Page 36 of In the Dead of Night

He glanced toward the side of the house. His pulse redlined when he noticed footprints in the wet grass and sand. There was no way old footprints could survive days of rain. They had to be fresh.

Nick raced to the tracks and followed them north, toward the gully-washer that ran from the road and emptied into the ocean. All the while, his mind conjured images of all the terrible things he might find.

“Sara! Where are you?”

The prints led him into the ravine and up the other side. Two sets of them, he was sure. Larger ones with a plain sole. And smaller imprints, with a sharper heel. Sara’s, he thought.

The footprints led to an outcropping of rock on the north rim of the ravine. Nick paused to listen, but heard nothing over the downpour and the crash of the sea. Cupping his hands on either side of his mouth he called out her name.

He was midway down the rock when he heard a cry. A first, Nick thought the sound was a figment of his imagination, brought about by wanting to hear her voice so badly his brain had conjured it. Then he heard it again.

He rushed to the top of the rock and looked around wildly. “Sara!”

“I’m here!”

His stomach dropped when he realized her voice was coming from below. Scrambling to the ledge, he knelt and peered over. His breath jammed in his lungs when he spotted her on a narrow shelf ten feet down. The first thing that registered was that she had blood on her face. A dozen horrible scenarios rushed through his brain. She’d been shot. She’d fallen and struck her head. Then it occurred to him that she was standing, trying to climb back up the face of the rock.

Dangerous, considering that just a few feet from where she stood, the ledge dropped fifty feet to the rocky beach below.

“Don’t move,” he shouted. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m okay. Just…banged up.”

“Stay put. Don’t try to climb up. I’ll come get you.”

“Be careful,” she cried. “There’s someone else up there. He pushed me.”

His sidearm was out of its holster even before she’d completed the sentence. Nick stood, looked uneasily around. The hairs on his nape prickled when he spotted the crude letters scrawled on a rock face ten feet away in dripping red paint. The same type of paint that had been used to write the words on her car window the day before and again today.

Blaine Stocker.

“What the hell?”

Crossing to the rock, he set his finger against the paint—Blaine Stocker.

The name sparked a memory, but he couldn’t place it. The only thing he knew for certain was that he’d heard it before. The paint was slowly being washed away by the rain. The cop in him wanted to preserve it for clues, but the man in him wanted only to get Sara off of that ledge.

To do that he needed a rope. Ten feet wasn’t that far to pull someone up, but the rocks were slick with moss. If he couldn’t find a foothold, pulling her up would be difficult. But Nick didn’t want to leave her alone. As far as he knew the bastard who’d pushed her might return to finish the job.

He walked back to the ledge. Setting his gun on the ground, he stretched out on his stomach and reached for her. “Can you reach my hand?”

She tried, but their fingers were several inches apart. “Maybe we can use my purse strap. It’s leather.”

“That’ll work.”

Grabbing her bag, Sara stepped up on a small jut of rock, stood on her tiptoes and extended the strap.

Nick scooted dangerously close to the edge and grasped the strap. Her fingertips touched his hand as he twisted it around his fist. She did the same, wrapping the leather strap around her wrist. “Okay, I’m ready.”

“Whatever you do, don’t let go,” he said.

“Like that’s an option at this point.”

He dug in with his feet as much as he could and began to pull. His muscles quivered with the exertion. Even though he was soaked, sweat broke out on his skin.

“Use your feet to climb,” he ground out.

He could hear her choking with effort as she squirmed and pushed her way up the sheer face of rock. Her free hand grasped dry grass next to his shoulder, her fingers digging into mud like claws.