Two things happened simultaneously. When the breeze scooped up the bag and sent it scooting toward the edge of the rock, Savannah reacted instinctively, lunging toward it.
And something clamped around her wrist.
Savannah let out a startled scream. Time seemed to slow to a crawl. Her gaze remained locked on the bag as it skittered toward the drop-off even as the vise around her arm yanked her backward.
She banged into the railing, and pain shot from her hip. Then she felt herself lifted and thrown backward in a fireman’s carry. Her breath whooshed out as her diaphragm hit a broad, hard shoulder. For a moment Savannah was too stunned to struggle, too shocked to be afraid, but then a flashback to something that had happened when she was eighteen burst into her mind.
She’d been picking wildflowers in a high meadow above her grandmother’s homestead when a big, burly, smelly mountain man emerged from the trees. The ratty jumpsuit he wore identified him as a prisoner, most likely someone who had walked off a road crew. He’d grabbed her and carried her toward the trees, his talk nasty and promising rape.
On that day she’d used her intellect and her knowledge of the mountain to escape before any real harm could be done to her. Now, while she didn’t know this mountain, she still had her brain. Plus she’d learned a whole new set of survival skills during those six lost years. She could fight dirty when necessary.
Only a handful of seconds had passed since the stranger had grabbed her up and started toting her away from Lover’s Leap, away from the keepsake bag. As she gathered herself to struggle, she felt her captor lean forward. Her body began to slip. Her butt landed hard on top of the picnic bench, and she looked up into a pair of aviator sunglasses.
He stood well over six feet tall in a spread-legged, aggressive stance, wearing faded jeans and an unbuttoned blue-plaid flannel shirt over a tight white T-shirt. Reaching up, he lifted the sunglasses off a straight blade of a nose to reveal piercing blue eyes. But it wasn’t his movie-star good looks with those mesmerizing eyes, chiseled cheekbones, and sexy five o’clock shadow that made her mouth go dry.
The gun holstered at his waist managed that.
The moment Zach spied the leggy blonde climbing the barrier meant to block access to the ledge of rock that had given Lover’s Leap its name, his heart lodged in his throat. He’d had a jumper in February and one in March. Be damned if he’d allow it to go three for three.
So he’d acted, moving silently forward so as not to startle her, not breathing freely until he’d clamped his hand around her wrist and managed to cart her away from danger’s edge.
Once he had her over his shoulder he allowed his temper to flare. Life was precious. More than once he’d watched someone he loved fight for one more day of life in the face of terminal illness. Suicide totally pissed him off. It was the selfish act of a coward.
He toted the woman to the picnic bench, where he set her down a little roughly and demanded, “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t haul you off in handcuffs.”
Her jaw came up. Brown eyes snapped with temper. “Excuse me?”
With those two words he heard the slow, sexy heat of the Deep South in her voice. He’d always been a sucker for a true southern accent, so his temper flared even hotter imagining it ending in a splat at the bottom of the cliff. What a waste.
With his blood still pumping, his heart continuing to pound from the scare she’d given him moments before, he snarled, “Don’t try to give me BS about attempted suicide not being illegal.”
“Suicide! Listen, mister—”
“I don’t have to charge you with that,” he interrupted. “I can start with reckless endangerment. Add in cruelty to animals, too. You were going to leave the poor dog tied to the picnic table to die of thirst?”
“You think I was going to jump?”
Judging by the scathing note in her tone, she might as well have added the words “you idiot.”
Okay, so maybe he’d been wrong.
Nevertheless, climbing over the guardrail made her criminally stupid. It was too easy to imagine a strong gust of wind blowing her off the rock to her death. Dead was dead, no matter if through accidental death or by suicide. Both pissed Zach off.