“Don’t do this,” Bradley said quietly. “Why are you doing this right now? Don’t ruin the trip, man.”
But Leo knew that ship had sailed long ago. Holding his shaking hands out where Terry could see them, Leo—with his heart in his windpipe—took a cautious step forward, and then another. “Terry. I’m going to reach for the gun, and we’re going to put it down. You can take the book and go. Whatever you need. It isn’t worth this.”
Leo reached out, wrapping a hand around the barrel, but as soon as he tilted it to the side, Terry registered that he was fucked. Panicking, he reached with his other hand to try to claw at Leo’s face, and before Leo knew exactly what was going on, the two were wrestling with a loaded gun between them. He heard Lily cry out his name. His heart was in his skull now, pounding, pounding; everything around them was dust and panic and noise.
Walt grabbed on to Terry’s gun arm, trying to help Leo wedge the barrel from Terry’s grip. The gun came free, falling to the ground in the melee. Bradley came for Terry’s other arm, finally managing to drag Terry away. Furious, Bradley wrapped his fists in Terry’s shirt, walking him backward.
“Are you out of your mind?” Bradley shouted into his face. His normally placid expression was tight with adrenaline and fury. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Red dust had kicked up, leaving them all disoriented; Leo had no idea whether the rocky lip of the canyon was in front of him or behind him, so he carefully went down to his knees, feeling around to regain his bearings. Somewhere in the past thirty seconds, the shouting had stopped sounding like individual words and was now only a din. Squinting up into the gritty cloud, Leo reached forward to grab Bradley’s calf, desperately yelling for him to let Terry go and get down.
So, Bradley did.
Terry’s face went round with shock, eyes wide and arms flailing as the dust cleared and all six of them seemed to realize in unison that only the very tip of one of his shoes had any remaining contact with the fragile lip of the canyon. And even that slipped away as Terry’s weight and momentum propelled him backward.
Over the edge, for just a heartbeat, Terry appeared to be running in place on top of nothing but air. Leo reached out, grappling into the emptiness—
But Terry was gone.
Leo was astounded at how fast a human body could fall. He had never—not once in his life—heard such silence. It was as if Terry had pulled all of the sound with him when he plummeted.
For two,
five,
ten heart-pounding seconds, they stared at the empty space that Terry’s body had just occupied.
Delicate swirls of dust danced around them in the fading light. “No way that just happened,” rasped Bradley.
“Maybe…” Walter wondered, “maybe he survived?”
Shuffling to the edge and staring down together, the group struggled to catch their breath. The fall was so far, it was impossible to see clearly from where they stood, but the five of them winced together when a tiny puff of dirt rose up from the distant ground.
Even if nobody said it aloud, they all knew he hadn’t.
Chapter Eleven
NO ONE MOVED.
The numbness began in Lily’s fingers, spreading up her arms with shocking velocity as she registered what had just happened.
“What did I just see?” Nic asked, voice high and thin. “What am I seeing right now?”
Bradley turned with wild, hysterical eyes and, as if his emergency glass case had been shattered, yelled, “TERRY WENT OVER THE FUCKING CLIFF!”
Butter in a frying pan, Lily’s thoughts melted away. Nic’s face, Leo’s face, Bradley, Walter… they all told the same story. They’d really seen Terry fall over the edge into the canyon.
Her ass hit the dirt. Dread filled her like the cold, violent rush of ocean water into a cave, and something broke loose in the group. Chaos erupted: Bradley was still yelling. Leo yelled at Bradley to stop yelling. Walter yelled that his lower intestines were very sensitive to stress. Nic started yelling at all of them to shut the hell up and calm the hell down. Each one peered and gestured over the edge of the cliff.
But to Lily, all of it sounded like it was happening many, many miles away. White noise roared in her ears. This wasn’t falling off a horse or breaking a leg. A person had died on one of her tours. A man was dead.
Get it together, Wilder. Fucking get up.
She scrambled to her feet, crossing the last few paces and jerking them all back from the ledge. When she hurled him away, Bradley rolled, coming to a stop on his side. He shoved a hand into his hair and groaned. “Holy shit, holy shit, I’ve never seen someone die before.”