Chapter 7 - The Unyielding Grip
Cara reached down with her left hand, searching blindly through the debris of the footwell until her fingers found the heavy plastic housing of the seatbelt buckle. Her knuckles brushed against the crumpled metal of the transmission tunnel, her fingernails scraping the latch.
“Press the release!” she yelled over the wind.
Dante, realizing that this woman would genuinely choose to plummet into the gorge before abandoning him, stopped fighting her grip. He jammed his thumb down on the red release mechanism.
The belt snapped back with a sharp recoil.
“My foot is caught on the pedal assembly,” Dante grunted, his jaw tight as he wrenched his torso toward the window.
Cara braced her feet against the slick mud of the rock shelf. She looped both of her arms under his broad shoulders, using her entire body weight as leverage. “Pull back! On three! One... two... three!”
With a guttural roar, Dante threw his weight backward, his right boot kicking violently against the steering column. The crumpled metal groaned, yielding just enough for his trapped left foot to wrench free from the pedal housing.
Cara pulled with every ounce of strength in her body, her muscles screaming as the sheer mass of the muscular thirty-eight-year-old businessman tumbled through the shattered window frame. They crashed backward together onto the narrow, muddy ledge, Dante’s heavy frame landing partially across her, knocking the breath from her lungs.
They didn't have a second to breathe.
Behind them, the ancient pine tree gave a catastrophic, thunderous shriek. The remaining roots ripped from the saturated clay like severed cables.
“Move!” Dante barked, his instincts instantly asserting command.
He scrambled to his feet, ignoring the severe bruising on his ribs, his large, calloused hand shooting out to seize Cara’s upper arm. With effortless, terrifying power, he hoisted her off the ground and shoved her up the slope just as the ledge collapsed.
A section of rock the size of a minivan sheared away into the void.
The black luxury sedan, along with the two-ton pine tree, slid silently off the ledge and vanished into the fog-choked abyss. Three seconds later, a violent, metallic crash echoed from the bottom of the gorge—the sound of heavy machinery being flattened against the boulders of the riverbed, followed by the dull hiss of rising steam.
Cara stood frozen on the steep incline, her hands clamped over her mouth, her chest heaving as she stared at the empty space where the car had been sitting only heartbeats before. If she had hesitated for five seconds—if she had listened to him and backed away—they would both be at the bottom of that river.
Dante stood beside her, his chest rising and falling in heavy, measured strokes. The rain cascaded down his dark hair, plastering his shirt to his muscular chest, illuminating the intricate lines of the ink covering his neck and arms. He didn't look at the gorge.
He was looking at her.
His pale gray eyes were wide, burning with an intense, unreadable mixture of shock, adrenaline, and cold, calculating assessment. The ruthless titan of the Eastern Seaboard had just been pulled from the jaws of an engineered grave by a girl who poured coffee for fifteen dollars an hour.
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Before either of them could speak, the darkness of the mountain ridge above was violently severed.
Twin rows of high-intensity, piercing white xenon headlights crested the highway curve, cutting through the pouring rain like searchlights from a warship.
