“I’ve finally found you.”

The words barely reached my ears before the rescuer tightened the straps around my body and shouted something into his radio.

“She’s alive, but she’s losing consciousness. We need the medical team on the ground now. And somebody get an obstetric surgeon on standby!”

I tried to speak, but my lips had gone numb. The helicopter blades thundered above me, and the man with the silver hair kept one gloved hand wrapped around mine as if he were afraid I might disappear if he let go.

“Please,” I whispered. “My baby.”

His expression changed.

“Your son is still fighting. Do you hear me, Emma? Your little boy is fighting.”

A sob escaped me.

“How do you know my name?”

He stared at me for a moment, and something painful moved across his face.

“Because I’ve spent twenty-eight years looking for you.”

Twenty-eight years.

The numbers made no sense. I was twenty-eight years old, and my mother had raised me alone. Whenever I asked about my father, she gave me the same answer: he had died before I was born.

There had never been a funeral photograph, an old letter, or even a story about how they had met. Just silence.

Yet the man holding my hand looked exactly like the stranger in the photograph my mother had hidden inside a locked wooden box.

“Who are you?” I managed.

“Gabriel Rowan.”

He swallowed hard.

“I’m your father.”

The helicopter lurched as it banked toward the valley.

“No,” I whispered.

“I know this is a terrible way for us to meet.”

“You can’t be.”

“I wish I could explain everything right now.”

He leaned closer, his eyes shining with tears.

“But first, you have to live.”

I wanted to tell him that my husband had pushed me from the cliff. I wanted to explain the insurance policy, the conversation I’d overheard, and the terrible smile Michael had worn before I fell.

Instead, a violent wave of pain tore through my abdomen.

I gasped.

Gabriel shouted for the medical team again.

The next few minutes blurred together. When the helicopter landed, several paramedics rushed forward with a stretcher. Someone cut away my snow-soaked jacket. Another person placed an oxygen mask over my face.

“Pregnant female, severe hypothermia, suspected internal injuries,” one paramedic called. “We need to move!”

I reached blindly for Gabriel.

He caught my hand before they loaded me into the waiting ambulance.

“Don’t leave me,” I whispered.

His face crumpled.

“I have already lost too much time with you. I’m not leaving now.”

The ambulance doors slammed shut.

As we sped toward the hospital, a young paramedic leaned over me.

“Emma, I need you to stay awake. Can you tell me how far along you are?”

“Thirty-four weeks.”

“Have you felt the baby move recently?”

I nodded weakly.

“On the ledge. I felt him.”

She exchanged a worried glance with her colleague.

“All right. We’re going to take care of both of you.”

The siren screamed through the winter afternoon.

I pressed my fingers against my belly, silently begging my son to hold on.

Then the paramedic asked the question that made everything inside me go cold.

“Can you tell us how you got injured?”

I looked toward the back doors, where Gabriel’s helicopter had become a dark shape against the snow.

“My husband pushed me.”

The paramedic’s expression hardened.

“Did you see him do it deliberately?”

I closed my eyes.

“I was looking straight at him.”

She reached for her radio.

“Dispatch, we have a suspected attempted homicide involving a pregnant woman. Notify local law enforcement.”

“No!” I cried.

The movement sent pain through my ribs.

“Please. My husband thinks I’m dead.”

The paramedic leaned closer.

“Listen to me, Emma. If somebody deliberately put you here, we have to make sure that person cannot reach you again.”

“He’ll come looking.”

“Then we’ll make sure we’re ready.”

I wanted to believe her.

But Michael Carter had spent five years convincing me that he was the safest person in the world.

He knew my passwords, my routines, my fears. He knew which flowers to send when I was upset and which words to say when I questioned him. He had learned every weakness I possessed, then used my trust as a weapon.

If he discovered I was alive, I knew exactly what he would do.

He would finish the job.

By the time we reached the hospital, I could barely keep my eyes open.

Doctors surrounded the stretcher before the ambulance doors had fully opened. A nurse asked me to identify myself. Another demanded my medical history. Someone mentioned that the baby’s heart rate was dropping.

Then a doctor appeared above me.