Dark Sky (Joe Pickett #21)(15)

She wore tight climbing pants over a thin wool inner layer and a windproof shell on her upper body. Baggy clothing was dangerous, as folds of it could snag on brush or roots that stuck out from the cliff. A chest pack was cinched tightly against her breasts, containing the gear she’d need.

The first falcon nest, which belonged to a family of redtails, was ten feet below her and slightly to her right. It was tucked in a wind-hollowed alcove and it consisted of a two-foot-wide tangled bed of branches and twigs festooned with the small pinfeathers of consumed prey, almost like macabre decoration.

Sheridan stepped a few feet to the right and then carefully lowered herself to the side of the nest. Although it was unlikely there was anyone home, she’d been cautioned by Nate never to approach a nest straight-on until she could see it clearly and assess if it was occupied.

If there was a resting falcon on the nest and she surprised it, the bird might react in a panic and slash her face with its talons, trying to escape. More than a few falconers had been blinded that way, and some years back a couple had plunged to their deaths.

So she secured the rope to the side of the alcove and carefully peered in.

The nest, as she suspected, was empty. In the hollowed-out bed were more stray feathers, tiny white bones from prey that had been eaten within it, and slivers of eggshells that looked like weathered costume jewelry that had been smashed with a hammer.

Being as close as she was to a falcon nest, so close she could reach inside and pluck a bone from the twigs, made her feel like a voyeur, as if she were walking through the empty bedroom of an unsuspecting stranger.



* * *



—

Her purpose for checking out the redtail nest was to ascertain if it was viable or abandoned, even though any hatchlings would have been born in the spring and since flown away. Not all nests were used annually, and different species of raptors sometimes took them over and made them their own. Occasionally, snakes would move in and make the nest uninhabitable, until the snakes themselves left or died.

This nest, Sheridan thought, looked viable. The remnants of eggshells proved that it had been used just that previous spring to raise little ones. The bones of the prey delivered to the nest looked just a few months old.

But since she was new at judging the condition of existing nests, Nate had told her to photograph the location so he could study it and make a final determination. Sheridan unzipped the chest pack and dug into it for her cell phone.

As she powered it up and punched in the passcode, something about the nest struck her as odd. At first, she couldn’t figure out what it was—maybe she simply hadn’t studied enough wild nests.

There was something off about the edge of the nest itself, she decided. It was positioned within the alcove on a natural shelf and it didn’t completely fill the space as an eagle’s nest would have. There was exposed shelf on both sides, and on the right side of the nest, beneath a film of dust, was what looked like a symmetric dark C shape. The opening of the C arched around the nest. It was smooth and without a flaw. Nothing in nature was perfect like that. She took several pictures.

It wasn’t until she shifted her position that she noted something else: a glint from a long thread extending across the mouth of the nest. It stretched from the left side of the nest across the top of the structure and vanished in the twigs and debris of the nest edge near the opening of the C.

“A spider’s web?” she said out loud. But it was too straight. Too perfect. A single strand of spider’s web would have dislodged in the wind, wouldn’t it?

After dropping her cell phone back in the pack and zipping it closed, Sheridan continued to study the C and the line. It made no sense to her.

When she turned and looked down at Nate, he gestured up to her with both hands out, as if to say, What are you doing up there? After all, there were three other nests for her to check out before she could get firm footing on the ground. One had been occupied by prairie falcons, another by peregrines, and the last and biggest by gyrfalcons. Nate obviously thought she was taking too much time with this one.

There was no way to communicate with him—her cell phone had no signal and they hadn’t brought radios. To try and indicate what she’d found, she locked the rope anchor to hold her in place and formed a C with her arms and gestured into the alcove.

Nate shook his head, not understanding.

“I don’t know what I found,” she yelled. But the distance between Sheridan and Nate was too far and the wind at the base didn’t help. He couldn’t understand her.

She sighed and decided to simply show him the photos when she got down. Maybe Nate would know what it was.

Before she unlocked the anchor and rappelled to the next nest, though, Sheridan’s curiosity got the best of her and she reached out with her hand and tapped the string to free it.

The result was instant. There was a metallic snap and a flash of movement and her entire head, shoulder, and arm were suddenly engulfed within the jaws of some kind of large trap. Her vision blurred and she could taste grit in her mouth.

She pushed away from the cliff involuntarily while she screamed and found herself twisting slowly in the air, looking out from inside the mouth of the device.

It took her a few moments to get her breath back and realize that she wasn’t actually maimed—the pressure of the trap was firm but not tight, the jaws of the device were made of fiberglass tubing connected by springs, and the mouth of it enveloping her consisted only of light mesh.