Chapter 75

Arthur

The tires screamed against the desert hardpack as I floored the accelerator, the vehicle fishtailing before I corrected and kept going. Max had his hand braced against the door frame. Carter was silent in the back seat. Nobody told me to slow down.

My phone was still in my hand from when I'd grabbed it off the console. I hadn't looked at it since. There was nothing on it that mattered right now.

Cecilia fell into the river.

Five words. Max had said five words and my entire nervous system had short-circuited. I'd been running before he finished the sentence, and I hadn't stopped since.

The canyon ridge came into view. I could see figures near the edge. Alice's silhouette, unmistakable even from a quarter mile out. Sarah standing beside her, one hand on Alice's shoulder.

I hit the brakes hard enough to throw us all forward, killed the engine, and was out of the Jeep before the dust settled.

Alice was covered in dust, with a few minor scrapes on her skin. Her hair was plastered to her face, her clothes smudged with grime, and she was shaking so badly her teeth chattered audibly. When she saw me coming, something in her expression cracked open.

"She went in right there." Alice pointed downstream, her arm trembling. "The ground just—it gave way and she was running and then she was gone. I tried to grab her but I couldn't—Arthur, I couldn't reach her—The search team's been down there but they said current—"

"Where's the team?"

Sarah stepped forward. "Downstream about half a mile. The river bends there. They've been working the banks but the water's moving fast and there are rocks and—" She stopped. "The team leader wants to talk to you."

The team leader was a weathered man in his fifties named Reyes, and he had the look of someone who'd delivered bad news before and hated it every time. He met me at the canyon's edge, where a rope line had been anchored to a boulder.

"Mr. Winston. We've had eight men on the water for the last twenty minutes. The current's running about twelve knots through the main channel, and there are three significant rock formations between the entry point and the bend." He paused. "We haven't found her yet."

"What does that mean?"

"It means she's either downstream of our current search area, or she found something to hold onto. The river splits about a mile out—one branch slows down considerably, the other goes into a gorge. If she went left—"

"She's alive," I said. Not a question. Not a prayer. A statement of fact, because the alternative wasn't something I was willing to process. "What do you need to keep searching?"

"Honestly? More people who know this terrain. My team is good, but this section of canyon—the geology's unstable after the slide. Two of my guys already had to pull back when a secondary section started moving. I can't order them into that."

I understood what he wasn't saying. He couldn't order them. But he wasn't ordering me either.

"What's the reward for finding her?" Max asked from behind me.

I turned. He and Carter had followed me down, and Max was looking at the cluster of local guides who'd gathered at a respectful distance—men and women who knew this land the way I knew a balance sheet.

"Five million dollars," I said, loud enough to carry. "Cash. To whoever finds her."

The silence that followed was not the silence of people considering the offer. It was the silence of people who'd already considered it and reached the same conclusion.

An older man stepped forward. His face was deeply lined, his eyes sharp. "Mr. Winston. I've been guiding in this canyon for thirty years. What happened today—the slide, the secondary instability—this whole section is compromised. Could go again any time." He paused.

"I know," I said.

"Five million dollars doesn't help a dead man."

"No," I agreed. "It doesn't."

The silence stretched. I looked at the canyon, at the river I couldn't see from here but could hear—a low, constant roar that had been background noise for the last twenty minutes and was now the only sound in the world that mattered.

She's down there. She's alive. She's waiting.

"I know that canyon."

The voice was small. I turned.

A boy—ten years old, maybe eleven—had pushed his way to the front of the group. He was looking at me with the particular directness of a child. I recognized him. He'd been one of the kids who'd crowded around Cecilia yesterday when we arrived.

She'd sat down in the dirt with him and explained it using rocks and sticks.

"I go in there all the time," the boy said. "My uncle says I'm not supposed to but I do anyway. I know where the water goes."

"Jack." The older guide's voice was warning.

"I know the split," the boy said, ignoring him. "I know which branch she'd go down. There's a place where the water slows—a hidden bend, kind of like a pocket. Things get caught there." He looked at me steadily. "The lady with the necklace. She gave me chocolate yesterday. She was nice to me."

Something moved in my chest. I crouched down to his level.

"You know the way in?"

"Yeah."

"It's dangerous."

"I know." He didn't flinch. "But she was nice to me. And I'm gonna marry her when I grow up."

Under any other circumstances, that statement would have landed differently. Right now, I felt nothing but a fierce, irrational gratitude for this child's certainty.

"Jack, I will keep you safe." I said. "I need you to show me."

Carter pulled me aside while Max organized the equipment—rope, medical kit, satellite phones, the emergency beacon from the Jeep.

"You're taking a ten-year-old into an unstable canyon," Carter said quietly.

"He knows the terrain."

"Arthur—"

"She's down there." My voice came out rougher than I intended. "Carter. She's down there and every minute I stand here talking is a minute she's in that water."

He looked at me for a long moment. Then he nodded. "I'll take the western branch with one of the guides. We'll cover the slower water."

"Every thirty minutes on the satellite phone."

"Every thirty minutes." He gripped my shoulder once, brief and hard. "Go find her."

Alice appeared at my elbow as I was checking the rope harness. Her jaw was set, her eyes red but dry.

"I'm coming with you," she said.

I looked at her. She was still shaking, and she was looking at me like she'd fight me if I said no.

"Stay close," I said. "Do exactly what Jack says about where to step. If I tell you to stop, you stop immediately."

"Okay."

"I mean it, Alice."

"I know you mean it." She met my eyes. "Go."