The Wall Read Free Page A

was at such peace, one hand over her heart, the other dangling from the stone as if she were drifting on a boat in a stream. She had searched out this perfect view. She had laid herself down in a stone trough that cradled her skull and shoulders and womanly hips.
    He took a step higher, and of course this was no cradling trough. The slab was flat. The underside of her lay crushed against the stone.
    Hugh flinched once, but did not back away. The lizard king had caught her, that starving, patient thing. People talked about Mother Nature. Mother, hell. One false move and you ended up in its belly like this.
    He held back, piecing together the details. A seat harness girdled her thighs and waist. She was a climber, not a suicide or a murder victim. He knew roughly when she’d fallen and from where. Just a half hour ago, before setting off from the road, he had seen her and her two partners working it out twenty-five hundred vertical feet off the deck, closing in on the summit. Until now, he’d had no idea one might be a woman.
    He set his feet and tipped back his pack to get a proper look. The vast, radiant panels of El Cap gleamed through the darkening trees. It took a minute for his eyes to adjust to the immense scale and orient himself to the cracks and shadows. A dark hole on the wall was his landmark. If there were any survivors, they would be cowering in there. If not, the rest of them were probably lying close by in the forest.
    He lowered his eyes to the woman. She had crashed within the last few minutes. The first flies had yet to arrive.
    He must have been within a hundred feet when she landed. How could he not have heard such an earth-shattering thing? There should have been the sounds of tree limbs snapping and a body—a life—exploding. Where was the thunder of her collision? Where was the howl?
    And still Hugh remained on the outskirts. He did not have to be part of this thing. Many people would have bolted from the scene, some to run for help, others to be shed of the horror. Even among climbers, with their vaunted brotherhood of the rope, some would have fled, some would have reached for their cameras, and some would have just made a wide detour and continued with business.
    The smell was mounting. Blood and shit.
    His horror aside, the crash would steal hours from his day, right when he had his own climb to tend. He had no obligation to her, no duty as a witness. She was a stranger to him. And though he had traveled among Bedouins who lived their lives like books already written, Hugh did not traffic in predestination. He did not believe he was meant to be here to help her to the other side.
    But her quietness pulled at him. And—again—he had that sensation of being watched.
    He resigned himself. “Ah, Glass, you’re in it now,” he said, and ponderously backed against a boulder to ease off his pack. Released from his cargo, he had an odd moment of separation. The death chained down his mood, even as his body felt buoyant and thankful for the release.
    He approached her warily. She frightened him. From this side, she seemed too perfect. Where was the ruin? Her lips were parted. She had white teeth, and five small earrings like silver fringe along one lobe. Her beads were real minerals, not plastic.
    As a geologist, Hugh could pick out the turquoise, agate, jade, and ruby, and even their likely value and source. She wore no rings or bracelets, of course, not on a climb. But it was easy to imagine her adorned for the street, like some barbarian loose among the lowlanders.
    A few colorful slings and a gear rack crossed her chest like bandoliers. Hugh eyed the equipment, reading in it her last minutes on the wall. The rack held little gear. She’d either exhausted her protection just prior to the fall, or had deliberately gone up with next to nothing. The latter, he decided. The few pieces of “pro” had small heads on thin wire, the sort that favor very delicate placements. That told him much. She’d