Chapter Thirty-One
Liv had never been so glad to see her sister fall. Mandy tumbled down the rocky hillside behind Thor, moving so quickly it
appeared as if her sarong was a kite cut loose and plummeting to the ground. But it didn’t matter. She’d made it back. She
was alive. They’d be together in just a few minutes.
But between her and Mandy was the sound.
The sound Mandy was charging at—that all of them were now heading toward—was terrible. It was a ragged, animalistic sound,
a siren turned sentient, like the air raid alerts she’d heard sometimes late on foggy nights during her short stint in Ukraine.
It tore through the amphitheater, reminding everyone that despite their fantasies otherwise, danger was an ever-present possibility.
“Could it be another mule?” Fiona asked.
Even as the hope hit her, Liv knew that was ridiculous. No animal would make a sound like this. Not unless it was dying.
“It’s coming from over there.” Lucinda pointed up to a cluster of rocks backed by a yellow thicket of brush.
“It can’t be Babette,” Guy said. “She was just a little hot. Marc said she’d be fine.”
Lucinda shot him a perplexed look. There hadn’t been time to introduce Guy to the others yet.
But the horrible cries from the rocks suffocated any other immediate concerns.
They climbed slowly, some with clenched fists, others with hands open, as if in supplication to the gods for this to be something other than what they feared.
“Babette?” Devon called out. “Is that you?”
“BABETTE?” PK shouted.
Unlike Mandy, Thor’s movements were graceful, furtive. Liv watched him snake down through the brush to Mandy’s left, pulling
a knife from his belt without pausing. Liv felt a faint prick of fear for her sister, but then the guide pushed past Mandy
and slowed, holding the knife in front of him, the outstretched blade pointing at the source of the sound.
It was a man, a bent-over, shuddering, howling figure, huddled at the base of a stout tower of rocks.
“Charlie.” Thor’s steady voice cut through the horrible keening. The guide kept a firm grip on his knife, but he brought it
close to his body now, stretching his other arm out in a placating, defensive posture. “Are you hurt?”
The sound coming from Charlie’s throat dropped from a wail to a stuttering sob. He was clutching something in both hands.
Devon raced ahead and dropped to her knees by her brother. Liv could see Charlie’s eyes—his wild, panicked eyes—flicking from
his sister to Thor to the sky above them. The man was in shock. Which meant he was dangerous. Even if he didn’t know it.
“What do you have there, Charlie?” Thor said. He was gripping the knife more tightly now. Mandy was practically breathing
over his shoulder.
Charlie glanced up, and the two men’s eyes met in a swirl of confusion. Liv saw terror on Charlie’s face. Terror and pain.
He revealed one hand—a dirtied, sandstone-red hand—and Mandy took a step back.
“Good girl,” Liv whispered.
Slowly, Charlie rose to his feet. He was trembling hard, the shudder fierce and unceasing, as if this was his new permanent
state of being. He brought both his hands up. He was holding a sparkly glass water bottle by the neck.
“It was in her lap. I tried to give her some, but she couldn’t . . . she wouldn’t—” The bottle tumbled and smashed to the ground, spraying open in a web of cracks that soaked the parched sandstone.
Thor grabbed his arm, but Charlie didn’t seem to notice. He had turned away to look at the massive pile of rocks looming over
him. Three enormous slabs formed a crude staircase six feet up to a dust-orange throne upon which, Liv now saw, sat a woman.
Her head was slumped back, her shirt yanked loose and limbs strewn wildly, as if she’d been impaled there. But there was no
blood. Only stillness. She looked like a mangled porcelain doll, beautiful and broken. Nestled in the stone cradle lay the
woman they’d all been waiting for, Babette’s wide, unseeing eyes taking in the Grand Canyon for the first, and last, time.