Chapter Thirty Six

Chapter Thirty Six
Braxton

The Paracommander parachute was designed to give us a straight-down descent opposed to a swooping glide to the ground. It was a soft landing, considering this was Bexley’s first time. That was good because she may be more inclined to try this again sometime.

“What a rush!” she exclaimed, pumped so full of adrenaline, I could practically feel her energy buzzing.

I removed the harness from around us and jogged to where my brothers were waiting.

“I’m so proud of you,” Cruz told our wife, then hugged her.

Bexley beamed up at him, basking under the glow of his praise.

I checked my watch. “We better hurry if we want to search the area before sundown. It may take us a while to find what we are looking for.”

My brothers and I carried the climbing gear in our backpacks, leaving Bexley to walk unhindered. It was an arduous trek across the uneven terrain, and she was likely to tire before we reached the falls. We had to remember that we had been trained for this, but Bexley hadn’t. She was holding her own and keeping up with us though. It no longer felt like a competition between us. She was part of the team, and it showed.

Asher lumbered two steps behind us to check something that beeped on his watch. We all received the same vibration, notifying us that Dad had sent us a message.

“Teddy and Emilio have arrived at Alpha Two,” he informed us.

Bexley exhaled with relief. “Oh, good. At least we know they’re safe.”

Dominic took hold of her hand as they walked. “You should be more concerned about whether we’ll make it back in one piece,” he mentioned. “That water will be ice-cold. I don’t want to die by freezing my nuts off.”

Bexley chuckled. “I forgot my bathing suit. I might have to sit this one out,” she joked.

Cruz flashed me a grin, and I knew he would be up for skinny-dipping if we had time. Maybe even a shag-fest near the falls. There was no way to make that happen without the risk of us developing hypothermia. As Dominic mentioned, I would rather leave here with metaphorical blue balls than the real deal.

“Well, luckily for us, we packed wetsuits,” I pointed out. “Trust me, you’ll be thankful when you feel the temperature of the water. It will suck the breath from your lungs.”

Asher grunted. “I can’t say I’m looking forward to it. The only consolation is that we’re flying to the Maldives after this.”

As we approached the cliff edge, the sound of fast-flowing water got louder. A dense mist of water particles hovered above the drop-zone and dampened the air all around us.

My brothers and I rummaged through the backpacks to retrieve the wetsuits. I carried an extra one for Bexley, along with our climbing gear.
“Put this on,” I said, handing her the neoprene suit.

It was stretchy, durable, and absorbed little water. The suits were designed to retain body heat, which would be welcomed by us all. This was not going to be a pleasant experience. One they would all experience for themselves. They only had to endure this for a matter of hours, whereas I had to stick this shit out for four days. I did not want to be back here again, but I had no choice than to find the missing clue. It could be anywhere among the falls. And as Cruz peered over the cliff edge, he glanced at me with an ominous look on his face as if to say “shit”.

My thoughts exactly.

I helped Bexley to put on her climbing gear and waited for my brothers to put on theirs.

“I’ll go first,” I offered, “since I know this land like the back of my hand. There’s a teqhnique to climbing down. Just mimic the route that I take and you will be fine.”

Cruz volunteered to go next, but insisted he would shadow Bexley in case she got into any difficulty. That just left Asher and Dominic. Both decided to search the opposite side of “Electra” to cover all possible angles. That seemed like a strong plan. I took the first plunge and used the rope to lower myself. Just as I remembered, the rockface was slippery with moss and vegetation. Some of those plants were edible, and the mushrooms that grew there were considered a delicacy to the locals. Water hit me in the face, making me glad to be wearing goggles. The saturated rope kept slipping through my fingers and I knew I would have blisters after this.

“Hey . . . I think I found something,” Dominic bellowed over the rushing water noise. He cleared the water from the lower half of his face to speak. “There are amber stones set into the rocks.”

Without seeing the pattern for myself, it was difficult to determine what it meant. Bexley was better at recognising her mother’s secret language than any of us would be. We only knew what she had told us. Only she would know what they meant.

“I knew it,” Bexley announced not long after Dominic had mentioned finding them. “I can see the amber gemstones just like the ones my mum told me about.”
This was Bexley’s turn to decipher the clues. Our input was useless. All we could do was to wait and assist her if she needed us to.

“South, south west,” she called out, then lowered the rope to search for another clue. “What did the pattern look like, Dom. I need to know.”

Dom scanned his eyes around the area. “Uh . . . it looks like two dots, a line of four, and a pyramid of three dots below them,” he answered.

Bexley understood what he said and took a deep breath before reaching two steps to the right. The water crashed onto her shoulders and almost knocked her off course, but she managed to maintain her footing. Something else caught her eyes and she muttered something I couldn’t hear. She used her rope to drop down three feet and then braced herself on a ledge. It took us hours to search the falls, climbing all over the rock face to look for the clues. Bexley figured it was a map with several decoys thrown in to waste time. She figured out that there were deliberate mistakes that only she would notice. Once she established that, she was able to move through them quickly.

“Guys, get over here,” Bexley yelled, having found something else. “I’ve found it. I need your help to move this rock.”

We abseiled to where she was busy clearing moss away from an area of rock.

“Look.” Bexley pointed. “It looks like this could be it. This area has been cut out and replaced. You can see the marks right here.”

Dominic removed the axe hammer from his utility belt and my brothers and I did the same.

“Stand back,” Asher urged our wife to move to a safer distance as we set to work, obliterating the rock.

The laborious task took until the light faded and cloud-cover melted into the night sky. Our headtorches illuminated the places where the moon couldn’t reach, and just as our effort began to waver, we smashed through to a cavity in the stone. We sagged breathlessly, our limbs trembling with exhaustion. Cruz cleared the debris out of the way using his pickaxe and allowed Bexley to retrieve the galvanised box that her mother had stashed inside.

“We did it,” she choked with emotion. “We found the final clue.”

But as she tried to prise the lid open with her fingernails, she found that it wouldn’t budge.

“It can’t open it,” she stressed, panicking.

“Let me see that,” Asher insisted, taking the box from her to inspect it. “There’s a hole that’s meant for a key. We need the key,” he mentioned despondently.

I think the rest of us blanched with dread at that point. It was dark. Finding a key would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

“Wait!” Bexley gasped with realization.

She fumbled around her neck for her necklace and held the long, cylindrical pendant between her fingers. “I think this might fit.”

Asher held the box steady as Bexley slid the charm inside. The lid sprang open as if it was spring-activated, revealing a sealed plastic bag that contained a flash drive, and a wrinkled piece of paper inside. Bexley opened it and gave the flash drive to Dominic for safekeeping. He stashed it inside his backpack along with the others.

“What does the note say, Bexley?” he asked curiously.

Bexley unfolded it to read it. Her eyes creased with concentration.

“It’s not a note; it’s a haematology report belonging to Susan Wolfe . . . your mother.” Bexley glanced at each of us before continuing. “It confirms that she was pregnant.”

My brothers and I exchanged sombre glances among us. “So, it’s true about the illegitimate child theory then?” I spat out my words with contempt. “She cheated on Dad, and Aunt Safi found out the truth before Susan killed her.”

“It would appear so,” Asher spoke gravely. “We have no reason to believe that she went through with the pregnancy. If she did, then we have a sibling out there somewhere. Maybe he or she is our mother’s accomplice. We can’t rule that out.”

Neither one of us had anything to say to that. We just nodded to show that we understood.

The alarm on our watches began to beep, letting us know that Ulrich had returned and was waiting for us. He sent us the coordinates to a farm several miles from the falls. So, we would have to break it to Bexley that we would be walking well into the night. That was unlikely to go down well with her.

“We ought to make tracks. Ulrich has sent me the location of an abandoned farm outside Geiranger. It’s going to take us a while to get there.”

Bexley made a face as if to say “fuck” and whimpered her displeasure. She wasn’t alone. We were all pretty fatigued at that point.

It took three hours to reach the farm and we were all about ready to drop. Bexley slumped to her knees and rolled onto her back, groaning that she had blisters on her feet the size of marbles. I set my backpack down beside the jet then went to find Ulrich. The gruff veteran emerged from inside the building with a tin of canned peaches in his hand.

“This is all the shit I could find,” he said, discarding the dented can across the field. “I only have energy bars and bottled water on the jet. It will have to do until we reach Alpha Two.”

Bexley groaned. “I don’t care. At this point, I’ll eat anything.”

If we weren’t all so exhausted, I would have held her to that.