You’re going to die out here. He’s going to kill you—or let you die.
No. No, she would find a way.
Fighting despair, she put one foot in front of the other, sliding on snow and talus. Her toes ached, her fingers, too. But she had no choice to keep going. She thought of Harrison coming to while hanging upside down in that crevasse, thought of how hard it had been for him to climb out. If only she had his strength…
The minutes dragged on in misery, her mind growing dull.
Then, abruptly, Gizmo stopped, lay down, barked.
Kenzie sank to her knees beside him. “Did you find him, boy?”
She looked into the snow, expecting to see a corpse. Then a gust of wind blew the snow aside for a moment, knocking her onto her belly, and she saw.
They stood on the brink of an abyss, ground giving away to nothingness, the air divided by a thin razor’s edge of rock.
She shrieked, scooted backward, pulling Gizmo with her. If Gizmo hadn’t stopped her, she would have gone right over that edge.
She looked over her shoulder at Don, speaking through chattering teeth. “I-I th-think he’s d-down there.”
Another gust of wind came, knocking her to the ground.
“He’s not down there!” Don shouted, bent low against the gale. “He’s over there.”
Kenzie squinted and was just able to make out the ghostly shape of a cabin on the other side of the ridge. Well, that was it then. If he was over there, they couldn’t reach him. Even in good weather, they would need technical gear to cross the rock, and she wasn’t a climber.
“What are you waiting for? Move!”
Kenzie crawled back from the edge. “We c-can’t cross th-that in this s-storm. We’ll g-get blown off or f-fall. We need t-technical gear, ropes—”
“I want my goddamn money!”
“You don’t need us anymore. We’ve f-found him for you.” She saw on his face that she’d made a fatal mistake.
Still bent low, he drew the gun. “You’re right! I don’t need you.”
Kenzie knew she was going to die. Up here. In the cold.
He stood upright, aimed the barrel at her, then pointed the gun at Gizmo.
“No!” Kenzie threw herself at him.
Thecrackof the gun.
Don shrieking, arms flailing, as he toppled backward into the abyss.
Stunned, Kenzie lay in the snow, staring in horror at the empty space where Don had stood, no sound now but the wind.
He was gone. The bastard was gone.
She had knocked him over the edge.
Gizmo whined, licked her face.
Then she noticed it. Blood. Scarlet drops on the snow.
Frantic, she searched Gizmo to find where he’d been hit. Only when she saw the blood on her jeans did she realize that she, not Gizmo, had been shot.
“Shit.”
