Freefall by Kristen Heitzmann Read Free Book Online Page A

place than her brother’s arms, head pressed to his chest. She could still sometimes hear his heartbeat, even after he’d flown back across the Pacific. More than anyone else, she trusted Kai, even when he pushed and questioned. That was why she’d called him.
    If Okelani sensed a storm, Nica wanted the safe harbor of her big brother. Jade’s injury might not be life-threatening, but that knowledge hadn’t lifted the pall of impending death as she’d hoped. Kai must sense it too. In his less-spiritual but intuitive way, her brother saw what others missed. And this time, he didn’t like what he saw.

    He pulled with his arms, ignoring the suffocating pain of each jolt and drag. The swollen leg throbbed and burned as he inched nearer the echoing falls. Four days of inertia must have stabilized the bone somewhat, but the pain had increased incrementally, and he could no longer deny signs of infection.
    The aching in the opposite ankle and knee had diminished, and he might manage to use it. If the ledge offered a way past the thunderous falls without having to swim beneath, he just might get through. But as he crept another four inches, he felt the ledge narrowing, dropping away. He reached forward and groped. No ledge. The wall fell sharply toward the falls and the rocks beneath that had chewed him up already. Groaning, he pushed back. The pain and effort had been for nothing.
    No. He corrected his thoughts. He’d gotten information. Not the answer he wanted, but a fact nonetheless, a detail that contributed to a plan, if only by ruling out his first option. Gripping his leg with one hand, he eased back toward the wider surface.
    He had remained still the first few days to stabilize the shattered bone. Now, even if he bled out inside his leg, he had to find a way out. He could no longer depend on rescue, and he was reaching the limits of his endurance.
    It could have been worse, he reminded himself. He could have broken his back or neck. He murmured a prayer of thanks that he hadn’t been paralyzed, then sank against the wall, exhausted. He’d used the dozen aspirin in the foil pouch the first two days when he thought help would come. It had barely touched the pain. Now it was too constant to register with the same ferocity.
    He had refilled the water bladder that morning from the pool and treated it with the last of the purifying tablets. Four days with minimal food had left him weak, and even that was gone now. From his position nearer the mouth of the cave, he could see small dark shadows darting beneath the surface of the pool. If he could find a way before he was too weak to try …

SIX
    Jade woke with a jolt, her body clammy, her heart thumping like a rubber mallet inside her ribs. The panic that had driven her down the mountains to the Hanalei Valley had returned in a dream that wasn’t a dream. It was memory; fleeting, but real.
    With a cry, she threw her legs over the side and pulled on the soft cotton robe Nica had lent her, tying the sash as she hurried out to the garden and up the stairs to the lanai. It was early and she might have to wake—
    “Jade.”
    She shrieked.
    Cameron Pierce, bronze-chested and dripping in hunter green swim trunks, had blended in with the plants on the lanai. Coffee steam swirled up from his mug on the railing, and she should have noticed the aroma at least. She couldn’t afford to be careless.
    “What’s your hurry?”
    She’d intended to tell Nica, but he would have to do. “I wasn’t alone.”
    He straightened. “You remember?”
    “Just a piece, a … glimpse. A path with water on one side and someone behind me.”
    He examined her with his hard blue stare. “Who?”
    She struggled to drag it out, pressing her hands over her eyes. It was there, agonizingly close. “I don’t know. But someone was there. I need to go to the police.”
    “There’s a thought.”
    She didn’t have time for his sarcasm. “Look, someone’s out there … somewhere. And it’s been