"Jane! Are you there? Please!"
Alejandra's voice was hoarse now, shredded by pain. Jane sat on a large rock near the edge of the cliff. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a mint. She unwrapped it slowly, the crinkle of the plastic loud in the quiet night. She popped it into her mouth.
She calculated the acoustics. The ravine was deep, the walls acting as a funnel that directed sound upward, away from the house. The party music was still thumping in the distance. No one would hear her.
"I'll pay you!" Alejandra begged. "I have money in my room! Ten thousand dollars!"
Jane chewed the mint. The cool flavor filled her mouth. She remembered the winter of 2018. She had been evicted. She had called Alejandra, begging for a loan to pay for heat. Alejandra had laughed and told her to sell her kidney.
"Does it hurt?" Jane asked softly, though Alejandra couldn't hear her. "Consider it interest."
She stood up and kicked a few loose stones over the edge. They clattered down the rock face.
"Jane?" Alejandra's voice pitched up in hope. "Is that you? Are you coming down?"
Jane didn't answer. She walked along the rim of the ravine, her mind a cold machine of calculation. Leaving Alejandra alive but broken was better than murder. A coma, a lifetime of rehabilitation-these were fates worse than a quick death for someone so vain. It created a power vacuum, a story of tragedy, not of crime.
She needed to make sure the scene told the right story. She walked back to the broken platform. She took the wrench and carefully retightened one of the remaining bolts on a post that hadn't fallen, then scuffed the area around the sheared-off bolts with a rock, making the metal fatigue look natural, a product of time and neglect rather than tampering.
Below, the sounds changed. The screaming stopped, replaced by ragged, painful breaths. Alejandra had likely passed out from the pain or was conserving her energy. Good. It gave Jane time.
She lay on her stomach and peered over the edge. In the moonlight, she could see the silver dress, a pale shimmer against the dark rocks. Unmoving. It was enough. The heiress was neutralized, taken off the board in a way that would sow chaos and grief, the perfect cover for what came next.
Jane stood up. She was just a shadow against the stars.
Alejandra had made a mistake. She had assumed Jane was a lamb to be slaughtered. But Jane was a ghost, already dead, and she had nothing left to lose.
Jane took a deep breath. She didn't need to go down. She had done what she came to do. The scene was set.
Her attention now turned to the Lodge. The night was far from over.
