Page 125 of My Beautiful Sin

“It’s Ellie,” she said, then took his arm as he stumbled back, cursing himself for dismissing his first instinct. “And it’s Christopher.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She’s not answering her phone, and I think she’s in danger. I was doing research on—”

“Get in the car,” he said. “Tell me on the way.”

“Where are we going?” she asked as she strapped on her seatbelt and he started the engine.

He tossed her his phone. “To find her.” He gave her the password then told her to track Ellie’s location. He didn’t know where he was going, but if she’d had an accident, she was probably in the canyons. Damn her for driving too fast on those roads. She had skill, but that wasn’t always enough, and—

He frowned, Tamra’s words coming again to him. “What about Christopher?”

“The signal keeps popping on and off, but it looks like she’s on Winding Hill Road.”

“Terrible signal quality there. It’ll be hard to pinpoint. But we’ll find her. Hold on,” he said, as he took off down Pacific like a rocket, veering through traffic until he was climbing the canyon roads. “Christopher,” he pressed, his voice as hard as steel. “Tell me.”

“I’ve been doing research for Brandy. She wanted the Laguna Leader to run an article on the author who’s researching a book in our little town.”

He could feel his pulse beat in his neck. “Go on.” He didn’t have a clue where this was going, but if Christopher was going after Ellie, then the bastard was a dead man.

“Christopher Doyle is a pen name. His real name is Christopher Morelli Blackstone.”

Devlin slammed on the brakes at a four-way stop. “Say that again.”

“He’s Joseph Blackstone’s half-brother. And maybe it’s nothing, but with the threatening texts and now Ellie not answering her phone, I—”

“No,” Devlin said. “It’s definitely something.”

How they got to Winding Hills Road without an accident, Devlin didn’t know. He was driving blind, pushed forward with fear and fury, and taking the curves at a dangerous speed, especially in his Land Rover, and slowing down only when Tamra reminded him that they wouldn’t be able to help Ellie if they went over themselves.

Her words were still hanging in the air when he took the sharpest curve, then gasped at what he saw up ahead—skid marks burned into the road. And terminating right at the edge of the cliff.

Bile rose in his throat, fear covering him like a dark blanket. She couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t be dead.

He didn’t remember slamming on the brakes or killing the engine. He didn’t remember running toward the cliff’s edge.

There was nothing in his head until the moment he reached the edge. Until he forced himself to look over, then felt his knees give out as relief quickly shifted back to terror.

He could see her—but her position was ridiculously perilous and she was deathly still, half out of the car, with part of her body resting on the open door trapped in the tree’s twisted branches.

He had no way of knowing if she was even alive, though he refused to believe she was dead. The car had gone over and Ellie must have been trying to get out before it bounced and rolled all the way down the sheer cliff face.

It was that attempt that saved both her and the car, he thought. The open door had caught on a deeply rooted tree that grew at an angle seemingly out of the rock. Its roots must go deep, Devlin knew, in order to have sustained the car and not been torn free.

Still, there was pressure and the force of the car’s weight and the intense pull of gravity. Any moment, this precarious nest could come crashing down, and Ellie along with it.

“Oh, my God.” Tamra had come up behind him, her voice a whisper “That’s a miracle. If the car had gone all the way down. If it slips now…”

“I know.” The drop beyond the car’s resting place was deadly. And any tremor might send the car tumbling down into the canyon, and Ellie to her death.

“With me,” he told Tamra, who followed him back to the SUV.

Devlin opened the back and scoured the few things he kept back there. A jack. A crowbar. A length of chain and another of rope.

He took the rope, then hurried back, slowing his pace when he reached the shoulder, terrified that even the pressure of his footfalls could send the car skidding down.

He reached the edge, said a silent prayer, then looked down.