Chapter 33 - The Chasm on the Pigeon
Gravity seized us in a violent wrench. The wooden deck snapped into two jagged halves like an old spruce branch. Raymond lost his footing instantly; his polished dress shoes had zero traction on the moss-covered, slanting pine. With a ragged cry, he slid backward toward the open drop, his hands clawing at the air, his fingernails tearing against the splintered decking.
I hung suspended by one arm, my fingers hooked into the steel loop of the bridge’s center tie-rod, my legs dangling into empty space. Down below, the dark green waters of the Pigeon River churned against the jagged rocks of the historic millrace, white foam roaring like thunder.
Through the fog above, a hand caught mine.
It was rough, blistered, and shaking with pure adrenaline. Ellis. He was flat on his stomach on the northern edge of the broken bridge, his arm stretched out over the void, his teeth gritted so hard I could hear the enamel grind.
"I’ve got you," he gasped, his fingers locking around my wrist like an iron clamp. "Abigail, look at me. Don't look down. Look at my eyes."
"Ellis!"
Behind him, two State Troopers dropped to their knees, grabbing his belt and shoulders to anchor him against the sagging timber frame. With a synchronized heave, they pulled upward, hauling my shoulders over the jagged edge of the broken timber deck. My dress was shredded, the white silk soaked with mud and grease, my knees scraped raw against the wet pine.
Behind us, a strangled gasp rose from the mist below.
Raymond had not fallen into the water—not yet. He was clinging with both hands to a rusted secondary drainage pipe that ran parallel to the historic flume, his legs swinging wildly over the rapids. The iron pin had fallen, clattering down into the gorge, but his eyes were still burning with that terrifying, possessive madness.
"Abigail!" he choked out, the river spray blinding him. "The box! The box is falling!"
I looked back. The walnut box Sanford had given me on my wedding morning—the box that my father had slapped me across the face to steal—was wedged precariously against the severed end of the south timber, tilted at a forty-five-degree angle directly over the abyss.
"Leave it, Raymond!" I yelled back, tears burning my cold cheeks. "Take the troopers' line! Grab the rope!"
A trooper tossed a heavy yellow rescue line downward, the weighted carabiner clattering against the rock face inches from Raymond's hand. But Raymond didn't reach for the lifeline. With a desperate, dying spasm of greed, he reached upward toward the bottom corner of the wooden box, his fingertips grazing the polished walnut.
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"It belongs to the Vances!" he snarled.
Then the rusted iron bracket anchoring the drainage pipe sheared clean off the granite bedrock. With a dull metallic snap, Raymond Vance vanished into the foaming mist of the canyon below.
