Chapter 49
The wind strengthened the higher they climbed. It molded jackets to bodies, stole words from mouths, whipped hair across faces.
With each step, Liz could feel the weight of the cocaine bouncing against her hip.
Every few minutes, one of them would pause, turning to look over a shoulder, peering further down the trail to see if they were being followed.
There was no sign of anyone out here—yet she couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched.
Maggie had put her jacket back on, tugging the sleeves over her hands to keep them warm. “How much light do we have left?”
Helena, at the front of the group, checked her watch. “An hour and a half until sunset.”
It wasn’t long enough, Liz knew, looking up at the mountain trail, which stretched ever upward. “Joni, can I see the map?”
Joni, who was walking with her hood tightened beneath her chin, took out her phone and passed it to Liz.
Liz ignored the low-battery notification and concentrated squarely on locating them.
She blinked, squinting at the map, and tried to focus.
“It looks like another kilometer to the peak.” It was nothing in terms of distance—if you were on flat ground—but climbing up steep, strenuous sections was another thing entirely.
“After that,” Liz said, “we need to cross the ridgetop. The DNT cabin should be on the other side.” She could see it marked on the map as a red hut symbol.
“And if we don’t find the cabin?” Maggie asked.
We’ll be spending the night on the mountaintop, without tents, sleeping bags, or a stove, Liz thought. Joni was already hunched within her jacket, legs bare and goose-bump flecked, and she didn’t like her chances of making it through the night without hypothermia setting in.
“We will find it,” Liz said decisively.
—
“This must be the mountain pass!” Helena called from up front, her cheeks red, blowing hard.
Joni stood with hands on hips, catching her breath. They’d pushed themselves to their limits to reach the pass by dusk, but now they fell quiet, silenced by the sight of what lay ahead.
“It’s so narrow,” Maggie said, face white.
The peak they were standing on connected to Blafjell’s highest peak, over five hundred meters away. The trail ran along the brow of a steep-sided ridge. From here, it appeared so narrow in places that Liz guessed one misstep could send any of them to their deaths.
A strange sensation traveled across Liz’s shoulder blades. Not as clean as fear—something more shadowy. She stared at the black, rocky spine cutting across the dimming sky. Her insides tightened.
Wind gusted up the mountainside, flattening her jacket to her body, buffeting them all closer.
“There’s no protection from the wind on the ridge, so stay low if you need to,” she said. “And we all stick together.”
Liz tightened the hood of her jacket to protect against the battering wind. It was difficult to tell where the strongest gusts were coming from, the mountains creating their own weather system as cold air rolled in from the ocean, was drawn upward, then circled and ran away.
Fear fizzed and spiked in Liz’s veins as she began to lead Maggie, Joni, and Helena across. Her legs trembled, muscles spent and overworked as she teetered forward, keeping low to the ground.
Daylight had faded into a darkening dusk, leaching the texture from the earth, making it hard to tell the depth of each footstep.
Forward was the only direction. A zipper on her coat swung and flapped in the wind. There was nowhere flat to set her gaze, just sheer drops on either side of the ridge. She dragged in a breath, the air cold and fierce.
Without warning, the ground seemed to shift from under her, as if it were moving.
A dizzying rush filled her head as she crouched to the earth, hands digging at the stony path.
She broke out in a sweat. Her breath turned rapid and shallow as she lay flattened to the ground, cheek pressing into the dirt.
“What is it?” Maggie cried.
She’d never experienced it before—but knew instinctively what this was. “Vertigo . . .”
A terrifying plunging sensation had overtaken her body, as if she were tipping, the axis of the world spinning around her. Even though she could feel the earth hard beneath her, it was as if the ground were turning, sliding out from under her, intent on shaking her over the edge.
Vertigo wasn’t a fear of heights. It was a scrambling of messages to the brain when the ground wasn’t level so it couldn’t process all the sensory information.
Liz lay flattened to the cold ridge, frozen, not trusting herself—or the ground—not to spin away.
She felt nauseous, a hot liquid sensation rising into her throat.
Maggie pressed her hands over Liz’s. “You’re safe. Just breathe.”
Liz dragged air in and out of her chest. Behind her she could hear Joni and Helena asking if she was okay—but she couldn’t risk looking around, terrified to see the drop off the ridge.
She tried to set her gaze on Maggie, but around her the landscape swirled and shifted. She screwed her eyes closed. Felt saliva fill her mouth.
“Open your eyes!” Maggie instructed.
Liz did as she was told.
“Just focus on me and it’ll pass, okay?”
Liz nodded, keeping her gaze glued to Maggie’s. She took in the auburn tips of her eyelashes, the spray of freckles across the bridge of her nose, her cracked lips as Maggie pasted on a smile. “It’ll pass, and when it does, we’re going to keep on going.”
“I can’t.”
“If you can’t walk, we’ll do this on our hands and knees, okay? We’re almost halfway. The cabin will be waiting on the other side. We’ll get warm. Rest. We can do this.”
Liz sucked in another breath.
“I promise I won’t let anything happen to you.”
The world had eased its lurching. She could focus on Maggie’s face a little better. She managed a nod.
“We crawl, okay?”
Liz pushed herself up to her hands and knees, stones digging into the taut fabric of her hiking trousers. She made herself move forward, inch by inch, following Maggie.
Gradually, the dizzying sensation faded, along with the light, until the four of them were crawling in the dark, knees raw, palms grazed, just the sound of wind and breath and earth.