running shoes. He had the kind of body tension a lot of climbers trained a long time for, presumably from decades of running and cycling and swimming.
But the next move was harder, and he was still one short of the crunch point.
“How’s it going, Brett?” she called down, buzzing with triumph.
He glanced up at her. She couldn’t tell from his expression if he was concentrating on keeping hold of the rock, or if he hated her right then. She hoped it was the second one.
“Shall I give you a hand?” she asked, with a grin.
She wondered if he would screw this one up. His body weight was all wrong, his weight too far over his left leg when he needed to free it up. But he made a lunging jump upward and made it anyway, his height paying off.
He was one move away from her.
“All to play for now,” she said. “One last move.”
She saw him pause and take his right arm off for a moment. He flexed his fingers and then quickly replaced them on the rock.
“Ah, yeah. That’s the trouble with not being a real climber. Your hands give out first.”
He laughed. It was a short, breathless bark.
“They’ll last long enough to shove you off this fucking cliff, Jojo.” Despite the sweat on him, he still gave her a smile. “You should have stood by me and kept quiet about seeing me with her.”
Jojo gave a laugh. “That’s the thing, Brett. I didn’t see you. I was staring into a fire, and you were past it. You were bloody invisible to me. And you’ve stayed that way. Whatever games you’ve thought we’ve been playing for thirty years were all in your head.”
She could see that had unsettled him. He was looking up at her, trying to work out if she was telling the truth. But then something hardened in his expression and his gaze fell on the rock again.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You’re going to die either way.”
She couldn’t help grinning again as he looked around for a close-by hold. He scanned and scanned for something to grab on to, before eventually fixing his eyes on that final jug, separated from him by three and a half feet of clear space. And, of course, a full three feet higher up.
“That’s the one,” she said cheerfully. She moved a little until she was standing right above it. “All the way over here.”
Brett took his right hand off and reached out a little, before putting it quickly back on again.
“Is Brett a little scared?” she asked.
“Shut your fucking mouth,” he said.
He didn’t look up at her again. He was too busy preparing himself. Shifting his weight further to his right, and pulsing slightly. He was counting down to himself.
“Jesus, will you hurry up, Parker? I’ve got things to do.”
He didn’t say anything. He was primed for that move, and Jojo felt herself tensing with him. She crouched slightly, willing him to move for it. Willing him to jump.
He sprang suddenly. But she could see as he did it that he’d doubted himself even as he’d jumped; that he hadn’t really committed to that leap.
He’d gone barely a foot upward and across. His right hand reached out, but he was nowhere near the hold.
A strange sort of a spasm ran through his body as he started to fall. When she had time to think about it later, she wondered if it was disbelief.
He fell quickly, and she watched him all the way to the unforgiving stone and hard mud of the ground.
* * *
—
JONAH’S PHONE RANG as they were pulling up along the roadside. There were two squad cars there, too, but the officers were only just climbing out. They’d been no more than seconds ahead of him.
“Jojo,” he said sharply, as he answered. “Are you all right?”
“Don’t stress,” he heard her say, in a voice so sarcastic and laid-back that he felt like he might have been tricked into coming here. “Brett Parker is dealt with.”
“What do you mean?”
“He chucked himself off the cliff face,” she said. “Not deliberately, I should probably add.”
He still ran the whole way to the climb. O’Malley was just behind him, and the uniforms followed behind the sergeant. When they cleared the trees, and came into view of Brett Parker’s body, he slowed, and O’Malley bumped into him and then apologized.
Jonah found it hard to look away from the strangely angled pile of limbs, and the large spread of blood. But he