He hadn’t brought enough water, but the others were more prepared. One of the rangers fished a bottle out of her backpack and handed it to him when she noticed he was struggling.
“I didn’t think it’d take this long to get there,” he said. “It only took us about an hour and a half to get to the top.”
They’d been hiking for almost an hour by then, struggling through scraggly undergrowth and over piles of loose gravel and rock, and they didn’t seem any closer to the bottom than where they’d started. The trees were thick enough that the sky only peeked through over their heads occasionally, but it was still warm, even in the shade, even though it was just barely midmorning.
“It usually is faster to hike downhill, but there’s no defined trail that comes down here, so we’re forced to break our own path. Plus, the way the mountain is formed forces us to take a more extended route. There’s really only one way to come down off a cliff faster,” the ranger said. She paused, looking embarrassed. “Sorry. Talk about putting my foot in my mouth.”
At first he was confused by her apology, then he understood. Because it had been much faster the way Marie had come down, straight down, she’d hit the bottom in a matter of seconds.
They hiked on. The river encroached upon the trail in the last thirty minutes, not so much becoming a part of the landscape but taking it over completely, as if the water were a living thing. And it was—it chuckled and burbled in some parts, roared furiously in others, but even in the calmest spots none of them approached the shore to cup water in their hands to splash on their foreheads, or to soak a bandanna in to press against the backs of their necks. Matt knew why. Because Marie was in the water. A dead woman was floating in there.
“Here we are,” the ranger said, unloading his pack from his shoulders and dropping it on the rocks with a sigh, and it took Matt a moment to process, to take his brain off autopilot and blink the sunshine out of his eyes. Barely midmorning, but it felt like a week had passed since he’d climbed out of bed. He was stuck in a daze brought on by the sun and the heat and his aching muscles, but mostly it was the fear. He could understand how deer froze in the sight of oncoming headlights, because that’s how he felt now. Like an animal waiting to be run down in the road. “What a hike. I guess I can skip the gym today.”
Matt looked up, shading his eyes with the flat of his hand, and there was the cliff far above their heads, the spot where Marie had stood less than twenty-four hours before. The edge where he’d crawled and peered over. It looked so much different from down here—the cliff seemed almost close, as if it wasn’t that high at all, but when he’d hunched over the edge the night before it’d seemed like he was looking down into a dizzying eternity. They were standing in the shadow of the cliff now, the rock on their right and the river on their left, the cliff forming a ceiling above their heads as it sloped out, and it felt more like a shelter than a terrifying drop-off. Comforting instead of scary, but it was all perspective.
“Spread out along the shore,” the cop said. “From any point off that cliff she would’ve fallen directly into the river, so we’re going to start our search in this area. Everyone will take ten-yard segments along the shore and look. Water level’s running higher than usual and visibility is low, but there’ll be some boats heading down this way soon to help, and they’ll be able to get out toward the middle where it’s deep. Bodies sink like rocks, so chances are that she’s somewhere in this immediate area and hasn’t moved far. You got that, Mr. Evans? Evans, you got me?”
The cop came over and clapped a hand on Matt’s shoulder, making him jump.
“Yeah, I got it,” Matt said. The cop nodded and walked the few yards back to the river’s shore, but Matt didn’t move from his spot beside the sheer wall of rock. He was still looking straight up, at the spot from which Marie would’ve fallen. Tried to picture her tumbling from that faraway edge, nothing but a shadow hurtling through the dusky sky. He almost laughed then, but turned it into a cough, smothered into his hand.
“Evans?” the cop said. He sounded impatient. “You okay to join us?”
Matt nodded slowly. There was the river behind him, churning furiously, and the cliff over his head.
“Do you think it’s possible my wife might have survived?” he asked, looking from the cliff to the water and then back again. He’d heard someone call it a precipice. Marie would’ve liked the word, he thought. “Maybe she managed to get to the shore and wandered off into the woods?”
The cop stared.
“It’s a possibility,” he said. “But highly unlikely based on how fast the water’s moving. If she survived the fall it would’ve swept her along pretty quick, and most likely drowned her. I’m sorry, but even the strongest swimmer would have a tough time making it out of there.”
Matt slowly went to the river’s edge and pretended to peer into the water, but he really wasn’t seeing anything. He couldn’t see anything, not with the silvery glint off the ripples blinding him.
Marie had always been strong, he thought, but he would never have called her a strong swimmer. She never would’ve made it out of the frothing, hungry pull of the river. The cop was right. He had to be. Marie was dead. His wife was dead.
But if that were the case, why did Matt taste blood in his mouth, metallic and strong, the same taste he remembered having when Janice died, and all those days Detective Reid had come to the hospital and questioned him for hours? He hadn’t had that bitterness on his tongue once in the years since then, until now, but he found it was like riding a bicycle—you never forget what fear tastes like.