Chapter 1 - THE PHONE ABOVE THE DROP
Emily Hart knew she was going to fall before her body dropped.
She heard the rope give first.
Not fray.
Not snap under strain.
Cut.
One sharp, ugly slice behind her left shoulder while she was still easing backward over the red-rock rim.
Then the line jerked loose, her harness bit into her hips, and she slammed hard against the canyon wall below the ledge.
“Mom!”
Her fingers locked around the broken rope on instinct. Pebbles skittered past her boots into the ravine below. The western Colorado afternoon was blindingly bright, the kind of clean August light that made the sky look too wide for anything terrible to happen beneath it.
Above her, Dana Whitaker stepped to the edge with her phone raised in front-camera mode.
Her face looked frightened.
Too frightened.
Performed frightened.
“Keep hanging there, Emily,” she hissed, voice low enough that Alan, scrambling toward the rim, might not catch every word. “This accident has to look real.”
Emily stared up at her mother, unable to understand the sentence fast enough.
Noah, eight years old and already crying, grabbed at Dana’s vest.
“Mom, help her!”
Alan dropped to one knee at the edge. His tan work gloves scraped over stone as he reached with the remaining line.
“Emily, hold on. Hold on.”
Dana didn’t kneel.
She kept filming.
Emily’s boots scraped uselessly against the cliff face. Her right foot slipped, sending pain through her ankle. She slid lower.
“Dana, drop the phone and help me—she’s slipping!” Alan shouted.
Dana moved sideways instead.
She blocked his reach with her free arm, shoving his shoulder as he lunged toward Emily’s harness.
Emily swung and struck the rock again, hard enough to knock breath from her chest.
“Mom!” Noah screamed, this time in terror, not confusion.
Alan shoved back. Dana stumbled. Her phone flew from her hand and hit the rock shelf near the ledge without falling over the side.
Alan reached past her and caught the back strap of Emily’s harness with one gloved hand.
Emily gasped so hard it hurt.
She looked up at him through tears and dirt.
“You cut my rope,” she cried. “Noah saw you do it!”
Alan froze.
For one terrible second, so did everything else.
Then his eyes dropped to the phone lying faceup on the rock.
The camera was still rolling.
On the screen, in the tiny front-facing preview, a silver flash appeared beside Dana’s body.
A knife.
Alan’s face changed.
“Dana,” he said, voice gone flat with horror. “Your selfie video recorded the knife.”
Dana lunged.
Not for Emily.
May you like
For the phone.
And for the same gloved wrist holding Emily above the drop.
