Heartbreak Hero

by Frances Housden

  Her heart pounded in her throat as if lodged there by the fall, only short, fast gasps of breath issued from her lungs, drying every last drop of saliva. The reflex to cry for help stifled by a tongue brittle enough to crack if she dared try.

  With her throat like a dust bowl, the urge to cough was fearsome but not as terrifying as the thought of convulsive blasts of carbon dioxide sending her sailing over the edge.

  Please God, tell me I didn’t survive being knifed in that mugging years ago, to die here. I need the five weeks and six days I have left. I deserve them.

  Who would tell her friends in San Francisco? Who knew who they were? Sea and sky merged on the horizon in a wash of tears.

  Never give up, never.

  Ears ringing with the words, she fought for control. Numb, her eyes and mind closed to every sensation except those she could feel—her feet on solid ground, the clump of spinifex twisted round her hand—simply placebos to reassure her there was life after a tumble like she’d taken. It took a few seconds to erase the image of dark lava rocks greased with sea spume that for a hundred speeding heartbeats had seemed her final destination.

  Beware of waves. Unbidden, the stark warning sign at the top of the path leading to the rocks jumped into her mind, chased by her greatest enemy—fear.

  She didn’t want to die. Didn’t want the curse of the tapu to strike her down now she was so close to her goal.

  The curse had dealt its first blow to her grandmother exactly a week after her thirtieth birthday, and done the same to her mother. Now no power on earth could convince her this was simple coincidence. Once Ngaire worked it out, she’d realized not only had a skilled surgeon’s scalpel saved her life, but she’d been too young. At fourteen she’d had just over half her life to go. No matter if she survived this fall to live past thirty, the curse had already taken its toll. She would be the last of her line.

  Couldn’t the spirit of Te Ruahiki understand she was taking them both home?

  With her eyes closed, her other senses returned in small increments. Overhead she heard voices, male voices, Kel’s rattling out commands in pidgin, with a couple of Chinese words thrown in, including utai, which she knew meant belt.

  “Stay there, Ngaire.” Kel again. Where on earth did he think she was likely to go, when the only option was down?

  Or was it?

  What if she could climb back up? Her spine had formed an obsessive attachment to the cliff face, and the thought of tearing them apart unnerved her. Twisting her head round to look might just tip the scales to a point where she lost her balance. But not using her eyes didn’t preclude reaching out with her free hand to explore the cliff face nearest to her. Maybe she could discover if there was any assistance to be found in the rocks and cracks she could reach.

  “You okay, Ngaire? Any damage?” Kel’s voice was thinner than normal and sounded a long, long way above her head.

  This was not a moment for panic.

  She halted her tour of discovery, knuckles hooked round a clump of knife-edged grass that could rip her skin to shreds should it slide through her fingers. At this stage of the game she doubted she’d feel the pain, though she’d no intention of letting go. “Yeah, nothing major. I’ll survive.”

  Get me out of here and you’ve got yourself a slave for life.

  Her life.

  She’d been in some bad situations since the first time she’d been mugged and stabbed, but none she hadn’t believed she could survive. So what if she was scared? That was natural, it didn’t mean she’d give up. She never had before.

  Never give up. George Two Feathers had stuck to the motto even when his wife had died, leaving him with a baby girl to bring up. Her own father had died years before her mother was killed in a car crash—she hardly remembered him—and that left her grandfather with a preteen to raise. He said he hadn’t minded, that bringing up her mother had just been practice for when it really counted.

  “Ngaire!”

  The urgency in Kel’s voice broke her out of a short moon yum meditation as she tried to center the flow of her ki energy, knowing she would need all her skills to get out of this.

  Thankfully, her grip hadn’t dislodged the grass. It was one thing to know the plant withstood the howling storms the ranger had told them battered the west coast, but would it, and others like it, take her weight?

  “Yeah?” Did her voice sound as weak to Kel’s ears as it did to hers?

  “How you doing, doll? Got any room to negotiate an about-face? To pull you up, I’m going to need your assistance, by digging your toes in for starters. Think you can manage?”

  He sounded closer now, thank heavens. In that instant she took back every bad thought she’d had about him, including her brief flirtation with the suspicion he might be after Te Ruahiki. “Yes, I can manage.”

  She wasn’t certain he could hear her, but within seconds he said, “I’ve made a rope out of belts. Some of the others have gone for help, but how long it will take to get a safety harness and gear here is anyone’s guess.”

  Kel’s “If there’s one available” was barely discernible, as if meant for his ears alone. “Hell, I don’t even know if those guys can make themselves understood. They were so worried about giving up their belts, I have this vision of some of them tripping as their pants make a dive for their ankles.”

  A gurgle, egged on by a hint of hysteria, erupted deep in her chest until she forced it back down. “Please, Kel, don’t make me laugh. I guess it’s a toss-up which way’s likely to make them lose face. But I’m not worried. I’m sure they’ll deliver.”

  A scatter of stones and dust exploded out of the rock above her like residue from a shotgun blast, powdering her head and shoulders, before Kel shouted, “You okay? Did anything hit you?”

  A few small huffs solved the problem of the fine debris coating her face. Would that her other dilemma could be fixed so easily. “After what I’ve been through this morning, a little bit of dust doesn’t rate.”

  “So, what do you want to do? Wait, or trust me to get you out of there?” He sounded directly overhead now.

  How could she let him put his life in danger, then say she didn’t trust him? “I’ll take a chance on you. Just give me a minute to see if I’ve got room to turn around.”

  She inched the sole of one Nike, designed for walking, not climbing, to the left. A sigh of relief hissed through her parched lips as she found what she judged to be about a foot more of usable space.

  “Don’t take too big a risk, Ngaire. If you can’t turn around, just say so.”

  Risks, she’d been taking them from the moment she’d seen the notices for the quiz show in the Blue Grasshopper. Every step she’d taken since then had pushed her from the comfort zone of the do jan where she taught hapkido. Every question she’d answered correctly had brought her closer to New Zealand, to her grandmother’s subtribe. She faced the chance of being rejected by the people she’d learned to love secondhand through the stories she’d read and been told. Faced the risk of being wrong that the curse could be broken. That’s if its source didn’t end up at the bottom of a hundred-foot cliff, and her with it.

  Fool that she was, instead of leaving Te Ruahiki in the hotel safe, she’d brought it with her. The mere was hanging to the left of her head inside her backpack, adding its weight to hers on roots clinging desperately to a cleft in the rocks.

  Time to act before she lost her ki. Reaching her free hand overhead, her fingers scrabbling like a demented spider across the cliff, she clasped over the ones already clutching the strap. That done, she let her right leg swing free, taking her weight on the toes of her left foot, and rolled as if she was lying on the floor, instead of the side of a rocky plateau. The momentum sent her braid spinning wide to land with a slap between her shoulder blades.

  Her warm breath bounced back onto her lips as she leaned against weather-roughened stone, cushioned only by her breasts. A momentary spike of panic aborted a precocious sigh of relief when her right foot pa
wed air before encountering the shelf. The second her toes hit pay dirt, her breath gusted out as if she’d run a mile in under four.

  “Atta-girl! You did it. Now, give yourself a minute to recover, then move on out. Search for a hold, one step, one hand at a time. This rope I’m fastened to isn’t quite long enough for me to reach. You’ll have to climb three feet, four at the most before I can grab you.”

  She tried to relax, to ignore the scratches stinging at her waist where her T-shirt didn’t meet her pants. If she’d known rock-climbing was on the agenda she would have worn something more suitable.

  Resting her cheek against the cliff, she tried to release her grip on the strap that had become a lifeline. Her fingers were numb with strain. Letting go with her left hand was the hardest task she’d set herself yet. A yip of pain escaped as she flexed her fingers, making the blood flow under her whitened skin.

  She looked up as Kel asked, “Do you still think you can make it?” His gaze held hers and for a moment there was only Kel, her and the sky. No windswept headland, no wheeling gannets or diving tern, no fellow passengers on the cliff top, buzzing with alarm. Only the two of them, and the short distance between.

  As if hypnotized by the faith in his eyes, she affirmed, “Yeah, I can make it.”

  Gradually she climbed toward him, handhold after toehold, to the point where her day pack no longer offered support and the strap slid in a loop down her arm as she sought the next hold.

  How could she have known the cliff would crumble beneath her weight, sending her on a downward slide back where she’d come from?

  Finally, a small crevice acted like a buffer. She felt brain dead from stress. Not a single squeak burst from her lips. To open them was to give way to the nausea roiling inside her. She simply dug deep into her need for survival and tucked her toes into the space, clasping the strap once again.

  Lips pressed flat against her teeth, she sent a quick mental plea to her ancestor. “Here’s how it works, see. You don’t let me down, and I do the same for you. And before you know it, I’ll have you back home.”

  “Dammit, Ngaire! Let go of that thing!”

  “No way! It’s my safety line. I need it.”

  It took her twice as long to regain the lost ground through testing every foothold, every crack in the rock, instead of putting her faith in the cliff to stay in one piece. Seemed that for now, the only thing she could put her trust in was Kel, and maybe a tentative compromise with the supernatural.

  As her arm stretched through the strap again to clutch a clump of greenery growing level with the bush, she heard him say, “Forget the bag, we can get it later.”

  “No, it’s okay like—” Her words were cut off as the giant, soft-stemmed creeper, like a prehistoric ice plant, turned to liquid chlorophyll at her touch.

  Kel spat out a curse so foul it jerked her out of the small pocket of fear the second near-miss dragged her into, a reaction that sparked an urgent attempt to grab something safer.

  Three minutes later, her safety lay in Kel’s hand. His crooked smile lit a ray of sunshine inside her that spelled hope. “Okay, I’ll just pull you up a little farther, then you can shift your grip to my wrist.”

  The situation was tricky, dangerous, not the occasion for humor, but the irony of the moment wasn’t lost on Ngaire. “Okay, I’ll attempt it, but we’ve got to stop meeting like this. Are you sure you aren’t following me?”

  Kel knew it was crazy to feel this way simply because she’d unwittingly put her trust in him. Yet her laughter filled an empty spot centered about two feet higher than the lust contact with Ngaire normally involved.

  No matter that Chaly had given him license to do almost anything, he knew such reactions could be hazardous to the health of an agent, made them more likely to catch a bullet than a cold.

  Though, he admitted, Chaly’s offhand remark had been made to the cold son of a bitch he knew Kel to be, not to the hormone-driven Neanderthal he became when Ngaire was near.

  Sure, her figure was trim, but that didn’t always mean fit. Yet, the way she’d climbed up to him, muscles straining as she hoisted her own weight from one hold to the next, showed her fitness was equal to his own, which if not quite his SAS level, wasn’t far off. He still knew all the moves, plus a few others that could make her head spin if he felt so inclined.

  Reliving the moment he’d watched her go over the cliff was almost too painful. He’d never thought she’d survive. His father’s body had been an example of how well humans could fly from a hundred feet up. The thought that if she went into the drink, she’d take the formula with her and solve all his problems hadn’t raised its ugly head.

  Yet, now the notion poised at the back of his mind, swaying back and forth like a deadly snake ready to strike.

  This northeast side of the cliff was mostly sheltered from the wind, but who knew when a down draft would spew over the top and send them both swinging in its wake?

  He shut his dark thoughts away and gave a sharp pull on the rope of buckled belts; the sooner they were out of there the better he’d like it and the safer Ngaire would be from snake bite. “Get ready to pull us up.”

  The tour guide was back overhead; he could hear her translating to the men at the top of the cliff. Some of them looked as if one strong gust of wind would blow them over, and when he’d swiped their belts he’d wished for a few men with more girth, and the extra few feet it would have added to his makeshift rope.

  Taking his weight, the leather grew taut, stretched, held. He turned back to Ngaire. Although they were what you’d call at arm’s length, this was only the second time they’d touched hands in their brief acquaintance. Only the second time he’d felt the warmth of her skin against his own. It felt too good, too addictive, too dangerous to the code he lived by.

  Hell, he’d no desire to play Romeo to her Juliet. She worked for a drug cartel, he for a drug enforcement agency, a case of never the twain will get together under any better circumstances than an arrest. Yet his brain was giving him mixed signals.

  Consequently, his body was no better than his mind at eliminating the sexual fantasies she’d aroused the first time he’d seen her lithe figure stretching in Tahiti.

  Neither knew how to shed their neediness.

  He waved to the tour guide, depending on her to control the men on the other end. “Start winding us up slowly. Get it? Slowly,” he shouted, and heard “Don’t worry” for his reward. He wished he could feel as confident as the rest of his team.

  The coincidence of being involved with two people in the drug trade who’d gone over cliffs didn’t escape him. He’d learned his father had been no better than he should, but Ngaire?

  Kel’s inner focus fractured, revealing a picture behind the jagged edge of his own needs and wants. Gordie, sprawled on the stage, dying, was enough to stop him picking at the old wound his father had made.

  Were the bastards responsible for killing his buddy the ones she worked for? The ones who’d slipped a knife between Gordie’s ribs and let his life force stream out over that grimy stage. If so, why the hell was he trying to save her life?

  A useless question—he knew the answer as well as he knew himself, as well as he’d known Gordie. It was the same answer that had made him walk away from his buddy and left him riddled with guilt.

  Duty!

  Gritting his teeth, he scowled at the top of Ngaire’s head. “Okay. Hang on and move at my pace, step for step. Another two meters and there will be more grass to get a grip on, but you’re gonna have to lose the bag.”

  “No, I can’t afford to lose it. If you can’t deal with that, leave me and I’ll wait for the ranger.”

  Bang, just like that they were back where they’d started this morning when she’d bristled at him for offering to hold her day pack. The formula had to be inside.

  “It’s your choice, lady. Let’s move on out.”

  Her lips clamped tight on her reply, as if she was already a hostile witness. He climbed a step at a
time, stopping after each to let her close the gap, his mind on other things, like business. He’d wondered where the stuff for the drug cartel was hidden, now he knew for sure. It was inside her freakin’ day pack.

  As he looked beyond her, a huge wave broke over the rocks, taking with it the creeper Ngaire had broken off, bright green flotsam against the foam, visible for a second before being towed under. That’s what should happen to her day pack. Save them all a lot of trouble if the sea took the rubbish away.

  It hadn’t managed to carry off his father, though, or his car. Problems were all Milo had left his family. Like the porridge Grandma Glamuzina had made the morning they’d gotten the news, it had been cold comfort. His trip with Kurt to see the wreck had made him sick at the amount of damage that imitating an airplane could do to a car.

  He faltered on the next step, unable to go higher because she was dragging her anchor in the shape of the damn bag again. It had caught on the last few twigs of the bush.

  “Let go!”

  Unable to contain itself, the snake in his mind struck.

  Let her go.

  “Just give me a minute to get it loose.”

  “Is it worth risking your life, our lives?”

  The snake’s fangs sunk deep into his thoughts and released their venom. Let her go and save a million lives.

  “It’s worth it to me. My life might as well be over if I lose what’s in there.”

  A feral howl ripped at the wound the snake had inflicted on his mind. “Dammit! You ask too much, lady!”

  It would be so easy….

  He twisted as if to shake off the demon snake of temptation slithering around his shoulders, whispering in his ears.

  Clenching his teeth, he shred his venomous thoughts with a growl. “Shut up!” Murder might be the easy way out for some, but not him. He’d seen too much, done too much to ever kill in cold blood.

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing important. I’ll come back down a few steps. That way you can get a hold of the belt tied round my waist, then give the strap a real strong tug. Maybe that will shift it.”