Page 37 of Master of Lies

Panic exploded inside me. Oh, shit. He was going to throw me off the cliff, to make his chances better. Oh fuck.Fuck.

I explode into action, but he grabs my arm with his huge hand, trapping me.

I never even got to say goodbye to Holly, to Ethan. They would never know what happened to me. I was such an arrogant idiot. Playing hero. In over my head.

I fought him, panicked, as he pulled me toward the edge. “No, no, no, James, I swear! I’ll just run off into the forest. I won’t make a sound! I’ll hide somewhere. No one will ever see me or hear me, I swear to God!”

“They’ll probably have thermal imaging. They’ll find you, Sandee.”

I saw, with a flash of raw panic, that he’d knotted the end of the rope into a big loop. A noose. He was going to hang me, right off that tree, off the edge of the cliff.

I fought him harder, with a burst of frantic strength—

“Goddammit, Sandee, would you stop wiggling?” he muttered, and suddenly, he jumped—with me still clamped in his arms. Ohfuck…

We were airborne for an instant, and I saw my life in a brilliant flash. Then Jed’s feet hit a ledge on the side of the cliff, breaking our fall with a bone-rattlingthud.

I hung there in his grasp, utterly confused. The rope was looped around his huge, powerful hand. His feet touched the ledge he’d hit, but my legs weren’t long enough to reach it. I just dangled over the void below me, feet flailing over forty feet of nothing. Empty space filled with swirling snowflakes. Rocks and trees, far below.

My heart thudded so hard, I could hardly breathe. My vision dimmed….

“…dee? Sandee! Hey. Babe. Talk to me. You can’t faint.” Jed’s voice was commanding. “Don’t you dare freak out on me. I need you to be tough.”

Tough.I could do tough. I blinked until I could focus. Still dangling like a spider on a thread. But alive. “What the fuck are we doing here, James?” I gasped out.

He looked relieved that I could talk in complete sentences. “Keeping you alive.”

Huh. That was heartening. Contradictory, but heartening. “Um. Okay. How?”

“Look to your left, about knee level,” he said. “You see that foothold there?”

I looked, searching for anything that could even remotely be categorized as a “foothold.” I tapped at tiny snow-frosted notch with my toe. “You mean, this?”

“Yes, excellent. Put your toe on that,” Jed encouraged. “Then reach up over my head and grab the rope. I’ll push you until your weight is on it. Go on. I’ve got you.”

He did have me. In every way that mattered. He was the difference between life and a long, horrible fall to my death. His grip was warm and reassuring. I tried not to look down at the snow-dusted treetops, swaying in the wind, far below.

It took all my nerve to release my death grip on Jed with one hand to grab the rope above his head. I felt his hand under my ass, hoisting me…and suddenly, I was draped across the slightly slanted, jagged slope of the cliff.

“It’s easier from here,” he said. “Look to your left. See the other two footholds, leading over to that space between that outcropping? Two steps, and you’re there.”

I made the steps, my legs wobbling. Jed followed along, one big warm hand still gripping me. “You see that big loop of tree root, sticking out?” he asked. “Grab it.”

“Don’t know if it’ll hold me,” I said, through chattering teeth.

“It will. It held me. Go on.”

“You’ve been down here before?”

“Just grab it, Sandee!”

I did as I was told, and grabbed the exposed loop of root. It felt solid.

“Now look up,” Jed said. “See that little overhang? It’s a tiny cave. Climb up under the overhang. That’s your spot. Where you’re going to wait this out.”

I moved my hands and legs where he told me to put them, and in a couple of minutes, he had me huddled in a shallow cave, one not deep enough to give real shelter.

“I won’t be able to get back up on my own,” I told him, teeth clacking.

---