Chapter 1 - THE WOMAN BENEATH THE SNOW
“For fifty million dollars, she better be dead.”
Michael Carter’s voice floated down through the blizzard as Emma lay broken on a narrow ledge hundreds of feet below him.
She could no longer see her husband through the snow, but she heard Ashley Blake laugh beside him.
The sound was quickly swallowed by the wind.
Emma pressed both arms around her swollen belly.
She was nine months pregnant.
Every breath sent fire through her ribs. Her left wrist bent at an unnatural angle, blood ran from a cut near her temple, and the snow beneath her pale mint dress had begun turning red.
Only minutes earlier, Michael had stood beside her at the overlook with one gloved hand resting against her back.
He had told her they needed to talk before the baby arrived.
Emma assumed he wanted to apologize.
Instead, he asked whether she had changed the beneficiary on her life insurance policy.
She stared at him.
“What are you talking about?”
“The policy your mother created.”
“I never changed anything.”
Relief moved across his face.
Then he pushed her.
Emma remembered the empty sky.
The violent impact.
The ledge catching her halfway down the cliff.
She remembered Michael leaning over the edge.
“Neither you nor the baby will suffer long.”
Now his footsteps disappeared along the mountain path.
Emma reached for her cracked phone.
The screen no longer responded, but the recorder application remained active. She had turned it on during the argument because Michael had been behaving strangely for weeks.
The device had captured everything.
She dragged it closer and pressed it beneath her cardigan.
Then a contraction twisted through her body.
Emma screamed.
The pain passed slowly, leaving her shaking harder than before.
“Stay with me,” she whispered to her unborn son. “Please stay.”
For nearly two hours, the storm buried her.
She drifted in and out of consciousness.
Each time darkness pulled her deeper, she felt a faint movement beneath her hands.
Her baby was alive.
That tiny motion kept her breathing.
Then a beam of white light cut across the cliff.
The roar of helicopter blades shook snow from the rocks.
A black alpine rescue helicopter hovered dangerously close while a red cable descended through the storm.
A man in a dark blue rescue jacket came down with controlled speed. His boots struck the ledge. He clipped himself into an anchor, moved toward Emma, and placed one gloved hand beneath her neck.
“Emma, open your eyes!”
She forced her eyelids apart.
Silver hair.
Piercing blue eyes.
A rugged face she recognized from an old photograph her mother had hidden inside a locked drawer.
“You know my name,” she whispered.
The rescuer froze.
His discipline collapsed for one terrible second.
“Emma?”
Another contraction struck.
She cried out and tightened her arms around her belly.
The man saw the blood beneath her.
His eyes widened with raw terror.
He secured a rescue harness around her shoulders and hips, careful not to compress her abdomen.
“I’m your father,” he said, his voice breaking. “I finally found you.”
Emma stared at him through frozen tears.
“My father is dead.”
“No. Your mother was told I died. I was told you never survived the birth.”
Her damaged phone vibrated in the snow.
The recording continued through the cracked speaker.
Michael’s voice emerged beneath the helicopter blades.
“For fifty million dollars, she better be dead.”
Ashley laughed.
The rescuer turned toward the phone.
Murderous disbelief crossed his face before military discipline forced it back down.
He picked up the device, placed it inside an evidence pouch, and clipped it securely to his harness.
“He left my daughter and grandson to die.”
The ledge cracked.
Emma screamed as the ice beneath her collapsed.
The man drove an ice tool into the rock and caught her full weight with one arm. The rescue rope snapped tight above them.
“My baby!”
“I have you.”
The helicopter began lifting.
Emma buried her face against his chest as the cliff disappeared beneath them.
May you like
“Stay alive,” he shouted through the storm. “I will make him watch you come home.”
Continue to the next part: Emma awakens in a hospital to learn whether her baby survived and why the stranger who rescued her had spent thirty one years searching for her.
