Chapter 79
Joni!” Liz screamed.
She ran toward the space where Joni had been standing, an explosion of adrenaline ripping through her.
Sliding to a halt on the mountain edge, she stared into the emptiness below. Just rock and a silver stretch of water too distant to ripple.
“No! No! No!” she wailed, head shaking from side to side.
This can’t be happening.
She jammed a fist against her mouth, backing away.
Helena was standing near her shoulder, face white, mouth slack.
Liz clutched her arm. “Where is she?” Liz begged. “Where’s Joni?”
Helena blinked rapidly.
“WHERE IS JONI?” Liz yelled again.
“She . . . went over the edge,” Helena said, voice grated by disbelief.
“We need to get to her! Help her!” Liz was shouting, pacing the edge, looking for a route.
“There’s no way down,” Helena said.
“We need to do something! Call someone!” She was desperate, her voice unspooling. A deep, cold pressure was expanding inside her. “Joni is down there!”
Helena looked Liz in the eye, head shaking slowly. “No one could survive that.”
She thought of her and Joni’s last conversation, hours earlier, standing on a rocky platform, her hands gripped to Joni’s shoulders. She’d wanted to push her—wanted her out of her life.
And now she . . . she was . . .
“Joni’s dead . . . ,” Liz gasped at last, understanding.
Her stomach pitched, hot and liquid. She leaned forward, hands braced on her thighs as she vomited across the hard earth.
She crouched there, heaving breath in and out of her body. Wretched, broken. Tears streaming down her face.
Helena moved to her side, a hand on her back.
Maggie dragged herself toward them. Her hair was tangled and wild. Her right eye was already beginning to swell. Her lip had split, the blood drying down her chin. She stood on the other side of Liz, holding her tight.
Bleeding and battered, faces streaked with salt and blood and earth, they clung together.
Three where there should have been four.