Page 84 of Tactical Lies

Laughter, joy, happiness.

Then darker ones.

Pain and loneliness.

Connor.

Her greatest love, her biggest betrayer, her hope for the future.

Her everything.

No.

She couldn’t leave him.

Not like this.

Not when he could be out there somewhere needing her.

She couldn’t give up now, she’d already done the hard part and escaped.

All that ran through her head in the half a second or so it took for her to shift her body weight so she could scramble backward away from the edge of the cliff.

Close.

Too close.

Ignoring her body, which was screaming at her to stay and rest, Becca instead shoved back to her feet. Through the dark, she looked down the side of the cliff she’d almost gone over. It was hard to see how steep the fall would have been, but she was glad she hadn't found out the hard way.

Right as she was about to turn and keep running in a different direction, a bolt of lightning lit up the sky and she got a clear look at what would have been her fate if she hadn't been able to pull herself back in time.

Becca gulped.

That had to be a fifteen-foot drop at least.

Possibly survivable, but not in good shape.

Certainly, not in good enough shape to find a way to get help for herself and Connor.

When something slammed into her, Becca was taken completely by surprise.

For a second, she thought it was just a gust of wind shoving her, then she thought it was a branch from a tree that had hit her.

It wasn't until she was falling that her brain finally clicked into place.

It wasn't the wind and it wasn't a branch.

It was a person.

A person who had shoved her right over the edge of the cliff she’d only just avoided falling over mere seconds earlier.

A scream was ripped from her lips. It was picked up by the wind and tossed about and she was sure that the only two people who heard it were her and whoever had just knocked her over.

Not that there was anyone else around to hear it anyway.

Neighbors were too far away. She had to believe that Connor had been able to kill the other men who had come after them, although she supposed there was a good chance that was just wishful thinking. They could be out there, hunting her, and Connor could be dead.

There was no conscious thought on her part to try to stop herself from hitting the ground.

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