Page 44 of Stolen for Keeps
I practiced what I’d say the whole way over.
I’m sorry for being late.
You looked great.
I was an idiot.
Each version sounded worse than the last. Too stiff. Too rehearsed. Eventually, I gave up, figuring I’d say it plainly. Say it like a man who meant it.
But as I neared the bluff, the nerves twisting through me took a different shape. I slowed the truck, my eyes on the treeline, my jaw tight.
Nothing.
She might not’ve known the backroads around Buffaloberry well. There were two ways to the river from town. Most locals knew to veer right at the fork. But the left? That led to a narrower trail. Steeper. Unstable.
Dad used to warn us about it every summer, about dry heat turning the cliff face to powder. All it took was wind, a deer in the wrong place, or the rumble of a far-off tremor, and the whole edge could slip.
Tessa warned us too. Somehow, her big-sister voice stuck more.
I shifted in my seat, tension pooling behind my ribs. I took the turn toward the riskier trail.
I saw it almost immediately—her car. Parked just off the dirt road, tucked near the brush like she hadn’t wanted to be seen. My gut dropped. I cut the engine and jumped out.
Tracks. Another set of tires had been here too. Faint, but in a hurry.
I broke into a run.
The forest swallowed me whole. The trail narrowed, rising then cutting sharply down toward the bluffs. My boots thundered across the packed dirt, my breath coming fast, but Ididn’t slow down. Not even when branches tore at my shirt. Not even when the path dipped into a ravine.
“Maya!”
The clearing revealed more than I was ready for. A crushed buffaloberry crumble and the remains of a drink seeping into the soil. Something had happened here.
Two sets of footprints broke up the dirt—one small, one large. Not boots, but still a man’s stride. If Maya had been here, she hadn’t been alone.
And then?—
“Help!”
Her voice tore through the trees.
“Maya!” I scanned the edge, and my heart nearly stopped.
She was clinging to the cliff, her fingers sunk into loose earth.
“I’m here!” I shouted. “Don’t move!”
“Noah…”
“Hold on!”
I rushed toward the edge of the bluff, my lungs burning. The last thirty feet of trail gave way to a steep slope. Half the ledge had given out, the dirt sheared into a ragged mouth opening toward a fall that would shatter bones.
“Maya, I’m coming!”
She clung to a root wedged into the slope, her feet scrambling against loose dirt, her hair wild in the wind.
“Noah! I can’t…”
