Chapter 2

The first stain was no larger than a coin. Olivia’s expression told me it would not stay that way.

She stripped the linen runner from the nearest table and folded it beneath me. White thread disappeared under my hands. When I lifted them again, a red print from my palm marked the cloth like a signature.

“Call him,” I said.

The lodge had one weak bar of service near the kitchen windows. Olivia held my phone above her head while it rang six times. Daniel’s name filled the screen beside our anatomy-scan photograph, his thumb resting over the blur of Sophie’s feet.

The call went to voicemail.

Olivia tried from her phone while the lodge manager worked the county rescue frequency on an old wall radio. Static swallowed half his words. The storm had loosened rock above the lower switchback, and the dispatcher would not send an ambulance up until a road crew assessed it.

Pain stopped coming in waves. It settled low and hard, a band tightening around my spine and abdomen until every breath felt borrowed.

My phone vibrated at last.

Daniel had not called. He had sent a message.

*The road is getting bad. Give me forty minutes.*

I typed with both thumbs because one hand would not stop shaking. *I’m bleeding. Bring the SUV back now.*

His answer appeared after a full minute. *Rachel has no one here.*

I stared until the words blurred. Staff held blankets against the draft while Olivia argued with the dispatcher and the manager marked a landing area. Rachel had Daniel. I had almost everyone else on the mountain.

Just not my husband.

Another rush of blood soaked through the folded linen. Olivia saw it and pressed a clean towel between my knees, her mouth flattening as she fought not to frighten me. A loose crystal from her bridal hairpiece had caught in the towel; it flashed beside the spreading red each time lightning reached the windows.

“Try him again,” she told the manager. “Tell him exactly what’s happening.”

The hotel desk promised to knock on Rachel’s door, but no one answered. Olivia sent one final message: *Claire is bleeding. We need the SUV back now.* It showed as delivered. Nothing came back.

The dispatcher asked who should be my emergency contact. Daniel’s name rose automatically after seven years of forms.

I looked at the silent phone in Olivia’s hand.

“Olivia Grant,” I said. “Use her number.”

She closed her eyes, then squeezed my shoulder. There was no triumph in her face. Only the fear of someone accepting a job that belonged to somebody else.

Rocks had reached the road. No vehicle could pass until daylight. Rescue requested a medical helicopter, but the cloud cover left only a narrow window.

Forty minutes had not passed. It no longer mattered whether Daniel kept his promise.

The helicopter found us by the terrace lights. Its rotors flattened the rain and tore flowers from the wedding arch as two medics ran toward me. One placed a monitor against my stomach; the other looked at the blood-soaked linen and called for immediate transport.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Possible placental abruption,” she said. “We have to move now.”

Her hand tightened around the stretcher rail.

“I can’t promise that both of you will be all right.”