Freefall , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Kristen Heitzmann

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

205 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

When a young woman stumbles out of the Hanalei Mountains on the island of Kauai with no memory of who she is or how she got there, Cameron Pierce reluctantly agrees to investigate the mysterious circumstances surrounding her arrival. As pieces begin to fall into place, he suspects her injuries were no accident, but he's far from convinced she's an innocent victim. And there's that nagging feeling he's seen her somewhere before....Now known as Jade, the woman begins to recall fragments of what led her to this place, and she realizes the danger isn't over. Jade and the cynical Hawaiian investigator attempt to reconstruct the threads of her identity, but the stakes are far higher than either expected.

Informations

Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 novembre 2006
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781585588107
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0202€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

© 2006 by Kristen Heitzmann
Published by Bethany House Publishers 11400 Hampshire Avenue South Bloomington, Minnesota 55438 www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan. www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-58558-810-7
Scripture quotations labeled NIV 1984 are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com
Cover photography by UpperCut Images, © 2005 Richard Radstone.
Cover design by Jennifer Parker
To my dad, Richard Patrick Francis,
home with the Lord
and
to Alfred Otto Heitzmann,
my father-in-law,
friend and exhorter
The Spirit of the L ORD will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and power,
the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD.
—Isaiah 11:2 NIV
Contents
Cover
Title
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Acknowledgments
Other books by Kristen Heitzmann
Ad
Back Cover
ONE
The blow came like the torrent below, hard and swift and unexpected. Framed by jungle foliage, a face, the thrust of an arm. Her spine arched. She screamed, jerked, and pinwheeled, then splashed in and went under. Swept up in fluid momentum, her head broke the surface. A shout bounced off the canyon wall. She couldn’t turn to place it, couldn’t catch the words. Another shout, drowned by an ominous roar.
Realizing the danger, she kicked against the rabid current, but it surged, tipped, and flung her down, down to the pounding base. It drove her into the pool, tumbling and crushing, exploding in percussive blasts like war around her. She hit something hard. Pain seared her head. Her limbs slackened. Darkness.
Ears popping, lungs bursting, she woke with a single thought: Fight! She pulled and kicked, broke free of the tumultuous churn, and propelled herself to the surface, sucking air and choking. The hungry current dragged her from the pool into the rocky channel. She kicked and ducked—not thinking, just guarding herself as she rushed along until the cataract broadened and slowed.
Ahead, she glimpsed a promontory of dark rocks gilded with moss. She pushed toward them, grasped and slipped off the first but caught hold of the next. Pulling herself into the niche, she choked, then settled enough to draw air in through her nose, out through her mouth. The fire in her chest subsided.
Head throbbing, she leaned against the rock and dragged her thick-tread hiking shoes onto the promontory one foot at a time. A haze of gnats wafted by her face, drifting over the water. Her vision blurred and cleared as she clung there in the pooling edge of the river.
A brown bird called raucously. Ferns, broad-leafed trees, crescent-leafed trees, vines, and bushes surrounded her.
Something cut into her chest. She reached up and felt the stiff nylon straps of a hydration pack. Hardly thinking, she took hold of the mouthpiece at the end of the water bladder’s hose, bit the release, and drew in warm, then icy water. But as she drank, panic gripped her throat. Where was she, and what was she doing there?

As best he could tell, the waterfall had thrown him back into a sunken lava cave. The roar of the falls resounded inside the walls as he pulled himself over the lip and onto a ledge, using only his arms. Explosive pain shot down his battered and bloody legs. Pieces of his left shin ground together with each infinitesimal shift. His right ankle burned with a different but no less incapacitating throb. Teeth clenched, he rolled to his side, fitting himself into the curve of the cave wall. He lay still, stunned and weak, letting his body recoup, acquainting himself with the points of injury.
He squeezed his brow, rubbing the water from his eyes, and shivered. When Gentry toppled into the water, he’d shouted a warning, but already she was past the point of no return. Not even the strongest swimmer could resist the rushing cataract—as he’d learned. Maybe he shouldn’t have gone in for her. There’d been no time to think, to consider, only to react. Seconds before he went over he’d seen her surface in the pool below, but his own plunge was less successful.
He reached down and probed his shin, found the break he’d suspected. Waves of pain kept him from exploring further. Easy, he told himself. Easy . He could only pray Gentry hadn’t hit the same rocks. But then, like him, she’d have been channeled into the cave behind the falls, not carried out. Was she there still?
“Gentry!” No way she’d hear him over the echoing roar, but something in him had to cry out. His eardrums were shell-shocked from the din, but he yelled again. “Gentry!”
Sense returned. If Gentry was out there, he couldn’t reach her. He’d never pull through the falls. He’d be smashed down again onto the rocks. And if she tried to reach him?
“No. Please, God.” Cut and bleeding, pain escalating, he groaned. Her only chance—and his—was for her to get out, to get help. The trail, hardly more than a wild boar path over roots and rocks and clay, was so remote there was no telling how long until anyone might pass by. And it led to the top of the falls. People weren’t supposed to go over.
He dropped his head back and expelled his breath. What had happened? Gentry was an experienced hiker, strong and surefooted. But he’d read enough survivor stories—and stories that didn’t turn out as well—to know things could simply go wrong.
He closed his eyes. He needed to garner what energy he had, recover from the shock, rest. His bleeding had slowed, the wounds coagulating. The break in his bone could be bleeding into his leg, but he couldn’t help that. At this point, he couldn’t help anything. He drew a staggered breath and prayed.

Clouds puffed past overhead, carried swiftly through the sky, but heat blanketed the deep-cut valley where the winds didn’t penetrate. Moisture rose from the water and joined the graying gauze that erupted in showers, then passed.
Too woozy to think, she dragged herself ashore. She wanted to stay there, but an indistinct urgency moved her on. Following the water, she pressed her way through the palms and bushes, groping over tangled roots and rocks. She missed her footing and slid back into the river, then scraped her palms and bruised her hip climbing out. Her mind felt like sludge.
The cataract fanned out, plunging abruptly through jagged ridges, the nearest a rocky channel too steep and slippery to attempt. She splashed over and let herself down beside the next channel. Equally steep, the rocky edges of this one were possibly navigable—though not before resting. She drank from the water pack on her back and tried to stop shaking.
After less time than she’d have liked, she started down, turning almost immediately to work down the face like a rugged irregular ladder. Tucking her fingers into a crevice, she was startled by a sharpfaced chameleon-type lizard that skittered over her hand and into the vines that cloaked the ridge on her left. A short way down dangled a large black-and-yellow spider, whose legs went out in diagonal pairs. Again she heard the birds. Around her life teemed, but she felt unutterably alone.
Her arms shook as she stretched down for a hold. The cliff dropped away below. The water broke loose and fell, casting her in mist and slickening the rocks she clung to. Her breath came sharp and shallow as waves of dizziness took hold. She pressed herself to the wall, letting it pass, making it. Maybe there was a different way down, but she didn’t have the strength to climb back up and find it.
She inched her foot down, dug in the toe of the hiker, then forced her other foot to release. The bad stretch wasn’t too long. She could make it. She had to. She moved her hand, clawed a jut in the rock, then eased down. A slender white bird winged over the falls with a dipping motion that rolled her stomach.
She pressed her face to the stone and waited it out. Clouds parted and the sun caressed her. With her thigh quivering, she groped for a foothold, found a good-sized step, and lowered herself. She could do it. She would.
She reached level ground, staggered into a small clearing beside the stream, and dropped to her knees beside a boulder. Her head felt as though someone had opened it up and filled it with sand. She laid it on her arms. Maybe she’d just . . . rest. . . .
A sudden burst of birdsong penetrated her stupor. She drew in the scent of earth and water and rank foliage. Opening her eyes produced a grinding headache. She reached up and felt the top of her scalp, swollen, tender, and crusted under the hair. What. . . ?
Green folds of land rose steeply all around her, leaves and blooms just tinged with dawning light. She turned slowly, holding her head between her hands, and found the source of the mist wafting over her. A lacy spread of falls tumbled down a jagged cliff, forming s