“Okay, stay calm. Go back to where you started.” The beating of the wind in her face was getting to her, and she couldn’t hear her own voice, the canyon was so loud. Following the line back to the wrapper, River stretched her arm out farther as she searched. Small movements on the rope told her Jessie had clipped onto her section. She was running out of time to find the handheld because everyone else would soon be there.

Ben wasn’t as stern as Easton, but she doubted he’d wave and merrily continue on the path with her stuck like a rock in the same place.

“Where are you, where are you?” River muttered, going as far as her tether would let her. Abruptly, her boot nudged something. Not as substantial as a rock but hard enough to feel it, even with limbs numb from the bitter cold. Unfortunately, her boot had knocked the thing out of reach.

There. The camera was right there, but no matter how hard she stretched, River couldn’t reach it. If she pulled too hard, she’d risk destabilizing the anchors for the line, leaving everyone behind her at risk.

But it was so close.

With a noise of frustration, she stretched out one last time, knowing the effort was pointless. Then River took a breath, took a chance, and unclipped her tether from the fixed line.

Freed from her restraint, River took two steps away from the line, memorizing the degrees she would have to turn to get back as she bent down. The camera found her hands, hard plastic filling her gloves. Before moving out of place, River tucked it safely in the pack on her back. Filled with relief, River turned to step back to the line when her foot slipped.

Sometimes a slip was only a slip. Sometimes a slip was the start of a fall.

When River fell, she kept falling.

Crying out in alarm as she slid faster, she reached for her ice ax, pulling it free of her belt. Rolling onto her stomach, she brought the ax down as hard as she could into the ground beneath her. The resultant catch of metal into ice wrenched her arm so badly, she almost let go, her whole body jerking to a sudden stop.

She lay still as a stone, hand clutching the ax, lost somewhere in the icy whiteout that was the Veil. “At least I found the camera,” she told herself, trying not to panic. “This is going to be a great story to add. Especially if Easton doesn’t kill me.”

River shifted her foot, and instantly, the snow beneath her boot gave, crumbling away. Then the snow beneath her calf and knee. She was over a crevasse, one of the carefully avoided pits that Easton had set the lines to circumvent, with half of her dangling and the other half about to fall too.