by Steven James
“Now, take Nicole’s phone. You’re going to type in your confession and suicide note.”
“What?”
“You lured Emily out to the lake, where you drowned her. Guilt-stricken, you fainted at her funeral. Nicole found out about it and you had to kill her too. You brought her here to do it. And then, overcome with remorse, you felt compelled to take your own life.”
“No. No one will believe it.”
But Daniel had the sense that they just might, considering his dad already suspected him: he’d told him about the blurs—then there was digging up Akira’s corpse, the interest he’d shown in Emily’s death, the lens in his locker, his prints being the only ones on the glasses.
If Ackerman had deleted the last couple texts from Nicole’s phone, with Daniel’s destroyed—unless the phone company kept records of them—there wouldn’t be any proof that anyone had texted Daniel to get him to come out here to Wolf Cave, or any proof that Daniel hadn’t picked up Nicole after he left Kyle . . . .
“What about your car?” Daniel said. “You being out here?”
“I came here to stop you, but, tragically, I was too late to save either of you.”
No, it’ll never—
“I trust you, Daniel,” Nicole called.
“I’ll—” Daniel started
“Take the phone, Daniel,” Ackerman told him. “I’ll tell you what to type.”
He’s going to kill her anyway!
You need a bargaining chip. Something to—
“I trust you!” she shouted again.
Her eyes were on the wall beside him, where the phone lay beside those rocks.
Does she mean the phone or—
He glanced up at her and saw her slyly tuck her leg between two boulders to lock herself in place.
No. She didn’t mean the phone.
She means the rock.
“Pick up the phone, Daniel,” Ackerman ordered.
“Okay.” He held up his hands palms forward to try to reassure him. “I’ll do it, just don’t hurt her.”
Only Ackerman’s shoulders and head were visible as he held Nicole in front of him.
He’s nine yards away. You could hit her.
No, you can do it. You’re that accurate with a football at twice this distance, you can hit him with a rock from here.
When he looked back at Nicole, she made an okay sign with her fingers.
Do it.
Reaching toward the phone, Daniel chose the softball-sized rock instead and spun toward Ackerman. Instantly, subconsciously, he calculated velocity, trajectory, muscle flexion, the weight of the rock, the distance—all in a private, hidden corner of his mind, just like he did on the field, just like he did when he solved problems in math.
He fired the rock at Ackerman’s head.
Instinctively, the man ducked, and when he did, he loosened his grip on Nicole, who pulled away and leapt deftly to the side.
The rock smashed against the cave wall and bounced off, clunked across the platform, and dropped into Devil’s Throat.
If the other rocks had been small enough, Daniel might have tried again, but they were all too big to throw.
He didn’t have a choice. He needed to get Nicole safely off that platform as fast as possible, and there was only one way to do that.
Knock Ackerman off it first—
—the rock hit the bottom—
Devil’s Throat loomed before him, a jagged twelve-foot-wide gash on the floor of the world.
The rope dangled on the other side. If he actually made it across, it would be possible to grab it, but the momentum from the jump would mean he would slam hard against the wall.
Traversing over there will take too long. Ackerman will throw her off before you can get to them!
But if you do this, you cannot miss that rope.
No choice.
Go!
He backed up to get a running start, sprinted toward the fissure that plummeted twelve stories into the earth, aimed for the rope hanging on the other side, and launched himself into space.
CHAPTER
SIXTY-FOUR
Time seemed to slow to a crawl as he flew over Devil’s Throat, just like it had at the game when Emily appeared to him on the field. He saw Nicole scrambling as far as she could away from Ackerman, the murderous look on the man’s face, the rope coming closer, and then—
Hands open, he grabbed for it. He missed with his left hand, but managed to snag it with his right. He rotated his body to take the force of impact against his side, but his knee was what hit the rock wall first.
For a brief moment adrenaline smothered the pain, then it rolled up his leg.
Even though he was clenching the rope as tightly as he could, the force of impact jarred him harshly, and his hand slid down to the next knot, ripping skin off his palm as it did.
Fire blazed through his hand, down his arm, but he didn’t let go. Instead, he gripped the rope with both hands and, ignoring the pain of his shredded palm, climbed to the ledge, pressed his toes against a small foothold, and clambered over the edge onto the platform.
He rose to his feet and faced Ackerman.
The man’s demeanor had changed and he had transformed into something dark and demonic, as if all the evil inside of him had risen to the surface, overwhelming any good that used to be there. He hardly looked like the same person. Narrowed eyes. Tight fists. Bared teeth. Fierce. Primal.
You’re the bigger threat.
He’ll kill you, then he’ll throw her off too.
No.
He won’t.
Daniel tried to keep his injured leg from giving way under his weight, tried to disguise how much it hurt. “Don’t worry, Nicole. It’s okay.”
Ackerman said coolly, “They won’t be able to sort out the bones of the two of you on the bottom.”
He lunged toward Daniel, who managed to spin to the side, just as he would’ve if he were evading a tackle on the football field, but his leg buckled and he collapsed. Before he could stand again, Ackerman kicked him fiercely in the ribs.
Pain chugged through him, but Daniel kept from crying out.
You might have a broken rib.
Yeah, well, deal with that later.
Ackerman kicked at him again, but Daniel was able to roll to the side, get hold of a boulder, and work his way to his feet.
The photographer swung a roundhouse punch and Daniel threw an arm up to block it. The force of the blow sent him reeling against the rock face. He tried to land a punch of his own, but Ackerman ducked out of the way faster than Daniel guessed he would and he almost lost his balance, almost went down again.
Behind Ackerman, Nicole went for the rope. She yanked it up, tugged it toward another boulder, and pulled it tight between them, forming a line about knee height behind Ackerman.
“Do it!” she yelled.
Ackerman came at Daniel, punched him violently in the face, driving him back against the side of the cave again.
“Now!” Nicole called.
“Say good-bye, Daniel,” Ackerman hissed.
Daniel leaned against the wall for leverage, swung his left leg up, and kicked Ackerman hard in the chest, driving him toward the rope.
“Good-bye.”
The photographer stumbled backward, hit the back of his legs against the rope that Nicole was holding taut, and toppled toward the shaft.
He seemed to hover for a moment at the edge of the sheer drop-off as he flailed his arms to try to regain his balance, then he tipped back and disappeared. The beam of light from his headlamp swirled crazily up through the shaft as he fell. A long, thin scream trailed behind him as he hurtled toward the bottom.
And then the scream stopped as a thick crunch echoed up through the fissure, the light blinked out, and Devil’s Throat devoured t
he man who had killed three people.
But Daniel’s attention wasn’t on the scream.
Or the thud.
It was on Nicole, who’d slipped to the side from the force of Ackerman’s legs smacking against the rope she’d been holding.
“Daniel!” she cried as her legs dipped over the edge and the rest of her began to follow.
No!
He dove toward her, trying to keep his momentum from taking him over the ledge.
Just as her arm was disappearing, he snagged her wrist with his right hand. Her weight dragged him forward until he was lying on his stomach, bent over the lip of the outcropping, holding her with only that one hand.
“I’ve got you! It’s okay!”
Get her up fast. You can’t hold on like this, you need to—
Someone called out from the other end of the room. At first Daniel couldn’t tell who it was, but when he momentarily tilted his headlamp up, he saw that it was his dad, flashlight in hand, emerging from the crawl hole.
He shouted for them to hold on and started to rush toward them, but Daniel didn’t think he had time to wait for his dad to get across the traverse before helping Nicole up to the ledge.
He grabbed her other wrist with his free hand, then worked to hoist her toward the ridge of the outcropping so she could hold on while he repositioned himself to help her up.
“You can do this,” he told her.
“Don’t let me fall,” she gasped.
“I won’t.”
He lifted her right arm, bringing her hand to the edge. She clung to it while he got a better grip on her and then leaned back, heaving her the rest of the way up.
She swung her legs over the edge, rolled onto the outcropping, and collapsed into his arms.
For a long moment neither of them spoke. They were both breathing heavily, riding on the rush of adrenaline and the lingering fear coursing through them.
“That was a good idea,” he said at last, “with the rope.”
“That was a good throw,” she replied, “with the rock.”
“I might have hit you.”
“Yeah, that would have really ruined my day.”
It took a little bit for them to catch their breath, then he pulled back from her slightly. “Listen, I need to explain something about Stacy.” Whether or not this was a good time, he didn’t know, but he felt like he needed to do this.
“No, it’s . . .” Nicole sounded suddenly distant. “It’s okay, I . . .”
“Listen, there was never anything there between us.”
“What do you mean?”
“Everything I thought I felt toward her was . . . well, I can honestly say it was an illusion.”
She looked at him curiously. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. She’s not someone I plan on ever seeing again. When I look at you it’s as if she never even existed.”
A faint smile. “Really?”
“Really.”
And then, as Daniel’s dad once again told them to stay where they were and made his way around the traverse that led along the rim of Devil’s Throat, Daniel held Nicole tight.
He felt her heart beating against him.
Not like a ghost.
Not like a blur.
Just like a girl he should have drawn close to him a long time ago.
CHAPTER
SIXTY-FIVE
THE NEXT DAY
Daniel thought they might cancel school, but they didn’t.
“So, Mr. Byers,” Miss Flynn said as class officially began, “I know you don’t really like speaking in front of the class, but we all want to hear what happened in that cave—well, at least those of us who haven’t already been told—or texted—all the details yet.”
Last night after leaving Wolf Cave, he and Nicole had filled Kyle and Mia in about everything.
“Kyle’s a lot better storyteller than I am,” Daniel said. “Maybe he could . . . ?”
“I got it, Teach,” Kyle told Miss Flynn. “No problem.”
He stepped to the front of the room and spun the tale, leaving out the investigative details Daniel’s dad had informed them the previous night needed to remain confidential. He also bypassed mentioning their suspicions that the killer was Mr. McKinney.
Or Daniel.
Or himself.
Or the girl who didn’t exist.
Also, Daniel and his friends had agreed to keep the blurs to themselves, so Kyle skipped over those too.
Actually, that really cut down on what he could say, but somehow he managed to encapsulate the rest of the facts in a way that contained the essential truth of what had happened, even if he wasn’t exactly, entirely, one hundred percent forthcoming.
When he was done, the class peppered him, Daniel, and Nicole with questions. Some they offered answers to, some they couldn’t, some they chose not to.
Brad Talbot said to Kyle, “So your Mustang got smashed up? That sucks. That thing is sweet.”
“It’s not nearly as bad as Ty’s SUV.”
“And you fought him?”
“Well, mostly Daniel took care of that, but one of his friends smiled at Mia in a way I didn’t like and I was really tempted to smack it off his face.”
“So, what happened?”
“I gave in to temptation.”
“Sweet.”
Ty and his three buddies had taken off before Daniel’s dad arrived on River Drive and hadn’t shown up for school today. However, Daniel had disarmed Ty in front of his friends, undoubtedly embarrassing him, and he had a feeling that it was not the last time he’d be hearing from Ty Bell.
When the class was done asking questions, Miss Flynn said, “There’s one last poem I would like to share with you before the bell rings.”
She read:
And here is the truth from which all others grow; here is the spring from which all others flow: soon I will be dead.
Soon, as measured by stardust and time.
Soon as measured by comets and dreams.
Soon. Soon.
Soon, I will be dead.
And here is the question that determines everything—what will I do until then?
The meaning of that poem wasn’t too hard at all to unpack.
Soon I will be dead.
What will I do until then?
And the answer was evident too, and resonated through Daniel’s mind: Live each moment, each precious moment that you have. Live each one as if it were your last. And your first.
Miss Flynn gave them a short writing assignment for Monday, class ended, and as the students were gathering up their things, she asked to speak with Daniel for a moment.
She waited until the room cleared out. “I wanted to take a second to talk to you about your blog entries from last week.”
Oh, that’s right—she hadn’t said anything earlier about either of them. Daniel didn’t even know if she’d given him a completion grade.
“Okay,” he said somewhat uneasily.
“You wrote about vultures picking away at your dreams. First there was that, and now everything this week with Mr. Ackerman, and what happened in the cave. I wondered . . . well, how you’re doing.”
“I’m okay.”
“You sure?”
No, but as long as the blurs stop, I might be.
“We’ll see.”
She hesitated, evidently at a loss for how to respond to that. “Okay.”
After handing back his assignment with the completion grade on top, she said, “Daniel, remember to cling to the one thing that the vultures can never devour unless you let them.”
“What’s that?”
“This moment.”
He found Kyle waiting for him in the hall.
They hadn’t had a chance to connect that mo
rning before class, and now Kyle asked him, “So what did Coach say about tonight’s game?”
Daniel held up his bandaged, rope-burned right hand. In addition, even though he’d wrapped his banged-up knee in an ACE bandage, he couldn’t keep from limping. At least the previous night’s X-rays showed he hadn’t ended up with any cracked ribs, and the cut from Ty’s knife wasn’t severe. “It’s just a flesh wound,” Kyle had told him last night in his best Monty Python accent.
Now Daniel said, “Coach said it’s a no-go. I guess I agree. I’m not sure how well I’d be able to throw.”
“Next week?”
“I’ll be back then for sure, if I have anything to say about it.”
They started down the hallway. “And your mom?”
“She’s coming up tomorrow. After she heard about everything that’s happened she told me she was coming no matter what I thought.”
“What did you say to that?”
“I told her it’d be good to see her.” He paused. “We’ll see how that goes.”
“And this is her first time visiting? I mean, since she left?”
“Yes.”
They walked a little way, then Kyle said softly, “Your dad knows all about the blurs now.”
“Yeah, and he’s worried, I can tell. But when I explained everything about how they were helping me figure things out, he told me he needed to think about that. I’m not sure where that’s gonna lead. At least he doesn’t suspect me of anything anymore. By the way, sorry about yesterday, when I thought you might’ve been a serial killer.”
“It’s all good. You suspected yourself too. And Stacy, who never even existed—which I have to say is a little bit psycho. Anyway, at least I’m in good company. I think.”
“How’s Mia today?”
“As she would say, ‘Smokin’.’ ”
“What was up with that butterfly knife she pulled out?”
“She’s a girl who’s full of surprises.”
“Your kind of girl.”
“My kind of girl.”
Daniel got a text from Nicole, and when Kyle left for class, he decided to chance another tardy slip and meet up with her near the snack machines Emily had written about on the sheet of paper that’d fallen out of her notebook when he picked it up at her house.
