Page 99 of Betrayal of a Billionaire
Whatever she was saying, it didn’t sound good. She looked scared. And the sob that emerged from Luke next to him made his stomach turn over. “What does she mean? What’s happening?”
She fixed her eyes on his. “We’re going to be okay, Grant. Go with Luke. Sierra, I need you to hang on tight.”
Fear drove his heart to feel like it was going to explode out of his chest, his features pinching. What was she warning him of? “What?”
She fixed her eyes on them. “I’m going to open the lever. I’ll see you on the flip side.”
Lever? What was she saying?
He started to ask when her hand hovered over the device she’d used to stop herself from sliding down the rope. A second later, she flipped something.
His stomach clenched as she dropped away from his sight, plummeting toward the trees far below them.
“Julia!” he screamed after her, reaching a hand toward her in a desperate attempt to reach her.
Helplessness roiled through him as Julia and Sierra fell further and further from them.
Luke tugged him back before shoving his head down. “Get down.”
He didn’t understand what the man was doing until he spotted the pike he’d driven into the ground earlier slicing through the air and plunging down toward the ground below. He couldn’t find words as the pressure let off his neck.
He trembled all over as he continued to stare downward. His knees felt weak, and he clenched his hands into fists, trying to anchor himself to anything as the cold rain splashed on his face. Julia and Sierra had disappeared from sight along with the rope that had held them. They were…gone. He’d lost them both in seconds.
Next to him, Luke rose to his feet, zipping his backpack and flinging it onto his back. “Come on. We need to move.”
Grant still couldn’t vocalize as he remained in shock. How was Luke moving this easily after witnessing that? After watching Sierra and Julia fall to their…his mind couldn’t finish the statement.
“Grant, let’s go.”
“What? We can’t…they…fell…”
“Yes, and now we need to go find them.”
He offered the man an incredulous glance. Why was he so interested in finding their mangled bodies? Was it wild animals or something else that made this urgent? “How can you…be this calm?”
Luke’s brow furrowed as Grant rose. “We have to find them.”
“We just…watched them fall to their deaths.”
Luke pressed his lips together as he shook his head. “No. Julia hit that tree line before the anchor went. They may be hurt, but they’re alive.”
His forehead creased as he tried to make sense of the words. Alive? They were alive?
“They’re alive, Grant. Julia made a smart decision, and she didn’t hesitate. They didn’t fall. She put them into the fastest descent I’ve ever seen, but it was still controlled. By the time the pike went, the trees were breaking their fall. Now, let’s go.”
He let the words sink in as his heart lifted with hope. “They’re…alive?” His voice cracked, betraying his wavering emotion.
“Yes. And while Julia’s smart and very capable of keeping both herself and your daughter alive, I’d prefer to find her before either of them endures any more trauma.”
Grant bobbed his head up and down as the rain continued to pour, harder now than before. As he followed behind Luke, hesearched his memory for the clues Luke had used to assess the situation.
“So…” he said as he tried to piece it all together. “She…”
“Julia knew they’d never make it back up before that anchor went. She let the brake go and dropped. If she hadn’t done that when she did, the anchor would have let go and they would have been in a free fall to the ground.”
Grant trudged along behind the man, realizing his wife had just made the scariest decision he could imagine to save his daughter’s life. A mix of admiration and dread filled him. He realized, with a pang of guilt, how much he’d taken her bravery for granted. Her courage to save Sierra forced him to confront the depth of her love for his family, at least for his daughter.
“How did she know…”
