Chương 1
"The rescuer reached me just as my fingers stopped obeying me.
He dropped to one knee on the narrow ledge, clipped himself to an anchor line, and pressed two gloved fingers against the side of my neck.
“Ma’am, can you hear me?”
I tried to answer, but my jaw shook so hard that only a broken sound came out.
His goggles were crusted with ice, and I could see almost nothing of his face except a strip of reddened skin above his respirator.
Then his hand moved toward my stomach.
“Pregnant,” he said sharply into his radio.
The word seemed to wake something inside me.
“Baby.”
“I know.”
“Alive.”
“We’re going to find out, but I need you to stay still.”
I grabbed his sleeve with what little strength remained.
“My husband.”
“We’ll deal with everything else after we get you off this mountain.”
“He pushed me.”
For the first time, the rescuer stopped moving.
His eyes settled on mine.
“What did you say?”
“Michael pushed me.”
The rotor wash blasted snow over us, and he leaned closer as if the storm itself might steal the words.
“He thinks I’m dead.”
The rescuer stared at me for another second before touching the microphone near his collar.
“Command, be advised, patient is conscious and alleging intentional assault.”
Static answered him.
Then a voice said something I couldn’t understand.
The rescuer looked down at me again.
“My name’s Daniel Ruiz.”
I managed a tiny nod.
“What’s yours?”
“Claire Carter.”
“All right, Claire, I’m getting you out of here.”
The harness hurt when Daniel worked it beneath me, but pain had become strangely distant, as though it belonged to another body.
What frightened me was the silence inside my stomach.
I pressed one hand against the curve beneath my coat.
“Come on,” I whispered.
Daniel heard me.
“He’s got a stubborn mother.”
“You don’t know me.”
“No, but you survived a fall that should’ve killed you, so I’m making an educated guess.”
A laugh escaped me before turning into a sob.
Then something moved beneath my palm.
Small.
Weak.
Real.
“My baby.”
“I felt it too.”
Daniel’s voice changed.
The professional calm remained, but urgency sharpened beneath it.
He secured the harness and signaled upward.
The ledge disappeared beneath my boots.
For several terrifying seconds, I hung over open air with Daniel attached beside me and the mountainside sliding downward through blowing snow.
I refused to look below.
Instead, I stared at a black buckle on Daniel’s harness and counted the scratches in its paint.
Seven.
I counted them again.
Seven.
Again.
Seven.
The helicopter swallowed us into noise and heat.
Someone cut open my coat.
Another rescuer wrapped blankets around me while a medic placed an oxygen mask over my face.
Questions came from everywhere.
How far had I fallen?
Did my neck hurt?
Could I feel my feet?
Had I lost consciousness?
Was I bleeding before the fall?
When had I last felt fetal movement?
I answered some of them.
Others dissolved before I could understand them.
Then Daniel leaned over me.
“Claire, police will need to speak with you when you’re medically stable.”
“Don’t tell Michael.”
His expression tightened.
“He’s my husband.”
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t.”
I pulled the oxygen mask aside.
“He has fifty million reasons to find out whether I survived.”
Daniel gently replaced the mask.
“I heard you.”
That was the last thing I remembered before the helicopter ceiling blurred and disappeared.
I woke beneath fluorescent lights to the sound of a monitor beating faster than my own heart.
A woman in blue scrubs stood between my knees.
Another person was fastening something around my arm.
There were too many people in the room.
“What’s happening?”
A doctor appeared beside me.
“Claire, I’m Dr. Patel.”
“My baby?”
“We’re seeing signs that your baby is under significant distress.”
I tried to sit up.
Pain drove me flat again.
“We need to deliver him.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
My eyes found the clock on the wall.
2:17 a.m.
For some absurd reason, I remembered Michael complaining that the clock in our kitchen ran four minutes fast.
He had promised to fix it for six months.
I began crying over that stupid clock.
Dr. Patel took my hand.
“Claire, stay with me.”
“My husband tried to kill us.”
“I know the hospital security team has been informed.”
“He can’t come in.”
“He won’t.”
“You promise?”
“I can promise that nobody gets into this room without authorization.”
That was not the same promise, and I appreciated her for not pretending otherwise.
A nurse removed my wedding ring because my fingers had swollen.
She placed it inside a small plastic belongings bag.
The diamond turned sideways against the clear plastic.
I stared at it and remembered Michael kneeling beside a lake five years earlier, nervous enough to drop the ring box in the grass.
For one poisonous second, I wanted that man back.
Then I heard his voice from the cliff.
You and the baby won’t suffer long.
“Throw it away,” I said.
The nurse glanced at the bag.
“Your ring?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t do that with patient property.”
“Of course you can’t.”
She gave me an apologetic smile.
“Hospital rules.”
I almost laughed.
Michael had pushed me off a mountain, my child was in danger, and somewhere in Colorado there was apparently still a rule protecting my wedding ring.
“Fine.”
The contractions came before they could take me to surgery.
Everything after that fractured into hands, commands, pressure, terror, and bright light.
Someone told me not to push.
Someone else told me to breathe.
Then the fetal monitor changed.
The room changed with it.
People stopped wasting words.
I saw Dr. Patel’s face above her mask.
“We’re going now.”
The operating room doors opened.
I caught one final glimpse of Daniel standing in the corridor speaking to a uniformed sheriff’s deputy.
He saw me.
I lifted my hand perhaps an inch.
He nodded once.
May you like
Then the doors closed.
When I woke again, morning had arrived without asking anyone’s permission.
