I closed my eyes again and inhaled, drinking in Erin’s scent. My nose was buried in the blonde hair at the back of her neck and I thought about how silky it felt, not how most of me was hanging over the edge. Any second, I told myself, any second now, they’re going to leave and we can climb up.

Then we heard an electronic trilling. I recognized the sound because the team’s satellite phone made the same noise. Becker’s getting a phone call.

He answered in German. Then he yelled something that must have meant go on ahead, I’ll follow, because we heard the rest of the soldiers moving off. But we could hear Becker still pacing around on the cliff edge, a few feet above us. He’s going to take it here!

I felt Erin tense against me. She was trying to breathe shallowly, both to stay quiet and because the deeper she breathed, the more her back pressed against me, forcing me off the ledge. I was trying to do the same, for the same reason, but it was hard not to take big panic breaths when I could feel the open air behind me. My leg wound throbbed and I gritted my teeth.

Becker switched to English. “No,” he was saying, “But we’ll acquire it in the next few days.”

All of my weight was on one narrow strip of rock and it was grinding into my shoulder and ribs, compressing the nerves and sending my muscles to sleep. I could feel myself weakening and starting to tip backwards. It didn’t help that the morphine was making me spacey.

“I assure you we can deliver as planned,” Becker told the caller.

I started to tremble from the effort of holding myself in place. Then my chest began to lift from Erin’s back. I’m going….

“Make sure the money’s ready to transfer,” Becker said. He hung up…and then we heard his footsteps moving away from the cliff edge.

I knew that we should wait a while to make sure he was definitely gone but I couldn’t hold on any longer. I wormed my way along the ledge, reached up…and gripped the edge of the cliff. Just having a handhold sent the relief slamming through me and I wilted, just hanging there for a second. Then I clambered up onto the cliff, wincing whenever I had to use my injured leg. Becker was gone. I reached down, helped Erin up off the ledge and then we both just lay there on the ground, utterly spent.