Her gaze drifted up. And up. At the halfway point of the ravine’s dizzying climb, a lone gum tree reached out from the wall, its thin trunk emerging from a large crack, a hint of light peeking out from behind it. She continued her inspection up to the wedge of baby-blue sky framed by the blood-red cliff tops.
Two questions refused an easy answer: Where was she, and where was everyone else? This had to be a prank—probably Lincoln, as some kind of payback for last night for forcing him to reveal his secret to Eliza. Payback. It could be Andy, smarting over never being paid back for an audition that never took place. Guilt eased into her. She would have to make it up to him next time she saw him, somehow.
Then a third question hounded her: How on earth did they not wake her? Last night’s dinner must have been spiked. That was the only way they could have done it.
Her tears made their regular appearance. Would Eliza have been part of this? All because Bree hadn’t been honest about her audition?
The hissing began again. Faint. Close. It stopped. She backed into the solid rock wall. Her breaths came in short, shallow gasps, her frantic eyes roving to find the source. Her gaze was drawn to the swag and the mound of sand covering its end. With the tiniest puff of wind, one edge of the mound poured from the swag onto the rock beneath it, hissing as it hit and spread.
The sand made sense after the dust storm. Not much else did. This had to be a prank.
“Good one, guys.” Her nervous laugh rebounded to her sharply from the cliff face.
“Eliza!”
The only response was her own, and it reached ears already full of her own thudding pulse.
At one end of the ravine, the rocks of the riverbed disappeared into a pool of lime-green water studded with boulders and a fallen tree. Random bubbles popped to the surface. Beyond the pool, rockfall reached halfway to the sky. She looked for a way through—the murky water gave nothing away, least of all its depth.
And it revealed she wasn’t alone.
From the top of a lumpy rock in the middle of the pool, a coiled snake eyed her. Two vertical slashes stared her down amid dark-brown patches on a reddish-brown head, while its tongue lashed from what appeared to be a broad smile. Friendly and harmless, but only from a distance. Like a tax auditor.
This was no way out.
Bree’s heart rose into her throat as she took two tentative steps back from the water. She scrambled back to the swag, her back to the danger. She shivered as a wedge-tailed eagle soared majestically into the ravine, its metallic screech bouncing down these impossibly high walls and enveloping her in its harsh echo.
Bree ducked by reflex as the eagle sailed the length of the ravine, then disappeared from view behind the lonely gum tree.
“Follow the riverbed out.” She stumbled over the rocks, her arms outstretched for balance, and her eyes evaluated every shadow for danger. The pebbles gave way to solid rock slabs, scored and lined with fissures and cracks. The walls narrowed and she trailed her hands along them, at first with stretching fingertips, then with elbows tucked in. The air grew cold and stale as she approached another sheer rock wall. The ravine ended.
Panic set in as time slowed. They couldn’t leave her down here with no way out.
She shivered as the cold snuck through the thin fabric of her T-shirt, and she trudged back along the scored rock floor to where the pebbles began and resumed her ginger scramble across shifting uncertainty.
Bree reached the swag and found her hoodie. She searched for her phone, but they’d taken it. The impossibility of her situation bit hard as she sank to her knees, and her heart sank with her hopes. She screamed at the sky two hundred feet above her.
Bree opened her eyes and saw the pulsing light behind the thin trunk of the lonely gum tree, clinging to impossible life almost through obstinence. The wall in front of her was jagged and cracked but it wasn’t vertical. It leaned away with handholds and footholds. It was climbable.
There was a way out.
Up.
Sixteen
The crunch of the stones beneath Andy’s boots beat a hypnotic tattoo that slowed his legs and time. Sweat basted him as he tripped over more of the same—ankle-high rocks and thick spinifex whipping his shins. His phone proclaimed he’d been walking through the low scrub for two hours and the dirt road was no closer.
The dust cloud had disappeared, along with his righteous anger—and his hope.
Andy swallowed hard, his throat like sandpaper, as desperation set in. In every direction was an endless sea of dry, red dirt pockmarked with stones and scattered boulders holding down the skin of this ancient country—the surface of Mars brought to Earth. He swooned in the glare of the blazing, burning sun and tried to get his bearings. Was the sun in front of him or behind?
Scuffed footprints in the red dirt led away. His own. The heated air snatched his breath as he faced away from them and kept walking. The lure of his phone drew his hand to his pocket, before he jerked it away. He needed to conserve the all-but-dead battery for when he came back into range. Without it, he would be disconnected from everyone, and he needed a lifeline to the outside world. If he lost that, his desire to disappear for a while would become permanent.
Blotches of light exploded behind his eyes, fired by heat exhaustion and white-hot anger. Eliza and Lincoln had cooked this up with the tour guides. Some kind of macho Survivor thing he wasn’t prepared for and didn’t need. They were forcing him to discover himself, but he should have seen it coming—Eddie had said there were some surprises in store.
Andy’s every nerve sizzled as his mind threw up fresh targets for his self-righteousness to take potshots. Bree for taking his money and lying to him about it. The net widened beyond those responsible for more than his current predicament—the horse that was a sure thing but ran last, almost to spite him. The Rams, who gave up an insurmountable lead and lost to the winless Giants. At home, in overtime. The bookies who ignored his impassioned appeals for a little more time or one final chance.
His pace quickened, the touchpaper of his adrenaline now lit. The rhythmic scratching of his boots marked time for the parade of the guilty, which now stretched to losses that were more than money. The jobs he’d run from due to the unshakeable suspicion that the missing money was down to him. The girlfriends who’d left after they’d discovered he’d borrowed more after not fulfilling his many promises of repayment. The apartment he’d loved in Cincinnati that he’d had to abandon in a midnight run from outstanding rent.
Andy approached a stand of gum trees, sprays of leaves studded with large white flowers. He leaned a cheek against a large gum, his soul singing in gratitude for the respite from the sun and the trunk’s cool smoothness. He tipped his water bottle into a grateful mouth. One last dribble. He swallowed the tepid water and closed his eyes as the searing air sucked the water straight from his lungs.
The white flowers exploded into squawking life, as cockatoos flocked from the tree in a flapping, swooping mess of screeching and blinding white. Andy ducked and dropped to his knees, his head light, spinning and in turmoil. The tour guides had to come back, and the dirt road couldn’t be much farther ahead.
His sweat dripped onto the dry earth like a ticking clock counting out measures of time he didn’t have. As Andy swept the sweat-drenched strands of hair from his eyes he saw it. A tiny plume of dust. They were returning.