She only had seconds to spare before he reached the edge of the cliff. Focusing on the lessons she’d learned in Krav Maga with her feet dangling off the ground, all she could do was kick them, and her arms were completely trapped beneath his. With only one option left to her, she slammed her head back into his jaw as hard as she could.
Though pain shot through the back of her head, she ignored it.
Her captor swore, and his arms loosened.
JoJo pushed free of them and dropped to the ground. By then they were so near to the edge of the cliff, she was only steps away from falling over. She faced the man, and her eyes narrowed. “Curry, what are you doing?” she demanded, hoping to buy some time to figure out how to get around the bigger man.
He blocked her escape.
She had to do something to keep him from throwing her off the cliff.
“Tying up a loose end,” he said.
She stared at him. This man did not have the light eyes of the one in her dreams, but her dream could’ve been wrong. “So, it was you?” she questioned. “You were the one who raped, beat, and buried me alive?”
He sneered. “One out of three.”
“What do you mean? One out of three?”
He frowned. “I didn’t rape or beat you. I was just cleaning up the mess.”
“Then who?” At that moment, it came to her. “Stover?”
Curry snorted. “The man couldn’t keep his dick in his pants. I was always the one who had to clean up after him.”
“You mean there were others?” Her stomach roiled. “But you were the one who buried me in the sand?”
“Yeah, nobody would’ve found you if you’d have just died.”
“But I didn’t.” Her lips pressed into a thin line. “Kind of put a kink in your plans, did I?”
“You had us worried for a while there.” He took a step toward her.
She backed up one more and glanced over the edge of the cliff. She was only a foot away from falling off.
“We got a little worried there when we discovered you’d been found alive and evacuated to Ramstein, Germany. It wasn’t until we learned that you had amnesia that we felt we had a little more time to take care of the loose ends. When Stover retired, he got this idiotic idea to run for political position. Lo and behold, he was running in his home state…where you landed. Couldn’t have you remembering and ruining his chances and mine. So, like I said, just tying up loose ends.” He lunged for her, his hands out, ready to push her over the edge.
JoJo grabbed his arm, bent and used his momentum to fling him over her shoulder. Her plan was to throw herself away from the edge of the cliff at the same time, but he latched onto her arm, and they both went over.
Curry released her as soon as he went over, but he’d already done the damage.
Closer to the rocky side of the bluff than Curry was, JoJo reached out, scrambling for purchase, praying that when she grabbed onto a rocky outcropping she had the strength to keep herself from falling all the way down the three-hundred-foot escarpment. Her knee hit a rocky protrusion, and as soon as her knee hit, her hands found it as she fell down. She clung, but her weight and her momentum jerked her hands free, and she continued her fall downward.
She was close to the side of the cliff, but it was sheer and straight down. JoJo found her life passing before her eyes. She would’ve laughed if she could have. But she really couldn’t die. Not now. Not with Stover still loose.
Then she jolted to a stop. Not at the bottom, but on a very narrow ledge. Her feet found it, her knees buckled, and she almost fell over. For a moment she teetered on the brink. Just when she thought she’d tip backward and fall to her death, JoJo tipped forward against the rocky cliff.
She clung to it, shaking, her body bruised, her fingers bleeding, thanking God that she hadn’t fallen to the bottom. She wasn’t dead. She was alive. Now, all she had to do was wait for somebody to find her.
Chapter 16
The problem with having Brianna ride on the back of his ATV was that Max couldn’t turn far enough around to see how JoJo was coming along. It wasn’t until they came to a bend in the trail that he was able to look back.
His heart fell to the pit of his belly. JoJo wasn’t behind him. She was nowhere in sight. The trail was very narrow at the point. He couldn’t turn around until he’d gone around the bend and found a wider place in the trail. When he started to turn, Brianna clutched at his waist.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“JoJo,” he bit out, “she’s not back there.”
“She’ll catch up,” Briana insisted. “You need to keep following the people in front of us, or we’ll get lost.”
He shook his head. “We have to go back and get JoJo.”
“But I don’t want to go back up the hill. She’ll be fine. She’ll catch up with us.”
“I’m going back,” Max said.
“No,” Briana fired back.
Max stopped the vehicle. “Get off!”
“What? You’re not going to leave me here, are you?”
“Get off,” he said. “Now!”
She slid off the back and stood in the middle of the trail. “You can’t leave me like this.”
Max didn’t respond. He didn’t care. He had to get back to JoJo. In his gut, he knew something was terribly wrong. He gave the ATV full throttle and blasted up the hillside to the top of the bluff. When he got there, he saw JoJo’s ATV parked in the middle of the rise.
JoJo was nowhere to be seen.
He leaped off of his vehicle and yelled, “JoJo!” Max stopped to listen. When he didn’t get a response, he ran to the
