Page 116 of Bliss with a Billionaire

“What?” he asked.

“Yeah, Julia, what?” Sierra asked.

Kyle took a step toward the door with her. “Please don’t tell me you’re thinking what I’m thinking.”

Julia flicked her light down the corridor. This time, it didn’t disappear into blackness. It reflected off a giant mound of dirt.

Grant’s eyes went wide as he stared at it. “Is that–”

“Uh-huh. The tunnel collapsed. We’re trapped,” Julia said.

His stomach clenched at the words. They’d managed to successfully sleuth out the clues Lydia had left behind, but in one final cruel twist of fate, they’d now been trapped and would likely die.

CHAPTER 24

JULIA

Panic sent Julia’s heart into overdrive. It thudded against her ribs as her stomach turned over. She stared at the pile of dirt cutting off their access to the world as though her eyes deceived her. Her lower lip trembled, and her brows furrowed as she sucked in a shaky breath. “We’re trapped.”

“What?” Sierra barked, stomping her way to the door and pushing between Grant and Julia. “OMG! Oh no! Not again!”

“Again?” Kyle asked.

“Julia and I were trapped in Maine! And we barely survived it!” Sierra smacked her hands against her head, digging her fingers through her hair.

“Uh, I think you got out pretty unscathed. It was Julia who had to escape on her own,” Kyle argued.

Sierra twisted to face him, wagging a finger at her brother. “You have no idea what happened when those rocks fell. It was terrifying.”

Grant slid his hands onto his daughter’s shoulders. “I’m sure it was, baby. But…maybe we can just dig some of the dirt away and get out of here.”

“We can try, but…” Julia began.

“But?” Kyle asked.

“Sometimes shifting the dirt can make the cave in worse. We can give it a try, but if we don’t make any progress, we should stop. We’re better off letting people from the outside dig in to us. They can assess the situation above us,” Julia answered.

Kyle set his hands on his hips and bobbed his head up and down. “Oh, right, because that worked out so well for you in Maine. We literally spent hours vetting ideas that wouldn’t work, and you had to find your own way out.”

She flicked her beam around the vault again. “Unfortunately, that’s not an option for us. This is a dead-end. An airtight underground vault. We’re not finding a back way out.”

“Unbelievable,” Grant said, flinging his hands in the air. “We survived two years of hell and in one final twist of fate, Lydia will off all of us in one fell swoop.”

“Ally is here. She’ll do everything she can to get us out of here,” Julia said as she slid a hand onto his shoulder.

“No, we’re not waiting for that,” Grant said with a shake of his head.

“I’m with Dad. We need to dig our way out of here.”

“No!” Julia argued as she pulled her phone from her pocket. “Leave it. Let me try to call Ally.”

She pressed the call button next to Alicia’s name with trembling hands. The phone beeped, unable to connect the call.

“Try from outside the vault,” Kyle suggested.

She nodded and stepped into what remained of the corridor, trying the call again. “Nothing. Does anyone have a signal?”

After a check of their phones, they found that none of them had the ability to place a call. A curse escaped Julia’s lips as shecame to the realization that they were trapped without the ability to communicate with anyone to get help.