Page 109 of Betrayal of a Billionaire
“What’s happening?” he asked Ethan.
“They’re both inside. They’re both fine, more or less. She thinks Sierra may have sprained her wrist.”
He sucked in a breath as he let the words sink in. Were they correct? Were they both fine? “Can they get them out?”
He eyed the man as he spoke through the hole, then started to carefully shift some of the smaller rocks.
“Looks like it,” Ethan said with a clap on his shoulder and a smile.
The other officer waved his hands, seeming to motion for someone to come through. Grant held his breath as he waited. No one came. Were they not okay?
“Stick your arms through first, okay?” Tony said. “Then we’ll tug you forward.”
A minute later, hands thrust from the hole. A head poked through later. His features melted as tears filled his eyes. “Sierra!”
“Daddy!” Sierra shouted as they pulled her from the hole. She reached for him while they continued to free her.
He rushed forward, wrapping his arms around her. As she fell free, her foot kicked a stone. It set off a chain reaction.The ground rumbled and rocks shifted, causing dust to billow in the air. When the dust settled, Grant's eyes widened in astonishment. The hole in the rocks blocking the cave had vanished.
“Julia!” Alicia shouted.
She raced forward, clawing at the rocks. The officer who pulled Sierra free, Luke, and Ethan tugged her away.
“No!” she screamed. “No!”
“Ally,” Ethan said as he pulled her into an embrace.
“Daddy!” Sierra said as she clutched him tighter.
“It’s okay, baby. They can…they’ll…” But the truth was he had no idea if they could rescue her. His heart ached as he held his daughter but failed to retrieve his wife. She now was trapped inside the cave. Surely, they’d just have to move the stones. Why had they stopped Alicia?
“Get her out of there!” Alicia screamed.
“Ally, it’s not that simple,” the officer who’d retrieved Sierra said. “If we shift these rocks, we could cave the entire thing in. We don’t want to do that.”
“What about…blowing it?”
“Too risky. We don’t know how far back she can get, and plus, we could drop the entire rock face on top of her.”
“So…what? That’s it?” Alicia asked, panic filling her voice.
“We need to go back to the station. We need to regroup and look into some equipment. Rethink,” the man said.
“Rethink. Regroup.” Her features melted as her knees buckled. Ethan caught her, tugging her close.
Grant felt the same way she did. It ripped at his heart that they’d leave Julia here, trapped, alone.
Alicia’s shoulders shook with sobs as she twisted Ethan’s jacket into a knot in her white-knuckled fist. “No. I just got her back, Ethan. I just got her back.”
“We’re going to get her out. We just need to rethink, okay? We need to do this in a way that’s safe for Julia.”
“Daddy,” Sierra croaked. “Do something.”
“Uh,” he said, at a loss for words. Images of his own entrapment after the explosion floated through his mind. In those frightening moments, he’d thought he lost everything. And he hadn’t even been alone. Julia was on her own. “Is there anything I can do? Equipment, money, anything?”
“We just need to give this some thought,” the officer said.
Ethan tightened his grip on his wife as another sob escaped her. “You should get your daughter to the hospital and get her checked out. She’s had a really frightening experience.”
