It was horrible. His face was torn open.
“Are you okay?” I asked in a nice, maternal tone of voice. “Can you breathe?”
This man was certainly no friend of mine. But faced with a dying human, I couldn’t just walk away. I had to do something.
There are so many times I’ve told myself I need to take CPR. So many times Aaron and I decided that to be good parents, we had to be experts in resuscitation. Who knew when we might need to revive Sierra? Or each other? Or our dog? I had read the steps—but here I was, feeling helpless. I knew there was pressing, and counting.…
“Hey, man, wake up!”
In the heat of the moment, I was panicking. I was increasing my anxiety by the minute. I killed this man. I put my hands on his chest. To press.
Step one. Ask, “Hey, are you okay?”
Step two. Check for breathing and pulse. Not breathing. But he had a pulse, though it was weak.
Step three. Chest compressions. I vaguely remembered some trick with the song “Another One Bites the Dust,” which sets the cadence for the chest compressions. Ironic, given the circumstances. Did he even need chest compressions? I killed him. It was my plan to trip him down the mountain.
Step four. Call for help.
If I yelled out for help, out here approximately one billion miles from the nearest anything, no one would come. But if I were to call.…
That’s when the obvious dawned on me. I didn’t have a phone, but he did. He must. More important than his gun, I could take his phone.
Save him first, Miranda.
I would revive him, then find the phone, call 911, and request an ambulance for him and helicopter for my husband. The new plan. I leaned over to start the compressions.
But before I could even touch his chest, he coughed.
He was awake.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Hey, you’re up! You’re okay? Are you? Can you breathe?”
No words came out, just a terrible sound.
“My name is Miranda. You just fell down a mountain.”
He coughed and up came blood. Lots of blood. It was in his lungs. Whatever the problem was, he had ruptured something vital, deep within him. He burbled up a crimson stream that trickled down his chin and cheeks.
“Tellth…” he said to me.
“What?”
“Tell…” he said. He stopped. Then he continued. “Them.”
“Them? Who? Okay, I will. Tell what?”
It took a moment, but he finally answered. “My team…to save me.”
“What team?”
Team? Did he say team?
“Was there someone else in the car with you?” I asked. “Did you ram me off the road?”
I needed to give this man time to respond.
“Why did your team ram me off the road?”
He was dying. Now. Here.
“T-tray…” he said weakly. Was this his dying breath? He looked over at me.
“No,” I said. I would not let him quit. “No way. Stay awake, buddy. Please.”
“Kiss,” he said.
“Don’t give up, man!” How had I gone from a road trip with my family to watching a man I didn’t know die?
“Tray,” he gasped, then started again. “Tray…Kiss…Kilt…” and then a big exhale…
And he was gone.
Chapter 9
He died. Right there in front of me. I watched a human being leave this world. At thirty years of age, I was lucky—this was the first time I’d ever seen someone go.
I stood up, feeling heavy and sick to my stomach. My head was swirling. My face was sweating cold droplets down my brow. Before I knew what was happening, I gave way to my nausea, sending my upper body folding forward with hands braced against my thighs. I did this to him. I sent him up the loose shale. I ended a man’s life. No matter what kind of idiotic warfare he had waged on me, I’m not in the business of ending lives. And I’d just ended one.
“Damn it, Mandy.”
I took a few breaths, got my bearings, and knelt by him again.
I began a prayer. A silent one, not words but more feelings. Putting aside the guilt that threatened to overwhelm me, I prayed for him to be forgiven, to see a better place than whatever chaotic evil had led him to a life of chasing innocent women through the desert with a rifle.
Or was he chasing Aaron?
“Tray. Kiss. Kilt,” I said to myself. What in God’s name could that mean?
I unpressed my palms and stood back up.
I had to be careful. This man mentioned others. The rest of his “team,” so I could assume that there were other fine gentlemen in the car that ran us off the road. If he was now in my canyon, shooting at me, what were these “others” doing?
I drew a little map in the dirt with a stick. The river. The highway. The cliff we tumbled over. The spot where our van was sprawled out like a turtle on its back. The waterfall. The crags. The cave containing my husband and child.
As far as I could tell, this guy, this corpse next to me, got lucky finding me out here on the south end of the canyon. Unless he had tracked me in a more sophisticated way than I was aware of, he wasn’t expecting me to be right here. The safer place to look—where I was betting his team was right now—was the area very close to the highway where we were run off.
So my new goal was to get to the main highway we were headed toward. A big eight-lane behemoth of glory.
Tray. Kiss. Kilt. I picked up Mr. SUV Driver’s rifle. It was scratched but didn’t look broken. I tried to cock it, but the gun didn’t cooperate.
Then I remembered—the phone!
I quickly turned back to him. I’d completely forgotten. I dug for his
