39
Sandals scrape stone as Leo spins away from the edge above us and runs. He isn’t moving toward Allie and me, but back along the outcropping—back toward the portage trail.
Toward Macy, Pam, Deborah, and Imani.
“Oh god,” Allie breathes beside me, her voice rising in panic. “Oh shit, oh shit!”
“Come on,” I hiss, pressing my body against the canyon wall and inching along the slick, sheer rock toward the narrow strip of sand where the trail begins.
It isn’t far away, but the handholds in the canyon wall are difficult to find in the deepening dark. I squint hard, scanning for the nearly invisible divots in the rock. And each time I grab onto a new handhold and let go of the last, I slap the wall to show Allie where to follow.
“There! Hurry!” I say, amazed that I have any strength left to pull myself forward.
When my feet finally feel sand beneath them, I realize it’s the first solid ground they’ve touched in nearly twenty-four hours.
On shaking legs, I stumble through the shallows toward the beach, where Leo’s gear raft is parked on the shoreline. Is he planning to drag it by himself along the portage trail after he kills all of us?
Then I wonder: Is there any way Allie and I could use it? Maybe send it over the falls in hopes that it’ll survive the plunge?
No. I already know we aren’t going to be able to lift it, even with the two of us. The raft is too heavy, and we’re too exhausted. It’s a miracle our bodies haven’t given out already. I’m pretty certain Leo can’t do it alone, either. Leo is strong, but not that strong. So what is his plan?
There isn’t time to wonder. We have to get moving, catch up with him before he reaches the others.
I haul myself out of the water on shaking legs, with Allie right behind me, and whip my head toward the rocky outcropping looming above us.
It’s empty now.
As we rush to the mouth of the portage trail—the only path forward—the sound of the falls fades slightly, blocked by the rocky outcropping. That’s when my ears pick up the clatter of rocks ahead.
Leo.
I hesitate. Should we hang back a little longer before following him?
“No. Hurry,” Parker whispers, urging me forward.
“Keep going,” I whisper to Allie, even as I try to get my own leaden legs to run faster. “But keep quiet. I don’t think Leo knows we’re behind him.”
The narrow portage path winds between house-sized boulders and gnarled pines that offer little cover. Allie trails close behind me, trying to keep up, muffling her gasping breaths with her hands. We move as quietly as we can, bent low, every footfall sending small rocks skittering.
My lungs burn, and my legs tremble with each step. I can’t think beyond Parker’s voice in my ear, urging me to keep going.
“Wait!” Allie finally hisses, grabbing my arm. “Listen!”
I go to shrug off her arm, intent on following Parker’s instructions, but then I hear something that makes me freeze.
A familiar voice cuts through the night, and my blood turns to ice.
“Well, that was a lot of trouble for nothing, wasn’t it?” Leo’s voice is sing-song, playful. “Nice bait-and-switch, but where do you think you’re going now?” He laughs.
I can’t breathe, can’t move. Is he talking to us? How did he spot us? His voice is coming from around the next bend in the trail.
Allie’s fingernails dig into my arm, but both of us are frozen in place.
Then Leo speaks again. “Wow, Macy. Looking good.”
I glance at Allie in horror. He’s not talking to us. He’s caught up with the other women. And from the sound of it, they’re all directly ahead.
My stomach lurches. What now?
The terrible truth sinks in. Allie and I aren’t in any position to help anyone—including ourselves.
We’re just two women on the brink of critical exhaustion, desperate to save a group of even more hopeless women.
All of us are trapped, with nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and nobody coming to save us.
Our raft—probably in pieces downstream of Splinter Ridge—has been torn to shreds by Leo’s arrows. We wouldn’t be able to salvage it, even if we could get to it.
There’s no escape route except the river, and we’d be doomed without life jackets. It’s possible Allie and I could survive a little longer in the water, if we somehow got past Leo and his bow and made it to the put-in at the bottom of Splinter Ridge. But Imani or Macy? Not a chance.
I wonder again how Leo plans to get out of here. It seems like he’s thought of everything. What about escape?
A muffled shriek from ahead twists my heart in my chest.
We can’t just stand here and let him kill them. We have to do something.
I nod to Allie and we creep forward, staying low, using the boulders for cover. As we round a massive rock formation, the path dips steeply downward, leading to a clearing—the put-in for rafters who’ve portaged around Splinter Ridge. We’ve nearly made it to the end of the trail.
What I see below me almost makes my legs give out.
It’s worse than I imagined.
There is absolutely nowhere to hide down there. Nowhere to run. Nowhere at all.
Macy, Pam, Deborah, and Imani are cowering on a strip of sand.
Towering above them is the sheer cliff face, a hundred feet high and impenetrable. And in front of them is Leo, advancing down the steep trail toward them with his bow.
Pam is trying in vain to help Deborah up the rock face, to reach the nearest ledge—but anyone can see it’s impossible. There’s simply nowhere to go.
Leo is maybe fifty feet away from the women. As he navigates the final rocky grade of the portage trail, he steps onto the sand and raises his bow, an arrow nocked. The string is drawn back halfway—not quite ready to fire, but close. He’s savoring the moment.
“You know what’s funny?” Leo says, his tone conversational, like he’s talking about the weather.
“When I thought you all decided to go over Splinter Ridge, I actually respected that. Like, legit respect. But then …” He laughs.
“I realized—nah. That isn’t the story I want people to tell.
” He cocks his head. “That’s a little anticlimactic.
Can’t leave the folks at Lifemark working with that kind of material. ”
“Fuck you,” Macy spits. She sways where she stands, barely able to hold herself upright. Even from this distance, I can see the angry splotches spreading down her neck in the moonlight.
Leo ignores her. “Nope. The story I want people to tell on your obsessive little subreddit,” he continues, “is the one where I kill all of you. Not Splinter Ridge.” He grins.
Then he raises the arrow.
I dart my eyes around the clearing, the path, and the canyon wall, searching desperately for anything useful. Anything that might give us one more chance.
Finally, my eyes land on the river.
Something is bobbing in the water, peeking from around a boulder about ten feet behind the rock face where the women are pinned.
It disappears and reappears in the current, ducking and then popping into view so briefly that, at first, I don’t realize what I’m seeing.
Then it clicks.
It’s the nose of an inflatable kayak. Bright green. Has it been in Leo’s gear raft all along—part of the emergency supplies, maybe? From my limited line of sight, I suspect that it’s meant for only one or two people, at most.
It must be his escape plan.
But it could be ours. If we can get to it. If even a couple of us can somehow—
“Hold on,” Leo says abruptly, not lowering the arrow an inch.
He points it at Pam and slowly says, “One.” He moves the arrow a hair to the right, targeting Imani.
“Two.” Next, he aims at Deborah. “Three,” he says, like he’s counting alongside a young child.
Finally, he points the weapon at Macy, lingering for a second longer.
Macy’s ripped face twitches.
“Hmm,” he says. “Four.”
Nobody says a word in reply.
“Where’d the other two little piggies go?” His eyes scan the clearing, the boulders, the inky pines. He doesn’t sound worried. Just intent on finding out the answer to his question.
I hold my breath, my heart pounding against my ribcage. Allie and I are barely hidden among the boulders maybe thirty feet behind him, close enough that I can hear his breathing, see the way his fingers squeeze on the bowstring.
“They went over the falls,” Macy rasps, emotion clouding her voice. Is there any way she can see us up here? “I tried to warn them, but they … thought they could make it—”
“Bullshit,” Leo snaps. He takes a step toward them, and Imani’s knees buckle. Deborah catches her, barely managing to keep her upright.
“Do you think I’m stupid?” he snarls. “I watched that raft go over. Watched it flip. Saw your little dummies fly out.” His voice rises, echoing off the canyon walls. “WHERE THE FUCK ARE THE OTHER TWO?”
“Look down,” Parker says urgently, and I do.
At my feet are two smooth river rocks, each about the size of a baseball.
I pick them up, even as I argue with him in my head. I can’t throw worth shit on a good day, let alone with enough force to actually hurt or kill someone, especially from this distance.
But Allie is snatching one of the rocks from my hand with authority, like maybe she can.
“Look, we can do this the easy way or we can do it the hard way,” Leo drawls.
“If your true-crime freak is as smart as she thinks she is, I bet she knows all about how long I could draw this out,” he calls.
“So tell me where they are, or I’m gonna start putting arrows through body parts.
And when I’m out of those, my knife can go all night.
” He smiles proudly, then his face twists into a scowl.
“Let’s see … starting with—” He shifts his aim toward Imani’s chest. “—the slowest.”
“No.” Macy steps in front of Imani, spreading her arms wide. “I’m not fucking with you. Allie and Kaia went over Splinter Ridge. They’re dead. You don’t need to—”
“Enough,” Leo interrupts, his voice rising. For a second, he turns his head toward the river, where the tip of the kayak bobs in and out of view. Like maybe he’s worried Allie and I are in the water at this very moment, trying to untie it.
“Get a little closer,” Parker instructs.
I hesitate, knowing what’s at stake, eyeing the arrow aimed straight at my friends.
But that voice hasn’t steered me wrong yet.
I take a careful step, heart thumping. Allie follows my lead.
Leo swings the bow back toward Macy. “I’ll give you five seconds to tell me where they are. Five … four … three—”
“Now,” Parker says in my ear.
“Now,” I whisper to Allie. I throw the rock in my hand with everything I have. Beside me, Allie does the same. The stones seem to hurtle in slow motion, arcing up against the dusky sky.
My rock lands in the sand with a thud, pitifully far away from its mark.
Allie’s, on the other hand, flies with surprising force. The words captain of my intramural softball team scroll across my mind—right as the rock hits Leo square in the back of the head with a sickening crack.
He stumbles forward, barely catching himself from falling, as a sharp exhale escapes him.
I gasp in amazement.
But his fingers have already released that bowstring.
The arrow flies, zipping through the air.
For a split second, I think he’s missed—that maybe the impact of that rock has thrown off Leo’s aim enough that he launched the arrow into the water.
Then Deborah screams.