Page 126 of My Beautiful Sin

He didn’t have much time.

“Don’t move, baby,” he called down. “I’m coming to get you.”

Chapter Forty-Three

I’m coming to get you.

I want to cry when I hear Devlin’s words. More than that, I want to call out to him. To tell him I want him. That I need him. And that I have to get out of this mess so I can show him just how much I love him.

But I can’t say any of that. I can hear the tree branches creaking, and I know that’s all that’s holding me and Shelby in place. And when I look down, all I see is a deadly fall onto the rooftops far, far below. If I speak, I move. And if I move, I just might die.

“I’m coming down,” Devlin says, and I bite back a whimper. “Don’t move. Don’t look. I’ve got a rope. It’s tied off. I’m going to come down, get you, and we’re going to come back up together.”

I have to fight an ironic laugh. Devlin’s rappelling down to save me. How poetic is that?

“Okay. I’m coming,” he says. “All you have to do for me is absolutely nothing.”

I close my eyes, wishing I could tell him that I’m unhurt. Just terrified. He’s operating on faith alone. There’s no way he can know that I’m conscious, much less alive. But he’s coming for me.

I’m not surprised. I know well enough that Devlin will always come for me.

I hear the sound of his feet scraping the cliffside, his heavy breathing as he moves carefully closer.

And then, in the distance, I hear a siren growing louder and louder as Devlin moves closer.

“I’m right here, baby.” He’s so close I can feel the breath on the back of my neck. “Move slowly and let me loop this around you.”

I swallow, then very slowly shift so that I’m looking up at him. I’m holding the steering wheel with one hand and the door with the other, and my body is hanging out over the void. I have to pull myself up toward the steering wheel, and as I do, I feel the car shift and hear the hard, brittle snap of the tree that’s been holding me in place.

“Fuck,” Devlin says, at the same time that the floor seems to fall out from under me. I hear a sharp, metallic clang, and at the same time Devlin’s arms lock under mine.

He yanks me toward him, and my legs go free as Shelby drops away. I have only a moment to gasp—to mourn what will soon be a tangled mess of metal—when she comes to a sharp, violent stop, the downward motion stopped by the heavy cable now hooked to her bumper.

I sigh with relief even though Devlin and I are dangling over the abyss. Shelby’s safe. I’m in Devlin’s arms.

And right then, I know I’m going to be just fine.

“Jesus, Ellie,” Lamar cries as he pulls me into his arms. I’m still tied to Devlin, and so he’s yanked close, too, as Lamar captures him in a hug big enough to encompass us both. “You have to stop this shit—driving fast, taking wild curves. How many times have I told you—”

“I wasn’t,” I say, pulling back so I can look at them both. I shift my attention to Devlin. “I was being careful because I was on my way to see you.”

I see the moment he understands my deeper meaning, and he lifts the hand he’s been holding so tightly and presses it to his lips.

“So, what? You’re saying you just lost control?” Lamar asks as Tamra joins us, her face still pinched with worry. “That this was a freak accident?”

“She’s saying that somebody tried to kill her,” Devlin says.

Lamar looks at me, and I nod in confirmation.

“Who?” he asks, his voice as steely as the metallic grinding coming from the slow engine of the chain pulling up my car.

“I don’t know.” I look between the two men. “It was a black Tesla. I thought it was you until—well, until they forced me over a cliff,” I add, my eyes on Devlin. I draw a breath. “Now, my best guess is Joseph Blackstone. If you’re getting close to proving he’s behind the foundation’s security breaches, then killing me makes for a quite a distraction.”

“True,” Devlin says, as Lamar taps something into his phone. “I happen to know that Blackstone’s currently in Utah.”

“Yes, but—”

Devlin rests a hand on Tamra’s shoulder, interrupting her. “You’re right, of course. He wouldn’t have done this personally. One of his flunkies.”