Heart of a Hero (26 page)

She let go of his hand and grabbed the rope, immediately putting too much of her weight into it, and swaying out over the water. Hunter’s heart kicked. He jerked the rope back so that her weight was once again centered over the log, almost losing his own balance in the process. The biohazard container lurched around his thigh, threatening to topple him.

“Easy, Sarah. Easy does it. Keep your weight over your feet. Just use the rope as a guide.”

She swallowed hard and began to shuffle sideways, making little moaning noises as she went. He moved slowly alongside her, muttering words of encouragement, ready to grab her if she slipped.

They were completely drenched now, Sarah’s hair plastered to her face and her knuckles white on the rope. Her movements grew jerky as she neared the center of the gorge. Hunter could literally see her losing her nerve. She made it to the middle, where the boom of the water was loudest, echoing between the rock walls of the canyon. Waves licked up toward the log. She faltered, then froze. “Just a few more steps and you’re more than halfway,” he yelled over the roar.

She glanced nervously at the opposite bank, subconsciously leaning toward it as she did. The motion shot her left foot out from under her, and she went down onto log with a scream, just managing to hold onto the rope with one hand. The movement knocked Hunter off balance. He flailed backward and the
canister swung wildly out behind him. He grabbed for the rope, catching himself, but his added weight jerked it from Sarah’s hand. She screamed as she clutched at a small bit of branch, just managing to halt her slide off the log and into the river. Her feet dangled precariously over the churning white water as she stared, wild-eyed, up at Hunter.

He dropped flat onto the log. “Sarah! Give me your hand!”

But she couldn’t seem to make herself let go of the small, rotting branch she was hanging on to for dear life. He could literally see it tearing loose. It was going to go at any second.

He lunged for her, grabbing her arm just as the branch gave way. The canister swung out over the water, threatening to pull him over, too.

Hunter hung on to Sarah desperately as she swung over the gorge. He could feel his grip on the log slipping as the black detritus began to slough off. Her arm was also slick with river mist, and he could feel he was losing his grip there, too, gravity and her weight conspiring to fight him, the river hungry and waiting below.

She began to slide from his grasp, and the waves licked at her shoes. She flailed wildly with her free hand, trying to grasp the canister hanging almost within her reach. She grabbed it just as her arm slid free of Hunter’s hold.

The fresh weight on his belt yanked him sideways around the log. Hunter swore as he dug his fingers into the rotting wood, knowing that if he lost his grip, they would both go down.

He clung with all his might, but the thin cord on his belt gave, snapping free with a jerk.

His heart lurched. He scrambled up onto the log, and the last thing he saw was Sarah’s hair churning like brown streamers in the white water before the foam swallowed her completely.

Then he saw her head pop up downriver, the canister lolling
in the waves beside her—both heading inexorably toward the smooth, glassy sheen of water racing toward the falls.

He could never reach both before one went over.

He faced the choice. Sarah or the canister.

Her life, or the lives of millions?

Hunter plunged feetfirst into the roiling maw.

08:22 Alpha. Eikona Falls.
Tuesday, September 23

S
arah thrashed against the roiling current, but the powerful Eikona sucked her under, whirling her along.

She forced her eyes open, trying to figure out which way was up and which was down, but all she could see was a milky-green blur. She was running out of breath, and she didn’t even know which way to push for the surface! Terror squeezed her lungs. She knew she was being hurtled toward the falls, could already feel the change in the water…
She was going over.
But just as the knowledge slammed into her, she felt something grab at her.

Hunter!

Hope kicked at her heart. She began to fight harder against the current, struggling to find the surface. She felt the iron
strength in his arms as he pulled her toward him, hooked his arm around her chest and dragged her up through the water until they popped to the surface like corks. She gasped for air as he towed her diagonally across the ribbed sheen of water that surged toward the falls, and into the calm of an eddy. He hauled her roughly up a slope of rock, dumped his pack with a thud beside her. His gun and machete clattered down beside it. “Use them if you need them!” he yelled over the roar of the falls.

And he was gone, back into the river, cutting across the glassy, swollen surface with smooth, powerful strokes. Sarah’s heart stalled as she saw him heading for the biohazard container bobbing dangerously close to the brink of the falls.

It was impossible. He’d never reach it in time. She watched in numb horror as Hunter was swept sideways faster than he could close the distance between himself and the canister.

She saw him near the container, grab it. Her heart jerked against her ribs. He turned, began to swim toward her. But he was moving backward even faster. She caught her breath.

He wasn’t going to make it!

Sarah leaped to her feet, pressed her hands over her mouth as everything began to unfold in sickening slow motion.

Hunter was pulled to the edge of the falls, and for a second he seemed to hang there, poised in the mist on the knife edge of the swollen, glassy river. Then the Eikona sucked him over and he disappeared into the steaming sky.

“No!” she screamed. “Oh, God, no! Hunter!” She spun around, hysterical. She didn’t know what to do! Then she spotted his pack, his gun, his machete. He’d left all his equipment.
He’d known all along he wasn’t going to make it.
She was on her own. He’d left her all the tools he could for her to try to survive without him.

For a second sheer terror paralyzed her. She wouldn’t believe
it. She could
not
believe he was gone. He was invincible. He was her lifeline. She choked with emotion. No, he wasn’t invincible. Hunter McBride was only human in spite of everything she’d learned and thought about him. He’d saved
her
first. Her life
had
meant more to him than his mission.

Tears streamed from her eyes. Oh God, she had to find him! She pressed her hands to her temples, trying to think. She’d need his pack if she found him. She’d need the first aid gear, food, whatever else he had in it. She grabbed it, hefted it up to her back, but it swung violently, throwing her off balance. Her wet runners slithered out from under her on the slick surface. She crashed down onto the rock, landing hard on her hip. But she barely registered the explosive spark of pain. She scrambled back onto her feet, repositioned the pack on her back. It felt incredibly heavy in her weakened state. Bowing under the weight of Hunter’s gear, she grabbed his assault rifle and machete, slung them over her shoulders.

How in heaven had he carried all this stuff, and hacked through the bush at the same time? How could he have possibly looked so relaxed under all this hot and cumbersome gear? Sarah clenched her jaw against the strain, staggered awkwardly over the rocks in her sodden runners. She reached the muddy bank, grabbed a fistful of coarse grass, dragged herself up off the rock slab. On hands and knees she clambered up the steep slope toward what looked like a narrow path along the ridge.

Breath rasping in her throat, fear slamming her heart into her ribs, she reached the path. She bent over to catch her breath, saw animal tracks in the red soil. She lifted her eyes. It was a narrow game path leading toward the falls, where it disappeared alongside the booming curtain of water. She suspected the trail led all the way down to a big calm watering hole at the bottom of the falls. She’d seen something just like this on a nature program.

Sarah staggered along the path, fatigue and panic making her sway wildly under the weight of Hunter’s pack and gun and machete. Her hair was plastered to her face, her wet clothes chafed her skin and her feet skidded and squelched in her drenched shoes. But she was blind to it. All she wanted was to get down that path and find Hunter.

But the jungle fought her every step of the way. She tried to run, making it to the edge of the falls before the weight of the pack swung her sideways and she skidded on vegetation slick from the heavy, constant mist churned up by the thunderous falls. Sarah landed hard on her butt and began to slide downhill alongside the crashing curtain of water. She held the gun tight at her side, worried it would go off as she tried to control her hectic tumble down the steep path. She hit a rock, lurched head over heels, came to a dead stop. Blood thudded loudly against her eardrums.

She had to focus. What had Hunter said? Panic could kill you. She forced herself to breathe, and peered nervously through the mist and rainbows.

She could see something down below. A dark, limp shape lay at the edge of a tranquil, turquoise-green pool at the base of the falls. She froze. The shape was unmistakably human. It was him, had to be, lying facedown in the mud, sprawled out, unmoving. Her heart stalled. A part of her didn’t want to believe it was Hunter. She willed him to move, to show some sign of life. But he didn’t.

“Oh God, Hunter,” she whispered. “Please be alive. Please be alive. Please be alive….” She repeated the words over and over like a mantra as she scrambled down the path to the rim of slippery, rust-colored mud.

She stopped at the bottom, afraid to go up to the water’s edge, petrified of what she might find. She began to shake violently, and tears made her blind.

She swiped them brutally out of her eyes.
Control yourself, Sarah. He needs you now.

God, she hoped he
did
need her, that she would find some sign of life in her invincible mercenary, the hardened man who had touched her so tenderly, helped give her willpower. The man who—she choked on a sob—the man who had chosen
her
life over everything he’d been trained to do.

She began to squelch toward his limp form, swallowing her trepidation and forcing herself into clinical mode as she got closer.

He was lying on his stomach, his right arm twisted at a strange angle, his fist still clutched around the handle of the biohazard container. One side of his face was in the mud. His eyes were closed and his skin was gray. Sarah’s heart plummeted. She’d seen that look before.

She knelt at his side, her heart beating light and fast. “Hunter?” she whispered as she touched his face. His skin was ice-cold. “Hunter!” She grabbed his shoulders and shook him. She could not, would not, lose someone else to this jungle. Not him, not Hunter. He had to be alive. “Hunter!”

She felt him move. Her heart pounded against her ribs.

“Hunter?”

He lifted his head slightly out of the mud and his eyelids fluttered open. He stared at her, slowly registering his surroundings. Then he grimaced. “Hello, angel.”

A wave of emotion surged through Sarah, so strong it stole her breath and ability to form words. Hot tears of relief filled her eyes. She smiled and placed her hand against his muddy cheek. “Thank God, oh thank God you’re alive.”

He closed his eyes briefly and his body shuddered.

“How…how badly are you hurt?”

He tried to lift his head again, groaned, let it fall back into the mud. She winced and a new set of fears crept into her heart.

He tried to move again. “Help…help me up, Sarah.” He ground out the words through clenched teeth. “I need to get up there…by the trees. Less mud there.” He maneuvered himself onto his good elbow, his eyes bright with pain. “And we…must…stay…near cover.” He swallowed a bark of pain as he tried to sit up.

“Maybe…maybe you shouldn’t move. Maybe you should lie still until—”

His eyes cut to hers. “Until what? The ambulance comes?”

It hit her then, the implications of being hurt in the wilderness. There was zero hope of help, no civilized system to come to their aid. They had only themselves, two humans against a deadly jungle where only the fittest survived. And now the balance of power between her and Hunter had shifted squarely onto her shoulders.
He needed her.
And she had the skills to help him. She could no longer be a victim in any way. It was up to her now.

The realization shot a jolt of determined fire through her body. She couldn’t afford raw fear now. She had to focus and fight—for him.

She sucked in a steadying breath. “Hunter, before I help you move, you have to tell me exactly where you hurt, so that I—”

He was feeling his left shoulder with his good hand. “Anterior dislocation of the sternoclavicular joint.”

Surprise rippled through her. “What?”

“My left shoulder—” he groaned as he forced himself onto his knees “—it’s dislocated.”

“How do you know?”

“I know. I can feel it.”

She stared at him, momentarily stunned. “It…I mean, it could be broken, or—”

“No.” He staggered to his feet, gasped as pain punched through him. “I…felt it go…when I tried to keep hold of the container as I went under at the base of the falls.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure! The muscles are already going into spasm. You’ve got to help me reduce it immediately, Sarah.” His eyes pierced hers. “I need my arm. We
both
do if we want to get out of here.”

He was right on that count. And if his diagnosis was correct, the top of his left humerus had been forced forward out of the shoulder socket. The longer it stayed that way, the less likely it was they’d manage to get it back into place without surgery. And that was impossible. If left untreated, he’d be seriously disabled and in constant and debilitating pain.

He started to stumble through the mud, holding his injured arm steady with his good hand. “Bring the container,” he called back to her as he made his way up to the trees.

Sarah grabbed the handle of the biohazard canister and got to her feet. She squished through the mud after him, the gear on her back weighing her down.