Read Blind Descent-pigeion 6 for Free Online Page B

you know that, don't you?"
      Holden Tillman eased up beside them and swung his legs over the edge. Anna kept all her appendages on solid ground, her legs folded neatly under her, tailor-fashion.
      "So," Holden said, uncapping his water bottle and pausing for a long pull. Anna followed suit, checking first to reassure herself there wasn't a "P" scrawled on the cap.
      "Freak-Out Traverse," Holden said, and waved toward the roped cliff face with his water bottle.
      "Gee, why do you think they call it that?" Anna asked.
      Holden didn't seem to notice the sarcasm. "Interesting story," he said. "See below the rope there? That great, big, old, solid-looking poke-outance, just exactly the right size to wrap your arms around and hang on to for dear life?"
      He traced the rock outcrop he described with a golden finger of lamplight. It was the obvious place to make the traverse. Anna had wondered about the trail being set so high above the starting point.
      "We got here. Me and a caver named Ron. I, being the gentleman that I am, insisted Ron have the first crack at it. 'Oh, no,' he said. 'After you, my dear Holden.' 'I wouldn't dream of it. After you,' says me. So he goes first. Ron gets to that big, old, friendly rock and spreadeagles himself across it like a love-struck starfish. And that sucker starts to move. The thing is on ball bearings. Hence 'Freak Out Traverse.' I let Ron name it. I'm just naturally generous that way."
      Even in the wandering half-light, Anna noted the twinkle in his eyes.
      "Everybody rested and rejuvenated?" Iverson asked.
      A sheer curtain of panic, like heat rising from the desert, quivered behind Anna's breastbone; panic not at the traverse but at going on instead of turning back. Gideon, the horse she'd ridden on backcountry patrol when she was a ranger at Guadalupe, and she had this discussion at every fork in the trail, Anna insisting they go on, Gideon determined to take every opportunity to go back to the barn.
      Rest stops were going to be bad news.
      "Ready," she said, and was the first to get to her feet. Movement was good, work even better. She felt herself almost looking forward to Freak-Out. That should take up every shred of her thought processes for a few minutes.
      After Freak-Out the going got somewhat easier. Though a good deal of effort went into climbing on, around, and under the blocks, little of it was heart-in-mouth stuff.
      Shoving her hands in cracks, her face in the dirt, reaching into darkness, squeezing through the narrow ways, Anna came to appreciate the sterility of the cave environment: no spiders, grubs, scorpions, rattlesnakes, wasps, tarantulas, ants, or centipedes. She burrowed and barged her way through with more or less complete confidence that, as predators went, she was pretty much alone. Given the forced intimacy with blind crevices and dank hidey-holes, this was definitely a plus. This far in there wasn't even any evidence of that benign resident, the cave cricket. For the first three or four hundred yards she had seen a few of the harmless, spectral insects, but cave crickets found their food on the surface or in the twilight zone where the outer world reached within. They seldom wandered more than an easy cricket commute from the terrestrial world.
      Partway down the North Rift, half an hour's travel and not quite a hundred yards as the crow flies-should a crow choose such a batlike endeavor-Iverson stopped again, perched this time on a narrow ledge, his lamp extinguished. Lest he startle Anna and make her lose her footing, he announced himself shortly before her light strayed across his aerie. "I'm here," he said softly.
      Anna squawked, her heart leaping so forcefully it felt as if it pounded against the rock she embraced. "Don't do that," she said when breath returned and she'd found a stable roosting place.
      "Sorry," Iverson said politely. "I guess 'I'm here' are the two scariest words in the English language."
      "Nope."