Lost Girls Read Free Page A

She knew now why Brigham had let it get this far. You didn’t always need eyes to size up a man. The perception of comportment was not exclusive to people with sight, nor were qualities such as competence and self-assurance. Metcalf was a Navy SEAL and that assumed certain abilities, but there was far more to Metcalf than ability.
    The plan was extraordinarily simple, he told her. The pilot of the Pave Hawk would drop them above the headwall at 16,200 feet. Then they would belay off fixed lines—already attached to the side of the mountain—and rappel 400 feet to where the body was hanging. Recovering the dead climber’s body was not an option—there was no time for rescue baskets and Metcalf could hardly divide his attention between a blind woman and a dead man once they were down there. But if the dead man had been part of Allison Metcalf’s team, Metcalf might be able to make clear the meaning of the message the climber had been trying to write on the side of the wall. If they could decipher it, Metcalf could radio the information to his men up above and they could focus their search accordingly.
    Sherry often went into these kinds of situations feeling doubtful. What a person was thinking about in their last few seconds of life was not always what her clients wanted to hear. No one knows the precise moment they will expire and what random thoughts might occupy their short-term memory when they did. This was especially true when death is inevitable but protracted. People preparing themselves for death run the gamut of emotions, all the while searching their mind for visual references of their journey through life.
    The man hanging from his boot had surely frozen to death. He was probably thinking about loved ones in the end, most people did, but he might also have been occupied by the technical problems of his situation, how to regain the fixed line on the side of the mountain, how to right himself again.
    Even if he could still focus on the message he was trying to leave, Sherry couldn’t imagine him producing a mental image that might help them locate a team of climbers buried in a snow cave above them. In fact she could not imagine how he had hoped to find his own way back in a storm of the magnitude that had been described.
    It occurred to her that he might never have had the intention of returning. That he might have known he was not coming back, that his message on the wall was an act of extreme selflessness.
    “Kahiltna Glacier.” The pilot’s tinny voice came over the headphones. Metcalf tapped the side of her helmet and Sherry nodded to acknowledge that she’d heard. That her equipment was operating.
    She pulled the microphone away from her mouth to speak to Metcalf privately. “You know the admiral?” Brigham had never mentioned Senator Metcalf before. She was aware that Brigham had friends on Capitol Hill, had even overheard a woman at one of those rare gatherings at Brigham’s house comment on a birthday card with the presidential seal.
    “Mostly by reputation, ma’am.”
    “Reputation?” she repeated lightly. Sherry had never thought of Brigham in terms of having a reputation.
    Metcalf was silent again, even stoic. Except for the brief description of what he’d asked her to do on the side of the ridge, since leaving Anchorage he’d spoken only to his men and always in fewer than three words. He didn’t like questions, or so it seemed. He wasn’t used to them and they probably made him uncomfortable.
    “So you’ve never met?” Sherry couldn’t help herself.
    “We’ve met,” Metcalf allowed.
    Sherry had always had a nose for people’s discomfort. She knew that Metcalf had a lot going through his mind. His sister, alive or dead, was out there somewhere. One could only imagine the stress he must be under. She couldn’t help but wonder why he was putting such energy into taking her along with him. It didn’t quite fit the manner of the man. Was it Brigham’s influence over the