He Waited She Wilted (Ottilie and Yorath) novel Chapter 160

The boot that had been wedged so deeply in the mud was washed away by the rushing water. It was just a shoe.

There were no human remains tangled in the gravel.

Jevon aggressively wiped the rain from his face and practically sprinted down the slope.

He ran so fast he slipped and face-planted into the mud, but scrambled right back up and kept running.

Throwing himself into the pile of crushed rock, he started clawing at the earth like a madman.

With the massive boulder shifted and the water softening the ground, Jevon easily hollowed out a massive crater.

It was completely empty, save for more rocks.

He looked up, wild with adrenaline, and screamed, "Yorath! There's no one here! She's not here!"

The rest of the crew rushed in with shovels to help, but all they managed to unearth were the shattered fragments of the camera.

Standing in the pouring rain, Jevon threw his head back and burst into hysterical laughter. "I knew it! That woman is far too cunning! She loves Yorath way too much to just roll over and die before she even got the ring!"

Standing high above them, Yorath stared down at the lone boot for a long moment. A faint, almost imperceptible trace of a smile seemed to touch his eyes.

"Let's head back."

Jevon snatched the boot from the mud, stuffed it into his jacket pocket, and began whistling a cheerful tune as he followed the crew up the trail.

The rain was coming down so hard it ruined his whistling. Instead of hitting a high note, he choked on a mouthful of rainwater and coughed violently.

Walking between Elian and Jevon, Nyssa pulled her raincoat tighter around herself.

She murmured softly, "It's so wonderful that Ms. Sewell is still alive."

No one bothered to reply to her.

By the time they reached the camp, night had fully fallen.

Exhausted and starving, the crew scrambled to eat, boil water, and scrub the freezing mud off in the shower tents.

Yorath didn't touch a bite of food. The second he stepped into his tent, he extracted the memory card from the ruined camera, plugged it into a card reader, and connected it to his laptop.

The SD card was heavily encased and perfectly intact. Since it was standard production gear, the files inside were solely broadcast footage.

Because this specific camera had been assigned exclusively to Ottilie, every single file featured her.

There wasn't much footage, so Yorath quickly located the final clip.

Yorath hit replay, watching it again.

He tracked the exact timeframe of Ottilie's escape, mentally calculating the distance between the camera's final resting place and the landslide's epicenter.

"If they started running at that timestamp," Yorath deduced, "and the camera was swept away by the mudslide *after* they dropped it, pushing it all the way to the absolute edge of the impact zone... it means there is a ninety-nine percent chance she made it out alive."

Jevon grinned. "I told you, she's too stubborn to die."

Nyssa stepped into the tent. "The bathwater is ready. Yorath, please go wash up and change into some dry clothes before you look at any more footage. Otherwise, your body is going to give out before we even find her."

Yorath closed the laptop and stood up. "Since we know Ottilie is alive, we'll suspend the heavy excavation for now. But keep the equipment on standby, just in case."

Nyssa looked at him, feigning mild confusion. "Earlier, when we all thought that was her body underneath the rocks, you gave the order to stop digging. Why are you suddenly..."

Yorath didn't offer a single word of explanation. He simply pushed past the tent flap and walked out.

He headed straight for the private shower tent.

Yorath had just stripped off his soaked shirt and unbuckled his belt when Nyssa walked in without knocking.

"Yorath, I brought you some medicine," she said softly. "Elian said pouring this into your bathwater helps with the inflammation..."