Chapter 3: Pulled From the Edge
Victoria's thumb moved to decline the call.
Elena saw it.
"Answer it," Elena said.
Her voice had changed.
The trembling was gone.
"Answer it right now, or I start screaming loud enough for every hiker on this mountain to hear what you just said."
Victoria's jaw tightened.
She didn't move.
"Answer it." Elena's eyes didn't leave her mother's face.
"Or I let go of this rope and I walk down that path and I call the police myself."
Daniel took a step toward her.
"Elena—"
"Don't." She didn't look at him.
"Don't come one step closer."
The phone rang a third time.
Victoria answered it.
She said nothing.
She only listened.
And whatever she heard made the color drain from her face so completely that even Daniel noticed.
He reached for her arm.
"Mother.
What is it?"
Victoria lowered the phone.
Her voice came out smaller than Sarah had ever heard it.
"It's Marcus."
Daniel went still.
Sarah didn't know who Marcus was.
But the name did something to Daniel that nothing else had — not Elena's screaming, not Sarah's tears, not the baby.
His shoulders dropped.
His chin came down.
For just a moment, he looked less like a man who had made a plan and more like a man who had just watched it crack open.
"He wasn't supposed to call," Daniel said.
"Not yet."
"He knows," Victoria said.
"Someone told him."
"Told him what?" Elena demanded.
"Who is Marcus?
What does he know?"
Neither of them answered her.
Sarah's arms were shaking so badly she could barely feel the rope anymore.
Her palms were raw.
Her vision was beginning to blur at the edges.
She had been hanging for too long.
"Elena," she managed.
"Elena, I can't—"
Elena dropped back to her knees instantly.
Both hands on the rope.
"I have you.
I have you, Sarah.
Hold on.
Just hold on."
"She can't hold on forever," Daniel said.
But his voice had lost its certainty.
He was still staring at his mother.
"Then help her up," Elena said.
"Help her up right now."
He didn't move.
Elena looked up at him from the ground, her arms burning, her knees bleeding where the rock had cut through her trousers.
"Daniel.
If she falls and that baby is lost, Marcus will be the least of your problems.
Help.
Her.
Up."
Something shifted in his face.
Not guilt — it wasn't guilt, not yet — but calculation.
A new equation being worked out behind his eyes.
He reached down.
Sarah felt his hands close around her wrist — the same hands, the same grip — and she wanted to pull away from him, wanted it more than almost anything.
But her fingers were giving out.
She had nothing left.
She let him pull her up.
She collapsed onto the rock ledge, gasping, her whole body shaking.
Elena was beside her in an instant, arms around her, one hand pressed gently to Sarah's stomach as if checking that everything was still whole.
"I've got you," Elena whispered.
"You're safe.
You're both safe."
Sarah pressed her face against Elena's shoulder and couldn't speak.
Behind them, Victoria was back on the phone.
Her voice had dropped to almost nothing, but the wind had dropped too, and Sarah caught three words clearly.
*Not here.
Tonight.*
She lifted her head.
Elena had heard it too.
Their eyes met.
May you like
Whatever had just been arranged on that cliff — it wasn't over.
It had only moved somewhere else.
