The Descent From Truth Read Online Free PDF Page A

fire to a roaring flame. He found a pillow in the bedroom and stuffed it into the gap where he had removed a window pane. Then he headed for the kitchen to search for a large pot. They would have to melt snow for water.
     
    He found Pia balancing her baby on her hip and looking in the refrigerator. Like the cook stove, the refrigerator was butane fueled. Meat and vegetables filled the freezer compartment. With her help, Alex prepared a meal of pan-fried sirloin steak, hash browns, and boiled green peas. They dined sitting on the floor around the coffee table with Pia holding the baby in her lap. She had found some Tang, mixed it, and poured it into wineglasses. “Tropical wine,” she said, and raised her glass to clink with his.
     
    “So this is your first experience with snow,” Alex said. “Your first time in the U.S.?”
     
    “My first, yes. Is Colorado your home?”
     
    “Nearest thing I have to a home. But how’m I going to learn about you if I talk about myself?”
     
    “How else am I to learn about you?” She didn’t sound argumentative, just inquisitive. “Does your family live here?”
     
    He nodded. “After Mom died—I was eleven—my grandparents took care of me. My granddad had retired from the Army. They have a ranch near Grand Junction.”
     
    She looked sympathetic. “What about your father?”
     
    “My old man was career military. Like Gramps.”
     
    Not precisely true, he thought. They’d both had Army careers, but not at all alike. His grandfather, an infantry officer commissioned during the years between Korea and Vietnam, had plodded a conventional professional path. In contrast, his father’s career had twisted and veered. Starting as a helicopter pilot, he wrangled a transfer to Intelligence and became a field operative, a flamboyant vocation with limited advancement potential. Pia, however, wouldn’t be interested in all that. “Dad was gone a lot.”
     
    Pia’s eyes took on a liquid sheen in the firelight. “How sad.”
     
    “I didn’t see him much, but he was always hovering in the background, trying to manage my life.”
     
    Alex had disappointed his father by dropping out of college in his senior year to enlist in the Army. During his nine years of service, they had only seen each other once until his father visited him in the hospital. But he’d felt the elder Bryson’s influence and fought it bitterly. His first duty assignment was the Quartermaster Corps, the Army’s supply and housekeeping arm, and he never doubted that was his father’s doing, to make his enlistment as boringly danger-free as possible. He’d countered by volunteering for Special Forces training.
     
    He shook off the memory and refocused on Pia. “Tell me about you.”
     
    “There is little to tell. I am just a simple girl who did some foolish things.” She announced her intention to make coffee, gathered their plates and eating utensils, and headed for the kitchen.
     
    Alex dumped more snow into their water pot, packing it tightly. Then he played with the baby. Lying on his back on the floor with the little fellow seated on his chest, he bounced and twisted, pulling uproarious laughter from his playmate. Hugging the warm, small body, he rolled so that the boy was on the floor and he, on all fours, loomed over the youngster. “Gotcha, Freddy.”
     
    Babbling, the baby reached for Alex’s beard, only inches away.
     
    “You like that?” Alex let him grasp a double handful of curly facial hair. “You like Alex’s beard?”
     
    Stringing vowels and consonants together randomly, the baby tugged with both hands.
     
    “You’re not that far from growing your own beard, little man. When you do, let—ouch!” Alex put a restraining hand over the miniature fingers. “Easy, tiger. You’re hurting old Alex.”
     
    “Ax,” the baby cried. “Ax!” He tugged again and launched himself into peals of laughter.
     
    “It’s Alex, little buddy.” Alex lifted him off the floor and