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When he looks up, I see the same disbelief on his face that must have been on Casey's when the ground disappeared beneath her feet. She ran from him here. She faced the same anger, the same drop at her back.

I want nothing more than to stomp his fingers over and over until he’s forced to let go.

His fist remains locked around the root, his other hand clawing at the loose ground until he manages to drag himself far enough up the slope to get a knee beneath him.

I don't stay to watch.

I turn and run.

Or attempt to. At this point, what I'm doing is closer to an aggressive limp, but distance matters considerably more than dignity. I push through the trees toward the road, one hand occasionally catching a trunk when the ground shifts beneath me.

Behind me, Ian swears.

I glance back and immediately regret it. He's on his feet, filthy and bleeding from one side of his face, but upright. “Serena!”

“Fuck off.” Possibly not my most strategic contribution to the situation, but I keep moving.

The trees thin ahead, the access road visible in the fading daylight, and for several seconds I hear nothing except the river and my own breathing. Then an engine cuts through both.

Headlights sweep around the bend, followed by the spit of gravel as a vehicle comes in too fast and brakes hard. Ian turns toward it at the same moment I do, and the driver's door flies open almost before the vehicle stops moving.

“Serena!” I know the voice instantly, but my body recognizes it faster. Relief hits me so hard my knees threaten to give out, but Ian recovers before I do. He bolts away from the road toward the trees on the opposite side, and Baryn immediately starts after him.

“Baryn, don't⁠—”

Something enormous shifts at the edge of the headlights, and Ian jerks to a stop so abruptly that his feet skid beneath him.

For one confusing second, my concussed brain refuses to make sense of the shape emerging from the darkness. Long legs. Massive body. A head considerably larger than anything I would prefer to encounter while already having a very bad evening.

A moose emerges from the trees and steps fully into the road, massive enough that I struggle to comprehend the scale of it. Ian stumbles backward as it turns toward him, lowering its head in a slow, deliberate movement that requires absolutely no expertise in wildlife behavior to interpret.

“Oh, fuck,” Simon says somewhere behind Baryn.

Ian makes the poor decision to run, which the moose takes personally. It lunges after him, and Ian yelps, changing direction so violently that his feet slide out from under him. He hits the gravel hard, scrambles upright, and manages approximately two steps before the moose charges again, sending him diving behind the back of the car.

For several seconds, nobody moves. The moose remains planted in the middle of the road, enormous and visibly displeased by the existence of everyone involved. Baryn stares at it, then at Ian crouched behind the car, then back at the moose as though determining which part of the situation requires his attention first.

“Is that a fucking moose?” he asks, sounding genuinely perplexed.

There is absolutely nothing funny about the last hour of my life, and I may have a traumatic brain injury, but a laugh escapes anyway. Baryn's head snaps toward me, and whatever bewilderment the moose inspired disappears from his face. His attention locks onto me so completely that Ian could probably catch fire behind him and it would go unnoticed.

“Serena.” My name comes out rough, almost breathless, and then he's running toward me.

He makes it three steps before Simon catches the back of his jacket. “Wait.”

Baryn whips around, and the look he gives Simon suggests he has approximately one second to justify preventing him from reaching me. Simon doesn't waste it. He points toward the car, where Ian has taken advantage of everyone's distraction to edge toward the trees with one hand braced against the hood. The moose has wandered several yards down the road, but not nearly far enough for anyone with functional survival instincts to forget it exists.

Simon releases Baryn's jacket. “Fine. Go.”

That's all it takes. Baryn runs toward me while Simon turns in the opposite direction, heading straight for Ian. For one irrational second, I think he's actually planning to take him on barehanded, but Simon veers toward the car and yanks open the passenger door. When he straightens again, there's a tire iron in his hand.

“Oh, absolutely not,” Ian says.

Simon plants himself between Ian and the rest of us, the metal bar held low at his side. Even from here, I can see the fear in the rigid set of his shoulders and the careful way he's breathing through it, but there is nothing uncertain about the way he looks at Ian.

“Sit down,” Simon tells him.

Ian laughs. “Simon. Please.”