10:34 A.M.
WHEN HE CAUGHT SIGHT of the group, Jason started backing away. He was moving awkwardly, his right hand cupping his left elbow. Dangling from his right index finger was the canister of bear spray.
“Don’t get any closer!”
They were about thirty feet away. Jason’s voice sounded hoarse, which made sense given the smoke and his probable lack of water. But was it also edged with tears?
Ryan snorted. “Trust me, Jason—if that’s even your name—we don’t want to get close to you at all.”
“What happened to your arm?” Zion asked. He was the only one who didn’t look some version of angry.
“I tripped. I tripped on a stupid rock, and I fell. Pretty sure my collarbone is broken.” The corners of Jason’s mouth pulled down. “I can hear it clicking when I try to move it. Like, inside the bone.”
His self-diagnosis sounded right to Natalia. It was a common result of what doctors called a FOOSH—Falling On Outstretched Hand, the most frequent mechanism of injury.
“What did you think was going to happen when you ran off in the dark?” Sarcasm colored AJ’s voice.
“No wonder you took off.” Darryl’s hands curled into fists. “We figured out you’re the one who started the fire.”
Jason shook his head vehemently. “Not on purpose.”
“Right,” Beatriz sneered. “That’s why you were carrying around the cap to a road flare.”
“And after you realized I’d seen it,” Natalia said, “you tried to push me off the bridge.”
Jason’s mouth twisted. “I was just scared, okay? And I didn’t really know you then. I was afraid you were going to tell everyone and they’d figure out the fire was my fault. And then at Sky Bridge you were right in front of me and I just had this sudden, stupid impulse.” He sucked in a breath. “But I’m also the one who pulled you back.”
Wyatt made a scoffing noise. “You know those two don’t cancel each other out, right?”
“And where does that pin covered with diamonds and rubies come in?” Marco asked.
“It was supposed to be the easiest job ever.” Jason made a face. “There’s this museum out in the middle of nowhere, right? It actually used to be some rich guy’s house. A rich guy who had rich friends, including the queen of freaking Romania. And my friend Brian knows a guard there. He said if we came at closing time we could tie him up to make it look good, smash the case, take the jewels, and then later break them apart and sell them. Split everything three ways.”
“You said jewels,” Ryan said. “So where are the rest?”
“In Brian’s pockets.” Jason pressed his lips together. “Afterward, I was supposed to set the car on fire so that there wouldn’t be any prints or DNA or anything. But something inside exploded. And suddenly everything was on fire, and I had to run.” He sounded exhausted. “And now I’m sure Brian’s on the plane to Thailand. I doubt he waited for me. We were going to be rich, kicking back on a beach. Instead, I’m stuck in the wilderness. And what good is a seventeenth-century diamond-and-ruby brooch out here?”
Lisa swore. “My husband’s got second-degree burns because of you. He should be in a hospital right now. Just like I need a doctor for my knee. Except, we’re all trapped in the woods trying to outrun a forest fire. We could all die. Even my baby!” She took one stiff-legged step toward him.
Releasing his elbow, Jason raised the bear spray. “Back off!”
Marco moved to stand beside her. “You do realize there’s way more of us than of you, right?”
Ryan stepped up on the other side of his wife.
With a defiant shout, Jason pressed the nozzle, emitting an angled spray of red droplets. Even though everyone started to back up, it didn’t matter. The spray went less than fifteen feet.
Meanwhile, Wyatt had started sprinting in a wide circle around the spray, with Trask bouncing and wailing on his back. Wyatt cocked his fist, but rather than punch Jason in the face, he punched him in the upper arm. On the side of the broken collarbone.
With a scream, Jason toppled over, landing on his back. Wyatt kicked the bear spray away as Marco, Beatriz, and Darryl pinned his legs. While Jason whimpered, Wyatt used the parachute cord to tie his ankles together.
After Wyatt finished, it was like the last bit of fight had gone out of Jason. He lay on his back, cradling his arm and moaning. His eyes were closed, but moisture shone around them. Natalia took a quick look at his collarbone, just long enough to ascertain that it was broken and it wasn’t going to kill him.
“Now what?” Marco asked as she did.
“Now we’ve got two problems,” Wyatt said. “How to get across the canyon and what to do about Jason. Since he’s not going anywhere, let’s figure out the canyon first.”
Lisa and Ryan tried to calm Trask while the others ignored the trussed-up Jason, walking past him to stare down at the canyon and what was left of the bridge once spanning it.
All that remained was the metal skeleton. On the other side of the chasm, tantalizingly close, was the trail, a clear path through untouched trees. But in between was a sixty-foot drop. At the bottom was a narrow river, the water churning and white. The walls of the slot canyon both contained the river and increased its power by concentrating it.
“It’s like Sky Bridge without the gate,” Natalia said.
Lisa shook her head. “It’s like Sky Bridge without the bridge.”
“So near and yet so far,” Beatriz said. The gap was only about thirty feet wide. But it might as well have been thirty miles.
“What are we going to do now?” Darryl sounded exhausted. “We can’t get over that.”
AJ looked back at the fire. “Well, we can’t go back.”
“Could we just wait here to be rescued?” Beatriz asked. “They have to be looking for us.”
“For all the authorities know, we got burned up last night,” Wyatt said. “It’s going to take a long time for them to figure out where everyone is. Besides, I don’t think we can really afford to wait.”
Natalia snuck a glance at Zion. While his face was much less swollen, it was still puffy. If he started to get worse—which she knew was a possibility—they could try giving him one more dose from the EpiPen. But that was it. An overdose of epinephrine could kill him just as easily as could anaphylactic shock.
“Has anyone tried their phones recently?” Lisa said hopefully. But when they checked, nearly all of them were completely dead: battery drained or killed by the swim across the lake. Only Ryan’s and Darryl’s phones still powered on. And both of them showed “No Service.”
“It’s not that far to the trail, really,” Wyatt said slowly. “All we need to do is get on the other side.”
“What do you mean, ‘all we need to do’?” Ryan echoed. “Unless we suddenly sprout wings, it’s impossible.”
Wyatt’s eyes traced the lines of the bridge. “It’s not like it’s totally gone.” It was true the metal framework was still there. But the wooden floorboards and sides had burned up, leaving just a series of open metal squares, each about six feet on a side. Each square was braced diagonally by another piece of steel. Taken together, the diagonal braces made a zigzag pattern the length of the bridge.
“Yeah, but the important parts are gone.” Darryl’s laugh was like a bark. “The parts that you walk on.”
“But the framework’s steel, and it survived,” Wyatt said. “It’s still got the handrails and the bottom chords of the truss—the pieces that run parallel to the handrails. It’s still got the diagonals and the cross struts that were the floor beams.” Each of the pieces he named was about six inches wide.
Marco shook his head. “Who cares if it has the floor beams? It doesn’t have the actual floor!”
As if he hadn’t heard, Wyatt said, “If we held on to the top chord—the handrail—and shuffled along the bottom chord, then we could step around the posts and the braces and get to the other side.”
“That’s a pretty big if.” AJ looked pale. “Look at how far down it is. One missed step and you’d die.”
“Let me think this through.” Wyatt unbuckled the strap of the child carrier and set it down between Lisa and Ryan. “Maybe we could do it like this.” Setting his right foot on the bottom chord, toes facing away from the bridge, he grabbed on to the handrail. He stepped up with the other foot.
Even though at that point the drop beneath his feet was less than a yard, it felt like someone had just put a hand around Natalia’s heart and squeezed. He leaned forward over the hip-high handrail, bent at about a forty-five-degree angle, and rested his hands lightly on either side.
Wyatt took a sideways step and then moved his trailing foot to meet the first. Two more shuffling steps brought him to the point where the first post, diagonal, and cross strut met at the bottom chord. He lifted his right foot and carefully placed it on the other side of the post, leaving room for his left to join it.
Her hand across her mouth, Natalia barely breathed as he inched farther and farther away. Moving carefully but quickly, Wyatt made it all the way to the far side of the bridge in less than two minutes. Jumping off, he raised his fists in triumph. His whoop carried clearly to them. Instead of answering with their own cheer, the people on the near side of the bridge just tossed anxious glances back and forth. Then Wyatt stepped back up on the bridge, reversed direction, and sidestepped over to them.
“Guys! We can definitely do it!”
Natalia was already shaking her head. “No. I don’t think I can do that.” She took a step back. “Everyone will just have to go on without me.”