to the top, only partway. That section can be seen by only half of Elk Park. Besides, we’ll be back down before anyone notices.”

  Lark pinched her lips together and twisted her braid. Rachel sensed she was wearing down.

  “You said you’d teach me things.”

  “I meant about birding, not playing mountain goat.” Lark flipped her braid off her shoulder. “I must be out of my mind, letting you talk me into this. Let’s go before I chicken out.”

  “I knew I could count on you.” Rachel clambered out of her chair and clapped Lark on the shoulder. “I’ll meet you beside your car in two minutes.”

  She scooted into the house before Lark reconsidered, grabbed two water bottles, and changed into the hiking boots she’d worn on the last trip she’d taken with Roger. The one to Yellowstone. Lark was leaning against her car when Rachel charged down the front steps a few minutes later. “Ready?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” Lark said, slipping a coil of rope over her shoulder and pointing the way to the start of the trailhead. “I figure we might need it.”

  Rachel pushed ahead up the short, steep section to the base of the Lower Owl. She knew they were taking a risk. But what other way was there? The longer Aunt Miriam was missing, the less chance they would find her unharmed. Rachel was just relieved Lark had agreed to come along.

  The first section was a relatively easy climb along a ridge of trees that angled up the base of the rock. Rachel stumbled once, grabbing a branch for support. The rough bark scraped her hand, and gummy pine sap smeared her fingers.

  Soon the trees grew closer together. Rocks cropped up on the downhill side and the cliff face rose sharply on the other, forming a trough that grew steeper with each footstep. The sun beat down on them. Heat rose in waves off the granite rocks.

  Rachel stopped as the ground leveled off and flapped her shirttail, cooling her sticky back. She glanced at her watch. They’d been climbing an hour. “This isn’t so bad.”

  “How much further do we have to go?” The tremor in Lark’s voice revealed her anxiety. She threw herself against a large boulder, pulled long on her water, and wiped her mouth on her shirtsleeve.

  “I think this is where we cut up.” Rachel pointed toward a lone tree growing fifty feet above them. “I remember that tree. Another fifty feet above that is the ledge where I spotted the raven.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  Rachel had grown up in the city, but she’d climbed rocks in the park and on vacations. “Didn’t you ever climb rocks as a kid? I’ll race you to the tree.”

  “Lead on, oh fearless one.”

  Rachel pulled herself up the first boulder, aware that from here on out, they could be seen by anyone in east Elk Park. She had worn a beige shirt and tan jeans, hoping to blend in, but her red hair flamed against the rocks. A dead giveaway. Add that to Lark’s bright T-shirt and blue Levis—invisibility was something they had not. “Try and stick to the crevasses wherever possible.”

  It took nearly another hour to reach the lone tree. Rachel threw herself on the ground, and watched Lark struggle the last five feet. Elk Park stretched out below them, the lake shimmering in the distance. The Drummond Hotel loomed on the ridge, and downtown bustled with life. The summer onslaught of tourists had begun. Let’s hope they’re all too busy to look up.

  Lark crested the ledge, stuck out her tongue, and panted. “And I thought I was in pretty good shape.”

  “Not!” The muscles in Rachel’s calves cramped from exertion, and her arms ached from pulling against the rock. Even working out three times a week on the stair-stepper at the gym hadn’t prepared her for this. Still, she liked the heightened senses that came with exhilaration, and the view. She now understood what Roger saw in the sport. “But we’re almost there. We can do this.”

  Her companion eyed the cliff above them dubiously. “That’s pretty steep, Rae. More like a technical climb. I think we should turn back.”

  “Not now that we’re this close.” Doing something to help find Aunt Miriam had assuaged her worry, if only temporarily. Besides, they’d come too far to give up.

  “How are we supposed to get up there?”

  Rachel studied the rock, sighting the ledge. The raven swooped in, something gripped in its beak. A few moments later it flapped away. “He looks bigger up close.”

  “They’re known to protect their nests, you know.”

  “Don’t even think you’re going to dissuade me.”

  “Then I’ll follow.”

  “Great.” Rachel gripped a knobby chunk of rock, wedged her toe into a knee-high crevice, and reached up. Hand over hand she climbed, the rock bit
ing into her fingers, scraping her knuckles raw. She glanced down once to check on Lark, and the ground wavered below her. The cliff tilted. Rachel closed her eyes and held on.

  “What I want to know,” called Lark, “is how are we going to get down?”

  Rachel pressed her face to the rock, clenched her eyes shut, and pondered the question. Climbing up was one thing; climbing down was another. Going up, she could see where to place her hands and feet, and she didn’t have to look at the ground. “Carefully?”

  “We’re going to die.”

  “Stop it, Lark.” Panicking now served no good purpose. Rachel was already terrified. “We’re almost there. Just a few more feet to go.”

  “I’ll wait for you here.”

  Rachel opened her eyes. The ground steadied, and she could see Lark clinging to a ledge halfway between herself and the lower ledge. Lark’s fingers gripped the rock so tightly her knuckles appeared as white as her face.

  A loud crack above her made Rachel look up. A rock dropped from the sky. She startled and her foot slipped. Rachel flinched as the rock glanced off the upper ledge. Then she struggled to regain her foothold. The rock tumbled past, crashing to the canyon floor.

  Lark shouted, her voice laced with panic. “What was that?”

  “A rock. It must have broken loose.”

  Another crack, and a larger rock careened toward them. Rachel managed to maintain her precarious hold with one hand and cover her head. She lurched sideways as the rock rolled toward her with gathering momentum. Air swished as the rock whizzed past.

  Lark stared up from below, her eyes wide with fright. The rock glanced off her fingers, grazing the side of her head. She slumped, pitched backward, and fell. Lark flipped once in the air, slammed against the rock wall, and landed face down on the ground with a sickening thud.

  Oh my God! “Lark? Are you okay? Lark, talk to me.” Rachel started down the cliff.

  Lark moaned and stirred.

  Thank God, at least she hadn’t broken her neck.

  The cliff face seemed steeper and the cracks fewer as she was going down. Rachel groped for a foothold, found a small fissure, and jammed the toe of her boot inside. She stretched, her fingers searching the rock for someplace to grip. “I’m coming, Lark. Say something. Talk to me.”

  “My leg hurts.”

  Rachel jumped the last ten feet, landing with a thud inches from where her friend lay crumpled on the ground. A quick assessment confirmed that, aside from a possible concussion, the worst damage was to Lark’s right ankle, which was twisted at an odd angle.

  A flash of movement overhead caught at the corner of Rachel’s eye. Her head snapped up. Another rock? A man dangled from the end of a rope at the edge of the raven’s ledge. Climbers! They must have kicked the rocks loose above them.

  “Hey, we need some help down here.”

  The man shrugged and swung onto the ledge. A few minutes later he reappeared, a black square held aloft in his hand.

  Adrenalin surged through Rachel’s veins. The air crackled with a dry heat. The man wasn’t just a climber. He had come here for the computer disk, bombarding them with rocks to keep them at bay. But how had he gotten onto the rocks above them? More to the point, how had he known where to look?

  Cold fear coursed through her. Besides Lark and herself, only five people knew about the raven: Eric, Charles, Forest, Harry, and the sheriff. One of them had to have sent the man after the disk.

  Rachel squinted up, taking in the man’s features: medium height, muscular, jet black hair, a large hooked nose, skin tanned a deep brown. Rachel had never seen him before.

  He positioned himself on the ledge, then signaled to someone above him. A second person started down while the stranger picked up a rock, hurling it off the ledge. Rachel dodged. The rock landed just inches from Lark’s head.

  Raaa-ra. The raven soared into view, then stooped, making a swift line for the man on the ledge. It jabbed its beak toward the man’s face, then twisted, flashing its talons.

  “Hey! What the—” The man flung up his arms. The disk flew from his grasp, ricocheted, and clattered down the cliff face, landing on a small ledge west of Rachel and Lark.

  The raven dived again.

  The man she’d now dubbed Igor hollered. His voice, low and harsh, rumbled off the rocks. The other man on the rope lowered himself into kicking range, and swiped at the large black bird.

  This was Rachel’s chance.

  Raaa-ra.

  The raven swept in, and Rachel moved quickly. She scrambled to the edge of the ledge, lay on her stomach, and stretched her arm toward the disk. Her fingertips nudged the black square, and it slipped further from reach.

  Damn!

  A barrage of rocks rained down, and Rachel covered her head. Behind her, Lark curled into the fetal position. Rachel wormed her way forward, leaning out over the ledge. She had almost had it. Her fingertips brushed the disk again, but this time she was able to coax it forward, capturing it in her hand. “Yes!”

  “Hey, bitch!”

  She glanced up. The raven circled overhead. The men glared down from the upper ledge. “That belongs to my boss,” yelled Igor.

  “Not anymore.” She jammed the disk into her back pocket, and sprinted back to Lark. In a low voice she urged her friend to move. “We have to go. Now! We have to climb down.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You don’t have a choice here.”

  Igor lowered himself over the ledge.

  She had to think fast. Breaking a long branch off the scraggly tree, Rachel snapped it in two. Then, pulling off her belt, she used it and the branches to splint Lark’s leg. Thank God for first-aid classes.

  Grabbing the rope Lark had brought with them, Rachel looped it around Lark’s torso and tied it with a triple knot under her arms. Then she wrapped the free end around the tree and knotted it securely. “How long is the rope, Lark?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Make a guess.” She needed one length to lower Lark down—enough to reach from the top of the cliff to the bottom. Twice that to belay herself afterwards.

  “Seventy-five feet.”

  “Long enough.”

  Rachel prodded Lark. The woman moaned, lolling her head from side to side. Rachel splashed water from one of the bottles into her face, and Lark sputtered out of her pain-induced fog. “Hey!”

  “Listen to me. Do you see those two men?”

  Igor was nearly halfway down the cliff face, headed straight for them.

  “They were the ones throwing rocks,” Rachel said. “We have to go. Now! Crawl over to the edge, and I’ll let you down.”

  “It hurts too much.”

  “Bite on a stick or something.” Rachel pinned Lark with a stare. “This is the only choice. You can’t climb, and we can’t stay here. The tree will work for leverage, but only if we hurry. Otherwise, if Igor and Frankenstein reach us first, Garcia and his buddies are apt to find us both dead at the bottom of the cliff.”

  Lark registered, and pushed herself up. Pain contorted her face as she pulled herself toward the steep edge.

  Rachel checked on Igor’s progress. He was within twenty-five feet of the ledge.

  “Keep moving, Lark. You’re almost there. Good! Now use your good foot to keep yourself away from the rocks.”

  Lark pulled herself to the cliff and swung her feet out into the air. “I got it.”

  “Go.” Rachel pushed Lark off the edge and leaned on the free end of the rope the way she’d seen Roger do any number of times. Only he had used pitons and carabiners to hold the weight. Rachel used the tree. More primitive, but it worked. In only a minute or two, Lark had reached the ground and collapsed in a heap.

  “Untie the rope, Lark. Pull it free from around your waist.”

  “It hurts too much to move anymore.” Tears edged Lark’s voice toward hysteria.

  “You have to. Please, Lark. Now!”

  Lark mustered her reserves and fumbled the knot free, struggling t
o push herself up. Rachel yanked on the rope, and it wrenched free. She reeled it back up the cliff.

  Above her the sounds of Igor kicking rock grew closer. Quickly she looped the rope around herself, then around the tree. Holding onto the loose end of the rope, she drew a deep breath, and stepped off the ledge.

  Hand over hand Rachel let out the rope, belaying herself down the craggy cliff. Hemp bit into her palms, and she struggled to control her descent as granite and pine tore at the fibers of the rope. Her boots scuffed the surface of the rock, leaving black marks.

  Twenty feet from the bottom, she ran out of rope. As she was holding her weight on the doubled length of line, she heard feet pounding on dirt. Igor was on the ledge.

  Spotting a handhold two feet over, Rachel pushed herself sideways toward the fissure. She reached out, managed to grab a handful of rock, and pulled herself tight against the cliff face, jamming her left foot into a thin crack. Secured, she let go of the free end of the rope and sharply tugged on the length still tied around her waist. The free end of rope snaked upward, over the rock above her. A pair of hands reached out. The rope swished through his fingers, back down past her and coiled just below her at the base of the cliff.

  “Bitch!” The man above her kicked a rain of dirt onto her head. “Dammit, she’s getting away,” he called to Frankenstein above him. “Hurry up and get down here with that rope.”

  Rachel leaped to the ground and gathered the rope in a messy coil, as Igor watched from the ledge. “Come on, Lark. Get on your feet. We may have time if we hurry.”

  “We’ll never make it.”

  She was right. An experienced climber could descend much faster than she and Lark had, and there was no way Lark could travel quickly with an injured ankle.

  “Let’s get around the corner,” Rachel said softly, “then maybe we can hide.”

  Lark stared at her in alarm. “What if they find us?”

  “Well, if we stay here, they’ll find us for sure.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Rachel heard the men shouting to one another on the ledge. Time was running out. Bracing Lark, she offered her shoulder as a crutch. Lark hobbled forward, gasping in pain.

  “Just a little farther,” coaxed Rachel. Up ahead she could see a break in the rocks. “You should be able to get over the edge up there.”