Freefall
DIAMOND OF THE ROCKIES
The Rose Legacy
Sweet Boundless
The Tender Vine
Twilight
A Rush of Wings
The Still of Night
Halos
Freefall
The Edge of Recall
Secrets
Unforgotten
Echoes
Freefall
Copyright © 2006
Kristen Heitzmann
Cover photography by UpperCut Images, © 2005 Richard Radstone.
Cover design by Jennifer Parker
Scripture quotations identified NIV are from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW
INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible
Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.
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.
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 978-0-7642-2829-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Heitzmann, Kristen.
Freefall / Kristen Heitzmann.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7642-2829-2 (pbk.)
ISBN-10: 0-7642-2829-3 (pbk.)
1. Amnesiacs—Fiction. 2. Kauai (Hawaii)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3558.E468F74 2006
813’.54—dc22 2006019505
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 LORD 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
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, crescentleafed 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!”
