They Left Her to Bleed, So She Healed the Untouchable novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Rope

Susanna goes to the stump where Tiffany hid the cut rope; Colson is there first. Their parents are flying in.

At dawn I limped out of base camp on an aluminum crutch, with Ben Rask walking backward in front of me.

He wore a knit cap pulled to his eyebrows and a camera rig that looked heavier than I was.

"For the record," he said, "I got this job because I'm cheap and I'm behind on rent."

"For the record, I'm the girl everybody hates," I said.

"Four million people changed their minds overnight, so you're only about half hated now."

"Is that good?"

"It's the best number of your career," Ben said. "Where are we going?"

"The creek. There's a hollow stump past the food cache."

"What's in it?"

"The reason I'm not a liar."

He grinned and kept filming.

The cache was a plank platform between two spruces, where our team's supplies had hung until last night.

The rope that held them up had been cut clean through, and everything we owned had dropped into the snow.

The viewers had been told I did it.

I knew who had.

Yesterday afternoon, while I filled water bottles at the creek, I watched Tiffany crouch at the old stump and push something deep inside it.

I had watched her do it in the first life too.

That time I had been dead before anyone thought to look.

The stump stood in a thicket of alder, half rotted, with a split down one side wide enough for an arm.

I leaned the crutch on a branch and reached in up to my shoulder.

Dead leaves. A beetle. Cold wet bark.

Nothing else.

I reached again, and my hand came out empty.

"Ben," I said.

"I'm filming, I see it," he said quietly.

"It was here. She hid the rope in here yesterday."

"Maybe she moved it."

"Maybe she's smarter than I thought."

That was all the proof I'd had, and now it was gone.

Ben crouched and swung the camera low over the snow.

"Hey," he said. "Look at this."

Around the stump the snow was trampled flat in a small circle.

The tracks were fresh. They ran in from the trail and back out again, and they were narrow, a woman's size seven at most.

"She came back after the vote," Ben said. "Probably before dawn."

"Can you prove that?"

He tapped the rig. "The time stamp is burned into every frame. Fresh tracks, a hollow in the snow where something got dragged out, and this morning's time. It isn't a rope, but it's something."

"It shows she knew it was here."

"It shows somebody did."

A twig snapped behind us.

I turned, too fast, and my thigh pulled so hard that the crutch slid out from under me.

I would have gone down into the snow, but a hand caught my elbow and yanked me upright.

Colson stood there in his blue jacket, breathing through his nose.

"You shouldn't be walking," he said.

His grip hurt. He had never grabbed me like that when the cameras were far away.

"Let go."

"Switch that off," he said to Ben, without looking at him.

"Can't," Ben said. "Mr. Halverson's orders. It stays live."

Colson's eyes flicked to the red light.

His fingers loosened, one at a time. He stepped back and put the smile on his face, the same smile as the poster.

"I came to check on my little sister," he said, loudly, for the lens. "She shouldn't be out here alone."

"She isn't alone," Ben said. "She has me, and I come with a camera."

I picked up the crutch.

"Did you move the rope?" I asked.

"What rope?" Colson said, and for a second he looked honestly puzzled, and then he looked at the stump.

His face changed.

He understood something I didn't.

"You went looking in there," he said, very softly. "Why?"

"Because I saw Tiffany hide it."

"Tiffany didn't hide anything." His mouth tightened. "Sue, you don't know what you're doing. You think the owner is on your side? Nobody on this show is on your side."

"Is that a threat?"

"It's a warning." He glanced once at the lens. "You keep this up and you'll lose more than a team."

He started down the trail, and then he turned.

"Mom and Dad are flying in this morning," he said. "They watched the vote."

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