Page 88 of No Safe Place

That’s when it happened.

There was a boom from up river, and the cable suddenly exploded at my feet and I was falling like a rock.

The cable I’d been hugging moved me out over the river in a Tarzan swing and then disappeared from underneath me.

And then I was headed straight down in a free fall.

I saw the dark raging waterfall beneath me, the shimmer of the moonlight on it and the bubbling white water beneath it rising up.

As I fell in a kind of slow motion, my eyes locked on the waterfall’s stone edge.

I was going to hit it, I realized.

Shit, this is going to hurt, I thought as I tried to get my feet below me so I wouldn’t hit headfirst.

But I was wrong.

I just missed the lip of the edge of the falls. By a whisker. The waterfall passed by the tips of my toes and then the tip of my nose by about a centimeter. I hit the water at the bottom of the falls hard in a kind of pencil dive and then went under, felt the bottom and kicked up.

I broke the surface of the freezing cold water with a gasp of breath.

“Shit!” I cried as I spotted Colleen, half the river away, still at the top of the pole.

I could see that she was yelling something at me but it was fruitless. I couldn’t hear a thing over the roar of the waterfall.

Suddenly, there was another booming gunshot and a chunk of the pole next to her exploded.

Get down off the pole, I wanted to scream as I treaded in the ice-cold water.

I watched as she wisely began to scramble down the pole and I swam toward her side of the river. She reached the edge by the lip of the falls and stopped.

What are you waiting for? I thought, realizing then how panicked she was.

“Jump, Colleen! Jump!” I screamed.

She just stood there, shaking her head. I could see she was crying now.

That’s when we heard a new sound.

Dogs were barking furiously in the woods behind the little brick building.

“I’ll come back for you!” I yelled.

I couldn’t look back at her. I turned and started swimming for the opposite bank, knowing that her only chance at rescue depended on me getting out of this river in one piece.

I promise I’ll come for you, I thought.

I swam as hard as I could along the gushing water and then heard a whistle and as I hit the shore, a big hand seized me by my forearm, helping me out.

Mathias pulled me up on my soaking feet, and when I looked up, I was shocked to see that Mario was there. He was drenched, too.

“You made it!” I said.

“Whadya think? Fuhgeddaboudit!” Mario said, hugging me.

“Where’s Colleen? Is she in the water?” Mathias said.

I shook my head.

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