They All Fall Down

by Roxanne St Claire

  “Death is an illusion, Quinte. At least, mine was, allowing me total freedom. Give me your damn phone. Now!”

  I reach for the phone and swerve to the left. In an instant, Jarvis pulls up Molly’s limp body with one hand, the knife poised at her throat with the other.

  “Don’t make me ruin a perfect record, Quinte! I will do what I have to do.”

  Shaking, I manage to dig the phone from my pocket and hold it up. He drops Molly and grabs the phone before I have any chance of hitting the screen.

  Wordlessly, he uses his free hand to open the window, and my phone goes sailing out.

  We’re nearing the top of the cliff and the road roughens and flattens. Ahead of us is … nothing. A long drop straight down that we’ll never survive.

  “Put the car in neutral,” he demands.

  I do, my mind whirring with possibilities of how to escape this, coming up with none. He has to get out of the car at some point if I’m going to drive it over the cliff, right? That’s why he wants the car in neutral—so I can’t back up and drive down the hill in reverse.

  But I can try.

  “Get in the backseat,” he orders.

  I don’t move, thinking too hard about my options.

  “Move it!”

  His command is loud enough to make Molly stir and shift in her seat. Oh my God, these might be her last moments alive. All because of me.

  I open the car door and he does the same. Okay, now Molly’s not in danger. Well, not from a knife, anyway.

  Jarvis is over six feet tall, and strong. I don’t stand a chance against him and his knife. I have to look up at him, way up, and when I do, I meet the ice-blue eyes of a killer.

  “Okay,” he says. “This can work but we have to think about how the evidence looks when they investigate.” He’s nodding, calmly thinking things through. Why can’t I be that calm? Instead, my whole body is quivering and my brain is flat-lining.

  “Sure, there will be evidence of a murder,” he continues. “The one you committed. And then you’ll jump off the cliff in remorse.” He tapers his eyes to angry slits. “I’ll still prove my point to them.”

  To who?

  “Nihil relinquere et nihil vestigi. That’s how we work.”

  “Who is that?”

  His smile is slow. “Sicarii.”

  Assassins.

  Before my next breath, he grabs my arm and whips me away. I go sliding on the slick surface, tumbling face-first, my hands slapping hard right before the rest of me does. I lift my head just as he’s pushing the car, standing behind it and giving it a solid shove to send Molly to her death.

  I swallow my scream, instinctively knowing that will only make him more determined, and vault to my feet just as the car starts to move and the two front tires pop over the edge of the cliff.

  He sees me, but if he stabs me to death, then his setup of a murder-suicide won’t work. So I run full force toward him. He turns, straightening the blade and aiming it right at my stomach. His face is contorted in frustration and fury at how I’m testing him and messing with his plans.

  I keep plowing forward, straight at that blade, imagining how it’s going to feel, cold and sharp.

  The world’s in slow motion—my feet stomping over the leaves and stone, the cold air whooshing over my face, the deadly expression in his eyes as I reach him. In the distance, muffled, a girl screams. Molly!

  “Damn you!” He flips the knife away and I pounce, surprising him and getting help from the slippery leaves. Off balance, he slides down, his full weight on top of me.

  I hear something hit the ground and know it’s the knife. At least he can’t stab me, I think, as his knee slams into my gut. I let out a grunt of pain, then reach up to grab his hair and pull like hell.

  He’s swearing as his fist slams into my face, and I can hear my jaw crack. I don’t care. Break my face. Break my body. I just have to fight him long enough for Molly to get out.

  Is she awake? Coherent? Come on, Molls!

  He gets his hands on my throat and I feel him squeeze, then relax, anger flashing in his eyes, and I know why. He can’t kill me like this. It will ruin his plan.

  I manage to grab his shoulders and push him off, then try to scramble away. I don’t get far. He lifts both legs and aims right at the VW’s bumper. With another solid shove, I hear the undercarriage scrape against the side of the cliff.

  I flail sideways to get away, but he snags my arm and drags me closer, something jabbing hard into my hip on the way. Not something, the knife. The knife is under me.

  Once more, he slams me onto my back, my head whacking against the stone. I see stars for a second, but manage to get the fingers of my right hand around the knife handle.

  “I don’t care.” He grinds out the words as his hands close on my throat. “I don’t care if it costs me everything.”

  He squeezes my neck, instantly cutting off my air. I have seconds, if that. There’s no pain, just relentless, blinding pressure.

  “You will not ruin this for me! I’ve worked too hard, too long, given up too much. Morere, Quinte! Morere!”

  “No!” I rasp and choke as I lift the knife, twisting my wrist. “I will not die!” I thrust the knife with all my strength, aiming for his neck and nailing it, blood splattering all over me as the blade slides into his flesh.

  He shoves my hand away and kicks backward, the screech of the car sliding farther over the cliff almost drowning out his gurgled cry of disbelief. I push him off and this time it’s easier, my effort rewarded by him rolling away.

  I slam my hands on the ground and push myself up, just in time to see the car teetering at the edge.

  “Molly!”

  The car is tipping forward, sliding and dragging to the edge just as I see the passenger door fly open. I scramble forward as the car teeters and Molly rolls out of the side onto the ground. I manage to reach out and snag her hand, pulling her away just as the VW loses the fight with gravity and goes headlong down to the boulders of the creek below.

  Tears are streaming down her face, her eyes vacant and shocked as she suddenly leans over and retches.

  I whip around frantically, certain Jarvis will be coming after both of us now, and freeze. Nothing.

  He’s gone. Absolutely … disappeared, like a ghost. Who took his knife with him. Of course he did—he’s an assassin.

  And he’s not the only one. Sicarii is plural.

  “I’m dying!” Molly rolls into a ball but I immediately grab her arm.

  “Not on my watch.” I pull her up, not caring that she’s stumbling. “Run!”

  “I need to barf!” She clutches her stomach and gags again but I refuse to wait.

  “Barf and run,” I tell her, wrenching her arm and practically dragging her to the bottom of the hill.

  “Kenzie …” She moans but staggers along as I squint into the darkness. I can’t see two feet in front of me and Molly can barely walk, let alone run.

  “Just be quiet, Molly,” I tell her. “Don’t make noise if you can help it, and force yourself to run.”

  She folds over again, her knees buckling. “Can’t. Sick.” She pukes again and my heart rips in half, but I don’t give in to the urge to comfort her.

  “Come on, Molly.”

  She’s starting to collapse, so I scoop her up by the armpits, making her groan and give me an ineffective swat. “I swear you’ll thank me if we live through this.”

  I wrap an arm around her and drag-walk her about twenty or thirty feet, my shoulders already aching from the effort. As we near the middle of the incline, I remember my phone and steal a glance in the general direction of where Jarvis threw it, praying for a miracle.

  Like, that it would ring at that moment and I’d see it light up.

  “Molly, do you have your phone?”

  She shakes her head and moans. “He took it.”

  I can’t afford to stop and look for mine, so I stumble us both farther down the hill, hauling Molly, who somehow manages to get
one foot in front of the other.

  I follow the path as best I can, finally on soft pine needles and not sliding on leaves over stone. After what seems like an eternity but is probably only thirty seconds, I risk stopping, giving Molly a chance to bend over and throw up again. After a second, she moans, wiping her mouth.

  “Where are we?” she asks.

  “Nacht Woods. It’s Jarvis, Molly. He’s not dead. He’s crazy. He’s some kind of assassin. I stabbed him but he’s not dead.” I seize her arms and squeeze.

  “I’m so sick. I’m so …” She closes her eyes as a wave of nausea passes through her. “I can’t.”

  “You have to.” I pull her along. “We have to get out of here before he kills us both.”

  Her eyes focus enough for me to know I got through to her. “ ’Kay.”

  “You can do this,” I tell her. “One foot in front of the other and stay standing.”

  She gives me a limp, pathetic nod and I swell with sympathy and regret. I shouldn’t have involved her. She almost died … because of me.

  “Come on,” I say again, urging her forward.

  She allows me to help her, her arm over my shoulders pressing on my sore neck, still bruised from being strangled.

  She’s whimpering in my ear as we head down a path I’m relatively certain will get us back to the road.

  I can’t believe I didn’t kill that son of a bitch. How did he get away from me?

  The path narrows and there’s another split-off that I don’t remember because I was so distracted when Jarvis made me drive here. Which way do I go? I hesitate just one second and think I hear—no, I do hear footsteps. Fast and furious and getting louder.

  “Molly,” I whisper frantically. “We have to move.”

  She looks at me, silenced for a moment; then her eyes widen as she hears the footsteps, too. We both run a little but the path is narrowing quickly, the trees coming together like a wall of evergreens.

  How will we get through that? I look around, my eyes slightly adjusted, my ears completely in tune with the footsteps that could be fifty feet behind me … or five.

  And then I see the tree—a tree that’s not a tree. It’s a telephone pole, and it has the two-by-four steps leading up. I stop and lean back to see how far up it is—oh, Lord, far—and squint into the starlight to catch a glimpse of a zip line.

  A zip line that would take me over the trees and far away fast. Surely a man bleeding from a knife wound wouldn’t have the strength to follow us up there and get on that line.

  “We’re climbing,” I say to Molly.

  “What?”

  I don’t explain but drag her to the pole and place her hands on the closest piece of wood. “Up!” I order. I have to go behind her so I can push.

  She looks at me like I’ve lost my mind but I just shove her up the first step. “Go or die!”

  That works. She starts to climb, slowly, but then I get on the ladder rung under her and shove her butt up each rail, refusing to let her slow down.

  She pauses just long enough to turn her head and look down at me; then she sways and slips.

  “Don’t look down, Molly,” I order. “Just look straight ahead. Go.”

  She follows the instructions and climbs, reaching a narrow hole cut into the platform. It’s only big enough for one of us to squeeze through at a time, which she does without even consulting me.

  As soon as she disappears through the hole, I follow, hoisting myself up to find her in a fetal position on the platform, covering her mouth either to stay quiet or keep from throwing up.

  “Oh, God, how long do we have to stay up here?”

  Right then, I realize there isn’t one zip line; there are three. Levi’s words come back to me. When you get up there, you don’t know which line to take, since there are two or three or even more. One takes you farther into the course, the other two dead-end on the ground and you have to start over.

  Damn. I peer at the three lines, each going in a different direction. I’m so turned around I have no idea which would take me where.

  But didn’t Levi say there were instructions? Weren’t they burned into the wood? I look around, squinting in the darkness, the thick cloud cover making it almost impossible to see three straight lines scratched into the wooden platform. I look harder at the marking, noticing there are two more running perpendicular to those three on the top and—

  “Oh, jeez,” I say, not even able to believe I didn’t see that Roman numeral. “That’s a three.” So now what? How do I find the …

  Instructions!

  I stuff my hand into my back pocket and exhale with relief that the sheet of paper Molly made me bring is still there. Could these phrases help me navigate the course?

  I open the paper and try to angle it to catch any light available and read the list in Latin, my gaze going right to number three.

  MEDIUM TENUERE BEATI

  That means … middle … kept … happy. I know this one. I can hear Mr. Irving’s voice: Blessed are those who have kept the middle course. Bingo.

  I choose the line in between the others and reach for a small silver clip, knotting the rope that hangs from it.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Molly whispers from the platform, slowly getting up to her knees as she realizes what I’m doing.

  “Actually, no.”

  “Kenzie, I can’t.”

  “I’ll hold you.”

  “I can’t.”

  We both hear the first footfall on the bottom rung. I peer down the hole and see the shadow of a man starting his climb. “We have to,” I whisper, reaching for her.

  She hesitates only long enough to hear another footfall, then her hand closes over my wrist and she lets me pull her up.

  “Hold on,” I say, opening my arms so she can wrap herself around me.

  For one quick second, we are face to face and eye to eye, best friends who need each other more than any two friends ever had. “I won’t let you fall,” I promise.

  “I just hope it holds us both.”

  The whole platform shakes with the weight of a man climbing closer. “I do, too.” I dry my hands on my jeans, letting go of Molly completely as I reach up and close my hands over the rough rope, anchoring my wrists against the knot. I have no idea how far this line goes or if it will break or whether we’ll live or die.

  “Lift your feet, Molly.”

  She does and I do the same, closing my eyes as a fat drop of rain hits my face and we fly.

  CHAPTER XXXI

  Wind whistles over us. Raindrops pelt our faces as we sail above the treetops, some so close they brush the bottoms of my sneakers. My hands already ache and my whole upper body is throbbing with Molly’s additional weight.

  Every second feels like an hour, every foot a mile, regardless of the fact that we’re going fast. The ride starts to slow and drop, not to the ground but to another platform. We almost crash into it, but I steady us and we tumble across the wood, Molly grunting and crying out in pain.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah. That actually cleared my head.” She manages to get up and we both look around to get our bearings. “Now what?”

  We’re definitely lower, but not, I realize, low enough to jump off the platform. As I sit up, I look around and see no lines and, of course, no railing—just rain.

  There’s no way down … only up. Way up. There’s a platform about twenty-five feet overhead, then another built off that one that is higher and farther out, then a third, even higher, in the opposite direction. It’s like a giant spiral staircase that leads at least fifty or sixty feet in the air.

  They all have multiple zip lines, and each one looks more impossible than the last. Please, God, don’t make me climb to the top.

  I peek over the edge of our platform. “What do you think of jumping?”

  She leans and looks down. “Not a chance one of us wouldn’t break something. Probably both of us, and it could be our legs.”

  She’s right. “Anyway
, we’re so deep into the woods I wouldn’t have a clue how to get out without getting completely lost.”

  “Could we just wait here until morning?”

  I consider that but shake my head. “This guy’s a killer and he built this course. He’s going to know how to find us.” I look up again. “But if we go higher, we might see a road and get a sense of which direction to go.”

  “And then we ride again.”

  I dig up a smile and nod. “Let me consult my instructions.”

  As I read, Molly pushes up to stand, swaying a little but holding on to the post attached to the platform. She leans closer to read over my shoulder.

  I point to the bottom of the page, at number nine. “I think that’s where we are. See how there are three lines of text? Wild guess, but maybe one for every platform.”

  “Maybe. What do they say?”

  The first clue is haud passibus aequis. “ ‘Not with equal steps.’ ” I frown. “What the heck does that mean?”

  She looks at the wooden rails that lead upward. “They’re perfectly equal in size and distance.”

  “Maybe it means not to take the zip line from the platform that has equal steps?” I suggest.

  “I guess we have to get up there to find out. What’s the next line say?”

  Sweat beading on my neck despite the cold, I study the words: alia tendanda via est. “ ‘Another way must be tried.’ ”

  “Great, Yoda wrote the directions.”

  I almost smile, more encouraged that Molly is back than by any humor in the situation. “It’s Latin,” I say. “But maybe it refers to the second platform? Let’s climb and see what we find.”

  Molly turns and immediately puts her hands on the third rung. “I’ll go first.”

  As I fold the instructions to keep them dry, she starts to climb, but suddenly I hear a loud crack and her gasp as she falls backward.

  “Molly!” I leap to her but the platform board under her gives way and she tumbles into space. I dive after her, our hands flailing to find a grip on each other before she falls all the way to the ground.

  I just manage to snag the sleeve of her hoodie and stop the fall. “Don’t move, Molly,” I tell her. If she squirms, the jacket could come right off.