FLAT ON MY chest, my body spread out, I tell myself not to let go. Ava scrambles with her feet, using me for leverage. I slip downhill, and it feels like both of us are going to pitch forward off the cliff. Then Ava gets a good foothold and throws her body up to the flatter surface.
We crawl away from the edge, grunting and gasping. I slump to the ground, and Ava jumps to her feet and runs to the SUV, where the handcuff keys are lying on the passenger seat. I put my hand over the entrance wound, trying to slow the bleeding. Ava runs back to me with her arms freed and a first aid kit in hand.
She tears off my shirt and dumps a packet of quick-clotting powder on the entrance and exit wounds, then begins to wrap me up in hemostatic gauze.
“You’re lucky,” she says. “Looks like the bullet missed your artery, missed your shoulder blade. I don’t hear any sucking sounds, so it missed the top of the lung.”
“Thanks,” I say when she’s got me good and wrapped up, with bandages running around my chest and shoulder. The kit doesn’t have a sling, so she fashions one with tape and secures my arm to my body.
She gives me a nod and thanks me in return. We share a brief moment, looking at each other, two partners—two friends—who just survived a terrible ordeal. Then the moment is over and she’s back to business.
“Move as little as possible,” she says, leaving me sitting in the dirt as she runs to the car to call for help.
I ignore her and rise to my feet. The worst of the shock is gone, so I’m no longer nauseated and dizzy. I walk over toward the edge—not too close—and look out at the canyon below.
“Fiona!” I shout.
There’s no answer.
A minute later, Ava comes back, looking flustered.
“No cell service,” she says. “All I can get is static on the radio. We’re going to have to drive back to civilization.”
“I’m not going with you,” I say.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
I gesture with my good arm toward the canyon.
“Fiona might still be alive,” I say. “I’m going to look for her.”
Ava argues with me. She says we can look for her together, but I tell her that this would waste precious time. We need help out here—and we need the most capable of us to go get it. That’s her.
She says that I’m going to kill myself trying to get down into the canyon, but we can both see a place where the cliff flattens into a gentler slope.
“Give me that first aid kit,” I say. “And if there’s any food in your car, I’ll take that, too.”
Ava digs out a stash of Gatorade and PowerBars she keeps under her seat. She hands the Gatorade to me and stuffs the PowerBars in the first aid kit. I chug half the bottle and wedge the kit into my pants pocket.
I pick my gun out of the dirt and try to put it on my belt, but I’m using my left hand and the holster is on my right. Ava finally helps me get it into place, giving me a look of disapproval that I’m stupid to be doing this.
“Drive safe,” I say.
“Don’t pass out,” she says.
As her taillights recede into the darkness, I walk parallel to the cliff edge. The slope flattens out somewhat, and a seam of rock cuts down the hillside at an angle. Ordinarily, Ava would have a flashlight to give me, but in the aftermath of the explosion this morning, she wasn’t sure what happened to it.
I can see well enough in the moonlight that I don’t really need it.
I make my way down on wobbly legs.
“Fiona!” I call. “Can you hear me?”
Traveling is slow, but I finally make it to the bottom, where the sandstone streambed is filled with shallow puddles and trickling tributaries connecting them. I make my way back downstream, heading toward where the cliff looms over the canyon.
“Fiona!” I call again. “Are you out there?”
Up ahead, I hear a noise. It could be an animal moving in the brush. A coyote or a javelina.
But something about it sounds more human—a large form slinking through the brush.
“Fiona?” I say.
The canyon is deathly quiet, filled only with the sound of water filtering through the rocks.
I get a cold chill.
Could it be?
I saw blood spray from her face before she fell over the edge. But she survived the fall once before. Maybe she survived again.
“Isabella?” I call.
Somewhere in the darkness, I can hear raspy, labored breathing, like an injured animal waiting for its final pounce.