LITMIR.BIZ

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slapped a couple of dollars next to his empty coffee mug and followed, pulling on his cap, unsure how to proceed. If he’d been confused before, he was downright flummoxed now, but he also sensed Ella might be in danger from this man as she began to suspect his motives.

      Ginny had said don’t alarm Ella, don’t frighten her. How was he supposed to get her away from Carl if he couldn’t even talk to her?

      He exited the restaurant with his head down so Ella wouldn’t notice him. A quick glance, however, revealed that she’d made it to their car, which was parked close to the bluff. She stood with her back to the restaurant and to Carl’s approach, arms linked across her chest, one hip thrust forward, her short, dark hair barely moving despite the strong wind. A lilac-colored coat flapped around her hips.

      Her body language screamed pissed off. The bounce of Carl’s steps and the faint whistling sound drifting back on the wind suggested Carl couldn’t care less about his wife’s frame of mind.

      The weather had deteriorated, the thin fog blowing up the bluff, swirling overhead. Searching for an excuse to approach Carl before he talked Ella into getting into the car, Simon noticed movement in a dark sedan parked nearby. The door opened as Carl passed the front bumper. Carl didn’t even turn to look as a big man with a very bushy gray-streaked beard got out of the car.

      The huge man was dressed all in black and looked damn formidable as he peered around the parking lot, his gaze sliding right by Simon, whose instincts had warned him to step behind a pillar. Apparently making a decision, the giant fell into step behind Carl.

      It didn’t take Simon’s twelve years in law enforcement to figure out something was going on.

      Picking up his pace, the bearded man grabbed Carl from behind, twirling him around, throwing a punch that connected with Carl’s nose. As he staggered backward, Carl pulled a gun from a hidden holster. The bearded man instantly kicked the gun from Carl’s hand with an agility unexpected in a three-hundred-pound man. The gun flew over the bluff as the assailant produced a terrible, mean-looking knife with a curved blade.

      Ella screamed. Simon started running toward her, taking his own gun from the waistband holster. Facing each other, jockeying for position, the two men backed Ella against the car. She pushed them away from her, lurching off to the side as blood from a knife slash blossomed on her palm. It ran down her arm as she continued stumbling backward.

      Again and again, the bearded man swung his knife in wide arcs at Carl. Ella seemed oblivious of anything but the fight. The men kept at it, forcing her toward the edge of the bluff as the giant lashed out and Baxter recoiled.

      Birds wheeling up the bluff caught Simon’s attention. At once he realized the direction Ella’s retreat was taking her. He yelled her name. The two men turned to look at him, but Ella kept moving as though oblivious of anything except escape. She stumbled backward against the knee-high rock and wood post wall, her hands flying, her purse launched into the air. She’d been moving so fast her momentum sent her sailing over the edge of the fog-shrouded cliff.

      Both men lurched toward the bluff, became aware of each other again, and squared off. Carl peered at the empty spot where Ella had last appeared, obviously caught between his desire to find out what had happened to her and the one to save his own skin.

      His skin won. He used the big man’s momentary lapse of attention to get a head start back to his car.

      Simon was only vaguely aware of the two men taking off in their respective vehicles as he reached the place where Ella had tumbled over the cliff.

      Chapter Four

      The bluff was riddled with gullies and overgrown with Scotch broom, their brilliant yellow flowers dazzling despite the fog. More important than their color was the fact that they could cushion, maybe even stop, a fall.

      “Ella!”

      Twenty feet below him, he caught sight of movement, but it was impossible to tell if a person was responsible or if it was just the wind rattling the tortured boughs of a Sitka spruce.

      Slapping his revolver back in the holster, Simon climbed over the fence and onto the narrow ledge, calling her name again. To his infinite relief, he heard her voice.

      “Help! Someone help!”

      As he took a cautious step, the sandy rocks beneath his feet shifted and he slipped. He grabbed one of the wood posts and caught himself but not before a shower of rocks skittered down the gully.

      “Hold on!” he yelled.

      Leaving her there was one of the hardest things he’d ever done, but he had to get a rope or risk stranding them both. He knew exactly where it was in his truck and dug his keys out as he ran. It was over twenty miles back to town. A call to the fire station would set a rescue in motion. Should he take the time to fiddle with his phone and instigate it?

      No.

      Grabbing the rope, he ran back across the lot. There was no one else around.

      Fingers steady, he quickly rigged a bowline in the rope and hitched it over the wood post six feet north of where he figured Ella had landed or caught hold of a branch or root. The fate of the baby she carried flashed across his mind, but he let it go. There was nothing he could do except save Ella.

      “Ella?” he yelled as he tore off the green baseball cap and pulled on the work gloves he’d grabbed along with the rope.

      It took her forever to answer and when she did, her voice was faint. “Hurry. I can’t hold on much longer.”

      “Keep talking. I’m rappelling down to your left, so no rocks will hit you, but I can’t see in the fog. I don’t know exactly where you are.”

      “I’m kind of in a tree,” she called, her voice a little stronger.

      The cliff below the post he’d chosen wasn’t gullied like the other, but stuck out in weathered bare rock. Leaning backward and paying out the rope through his gloved hands, Simon backed down the face until his feet hit empty air. He swung back against the cliff, the impact briefly knocking the wind out of his lungs.

      Below him and to his right, he heard Ella yell, “Are you okay?”

      “Keep talking,” he sputtered, and immediately pushed himself away. Now he could start veering toward the sound of Ella’s voice as she recited the alphabet, catching his feet in the gullies and fending off the brush as it became more dense. At last he spied a glimpse of lilac that almost but not quite blended in with the foliage.

      Ella was wearing a jacket that color.

      Another foot or two and he could see the gleaming cap of her brown hair and then two wide blue eyes.

      She’d been stopped from the three-hundred-foot drop to the surf below by the branches of the spruce, themselves twisted by the wind. She clung to the end of a slender branch, one leg looped over the top, both hands clinging to the rough bark. The tree didn’t look all that sturdy, but the thick foliage above her head explained why he hadn’t been able to see her from above.

      Pushing with his legs, he swung toward her, landing on the bluff right below her dangling foot.

      “You have to let go,” he said. The sound of the surf seemed twice as loud as it had from the top of the bluff and he raised his voice, reaching up to touch her denim-covered leg. “Trust me.”

      She looked down at him but hesitated. He wondered if she recognized him. Even if she did, why would she trust him? She didn’t remember she knew him, and the basic Ella he’d come to understand was a woman who liked to control her own destiny and didn’t trust easily.

      “You sure that rope is strong enough for both of us?” she called.

      He knew the rope was strong enough. They’d soon find out if the wood post at the top was. He said, “Would you rather hang around here all day?”

      The tree creaked as she adjusted her weight. “Okay, point taken. Just be ready.”

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