Chapter 16 - The Baby’s HeartbeatThe rotor wash intensified.
Ava’s hair lashed across her face as the helicopter hovered above the ledge.
The collapsed wing pulled against its lines like a living thing.
Ava held the root with both hands.
Her injured fingers began slipping.
Inside the helicopter, Mark forced the aircraft away from the cliff.
Ethan struck him again.
The helicopter spun.
The tail passed dangerously close to the rock wall before Mark regained control.
Then the aircraft climbed.
Dust settled slowly around Ava.
She released the root and rolled onto her side.
A sharp pressure tightened across her abdomen.
Then another.
Ava froze.
Not labor.
Not yet.
She forced herself to breathe evenly.
Shock and physical trauma could trigger contractions, but panic would make them worse.
She placed two fingers against the side of her abdomen.
Movement.
A faint rhythmic sensation beneath her palm.
The baby was alive.
Ava looked at her dead wrist device.
She needed to create another signal.
The emergency wing housing contained reflective material and a manual beacon, but reaching it required removing part of the harness.
She could not risk losing the support around her abdomen.
Ava searched the ledge.
One pearl earring remained in her left ear.
She removed it and placed it in a patch of sunlight.
The small white surface reflected almost nothing.
Then she saw the wing fabric.
Its inner lining contained silver emergency panels.
Ava dragged the material toward the open edge and spread it across the rocks.
Sunlight struck the reflective surface.
A bright flash crossed the ocean.
She moved the fabric back and forth.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Three flashes.
Pause.
Three flashes.
A universal distress pattern.
Far offshore, something glinted near the horizon.
Ava narrowed her eyes.
A vessel.
Perhaps too far away.
Perhaps moving in the wrong direction.
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But for the first time since leaving the helicopter, she saw something that was not Ethan, rock, or empty sky.
👉 Ava had created a signal without technology—but someone else was already racing toward the coordinates her final transmission had sent.
