11:24 A.M.
HER HANDS OUTSTRETCHED, NATALIA dove through the air. A scream trailed behind her like a spent comet.
Time slowed to a crawl. Her senses picked out every detail of what was happening. The colors were impossibly bright, sounds a smear.
Tick. Trask began to drop into the triangle formed by the crossbeam, the diagonal, and the bottom chord.
Tick. In slow motion, his small hands started to rise above his head. Pudgy fingers spread wide.
Tick. Now, Natalia told herself. Now. She shaped her hands like Cs.
Tick. The webs between her fingers and thumb made contract with Trask’s sweaty wrists.
Tick. Her fists clamped closed.
Tick. She landed hard on her belly across a metal beam.
Tick. Deep inside her chest something snapped.
Suddenly, time resumed its normal pace. Natalia lay facedown, folded in half across a crossbeam, holding a dangling Trask above a sixty-foot drop to churning white water.
And Trask’s weight was slowly pulling her down.
“No!” Lisa screamed. “Not my baby!”
Natalia’s heart had been replaced by a cold fist of horror. She already knew how this would end.
On either side of the bridge, people were screaming and shouting, punctuated by Blue’s barking. But it was Wyatt’s voice, just above her, she paid attention to.
“Natalia, listen to me. There’s a diagonal beam right behind you. You should be able to hook your legs under it.”
Straightening her legs, she slowly let them rise. As she did, her balance began to shift incrementally toward Trask.
What if Wyatt was wrong? What if she missed the beam? The toddler’s weight would make her somersault forward, pulling her off the bridge entirely.
Then first her left thigh and then her right calf made contact with the steel of the diagonal beam. Ignoring the grating in her ribs, she arched her back to press her legs even tighter against the diagonal. The move compressed her diaphragm against the crossbeam, forcing her to breathe shallowly. Pressure was building up in her face. Even in her teeth. Her head felt like a balloon about to pop.
But Natalia’s thoughts were only on the child she had to save.
“Trask.” Lisa’s voice was hoarse with panic. “Don’t move, baby. Be still.”
But asking him to be still was like asking a horse to walk upright on its hind legs. He started to fuss and kick at the empty air, making his wrists shift in Natalia’s fists.
It was all so familiar. Suddenly, she was back in the past. Back in her old house, the one that had burned down six years ago. A child’s life in her hands and all her choices bad. Back in the place that haunted her nightmares.
She struggled to draw a breath. There was no fire now, she reminded herself. They had already successfully escaped from it. But the slot canyon she was dangling Trask over was far more dangerous than a fall from a second-story window. If a fifteen-foot drop had killed her brother, what would a sixty-foot fall do to Trask?
“Lisa,” Wyatt was saying. “Hold tight. I’m going to unclip myself, put the leash over the rail, and then clip it to you.”
A beat later, out of the corner of her eye, Natalia saw Wyatt begin to lower himself onto the second diagonal beam. He moved as carefully as a tightrope walker.
On both sides of the bridge, the others were frantically debating how to save them. But Natalia felt strangely removed from the discussion. They didn’t understand this was her fate, the one she had wrongly escaped six years ago. It was all going to happen the same way it had before. The boy would fall from her grasp, and then she would follow him down. Only this time when she let herself fall, she really would die.
No! Natalia caught herself. No one was going to die today, not if she could help it. She was no longer a scared eleven-year-old. History was not going to repeat itself in an even more terrible iteration. She couldn’t let it. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t leave Lisa and Ryan childless. She had seen how much her brother’s death had damaged her parents. And if she died today, their wounds would burst open again. Would never heal.
Not to mention that she had so much to live for. Including the guy who was now straddling the second diagonal. In one hand he held Lisa’s trekking pole.
Her biceps were starting to tremble. “Whatever you’re thinking of doing,” she said, “hurry.”
“I think I can catch the back of his overalls with this.” Stretching out on his belly, he wrapped his legs around the beam. “Okay, Trask, try to stay still. We’re going to help you, buddy.”
He began to slide the trekking pole underneath one overall strap. But three inches from the tip of the pole was a small black circle, a rubber skirt meant to keep it from sinking too deep into the earth. Now as Wyatt tried to slide the pole farther in, the rubber circle got caught on the fabric of the overalls.
Wyatt adjusted the angle and tried to wiggle the pole deeper under the strap. As he did, Trask made a wordless sound of protest. Natalia guessed the tip must be digging into his shoulder.
“Stay still, Trask!” she begged as he twisted in her hands. Lisa’s and Ryan’s cries echoed hers.
But Trask was too little to think ahead, to know what would happen once he succeeded in getting away from Wyatt’s poking pole and Natalia’s clinging hands. All he knew was he wanted out.
He kicked harder, setting himself swinging back and forth. Millimeter by millimeter, he was sliding from Natalia’s grasp. Her arms felt as weak as spaghetti. Her vision began to spin like water swirling down a drain. She had nothing left. Nothing emotionally. Nothing mentally. Nothing physically.
This was it, then. This was the end.
But it wasn’t just Natalia’s grasp on Trask’s wrists that was shifting each time he kicked. His movements also opened up a gap between his back and his overalls. Suddenly, the trekking pole slid to the far side.
With a roar of effort, Wyatt threw himself forward. And just as Trask slid from Natalia’s wrists, he grabbed the far end of the pole.