Page 86 of The Triangle

And the borrowed clothes Christine is wearing that we retrieved as we made our escape from a military-style tactical assault on the three of us launched by an as-yet-unknown enemy.

And the seventeen stitches in Christine’s head.

“Nunu?”

“Hmm?” she replies.

“Talk to me about what you remember.”

She breathes out through her nose and says, “I remember pretty much everything, I think.”

“Do you?”

She nods. “Yes. You. Danny. I remember.”

“Yes. But do you remember what caused this?” I reach and touch, gently, the stitches on her skull.

She champs at her lower lip and says, “I was doing the job—”

“The Jimmy Sotoro job?”

She stares at me for a second, “Yeah. The Jimmy Sotoro job.”

Gaan naai ’n boom. Either she’s lying to me or she still doesn’t recall what happened. Lars made it plain that she was off on some other endeavor. And Danny is convinced that it has something to do with some oke called David.

Although I suppose it’s entirely possible that either one of them could be lying as well. Fokken hell, man.

“OK, yeah, and then what happened?” I ask.

She looks pained. It’s a look that lets me know one thing, at least. She’s not lying to me by choice. She’s not voluntarily trying to mislead me. She doesn’t know. Christine is a good enough liar that she has no tells when obfuscation is called for. Her skill at lying is, in fact, unparalleled.

Except by me. Which is appropriate. As I’m the one who taught her how to do it.

She shakes her head and says, “Someone… pushed me.”

“That part seems clear, luv.” I smile, trying to put her at ease. “Any idea who?”

She looks at me again with a face I’ve seen once or twice before. It’s a face she takes on when she doesn’t want to disappoint me. It breaks my otherwise unbreakable heart.

“It’s all right,” I say as I kiss her almost dry hair. “It’s all right. We’ll figure it all out. Over here. We’re almost there.” I speed up my step and she follows suit, the sound leading us in the direction we’re headed growing louder as we approach.

“What is that?” she asks.

And then she sees.

As we round the edge of a grove of trees, the earth falls away and in front of us looms endless, boundless horizon. The ground disappears and drops into a seemingly bottomless gorge hundreds of feet below. The sound she heard is that of a waterfall. Emanating from a mountain stream off to our left, it cascades down the side of the sheer rock wall, crashing to the depths below with exquisite, pulverizing power.

Her breath catches in her throat and I feel the tug of her hand on my arm as her knees go weak. It is an apt reaction to witnessing the majesty of nature’s force.

“Wow,” she says.

“Indeed.”

“Do you own all this?” she asks, moving her head around to suggest the breadth of the panorama before us. “Is all this yours?”

“No, my sweet,” I say, withdrawing her hand from my arm and turning to face her. “All of this is ours.”

She tilts her head as though she doesn’t understand.