Manna From Heaven
Manna from Heaven
Robards, Karen
Pocket Star (2012)
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MANNA FROM HEAVEN
By Karen Robards
Pocket Star
A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Manna from Heaven
copyright © 2001 by Karen Robards
This title was previously published in the anthology
Wait Until Dark
.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Pocket Star eBook edition June 2012
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ISBN 978-1-4767-0007-6 (eBook)
Contents
1. MANNA FROM HEAVEN
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
2. SHIVER excerpt
M
ANNA FROM
H
EAVEN
K
AREN
R
OBARDS
1
T
HE GREEN GLARE OF THE INSTRUMENT PANEL
was the only illumination in the pitch-dark cockpit.
“Ready?” Skeeter Todd stood by the door of the small Cessna, tightening the harness of his parachute. At his feet, perhaps three dozen duffel bags slumped, each equipped with its own parachute.
“Yeah.” Jake Crutcher rose from the copilot’s seat and moved toward Skeeter, checking his own parachute as he went. Then, in a gesture as automatic as a breath, he rubbed a hand over his chest to make sure that his Glock was still securely holstered. It was.
Skeeter opened the door. Cold night air rushed through the plane’s interior. Bracing himself against the sudden gale, Jake went to work helping Skeeter toss the duffel bags out into the night sky. They were flying low, and the specially designed search light was on, making it easy to identify their target, a narrow line of grassy fields in the midst of a heavily forested section of western Tennessee. A river ran nearby, and landing their cargo in that would be a disaster.
“Just think, in about six hours from now I’ll be sippin’ a cold brew and sittin’ in a hot tub with my baby.” Skeeter stopped working to grin at Jake. Jake didn’t grin back. His expression was grim.
“Like I told you, I don’t think dragging your girlfriend into this was a good idea.” Jake kept on heaving bags out the door, his booted feet planted wide apart so that he wouldn’t slip. Skeeter was twenty-five years old, little more than a kid, a feckless, reckless fool who had no idea of the magnitude of what he’d gotten himself into.
“Laura’s okay. I’d trust her with my life. Anyway, I didn’t want to leave my truck parked out here for a week. Somebody might have stolen it.”
That was so damned stupid that Jake didn’t even bother to reply.
“There she is, right on time.” Jake’s silence either didn’t register, or it didn’t bother Skeeter. He sounded as cheerfully unconcerned as if he’d arranged for his girlfriend to meet him at a movie. Together, they tossed the last couple of bags over the side. Then Skeeter straightened and gave Jake a mock salute.
“See ya on the ground,” Skeeter said, and stepped out the door. At the last second Jake noticed that a duffel bag was tied to Skeeter’s waist.
Damned stupid kid, Jake thought, and stepped toward the door. Hanging onto the edge, he glanced down. Skeeter was nowhere in sight. Of course, it was dark as hell, and the kid would have been blown back behind them by the force of the wind. But far below he could see two tiny pinpricks of light that could only be the headlights of Skeeter’s approaching truck with the unknown Laura at the wheel.
To get mixed up in something like this, she had to be as big an idiot as Skeeter, Jake thought, and that was saying a lot. Shaking his head, he looked up at the pilot.
“I’m outta here,” Jake mouthed, knowing the man wouldn’t be able to hear over the roaring wind. He waved, and the man waved back.
Then Jake jumped into the vast emptiness of the night, enjoying the sensation of free-falling for the few precious seconds he allowed himself before he jerked his rip cord.
2
T
HE LOW, HISSING GROWL
was enough to make the hair stand up on the back of Charlie Bates’ neck.
Curled on her favorite blue velvet cushion in the passenger seat, Sadie whimpered in sympathy.
“It’s okay, girl.” Charlie glanced over at the tiny Chihuahua whose liquid brown eyes stared anxiously at her through the dim glow of the reflected headlights. “It can’t get out. We’re safe.”
The cage door rattled violently. Charlie and Sadie exchanged mutually apprehensive looks. Charlie gritted her teeth, forced herself to focus on her driving, and tried not to think about what she was hauling in the back of the Jeep.
Another threatening growl caused her shoulders to rise in an instinctive bid to protect the nape of her neck. Sadie lowered her head, covered her muzzle with both paws, and whimpered again.
The critter in the back was one ticked-off raccoon. As she barreled down the pitch-dark highway toward the
state park and animal preserve that was her goal, Charlie listened to it growling and rattling the bars of its cage with growing dismay. At the end of this journey, she was going to have to let the thing out. And she was really, really fond of her slender white fingers with their perfectly manicured nails. To say nothing of her long, creamy and all-too-vulnerable neck.
The things she did to earn a living! She was a singer, for God’s sake. Not an animal wrangler. Especially not a wild animal wrangler. A country and western singer, trying her best to make it in Nashville, the New York, New York of the country music world.