Creeping forward a little, I could see around an abutment where the two young lovers were clutching each other on a much larger ledge that slanted back into the rock, illuminated by another Coleman lantern. “What the heck are you doing over there?”

He stood and nodded toward the water twenty feet between us, sipping something from a Styrofoam cup and holding the fourth cell phone. “We waded over a little way back when the water was shallower.”

I nodded. “Well, we’ll get in and bring you two back over to this side.”

He pocketed the phone. “You can’t.”

“Why?”

In answer, he tossed the white foam cup into the water between us, and we watched as it circled briefly and then submerged with a shudder and disappeared. “It’s a sinkhole—it’s where all the water goes, and I don’t think it’s a good place.”

The Bear stepped up to the edge and then kneeled, dipping his arm in as far as it would reach. There was a sudden tug, and I grabbed his shoulder with my good hand to keep him from pitching in. He looked up at me. “The current is strong just beneath the surface, which leads me to believe that the hole is not small.”

“Large enough to be sucked down into?”

He breathed a laugh. “Possibly, possibly not.”

I looked at the distance between them and us. “Well, hell.” Once again, I found myself willing to negotiate a timeshare on a portion of my soul, this time for a twenty-eight-foot, forty-eight-thread, right-twist lariat. Looking for anything that would be helpful, I played the beam of the light around, suddenly reflecting on the wires of the old electric lights that draped across the ceiling, the empty sockets looking like exclamation points.

I turned to Henry. “If I boost you up, can you grab that electric cable and yank it down?” I held the light on my face with the barrel of the Benelli shotgun alongside it and looked at him. “If you’ve got a better idea, I’d love to hear it.”

Setting the shotgun to the side and making a stirrup with my laced fingers, I watched as he steadied himself by grabbing a rock nub and reached out and up to take hold of the end of the seventy-year-old conduit. He yanked, and the clips driven into the rock pulled away, the length of wire holding together.

The Bear held the cable in his hands and started looping it. “I find it hard to believe that this wire is still whole.”

“Solid, braided copper cable—unless there was a break in the rubber housing it couldn’t corrode and degenerate.”

“Like what the helicopter blades hit?”

I nodded.

“We go over there, or they come over here?”

I looked at him. “I said it probably hadn’t degenerated too much—I didn’t say that it was indestructible.” I glanced at the young couple. “They weigh a hell of a lot less than the two of us.”

I stooped by the water and looked over at them. “Taylor, you two are going to have to come to us.”

“And how are we going to do that?”

“I’ll throw you this wire. Tie it off on one of the rock outcroppings on your side and make sure it’s solid. Hold on to the cable and don’t let go, no matter what happens.”

“Okay.”

“Have Jennifer go first.” He nodded, I tossed, and we watched as he fastened the cable and assisted her in getting ahold of it as I pulled it tight and looped it over a cornice to my right. “You’re going to have to work your way across the wire, and we’ll grab you when you get close enough, but most of the time you’re going to be on your own. You might dip into the water, but whatever you do, don’t let go of the cable—got it?”

She nodded and then looked at me. “What about my camera?”

“What?”

“My video camera—I don’t want to drop it in the water.”

“You’ve got it with you?” I thought about throwing her in the water but then had a thought. “Just out of curiosity, does that thing still have evidence on it?”

“Yes.”

“Toss it to me.”

“You’ll drop it in the water.”

“Why would I do that?”

“So that the federal government can have Jen.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“You’re all working together against us.”

I cocked my head. “Who is us?”

“The Lone Elk family.”

“And when did you become a member of said family?”

She held out a hand with, what I assumed, was a wedding ring on it. “Taylor and I were married yesterday.”

I sighed and thought about how even more complicated things had just gotten. “Throw me the damn camera.”

She looked at the rushing water for a moment. “I can’t—I’m not that good at throwing things.”

“Have Taylor throw it.”

She looked dubious but then handed it over to him in a moment of trust. I watched as Henry moved to the edge and prepared to catch it, catching items being in his background. Taylor tossed it, and the Bear swiped it in midair. He gave it to me, and I carefully put it in the breast pocket of my jacket with the thought that being the highest spot, it would be the safest.

I motioned for Jennifer to get with it. “C’mon, the water’s doing nothing but getting deeper and swifter.”

She was in pretty good shape and relatively athletic, so she didn’t have too much trouble shimmying along the cable with only her back and rear end getting dipped. “This water is cold!”

“Just keep moving.” The Cheyenne Nation reached out a hand and grabbed her by the scruff of the neck, the collar of her jacket safely in his iron grip. Like a crane, the Bear easily lifted her onto the ledge beside me.

We all turned to look at Taylor, who stood there without moving, and I could tell something was wrong. “C’mon, it’s your turn.” He didn’t move but just kept looking at the swirling water that led to nowhere, and I was getting a bad feeling. “Let’s go, Taylor.” He nodded briefly, as if he were making his mind up about something, something that was embedding a terrible resolution in him. “Taylor?”

His face rose, and I was sure he’d made up his mind. “I killed my grandfather.”

Jen stepped forward. “No!”

I held her with one arm as Henry, looking at the young man, stood in front of us. “What are you talking about, Taylor?”

He swallowed. “I gave him his whiskey just that once.” He looked at us for a moment, but then his eyes went back to the water. “I thought it would help, you know, make him feel better . . .”

He didn’t say anything else but just kept looking into the swirling darkness and then turned his eyes to Jennifer. “I really love you, you know?”

She pulled against my arm, but I held her fast. “Taylor?”

I watched as he leaned forward a little, almost as if ready to jump. “The whiskey was laced with mercury. Your grandfather died of mercury poisoning. It had nothing to do with the liquor itself, honest.”

“You’re just trying to keep me from doing what I need to do.”

I gestured toward the Bear. “Henry was there when Isaac Bloomfield told us, right?”

The Cheyenne Nation stood at the edge, and I knew what he was contemplating, but it was too far. “Yes.”

“The whiskey wasn’t the cause of his death, Taylor—we wouldn’t lie to you.”

“Tell my mother I’m sorry.” With that, he stepped into the void and dropped into the fast-running water.

Henry leapt in after him like a war lance and disappeared after the young man faster than a great white shark could’ve ever hoped to.

I pulled the loop from the cornice and let it drop into the water after them and then relooped the thing in hopes that the Bear would be able to grab the young man and the cable. Jennifer was screaming, and I was about to make the dive myself.

I pushed her back and moved forward, thinking that my next breath was probably my last when suddenly Taylor was thrust from the surface in a military press and handed to me.

I grabbed the wayward youth and extended my hand to the giant that rose up from the depths, the water at his waist. He stood there with his wet hair draping his head like a cloak. “It is only deep on that end, and as near as I can tell the drain hole is about the size of a small trash-can lid.”