“Hello!” I shouted, listening for the echo and hearing only my own voice return—a weak, diminished version. Clint and Zane had gone together down one branch of the canyon, and I’d gone on my own down the other. For a while, we’d shouted at each other, sending crazy echoes bouncing along the stone corridor until they faded as we moved out of earshot.
I was alone.
The dry, mid-afternoon heat baked my skin and a trickle of sweat broke free from where my cowboy hat hugged my head, running down the side of my face. I swiped it away with my shirt sleeve and another sprang up in its place.
My footsteps sounded harsh and loud, grating the desert floor, the only noise discernible between those walls of stone. I moved deeper into the cleft of the canyon, glad of a little shadow as the sun moved
