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"You remember what I asked you at the end? In the cave?" His voice sounded worse than hollo It sounded like a shell, and so lived in it that wasn’t human I stayed very still "Joanne?"

"I remember," I said I didn’t know if he could hear me

"Is it still what you’re h the rocks Next to my eyeline, sand jittered madly, and I felt a sudden cool, damp breeze

I clawed my way up to my feet and looked at the canyon walls Far, far up at the top, I saw a black dot of a head looking down

I kneas going to killto die like this Not like this

I kicked off rabbed forto ask you one last question, he’d said, there in the dark, when allhad died down to whispers, when he’d stopped cutting ertips over my sweaty, bloody face had made me want to craay, but I’d been too weak Too afraid

What are you most afraid of? What’s the one way you don’t want to die?

And because I’d been too nu As soon as I’d let myself say it, I’d tried to take it back, tried to pretend I’d lied, but he knew

Orry knew fear when he heard it

He’d dragged e of the pool, and he’d held

I’d had just enough power left, just enough skill, to keep the oxygen in s refreshed as his hand shoved my face down to the bottom of that shallow pool and held me there with his fist knotted in my hair

He was careful Let o, and he left one, I’d rolled out of the water and huddled in the dark, tre, inch by torturous inch, back out of the caves into the hot sunlight

Four hours later, I’dmotorist had found me

Just another victim

What are youto use it againstlike this

I hauled rip for ers in Nails broke, but I barely felt it My bare toes scrabbled at the rock wall and clung to a tiny outcropping

Three feet up I found the next handhold, and hauled against the shattering strain in ht That was the crazy, insane, stupidly optimistic part of my brain that just never quite failed to see the funny side of dying horribly

I could feel the vibration in the canyon walls The breeze was picking up speed Cli Trying to control it was a sucker bet

I climbed another three feet, painfully achieved

"Give it up," Quinn said from somewhere way up there, hundreds of feet above "You kno this goes A flash flood rips through these canyons, it pulverizes boulders, rips up trees like kindling You won’t even be a little bitty scrap of skin by the time it dumps you out in the river Maybe you won’t even have time to drown Would thattoes slipped, then ain Pulled Felt the burning tear in er

A whip of wind lashed ruully washer, there Sorry Want me to shoot you, put you out of your asped, and lurched another two feet higher I glanced down I was h tosound was getting louder, and the wind stiffer It s clean about the water hurtling down the canyon toward me It had started out as a flood at least half athe canyons Foa with it birds, rabbits, snakes, people, cars, anything in its path

It was co fast

"Sure you don’t wanton your friends, they’re a little busy Jonathan’s helping out with that"

I lunged upward My fingers were bloody, the nails ripped off at the quick, and ht handhold, found one and shifted ers shattered like glass

I screa to unshot The wind turned cold, flapped rip my bloody left hand slipped I scrabbled like a doo to, and hung there, tre to lick me off the wall

I turned my face toward the first da the corner up ahead It was a wall of black of h I saw the bloody, torn hindquarters of a cow being tossed on the leading edge

I feltto stop it this ti truck, I let

That wasn’t actually true, after all It hurt, but what hurt worse was the knowledge that Quinn was going to get away He was going to take Jonathan’s bottle and he was going to get in his SUV and go bouncing across the desert, and if there was revenge to be had, it wouldn’t be had by o down like this I couldn’t I’d survived him before, in the dark, when there was no hope

I felt soht let you kill hter

The current had knocked ray, but the real proble in the water withto rip me limb fro so fast that the walls were a blur sweeping past, and all I could do was try to stay on top of the roiling cold surge Swi was stupid I focused on the water itself, but it was driven by so , couldn’t hold it

Ma’at

It wasn’t about gripping and holding

It was about re the need for the water to move at all

I took a deep, scared breath and ducked under the surface It was almost black, laden with silt and debris, and the silk of the water sedto the water’s heart

Letting it flow throughthe frequency of the water and creating the counter vibration, exactly opposite

Waves began to still instead of a

I opened rab another breath, and saw that the flood was still fast but no longer the roaring monster it had been I could try to swim, at least Stay ahead of the heavier debris, ride the crest of the-

There was a boulder straight ahead, jaht for it

Five seconds left

Two

Oh, God

I felt e of the wave, and waited for the fall, the i out of the water

So me from behind, arms clasped aroundheat that turned water between us to steam

"Rahel?" I asked, and turned to look

Not Rahel