But it is too late.
"You bitch!" The camera slips from Mia's shaking fingers. It hits the grass with a muffled thud as Mia slaps her friend across the cheek.
Leah's face crumples. "Mia, wait! I made a mistake. I'm so sorry—" She reaches out in desperation. Her fingers close around Mia's forearms, trying to hold on, to make her understand.
Mia jerks back. Leah's fingernails rake down Mia's arms as she tears free. A few droplets of blood from Leah's nose splatter across the front of Mia’s bodice. Mia doesn't even notice through her blinding rage.
"Get off me!" Mia pushes Leah away from her.
Leah stumbles backward, her arms flung wide. For one suspended moment, she teeters on the bluff's edge, feet scrambling awkwardly for purchase in her heels. Then she regains her balance, chest heaving, eyes wide with shock.
Mia slumps to her knees. Appalled, crying hard, she stares down at her dress—once rose-gold, now mud-stained, torn, ruined. Blood wells from the scratches on her forearms.
For that critical moment, her attention is diverted. Away from the edge. Away from Leah.
Chloe recognizes her opportunity with the clarity of an apex predator. She steps forward and stands next to Mia, who's still on the ground.
Leah regains her balance. Inches from the bluff's edge, wavering but upright. Her eyes lock with Chloe's, not two feet apart now. Something shifts in her expression—a dawning comprehension, a sudden clarity. And then, pure scintillating anger.
Leah's lips part, perhaps to cry out a warning, to confess, to expose everything she knows. That cannot happen.
Chloe moves with liquid precision. Her hands connect with Leah's shoulders. She feels momentary resistance. Leah tenses in surprise, a gasp catching in her throat.
Chloe shoves Leah violently.
The sensation is oddly satisfying. The give of flesh, the sudden absence of weight. Leah's arms flail, a graceless windmill againstthe star-spattered sky. She screams. A startled, abbreviated cry. Her body drops away into darkness.
The silk of her dress makes a sound like tearing paper. The crack of breaking branches. The dull impact of flesh against something hard, unforgiving.
Then silence.
Mia looks up, stunned.
Chloe injects horror into her voice. "What did you do?"
Mia gapes at Chloe in alarm. She scrambles to her feet, dirt cascading from her ruined dress. "Leah?"
"You pushed her." Chloe’s voice slices through the night air like a blade. "You pushed her!"
"No—I—I didn't mean to—Leah!" Mia leans over the edge, peering down into the consuming darkness. "Leah!"
"Keep your voice down." Chloe digs her fingers into Mia's arm as she yanks her back from the edge. "Do you want people to know what you did?"
Mia stares at her in terror, mouth working soundlessly. "We—we have to call 911."
"She's dead," Chloe declares with certainty she doesn't feel. But Leah certainly looks dead from her glimpse over the edge. Forty feet down, pale limbs splayed at unnatural angles against a fallen tree caught on the steep incline. All that dark wet blood.
Does she dare hope it might be true? This mess might resolve itself neatly, with Mia cast as the perfect scapegoat.
A surge of satisfaction floods Chloe's veins. She watches Mia's face crumple with horror. This is unfolding more perfectly than she could have orchestrated. Leah silenced, potentially forever. Mia implicated. All of Chloe's problems wrapped up in one tragic "accident."
She frowns as Mia begins a treacherous descent down the bluff, clinging to exposed roots as she climbs downward, tears streaming down her cheeks.
"Stop! Come back here!" Chloe commands in a harsh whisper. "What do you think you're doing?"
Mia's hands shake violently as she navigates the steep slope. The darkness swallows her small form as she disappears. Chloe creeps forward cautiously, peering over the edge. In the moonlight, she can barely make out Mia kneeling beside Leah's motionless body below.
A sound drifts up from the darkness. Mia's voice, choked and frantic. "Leah? Leah, please. Please wake up."
