by Elle James
When everyone seemed to have their fill of the view, they remounted their ATVs and RJ led the pack back.
Brianna couldn’t get her ATV started, so Max went over to help her.
JoJo followed on foot.
Brianna stood beside the vehicle, wringing her hands as Max straddled the seat, checked the gear shift, clamped the brake, turned the key and hit the start button. It cranked for a second, and then died. When he tried the second time, it roared to life. He put it in neutral, set the brake and got off. “It’s all yours.”
Brianna backed away, holding up both hands. “I don’t know if I can drive back. I’m looking at that downhill slope, and it’s scaring me. Going up I was just fine,” she said. “I don’t know why but looking down that slope is making me dizzy.”
“There’s only one way off this mountain,” JoJo said, “and that’s to go back down.”
Brianna shook her head. “Then I’ll walk. I don’t think that I could drive that ATV down the hill.”
“Do you think you could ride on the back of one?” JoJo asked.
Brianna bit her lip. “I don’t know. It’s making me dizzy just looking down the path.”
JoJo couldn’t fault her. She’d run into people who’d had that same issue. Going up, they were fine. Coming back down, they freaked out. Each time she’d been able to get them down from the mountain by having them ride on the back of somebody else’s ATV with their eyes closed.
“You can ride with me,” JoJo said. “All you have to do is hold on and keep your eyes closed. I’ll get you down the mountain.”
Brianna stared at JoJo. “But you’re shorter than I am. I would still see the trail ahead of me.”
“Not if you have your eyes closed,” JoJo reminded her.
Brianna shook her head.
“Would you rather ride on the back with me?” Max offered.
JoJo’s jaw tightened. The last thing she wanted was the pretty little female riding on the back of an ATV with Max, but then, they had to get moving or they’d lose sight of the rest of the group.
Brianna chewed on her lip a bit more, looking up at Max. “I think I might be able to ride down with Max,” she said. “He would completely block my view of the trail below.”
JoJo nodded. Max’s broad shoulders would easily block her view. She cocked an eyebrow. “Are you up for that, Max?”
He nodded. “I’m up for it.” He leaned close to JoJo and whispered, “But I’d rather ride with you.” Then he gathered her into his arms and kissed her full on the lips in front of Brianna and the others who had yet to follow RJ from the top of the bluff. “Are you going to be all right?”
JoJo nodded. “I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll be one ahead of you then,” he said.
He mounted the vehicle.
Brianna mounted behind him and wrapped her arms around him, snuggling close.
JoJo ground her teeth as she climbed on board her ATV and cranked the engine. As they fell in line with the rest of them, JoJo hung back just a little bit with a view of the entire parade of vehicles. She counted. They’d started out with eighteen vehicles, counting hers. She moved along slowly, tallying the riders ahead of her. When she got to sixteen, she frowned. The seventeenth was her, and that was all there were. Somebody had been left behind.
The group kept moving down the hill and were just rounding a corner in the trail. JoJo thought about hurrying forward to catch up with Max to let him know that she’d be heading back to look for the straggler. But then she thought it would be faster if she just did it and then caught up.
She found a wide space in the trail, turned around and headed back up to the bluff. When she reached it, she couldn’t find the other vehicle. She parked hers, got off and walked toward the tree line. The sun shone brightly on her, making the shadows even deeper beneath the trees. It wasn’t until she’d reached the tree line that she saw the other vehicle. JoJo frowned. She didn’t see the rider anywhere near the ATV.
As she approached the vehicle she called out. “Hello?” Thinking someone had had to make a pit stop in the woods, she didn’t want to embarrass him or her. She called out again. “Hey, just answer me. Let me know who and where you are.”
A twig snapped behind her. Before she could turn, arms clamped around her, trapping her arms within them. Someone taller and stronger than her lifted her off her feet and carried her toward the edge of the cliff. She fought, kicking and screaming as loud as she could, but she knew the people on the ATVs wouldn’t hear them over the roar of their engines. Unless Max turned around and came back looking for her, she was on her own.
She only had seconds to spare before he reached the edge of the cliff. Focusing on the lessons she’d learned in Krav Maga with her feet dangling off the ground, all she could do was kick them, and her arms were completely trapped beneath his. With only one option left to her, she slammed her head back into his jaw as hard as she could.
Though pain shot through the back of her head, she ignored it.
Her captor swore, and his arms loosened.
JoJo pushed free of them and dropped to the ground. By then they were so near to the edge of the cliff, she was only steps away from falling over. She faced the man, and her eyes narrowed. “Curry, what are you doing?” she demanded, hoping to buy some time to figure out how to get around the bigger man.
He blocked her escape.
She had to do something to keep him from throwing her off the cliff.
“Tying up a loose end,” he said.
She stared at him. This man did not have the light eyes of the one in her dreams, but her dream could’ve been wrong. “So, it was you?” she questioned. “You were the one who raped, beat, and buried me alive?”
He sneered. “One out of three.”
“What do you mean? One out of three?”
He frowned. “I didn’t rape or beat you. I was just cleaning up the mess.”
“Then who?” At that moment, it came to her. “Stover?”
Curry snorted. “The man couldn’t keep his dick in his pants. I was always the one who had to clean up after him.”
“You mean there were others?” Her stomach roiled. “But you were the one who buried me in the sand?”
“Yeah, nobody would’ve found you if you’d have just died.”
“But I didn’t.” Her lips pressed into a thin line. “Kind of put a kink in your plans, did I?”
“You had us worried for a while there.” He took a step toward her.
She backed up one more and glanced over the edge of the cliff. She was only a foot away from falling off.
“We got a little worried there when we discovered you’d been found alive and evacuated to Ramstein, Germany. It wasn’t until we learned that you had amnesia that we felt we had a little more time to take care of the loose ends. When Stover retired, he got this idiotic idea to run for political position. Lo and behold, he was running in his home state…where you landed. Couldn’t have you remembering and ruining his chances and mine. So, like I said, just tying up loose ends.” He lunged for her, his hands out, ready to push her over the edge.
JoJo grabbed his arm, bent and used his momentum to fling him over her shoulder. Her plan was to throw herself away from the edge of the cliff at the same time, but he latched onto her arm, and they both went over.
Curry released her as soon as he went over, but he’d already done the damage.
Closer to the rocky side of the bluff than Curry was, JoJo reached out, scrambling for purchase, praying that when she grabbed onto a rocky outcropping she had the strength to keep herself from falling all the way down the three-hundred-foot escarpment. Her knee hit a rocky protrusion, and as soon as her knee hit, her hands found it as she fell down. She clung, but her weight and her momentum jerked her hands free, and she continued her fall downward.
She was close to the side of the cliff, but it was sheer and straight down. JoJo found her life passing before her eyes. She would’ve laughed if she could have. But she reall
y couldn’t die. Not now. Not with Stover still loose.
Then she jolted to a stop. Not at the bottom, but on a very narrow ledge. Her feet found it, her knees buckled, and she almost fell over. For a moment she teetered on the brink. Just when she thought she’d tip backward and fall to her death, JoJo tipped forward against the rocky cliff.
She clung to it, shaking, her body bruised, her fingers bleeding, thanking God that she hadn’t fallen to the bottom. She wasn’t dead. She was alive. Now, all she had to do was wait for somebody to find her.
Chapter 16
The problem with having Brianna ride on the back of his ATV was that Max couldn’t turn far enough around to see how JoJo was coming along. It wasn’t until they came to a bend in the trail that he was able to look back.
His heart fell to the pit of his belly. JoJo wasn’t behind him. She was nowhere in sight. The trail was very narrow at the point. He couldn’t turn around until he’d gone around the bend and found a wider place in the trail. When he started to turn, Brianna clutched at his waist.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“JoJo,” he bit out, “she’s not back there.”
“She’ll catch up,” Briana insisted. “You need to keep following the people in front of us, or we’ll get lost.”
He shook his head. “We have to go back and get JoJo.”
“But I don’t want to go back up the hill. She’ll be fine. She’ll catch up with us.”
“I’m going back,” Max said.
“No,” Briana fired back.
Max stopped the vehicle. “Get off!”
“What? You’re not going to leave me here, are you?”
“Get off,” he said. “Now!”
She slid off the back and stood in the middle of the trail. “You can’t leave me like this.”
Max didn’t respond. He didn’t care. He had to get back to JoJo. In his gut, he knew something was terribly wrong. He gave the ATV full throttle and blasted up the hillside to the top of the bluff. When he got there, he saw JoJo’s ATV parked in the middle of the rise.
JoJo was nowhere to be seen.
He leaped off of his vehicle and yelled, “JoJo!” Max stopped to listen. When he didn’t get a response, he ran to the edge of the cliff and looked down. His stomach clenched when he saw a body laying at the bottom. “JoJo!” he yelled. The body didn’t move. As he studied it he knew it wasn’t her. “JoJo!”
A small voice from below answered. “Max, I’m down here.”
He leaned as far over the edge as he could without falling off. He spotted her clinging to the edge of a very narrow ledge, her body plastered against the stone escarpment. All it would take would be a brisk wind, and it could knock her off. She’d meet the same fate as whoever else it was at the bottom.
“Hang on, sweetheart. I’ll come down to get you.” He had nothing with him. No ropes. No rescue equipment. Nothing. And everybody else was on their way down the hill. He had to go catch up with them and get them to go for help. He had equipment in the back of his truck. If he could get to that, he could at least get down and stabilize her until a rescue team could get there to bring her up in a basket. “I have to go down the hill!” he shouted to her. “I’m going for help. Don’t go anywhere.”
A strangled laugh sounded from below. “I’ll be here.”
Max ran back to his ATV, hopped on and sped back down the hill. He had almost reached the corner where he’d looked back when RJ raced around it and nearly ran into him.
She came to a halt. “What’s going on? Where’s JoJo?”
“JoJo fell over the cliff.”
“Holy shit!” RJ exclaimed.
“I need all of my equipment from the back of my truck. Ropes, D-rings and harnesses. Everything from behind the back seat of my truck. And I need you to call 9-1-1 and get a rescue team out here with a basket. Tell them we have one alive to be rescued and one to be recovered.”
RJ’s eyebrows rose. “Curry? He wasn’t with the rest of the group.”
Now that he thought about it, the person at the bottom of the cliff had worn the clothing colors Curry had been in. Max nodded.
RJ shook her head. “What the hell?”
“I’m sure we’ll learn all about it once we get JoJo up from the cliff ledge. Right now, I need that equipment. ASAP.”
They found a wide place in the trail and both turned. RJ headed downhill while Max headed back up to the cliff. He couldn’t do much until he got his equipment, but he could stay there and provide encouragement until it arrived. Back at the top of the bluff, he parked his ATV, ran to the edge and lay down on his stomach so that he could scoot out as far as he could without falling over and keep an eye on her until help arrived. “I’m back,” he called out. He could swear he heard a sob. “You hanging in there?”
“Doing the best I can,” she answered. “Max?”
“Still with you, baby. Want to tell me what happened?”
“Curry,” she said. “He tried to push me over.” She laughed, her voice catching on a sob. “He succeeded.”
“Why did he do it?”
“Dispose of the evidence,” she said.
Max swore. “That bastard!”
“No kidding,” she said. “He buried me, but he wasn’t the one who beat and raped me.”
The roar of an ATV drew Max’s attention. He rolled onto his side to see who was headed their way. Hoping it was RJ, he was disappointed when he saw Stover pull up behind him. Then it hit him. If Curry was the one who’d buried her, and he wasn’t the one who’d attacked her…
Max leapt to his feet and staggered a few steps on his bum leg. Stover didn’t get off his ATV. Instead, he revved the engine and raced toward Max. He turned right before he got to Max and swung out his leg in an attempt to kick Max over the edge.
Max grabbed the man’s leg and yanked Stover off his ATV.
Stover landed hard on his belly. Max threw himself on top of the man, straddled him and held him down. “It was you, wasn’t it? You’re sick and don’t deserve to breathe the same air as JoJo.”
Stover grunted. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Get off of me.”
“Your friend Curry pushed JoJo off the cliff. He told all.”
“Why would he do that?” Stover said.
Max grabbed Stover’s hair and pulled his head up. “Why would you try to kick me over the edge?”
“I thought it was you who’d pushed JoJo over the edge,” Stover said. “You’re the one who’s a danger to others.”
“Lying bastard.” Max barely resisted the urge to slam Stover’s face into the dirt.
“Is she dead?” Stover asked.
“Why do you want to know? Are you afraid she’ll get her memories back and point to you as the man who raped and beat her?”
“Again, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Stover struggled beneath Max. “Get off me. I’ll have you up on assault and battery charges.”
“Your man Curry confessed before he threw JoJo over the edge.”
“He did?” Stover asked. “Confessed what?”
“You know what,” Max said. “I bet he’d be willing to confess in exchange for leniency on his sentence.”
“You’ve got nothing on me,” Stover said.
“Don’t I?” Max called out, “You doing okay down there, JoJo?”
“Just waiting for my knight in shining armor to save me.”
Stover muttered a curse.
Max leaned close to Stover’s ear. “That’s right, she’s still alive, and she remembers.”
Stover snorted. “It would be my word against hers.”
“Her word and a rape kit.” Max straddled Stover for fifteen more minutes until he heard the sound of engines climbing the hill. He kept up a running conversation with JoJo throughout that fifteen minutes, mostly to reassure himself that she was still alive and hadn’t fallen the rest of the two-hundred-feet to her death.
She was getting weak, her voice shaking more with each
passing minute.
Max could do nothing until he had his equipment.
Moments later, ATVs topped the hill, racing toward him. Gunny, RJ, Cage and Jake pulled to a skidding stop. In the basket of Gunny’s ATV was all of Max’s mountaineering gear. He couldn’t get up until somebody relieved him of holding down Stover.
Jake ran over to where Max was. “I’ll take over from here.”
When Max got up, Stover tried to lunge to his feet. Jake pounced on him, put his knee in his back and slammed him into the dirt.
Max ran to Gunny’s ATV and retrieved his mountaineering equipment. He checked each item carefully before tying off the rope on a tree, stepping into his harness and attaching his D-ring to the rope. Once he had his equipment in place, he stood on the edge of the cliff his heart racing, remembering the last time he’d rappelled.
“Hey, Max,” JoJo called out.
“Yeah, JoJo.”
“You’ve got this,” she said. “Come on down and visit with me.”
“I’m on my way.” He stepped out over the ledge, let out a little rope, and then jumped. After several bounds, he ended up close to where she clung to the rock face of the bluff. Then he eased himself down to where they were even and walked sideways until he was right beside her. He stepped around her so that he was behind her, holding her up against the wall. “Hey, sweetheart,” he said. “We’ve got to stop meeting this way.”
She laughed and sobbed at the same time. “You did it.”
He frowned. “Did what?”
“Faced your fear and conquered it.” Her voice shook. “Congratulations.”
“I didn’t come down here to face my fear. I came after the woman who has captured my heart.” He leaned close to her and pressed a kiss to her temple. “Okay, so yeah, I’ve faced my fear of ever falling in love, but I’m still afraid.”
“Of what?” JoJo tried to turn her head, teetered and pressed her cheek against the stone wall.
Max leaned into her, holding her against the cliff. “I’m afraid she won’t feel the same.”
“Are you talking about me?” JoJo asked.