Time passes. Dawn can’t say how long, only that she lies there and listens to the wind and feels Lucas breathing softly, and every now and then he’ll wake up and gasp a lungful of air again, and he’ll cry out from the pain of moving and his breathing afterward will be hot and fast and feverish.

He’s in bad shape; that much is obvious.

And sooner or later, Dawn realizes that she can’t ask him to go any farther.

“Lucas,” she says. She turns on the flashlight. “Lucas, wake up.” She shines the light on him. He doesn’t open his eyes. He’s shivering now, from the cold or from something else entirely.

“Lucas,” Dawn says. She shakes him, gently, and watches his forehead furrow. He stirs a little bit, but doesn’t open his eyes.

“Hmm?” he says, finally.

“Lucas, I think you’re hurt,” Dawn tells him. “Like, really bad.”

Lucas doesn’t answer immediately. He exhales, and it sounds ragged. “Yeah,” he says. His voice is weak. “Warden got me.”

He shifts a little bit, and Dawn sees how every muscle in his face goes tense with the effort and the pain of moving. And she can see the blood staining the front of his red Black Bear jacket and she wonders how he even made it this far, how he didn’t just drop dead hours before.

“I don’t think…I can do this,” Lucas says, and that scares her. It scares her because she knows how bad Lucas wants to play the hero, how he wants to be the one who saves the day.

Solid and dependable.

“I think,” Lucas says, “I think I just need to lie here for a while.

“Dawn,” Lucas says. “Are you as scared as I am?”

Chapter 95

DAWN’S OUT OF THE CREVICE before she knows what she’s doing. She’s fifty feet away before she knows that she’s gone.

She’s left Lucas as comfortable as she can manage. As warm and dry as he’s going to get on this ridge. She’s left him with nearly all of the food—not that there’s much. He’s got enough, Dawn figures, to last a day.

She’s not sure he’ll survive longer than that. Not if she can’t find help.

She’s lucky she doesn’t walk right off that cliff, though. Plummet down into the abyss and die somewhere on the rocks. She’s not thinking right, not at all, hyperventilating and her thoughts going supersonic consumed with the idea of saving Lucas. And Amber. And whoever else is still alive.

She’s at the edge of the cliff before she realizes she made the wrong turn. Stops, just in time, and turns and hurries back toward the crevice and past it, before she can tell herself she’s better off staying put.

Before she can really feel the chill in the air.