As she ran, she heard a wet, roaring noise far below her. She realized what it was, but not before the ground beneath her became air. Her momentum carried her off the edge of a steep slope, where she tumbled shoulder over shoulder through mud and trees. The contents of her pockets spilled across the slope; her badge was ripped from her shirt; one boot fell away and left her right foot bare. She fell twenty feet, thirty feet, forty feet, and finally landed heavily on the soggy earth at the bottom of the hill. She tried to clear her head. Nothing felt broken. She got up slowly and realized with relief that she still had her gun clutched in her hand.

Water cascaded through the narrows. She recognized where she was now, at the edge of the Lester River where it ran southward toward Lake Superior. She knew this area from her beat, knew that a highway bridge crossed the river barely fifty yards away, knew that a single turn of the wheel would lead her back to Highway 43. Of all the horrors of this night, she had gotten lost only ten minutes from her home.

Another scream rose above the noise of the river from the opposite shore. Kasey stumbled on to the marshy rye grass at the bank, and the water flooded to her ankles. She could make out the black water; the fog was thinning. The river was barely twenty feet from shore to shore, but she forgot that the narrows also meant the water here was stronger and faster. She waded in with a shudder, and the impact slammed her body and knocked her off her feet. The hurtling current whipped her downstream before her feet clawed for purchase on the slippery rocks of the river bed. She fought to the opposite bank and dug her fingers into the eroded clay soil above her. With a silent groan, she pulled herself out of the river and on to the soft grass.