A WEALTHY WOMAN PUSHED A PREGNANT WOMAN IN A WHEELCHAIR TOWARD A DEADLY CLIFF—BUT HER BROTHER RISKED HIS LIFE TO SAVE HER! WHAT HAPPENED NEXT WAS EVEN MORE TERRIFYING...

Twelve miles away, in the freezing underbelly of the Black Ridge Ravine, the wind howled like a pack of starving wolves.

Search and Rescue had called off the recovery operation three hours ago due to blizzard warnings. The snow was covering the terrain at two inches an hour. To the Sterling family, Daniel was a closed case.

Beneath a massive overhang of frozen slate, half-buried under a blanket of fallen pine boughs and powdered snow, something moved.

A hand—blue, raw, with broken knuckles—erupted from the drift.

Daniel dragged his upper torso onto a shelf of dry rock. Every breath tasted like shattered glass. His ribs were cracked in at least three places; his right shoulder was completely dislocated. When Victoria had stepped on his hand, he hadn't fallen straight down into the rocks. He had hit a dense canopy of ancient Douglas firs sixty feet below the rim, their thick, snow-cushioned branches breaking his fall before he tumbled into a deep powder bank.

"Emily..." he coughed, spitting dark blood onto the pristine white snow.

He reached into his inner jacket pocket with his left hand. By some miracle, his heavy-duty satellite communication unit—the one he used for his backcountry search contracts—was still intact, though its screen was spiderwebbed.

The screen blinked: *SIGNAL ACQUIRED - 1 BAR.*

Daniel didn't call the police. He knew the sheriff of Black Ridge County was on the Sterling payroll; Victoria donated millions to his re-election campaign every four years. Calling 911 was a death warrant.

Instead, he dialed an unlisted burner number memorized during his five years in Marine Recon.

The line clicked on the third ring.

"Speak," a gravelly voice answered.

"Vance," Daniel wheezed, his vision tunneling as hypothermia crept into his core. "It's Daniel Reyes."

A sharp intake of breath on the other end. "Reyes? The news just reported your death on local TV. They said you went off Devil's Leap."

"The matriarch pushed Em," Daniel said, tooth enamel grinding together against the agonizing pain of resetting his own shoulder against the rock wall. *Snap.* A guttural roar died in his throat. "She tried to murder her. She thinks I’m fish food."

"Where are you?"

"Marker forty-two. North slope. Bring the untracked rig, cold-weather trauma kit, and two clean rifles. And Vance?"

"Yeah?"