Chapter 57
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Holy mother of god. My heart dies on the spot as the cliff slides away with a roar. I stumble toward her as she vanishes. “Kate!”
Mikail scurries back from the edge of the crumbling ground. “Fuck! Fuck! Kate!”
Everything goes instantly crystal clear. I can only hear my raging heart. My body goes into pure fight mode as I drop to the ground and crawl toward the last place I saw her before she dropped away.
My throat constricts and the most important name in the world will barely come out of my spasming muscles. “Kate—”
Rocks and sand tumble away from the edge as I crawl closer. The sound off the falling earth is a horrid ominous sound that’s nearly instantly swallowed by the roar below. A hundred feet down, the ocean crashes against the rock cliff in a dull roar.
As I crawl the final few inches to the edge, I say every kind of prayer I know. Please, please let there be a ledge below.
“Kate, can you hear me?”
That’s when I hear the sweetest sound ever known to a man’s ears. “Wolf! I’m here.”
Belly crawling, I hang my head over the edge. Down twenty feet on a sandy ledge, Kate’s pressed agains the wall.
I almost pass out from relief. “Hang on, baby. I’ll get you up here some fucking way.”
“Wolf! It's not safe. Don’t come down here. The cliff won’t hold you.”
The sound of stomping feet behind me makes me throw up a hand. “Easy, careful. It’s sketchy as fuck over here. She’s safe for the moment.”
“I’ve got the rope from my truck. A climbing harness, and some carabiners.”
Something slaps against my thigh. I reach back and grab the tail of Mikail’s rope. “Is this thing strong enough to hold both Kate and me?”
“Yep. It’s a good climbing rope.”
“Have carabiners?”
Three carabiners jangle as they hit the ground next to my thigh. The climbing harness lands next to them. “Damn good work, man.”
“I rappel on some cliffs near here.”
I carefully sit up and get to work tying, configuring a rescue rig. “Thank fuck. You’re going to have to lash this to one of those boulders.”
“I’m on it. Already picked out the one.”
While Mikail rigs up the rope, I scoot back to the cliff. “I’m lowering a climbing harness down to you. Slip it on but do it as carefully as possible. Got it?”
She nods and gives me a thumbs up. “Please be careful. I don’t want you to fall.”
“Dont’ worry about me. Don’t move an inch you don’t have to.”
When Mikail gives me a signal that he’s done, I begin to lower the gear.
“Wolf.”
I freeze. “What, sweetheart?”
“I love you.”
Growling, I begin lowering the harness again. “Bloody hell, Kate. I love you too. Now, don’t talk. You’ll make me choked up and I need a clear head right now.”
She holds her hand out and gives me the thumbs up again.
For the next five minutes, I can’t think, move, or get my damned lungs to work. Kate very carefully, very slowly works on the climbing harness. Until she’s secured, I don’t take my eyes off her or let the prayer in my head go.
“Okay, I’m in.”
“We’re going to start pulling you up. I won’t be able to see you, so you’ll have to yell if anything looks wrong.”
“Gotcha.”
I scoot back from the cliff and join Mikail where he looks like he’s ready to chew through the boulder he’s got the rope lashed around. “Time to get her up here.”
Together, we use the crude pulley system to winch Kate up. Bit by bit. Slowly so we don’t unsettle anything on the cliff from the rope.
I’m sweating bullets. Inside and out.
“Wolf! Wait! Stop!”
Mikail mutters, “Fuck. I don’t like the sound of that.”
I belly crawl back to the cliff edge. Kate’s dangling in the air, about three meters below the edge.
She’s staring in disbelief at the rock cliff just a few feet in front of her. “It’s here!”
“What’s here?”
“The meteorite.”
“What the hell?”
She’s smiling from ear to ear, suddenly completely oblivious to the fact that she’s dangling over the ocean where she nearly plunged to a horrible death.
“It’s here. Right here. I can see the green stones inside the crack.”
“Fucking hell.”
She reaches for the cliff. My blood turns to glass shards. I bellow, “Don’t touch it! That might trigger another slide.”
“It’s big, Wolf. Like the size of a beanbag. And it’s got this unreal light inside of it. What are we going to do?”
“Come on. We’re not having this conversation until you’re safely a hundred yards away from this fucking cliff.”
She glances up at me and smiles the softest, tenderest smile ever. And all that ice in my veins thaws, but it won’t start flowing again until she’s out of this fucking lurch.
Inch by inch, the two of us pull her up. When she reaches the lip of the cliff, Mikail and I tie off the rope. Five seconds later, she’s in my arms and I drag her up on top of me.
“You really are my knight in shining armor,” she says as she lowers her mouth to mine.
“You aged me a hundred years.”
Mikail laughs, “I told you that you were a geezer.”
Carefully, I pull Kate back from the edge. When we’re on solid ground, I drag her up and into my arms. “You’re in trouble, young lady. You should know better than to get near that kind of cliff.”
She wraps her arms around me. “I love you, grouchy rescuer, bear, Knight in shining armor.”
I shake my head as I crush her. “Trouble. Trouble. Trouble.” I press my face against the top of her head. “You smell like dirt.”
“You too. Maybe we should get a shower. Together.”
I smack her ass. “My work here is not done yet.”
She leaps back. “What do you mean? The rock is safe, no one will get it.”
I pry her fingers off my shirt where she’s got a death grip on me. “I’m going over that cliff and blowing that fucking rock into the ocean.”
Terror fills her eyes. “No. You can’t go down there. It’s too dangerous. What if something happens and you fall? Or you get blown up? I can’t take this. I just can’t.”
I tip her chin up for a kiss. “Luv, let’s finish this, once and for all.
Then there will be no reason for anyone to try to excavate this island.
We’ll burn that letter. We’ll meet with the elders and tell them the rock was destroyed.
Wilton will be out of the way once we explain everything to your father about how he was just trying to make his sick father happy.
His whole mission was to finish the quest that neither his father nor his great grandfather had ever completed. ”
I wrap my arms around Wolf’s waist again. “Isn’t there some other way?”
I kiss her and pull away.
She watches me, her arms folded tightly over her heart as I prepare the explosives and slip into the harness.
“Go with Mikail.”
She doesn’t speak as Mikail loops an arm around her shoulders and guides her away. My heart thuds and twists as I watch them go. If anything happens, he will watch over her.
When they disappear out of sight, I take a few moments to steady myself. I can’t be rattled, or distracted. I need to have my clear, cool head. I’ve done a lot of crazy shit before, but for the first time in over ten years, I actually care that I come back from the assignment.
“Alright, God. If you think this marriage thing is what’s right for me, then let me make it through this.”