Run Wild (Escape with a Scoundrel) - By Shelly Thacker Page 0,46
of their own. The far bank was closer than before. They might even reach it. Sweet Jesus, by some trick of fate they might actually reach it!
But he heard another strange sound—so loud it blotted out even the dogs.
A roar. A deafening roar made entirely of water. He heard the girl scream. Turned his head to find her right beside him. But he also saw what she did.
A spew of froth and spray and waves breaking over the edge of a precipice. Just a few yards downriver.
A waterfall.
All the breath, all the power, all the life in his body seemed to rise up through his chest in a yell of denial. But he never got the chance to voice it. Just as quickly as the river had given him hope, it snatched it away—and spat him right over the edge of a cliff.
The force of tons of water behind them rushed them into the waterfall like a pair of rag dolls, sent them tumbling out into nothingness beyond. For an instant he found himself weightless. Flying. Falling helplessly, in a pounding curtain of water that carried him down... down... down...
They hit the surface far below, slammed into the depths of a whirlpool that yanked him straight to the bottom, hard, as if the current above had been only a game.
Pain wracked his body. Several feet of swirling, roiling water closed over his head.
And sudden fury rose in him. A rush of sheer rage at being toyed with by fate. Teased by God.
His stamina, his will, his body may have failed him. But his rage did not.
Kicking, reaching, he rose against the driving power of the whirlpool. Against the column of river water that hammered down from above. The more it tried to beat him senseless and drown him, the more strength he seemed to find.
But he felt a drag on his ankle. The girl—below him, sinking. He turned, felt for her, grabbed for her, caught a fistful of her hair. She was limp, unconscious. Perhaps even dead.
No, damn it. If you die, I die. He grabbed for her again, with his left arm. Caught her.
And felt a horrendous agony rip through his shoulder. Like a slicing blade of pure hellfire. Like he was being torn in half.
Awash in pain and the burning rush of rage, fighting for consciousness, he struggled upward once more, his arm looped around the girl’s middle. He made it to the surface only to get a pounding faceful of spray for his reward. He lurched out of its way.
And found air. Blessed air. Life-giving, life-restoring air. For a moment that was all that mattered. It cleared his head, kept him from sinking into unconsciousness, from sinking to the sandy bottom of the river and staying there. And at least for one critical minute, he could think. He realized that the whirlpool wasn’t pulling at him as strongly anymore. He seemed to be behind the falls.
And just to his left he could make out a relatively calm place—a pool separated from the waterfall by a half-circle of rocks.
With the weight of the girl and the chain pulling him down, it was a struggle just to stay afloat. But he lunged for the rocks with one last life-or-death burst of strength. He saw a root sticking out from between two of the boulders and grabbed for it, clinging.
Cool shadow blotted out the sun. He realized they were beneath a stone overhang. A canopy of sorts, soaring several feet overhead, that protected them from the tumbling, roaring rush of water beyond.
The girl came awake, coughing, sputtering. Struggling. She was alive. Somehow he hung onto her. But he felt a strange, sticky heat flowing down his back. Blood. In a haze of fiery agony, he closed his eyes and clung to the root and knew that was all he could do. Saving the girl had sapped the last of his strength.
Hang on. Hang on.
After a time, he opened his eyes. Blinked as his vision adjusted to the darkness. He glanced back toward the whirlpool. No way in hell he was going back through that again.
He looked in the other direction. A few feet away, cut into the rock, he could make out a crevasse. An opening of some sort. Less than two feet wide. It might be a trick of his vision. A shadow. Or another little joke being played by God.