Leo points out the window. “Look!”
On the opposite side of the road, barreling toward them, is the white van, police car in hot pursuit. The van shoots by and Julia glimpses Daniel at the wheel but no sign of Toni.
Detective Muhtar does a 180-degree turn and follows at speed.
“Seatbelts,” he says.
Up ahead, there’s a long stretch of empty road and the police car takes advantage of this, pulling out alongside the van in an attempt to get Daniel to pull over. But Daniel’s obviously got different ideas and rams the police car instead. The police car swerves wildly but manages to correct itself and makes a second attempt to get Daniel to pull over. But he’s not giving in and rams the police car again, this time much harder, and Julia watches in horror as police car skids off the road, collides with a concrete barrier, and somersaults into the air. Detective Muhtar peels away to the left, barely avoiding being crushed as the police car slams to the ground on its roof.
“Oh my God,” says Julia, glancing out the back window at the carnage. “We should stop and help.”
Detective Muhtar shakes his head. “We cannot risk losing him.”
Daniel veers right and goes off road, heading toward the barren hills and canyons that Julia had observed when she flew in.
“Hold on,” says Detective Muhtar, burning rubber to catch up to the van.
Julia’s stomach lurches and she grabs the door handle to steady herself. Detective Muhtar follows Daniel at speed, fishtailing across the loose shingle. They drive along a ridge then dip into a valley before heading up a rise. Ahead of them, the van looks like it’s struggling and Julia wonders how the heck the aging vehicle is managing to keep going in such harsh terrain.
The roadway, which isn’t really a roadway at all, gets very narrow. Any idea that Detective Muhtar might have had for overtaking the van and heading it off is impossible now. Up and up they go, the strange stone pillars jutting into the sky around them.
Without warning, Detective Muhtar jams on his brakes, stopping inches from the bumper of the van, which has also come to a halt, millimeters shy from the precipice of a cliff.
Julia holds her breath, staring at the red brake lights in front of them.
“Back up,” she says, hoarsely. “Detective, please back up.”
She can hear loose rocks falling onto fixed rocks below. Detective Muhtar puts the car in reverse and carefully backs up, giving Daniel the space to turn around and escape if he wants to.
But the van waits there, its exhaust puffing smoke, brake lights constant.
“What’s he doing?”
Suddenly the van roars to life and reverses at speed, nearly crashing into their car’s hood. Then it screeches forward, tires spinning, and heads right off the cliff.
76
They watch the van fly through the air and then nosedive into the darkness below. There’s a sickening boom as the van hits the rocks and Julia sits in the car paralyzed, unable to comprehend the horror of what’s she’s just witnessed. For some reason, she thinks of Toni’s first day of elementary school, Toni’s first date with John Leigh, Toni’s high school prom when she got drunk and threw up all over herself. Suddenly, Julia snaps out of it, twists open the door handle, tumbles from the car, and races to the edge of the cliff.
“Toni!” screams Julia into the blackness.
She smells gasoline and crushed steel and wants to be sick. Leo calls to her and points to the right. Julia turns and sees the slow blink of an orange indicator light. She looks harder and can just make out the outline of the van, which is little more than a collapsed heap of metal in the bottom of the ravine.
Searching for a way down, she paces the length of the cliff then spies a slope that’s barely a slope but better than nothing. Detective Muhtar and Leo yell for her not to go but she ignores them and scrambles downward, slipping and shimmying on her hip, clutching at vegetation and roots and anything she can grab hold of. The further down she goes, the more suffocating the stench of the crash becomes. She tries not to think about what terrible things she might find when she gets there.
She reaches the van and stands there in shock. It would be a miracle if anyone has survived. The van has come to rest on its side, the windshield smashed and half hanging out. The front end is twisted and crushed, like a tin can torn open, while the back half is relatively intact. It’s there, at the back end, that the orange indicator flashes, back and forth, like a terrible parody of a journey gone wrong.
Julia tastes gasoline. The tank is leaking all over the rocks. She must hurry—there’s no telling when the van might ignite. Julia yanks on the back doors but they refuse to open. She looks around for another way in but there isn’t one, so she tries the back doors again, this time kicking them with as much force as she can. Finally, they give in and she clambers inside.
She finds Daniel draped over the broken driver’s seat, still alive. Dazed, he blinks at her, blood dripping down his face. She turns away and looks for Toni. But there’s so much debris strewn about that she has trouble telling a blanket from a human being.
“Toni, it’s Julia! Where are you!”
Then it occurs to her that maybe Toni has been thrown clear of the wreckage. She races outside but can’t see anything because it’s so dark.
She cups her hands around her mouth and yells, “Toni! Toni!”
Julia waits and listens. Nothing. She yells again but is met with silence.
She
