Chapter 1 - The Fall They Called an Accident

The last thing my husband said before he pushed his nine-month-pregnant wife off an icy Colorado cliff was, “Try not to make this difficult.”

Then Michael Carter put both hands against my shoulders and shoved.

I remember the pressure of his palms more clearly than I remember falling.

That was the part that stayed with me.

Not the scream.

Not the snow.

Not even the sight of the rocks rushing up beneath me.

His hands.

Steady.

Deliberate.

Certain.

There had been no hesitation in them.

One second I was standing on a windswept overlook in Rocky Mountain National Park, one hand under my belly, begging my husband to stop fighting with me and take us home.

The next, there was nothing beneath my boots.

My fingers scraped across ice.

My wedding ring struck stone.

I heard my own scream break apart in the wind as I dropped through blowing snow.

Above me, Michael stepped toward the edge.

For one ridiculous second, I thought he was going to reach down.

I thought instinct had returned.

I thought twenty-two years of knowing each other, seven years of marriage, and the unborn son he had spent months pretending to love might have been stronger than whatever rage had flashed through him.

Then I saw his face.

He was smiling.

“Don’t worry,” he called down.

His voice was almost gentle.

“You and the baby won’t suffer long.”

Then I fell again.

The world became white, gray, and pain.

My left shoulder hit something first.

Then my hip.

Then my back.

Air exploded from my lungs.

I slid over packed snow, clawing at anything I could reach until my right hand caught the twisted root of a pine growing almost sideways from the cliff.

The root tore skin from my palm.

I held on anyway.

My boots swung over open air.

Below me was another drop so deep that the storm swallowed the bottom.

I had maybe two seconds before my fingers gave out.

I kicked hard.

My left boot found a narrow shelf of rock.

I shoved myself sideways and collapsed onto a ledge no wider than a kitchen counter.

For several seconds, I couldn't move.

I couldn't breathe.

Then my baby moved.

A small pressure rolled beneath my ribs.

My entire mind snapped back into focus.

I curled around my stomach.

“No,” I whispered.

Snow covered my eyelashes.

“No, no, no. Stay with me.”

My name is Claire Carter.

At that moment, I was thirty-four years old.

I was thirty-eight weeks pregnant with my first child.

And I had just been pushed off a mountain by the man who was supposed to drive me to the hospital if my contractions started.

I did not cry.

That surprises people when they hear the story.

They expect screaming.

Panic.

Prayers.

There was no room for any of that.

Not yet.

Panic uses oxygen.

Crying wastes heat.

And I had no idea how long I was going to be trapped there.

I checked what I could.

No obvious bleeding.

My left shoulder screamed when I moved it, but my fingers still worked.

My right palm was torn open.

My hip hurt badly.

My ankle felt wrong.

But my baby had moved.

That was the only result that mattered.

I pressed both hands against my stomach and waited.

A few seconds later, another kick.

Weak.

But real.

“Good boy,” I whispered.

Then I heard voices above me.

At first, I thought Michael had changed his mind.

I thought maybe he was looking for a way down.

Then I heard a woman.

“Is she dead?”

Ashley Morgan.

Michael's executive assistant.

Twenty-nine years old.

Perfect blond hair.

Perfect white teeth.

A habit of touching Michael's arm whenever she laughed.

A woman who had spent the last year telling me how lucky I was to have a husband who worked so hard.

I slowly lifted my face toward the cliff.

I couldn't see them through the snow.

But I could hear Michael clearly.

“For fifty million dollars, she better be.”

Ashley gave a nervous laugh.

“You’re sure the policy pays if it’s an accident?”

“It pays if there’s a body or enough evidence that no reasonable person could believe she survived.”

“What about the baby?”

Michael was silent for half a second.

Then he said, “The policy doesn’t care about the baby.”

My throat closed.

Ashley whispered, “That sounded cold.”

“You knew what this was.”

“I knew about the money.”

“You knew about everything.”

“I didn’t know you were going to do it yourself.”

Michael’s voice sharpened.

“Then stop pretending you have a conscience now.”

Their footsteps moved away.

I waited until I could no longer hear them.

Then I started shaking.

Not from the cold.

From comprehension.

This had not been a fight that turned violent.

This had been planned.

Michael had brought me to that overlook because the road camera was out during the storm.

He had insisted I leave my phone in the car because he said the battery was almost dead and we might need it later.

He had chosen boots with smooth soles as a “gift” two days earlier.

He had argued loudly with me in front of strangers at the lodge, then apologized in public.

A trail of witnesses.

A story already prepared.

Pregnant wife upset.

Bad weather.

Icy overlook.

Tragic fall.

I pressed my forehead against the snow.

“Think,” I told myself.

The ledge sloped toward the drop.

The pine root above me was too far to reach now.

The cliff wall to my right had a narrow crack filled with frozen dirt.

To my left, maybe twenty feet away, the ledge widened around a bend.

I had to move.

My body disagreed.

My ankle burned the moment I tried to stand.

I bit down on my glove.

“No sound.”

The storm answered with a roar.

I moved sideways on my knees.

Every few feet I stopped and checked for movement from the baby.

“Come on, sweetheart.”

A faint kick.

“Good.”

By the time I reached the wider section, my vision had started flashing black at the edges.

There was a shallow recess in the rock, barely a cave, but it blocked some of the wind.

Inside, I found something that changed everything.

A length of orange climbing cord.

Old.

Frayed.

But tied around an iron piton hammered into the stone.

Someone had used the recess before.

I pulled on the cord.

It held.

I followed it with my eyes.

It disappeared downward around another shelf.

“You have got to be kidding me.”

The baby kicked again.

“Fine. We’re doing this.”

I looped the cord around my right wrist and lowered myself over the edge.

My left shoulder nearly gave out.

I screamed into the wind.

The cord led to a lower slope covered in deep snow.

I landed badly, rolled, and came to rest against a fallen log.

That was when the contraction hit.

It was different from every practice contraction I had felt before.

This one started in my back and wrapped around my stomach with terrifying purpose.

“No.”

I stared down at my belly.

“Not here.”

Another contraction came eight minutes later.

Then another after seven.

I crawled through snow because walking was impossible.

The forest became darker.

I had no idea which direction led toward the road.

Then I saw a light.

Dim.

Yellow.

Moving between trees.

I flattened myself behind a boulder.

Michael?

A ranger?

Someone else?

“Hello?” a man shouted.

I did not answer.

The light came closer.

“Anybody out here?”

The voice was older.

Breathless.

Not Michael.

I risked it.

“Here!”

The flashlight jerked toward me.

A man in a red park-service jacket stumbled through the snow with a radio clipped to his chest.

His eyes widened.

“Jesus Christ.”

“Don’t say that yet.”

He knelt beside me.

“I’m Daniel Reed. I’m a backcountry ranger. What happened?”

“My husband pushed me.”

Daniel stared at me.

“What?”

“My husband pushed me off the overlook.”

He looked toward the ridge.

“Are you sure?”

I almost laughed.

“My shoulder remembers him.”

Another contraction seized me.

I grabbed Daniel’s sleeve.

His face changed.

“Oh, hell.”

“That sounds more appropriate.”

“How far apart?”

“Six minutes. Maybe less.”

Daniel raised his radio.

“Dispatch, I have a live patient below Raven Ridge. Female, third trimester, trauma, possible active labor. I need medical and extraction now.”

Static cracked.

Then a woman answered, “Copy. Identity?”

Daniel looked at me.

I opened my mouth.

Then stopped.

If Michael believed I was alive, he would try again.

If he believed I was dead, I had time.

“Don’t use my name on open radio.”

Daniel frowned.

“Ma’am—”

“My husband tried to kill me for fifty million dollars.”

He held my gaze for three seconds.

Then he pressed the transmit button.

“Identity unknown at this time.”

The next two hours came in fragments.

A rescue sled.

A medic named Tessa cutting away my boot.

Daniel telling me to keep my eyes open.

My baby’s heartbeat on a portable monitor.

A helicopter that could not land because of the storm.

An ambulance waiting on a service road.

At Estes Valley Medical Center, a doctor looked at the fetal monitor and said, “We need to deliver.”

I grabbed her wrist.

“Is he okay?”

“He’s in distress.”

“Can you save him?”

“We’re going to try.”

“Then stop talking to me.”

The operating room lights were the brightest thing I had ever seen.

When I woke, the world was quiet.

A woman sat beside my bed.

Dark hair.

Sheriff’s badge.

She introduced herself as Detective Mara Singh.

“Your son is alive,” she said before anything else.

My eyes filled instantly.

“Where?”

“NICU. Small, angry, and apparently already bossing people around.”

I covered my mouth.

Mara gave me a moment.

Then she placed a phone on the table.

“You asked the medical staff not to register you under your legal name.”

“Yes.”

“You told Ranger Reed your husband pushed you.”

“Yes.”

“Claire, I need you to understand something.”

She turned the screen toward me.

A local news broadcast showed Michael standing beneath flashing lights at the overlook.

He was crying.

Or pretending to.

“My wife is missing,” he told reporters. “I tried to reach her, but the ice gave way. I couldn’t save her.”

Ashley stood behind him with a blanket around her shoulders.

Mara paused the video.

“Your husband says Ashley arrived later after he called her in panic.”

“She was already there.”

“Can you prove it?”

“I heard them.”

“Anything else?”

I stared at the frozen image of Michael’s face.

Then I remembered something.

In the car, before we got out, Michael had tossed my purse into the back seat.

My phone was inside it.

I had assumed it was dead.

But I had turned on automatic audio notes for childbirth practice that morning because my therapist wanted me to record breathing exercises.

The phone might have recorded after Michael thought the screen went black.

“My phone.”

Mara leaned forward.

“What about it?”

“It was in Michael’s car.”

“Do you know the passcode?”

“Yes.”

“Could there be evidence?”

“If the battery lasted.”

Mara stood.

“Then we have a problem.”

“What?”

“Michael’s car was found abandoned forty minutes ago.”

My blood turned cold.

“Where is he?”

“We don’t know.”

On the television, the broadcast cut to a photograph of me beneath the words PRESUMED DEAD.

Then the anchor said something that made every muscle in my body lock.

“Family representatives have announced that Claire Carter’s memorial service will be held Friday.”

Friday.

Three days away.

Michael was not waiting for a body.

He was moving forward.

And if he was already planning my funeral, he was also planning to collect the money.

I looked at Mara.

“Let him.”

She frowned.

“Let him what?”

“Let him bury me.”

“You want us to keep you hidden?”

“I want him to believe he won.”

Mara’s expression hardened into something almost like respect.

“And then?”

I looked toward the NICU doors down the hall.

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Then back at the screen where my husband was pretending to mourn me.

“Then I’m going to my own funeral.”