Then she felt it.
The smooth water.
She’d escaped!
Disoriented, unable to tell which way she should go, she allowed the current to sweep her downstream and away from the falls. Jewel opened her eyes and fought through her exhaustion to try to swim toward the surface.
I can do this.
But fear and doubt clawed at her, threatening to drag her down and keep her under. Her lungs burned and screamed as she fought her way to the surface. And in that moment, the instance before she breached, she saw rocks and trees blurred at the top of the ledge from which she’d fallen...along with a figure. A human figure.
She’d thought, she’d hoped, that a branch had fallen from a tree and somehow shoved her in the back, sending her over to plummet into the river.
The way the figure stood there, the wide, deliberate stance, she knew...she knew that he or she had pushed Jewel. Intentionally shoved her into Dead Man Falls to what should have been her death. And she hadn’t made it to safety yet. She could still die today in this river.
Why? Why had she been pushed?
The figure disappeared in the thick canopy even as the current dragged Jewel away.
Finally breaching the surface, she pulled in a breath and braced herself for a new battle to survive the river with its multiple tiered rapids and falls.
Jewel couldn’t be sure how long the river had taken her captive. How long she’d allowed herself to be carried away, floating on her back in order to save her energy for that moment, that one moment, when she might have a chance to escape. Except her reserves were almost depleted.
That moment hadn’t come.
How much longer could she keep her head above the rushing torrent?
Her limbs grew tired and numb, even with her effort to conserve energy. She searched the bank for calmer waters to swim toward. A branch to grab. Anything.
She needed out of the water before she hit the rapids and another set of falls.
God, help me!
Just ahead she spotted the trunk of a dead tree, branches sprawling and reaching. This was her chance and likely her last one before the rapids. Before she drowned.
Jewel reached, but the current, ripping and swirling as the rapids approached, twisted her away. She had no control over her own body. Her own life. She wouldn’t be able to grab the trunk.
Jewel was going to die. Despair engulfed her.
Excruciating pain stabbed across her shoulder and back. Her body suddenly jerked and her forward momentum stopped. Something had caught her. Wrenched her from the river’s grasp.
Stunned, recoiling in pain, Jewel twisted around. A branch from the fallen trunk had snagged and cut her deeply, but had saved her life even as it had wounded her. She held on with everything in her.
This was the chance she’d been hoping for. She wouldn’t lose it. After coughing up more water, she dragged in air and allowed a measure of relief to set in. Now to pass the next test.
This was no time to rest. She had to get out of the river.
She gripped the slick trunk and pulled herself up, higher out of the water until only her legs were beneath the surface. Slowly, she inched toward the bank.
Her left hand slipped, and she let out a cry as she slid deeper into the water. But she reached again, grappling with another branch to keep from slipping completely back into the river’s grasp. If only she weren’t already so weak from her injuries and exhaustion.
Finally, she reached the rocky outcropping of boulders hugging the bank and pulled herself out of the river completely. Laying flat across a slick boulder, Jewel rested her gaze on the swift river and its endless push toward the deeper waters of the channel.
I made it out. Thank You, Lord.
Jewel rallied and pushed to her knees to climb over more boulders. Every ache, every bruise, every scratch and sprain screamed in agony as the numbing power of cold water that had served as an anesthetic now seeped away.
Free of the rocky edge, Jewel crawled until the river was no longer a threat and fell face forward into the mossy loam. She clung to the dirt, breathed in the earth. She’d made it this far, and she would be grateful for small things.
She wouldn’t think about getting out of the wilderness. Maybe by now Meral and Buck would have reported her missing.
How long would they wait until they called for help? How long would it take that help to find her?
Terror snaked over and around her like a living, deadly vine and squeezed. It would crush the life out of her if she let it. She shoved her growing fear down and focused on surviving. She’d escaped the river and would draw confidence from that.
But it wasn’t just nature she had to contend with. Another danger loomed out there somewhere. Someone had pushed her into the falls. They could still be out there.
Had they watched the river carry her away? Were they tracking her now, on the verge of approaching to finish her off?
The pain in her back throbbed in rhythm with her innumerable other injuries. If the person who’d tried to kill her found her here now, nearly incapacitated after fighting and surviving Dead Man Falls and the river, Jewel wasn’t sure her self-defense classes would do her a bit of good.
But she held on to the hope they believed she had drowned in the falls as per their intent.
Since Tracy—her friend and previous employee at Jewel’s Bed and Breakfast—had dealt with a vicious stalker about two years ago, a
