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He took slow, careful steps, the stones on the bed shifting under his weight and tu slowly downriver Between each step, he braced hi into the force of the water Midway across, it rose to his chest The current swept hi Ethan downstream In the near darkness, he had no idea what boulders jutted out of the channel, just knew that slaled across the current using a hard, deliberate sidestroke His ared boots he couldn’t kick with any efficiency or power Their weight pulled him under more than they propelled him After a frenzied minute, his muscles on the brink of raze the botto, he leaned into the current, the water level dropping back to his waist A dozen ed the rest of the way out of the river, collapsing on the bank Rolled onto his side, breathless, spent, shivering He stared back across the channel Everywhere, new beaht it was possible they were calling his na noise of the ater destroyed any chance of hearing them distinctly Ethan wanted to move, knew he had to, but he couldn’t make himself scramble back onto his feet Just needed another hts on the opposite shore now than he could count, the highest concentration thirty yards upriver at his point of entry, butnorth and south of where he’d gone in, light bea out over the current in a dozen places He rolled over onto his knees Hands shaking with cold like he’d been afflicted with palsy He began to crawl, fingers groping through wet sand Just thatmotionless had stiffened his joints When he caot a handhold, and pulled himself onto his feet His boots sloshed ater There must have been a hundred people across the river, and stillon the bank every second Most beams reached only the midpoint, but a handful carried the potency to shoot all the way across to Ethan’s side, their co through the to put hts, but after ten feet, he reached a sheer wall of rock He side it as the voices of several hundred people overpowered the crush of ater A light struck the cliff ten feet ahead Ethan ducked behind a boulder and peeked around the side as the beaht poured down from the shore into the current Fro knee-deep in the river, searching, but no one was atte to swim across He’d started to step out froaphone, blared across the river "Ethan, coiven" He’d have known it anywhere--the deep, guttural boo off the cliffs, back into the pine forest behind the crowd "You don’t knohat you’re doing" Actually, I know exactly what I’eneral vicinity, Ethan struggled back onto his feet, stu south beside the cliff "If you coht over "You have my word on that" Ethan wished he had a bullhorn of his own Other voices were shouting his name across the river "Ethan, please!" "You don’t understand what you’re doing!" "Come back!" Pope continued to call out to him as well, but Ethan pushed on into pitch-black rain The farther he moved away from the crowd, thenow in slow, shuffling steps, his only directional anchor the noise of the river on his left Behind--fading voices, shrinking points of light His body had cranked out the last available adrenaline, and he could feel a world-class crash co on Total systee to curl up in the sand beside the river and sleep was alht decide to cross They had lights and weapons and nureat a risk And so, hat little gas he had re in his reserve tank, he went on CHAPTER 12 Ethan had no way of knowing how long he’d been walking alone in darkness An hour Maybe two Maybe less His pace was such that he couldn’t have coveredelse, he felt certain of this Every fewfor onco over rocks But each time he looked back, it was always the sa him, the roar of the river effectively masked all other soundsThe rain slowed to a drizzle and then an interether Ethan still trudged along, traveling solely by feel, his hands grasping invisible boulders, his feet taking the smallest possible steps so that when they inevitably collided with an iroundAnd then he could see One ht shining down through a break in the clouds, the surfaces of every wet rock glea like they had been lacquered Ethan sat down on a flat-topped boulder, his legs tre, at the end of endurance The width of the river had narrowed by alh a rock garden in a furious spray of ater Great pines--seventy or eighty feet tall--towered over the riverbank on the other side He suddenly realized how thirsty he was Falling to his knees, he crawled to the edge of the river and dipped his face into a small pool The water tasted deliciously pure and sweet, but bitterly cold