Karma Doesn’t Sleep: The Revenge Queen Rises novel Chapter 134

The call was from Michael.

“Dude, why aren’t you picking up? I’ve called you like three or four times. If you kept ignoring me, I was about to call the cops.”

“My phone was on silent for some reason. Didn’t hear a thing,” Clive replied, raising an eyebrow. “Why didn’t you try my work number?”

“You changed your work number a few weeks ago, remember? I never saved the new one.”

Clive paused, suddenly remembering. He’d switched numbers right after Amelia woke up. He’d been so busy back then that Kristen had taken care of it for him.

“So, what’s up?” Clive asked, scrolling through his mountain of unread messages.

His finger froze when he spotted a missed call from Amelia that morning, right around the start of the workday. The ringtone had gone on for over a minute.

Clive frowned and walked out to the living room. He dropped onto the sofa and checked his work phone. Sure enough, Kristen’s call had come in right after Amelia’s.

So that was it. Amelia had given Kristen a hard time about moving the lab equipment because she couldn’t get through to him?

Clive pressed his fingers to his temples, a headache starting to build.

“Cameron’s throwing something together tonight—lots of people from the circle, second-gen rich types, you know. Come out, have some fun,” Michael said, his voice still on the line.

Clive didn’t even hesitate. “Sounds good. What time, where?”

He honestly needed a break.

Plus, Cameron hardly ever hosted anything himself. With the Henson family’s reputation, whenever he did, pretty much everyone with a name showed up.

“Eight o’clock. The Hollow Beat.”

***

But Amelia couldn’t wait. She grabbed her gear and went into the mountains alone.

It was freezing and pitch black. The ground was slick, and she was terrified of the dark, but somehow she found the courage to keep going. She called Clive’s name over and over. Her hands, usually so steady in the lab, got torn up by branches, blood running down her arms.

She finally found him in a cave, curled up and shivering. He’d tried to take a shortcut down the mountain, slipped, and hurt his leg. His backpack had rolled away, and he couldn’t reach anyone.

The cave was dangerous with the storm coming. It could flood or collapse any minute.

Amelia patched up his leg as best she could. She barely weighed a hundred pounds, but somehow, she managed to get him moving—first letting him lean on her, then, when the pain got worse, she hooked his arms over her shoulders and carried him piggyback.

He was over six feet tall, heavy as a rock. Amelia gritted her teeth, her legs getting scraped and bloody, the cold rain washing everything away until she was numb.

The only thing running through her mind was, I can’t let anything happen to Clive.

That thought kept her going. She got him out of those woods, and when she saw Michael and the Salmeron family’s search team up ahead, she finally let herself breathe. The second she knew Clive was safe, her strength gave out and she collapsed, everything fading to black.