Page 3 of Crosscurrent

All the same tread pattern. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears.

Across the clearing, movement flickered between the trees. Wide shoulders. Dark clothing. Two men stepped silently out from the forest line.

The first carried a telescoping baton already extended. The second held a pistol low against his thigh.

She stayed down. Panic pressed hot and sharp at the base of her throat, but discipline shoved it back down where it belonged. Panic made people sloppy. Sloppy people died.

She forced herself to think. Distance to cliff edge: thirty paces. Distance between her and the men: roughly eighty.

Wet ground would slow everybody, but not equally. She had rehearsed this route. They probably hadn’t.

One breath later, she ran.

Her boots tore through wet loam as branches whipped past her shoulders. Behind her somebody shouted. The first gunshot cracked through the trees, and bark exploded off the spruce beside her head.

She ran faster.

The cliff edge appeared ahead where the canopy finally broke open against the storm-dark sky. Her hand found the steel anchor ring bolted into the trunk of the wind-bent spruce. Exactly where she'd left it.

The second shot was closer. Soon, they’d zero in.

She clipped into the anchor, dropped into the narrow gap behind the tree, and launched herself over the cliff edge.

The world vanished into roaring surf.

The rope burned through her gloves while wet stone flashed past beneath her boots. Rain slicked the cliff face, turning every foothold treacherous, but she’d measured this descent enough times to trust the rhythm of it.

At forty-one feet her boots struck the narrow sandstone ledge hidden beneath the overhang. Invisible from above. Her secret.

She unclipped immediately and slipped sideways into the narrow pocket concealed behind hanging roots and folds of basalt. Then she pulled the curtain of roots back into place and disappeared.

Above her, the men reached the cliff edge.

Flashlight beams stabbed wildly through the rain and dimming light, while one man barked something short and angry. Another answered while radio static crackled faintly overhead.

She pressed herself deeper into the stone pocket and forced her breathing slow despite the adrenaline trying to tear it apart.

In for four. Hold. Out for four.

Yoga breathing. Useful despite what most people assumed.

Water trickled cold down her cheek. Above, the flashlight beams swept lower again, then higher, then away. One of the men swore viciously.

A minute later the lights vanished altogether.

Carefully, she edged closer to the opening in the rock pocket and looked down toward the surf below.

The cliff dropped into roiling white waves and jagged stone. Something dark rolled between two wave-battered rocks far beneath her.

A body. Floating, face down, arms out. Male. Heavy coat. Broad shoulders. Dead or close enough not to matter.

Her stomach twisted hard.

Ray?

Maybe not. But highly likely.

No chance her luck had suddenly become that good.