Chapter 4 - The Promise
We got Tyler free before the next major surge.
Barely.
Carter and Hale hauled him to the ledge while I kept one hand on the rope and one on Elena’s shoulder. The moment Tyler cleared the gap, the boulder settled with a deep grinding drop that shook through the cliff.
Elena collapsed sideways into the surf.
I grabbed her before the water could take her.
She was heavier than she looked because exhaustion has weight. Pain has weight. A life spent carrying secrets has weight.
“Stay with me,” I said.
Her eyes opened.
“Tyler?”
“Alive.”
She closed her eyes for half a second.
“Good.”
Above us, the old man from the clifftop was shouting her name. Later, I would learn he was Gus Marlow, her neighbor, the only person in the county who knew she still trained on those cliffs when the weather turned ugly.
At the time, all I knew was that Elena’s pulse was fast, her breathing shallow, and the scar down her back had gone rigid beneath my hand.
“You need a hospital.”
She gave a weak, humorless laugh.
“I’ve been told.”
“Who are you?”
She looked at me through rain and fog.
“Someone who owed a debt.”
Before I could ask more, a Coast Guard rescue horn sounded through the storm. Our emergency beacon had finally found someone. Lights cut through the fog. Ropes came down. Voices became commands. The cliff turned from nightmare to operation.
Elena refused the first harness until Tyler was secured.
Of course she did.
Only when she saw him lifted did she let me clip her in.
As we rose toward the clifftop, she gripped my sleeve.
“Do not let them call me brave.”
“What?”
“Bravery is clean after people edit it.”
Her eyes drifted toward the surf below.
“I made a promise to a man who never came home.”
Then her body went slack.
At the top, while medics rushed in, Gus Marlow grabbed my arm.
“Did she say Raven?”
I stared at him.
May you like
His face crumpled.
“Then she finally told somebody.”
