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Blown Away

Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.

Chapter One

"Easy, Mel," Cole said, turning inland instead of toward the beach. The panicked call from Fly With Frank had reported a missing hang-gliding instructor. Frank had watched as the woman was blown inland over the ridge by a strong gust and he had been unable to raise her on her cell phone since then. That was twenty minutes ago. With so many of Courage Bay's police officers at the scene of a multiple motor-vehicle accident downtown, Cole and Mel were responding alone.

Mel replied with a low, throaty bark. Cole recognized it as conversation. He and the three-year-old dog had lived and worked together for eighteen months, and so far, Mel was the best partner Cole had ever had.

He was cross-trained for search and rescue as well as simple patrol and narcotics detection.

As Cole followed the road that led into the green foothills, he scanned the trees and brush rising around him, for some sign of the woman. The sail of the glider was yellow and red, accordingto Frank's description, the woman tall and fit.

"She can take care of herself up there," Frank had said, the fear audible in his voice, "but the wind can slam you into the hillside and splinter you. Find her, Cole. She's got an eight-year-old boy."

Cole heard a vehicle behind him and checked his rearview mirror to see Gehlen Lester's battered Jeep. Gehlen was the city's Parks and Recreation director and a member of the city's High Angle Rescue Team. His hobby was climbing and he'd done it all over the globe. Cole had thanked the fates that he'd been able to locate his friend on a Saturday, when he was usually off on some adventure. Gehlen was the only member of the five-man team Cole had found this morning. He pulled to a stop at the base of a steep slope.

The cliffs before them rose straight up about three hundred feet. Gehlen parked behind him, and Cole leaped out and ran around to the back of his vehicle to open the tailgate for Mel.

The dog flew out as though shot from a cannon, then waited, bristling, for a command.

"Any idea at all where she could be?" Gehlen asked, shouldering a backpack. He was average in height, but wiry and tough. Married three times, he was a favorite with the ladies. At least, those who weren't married to him ...

Cole pointed to the highest ridge. "Frank says he saw her disappear over there and go down on a gust. She's probably trapped somewhere in the Embrace."

That fold in the hills had earned the name because the ridge curled in on itself like an embracing arm, creating a concealed paradise of live oaks, big-leaf maples, and madrone. There was a pool on the far side of the Embrace that figured in a Native legend about a woman seeing the man of her dreams reflected in it. Or something like that. But horses were needed to make that climb.

Gehlen frowned worriedly. "Well, let's hope it carried her outside the curl of the ridge. If she went in, she may very well be at the bottom. Nothing for the wind to do in there but slam her around."

"Then we'd better know that before we start." Cole pointed in the direction of the ridge's base. "Mel, find!"

Mel ran off, barking, and Cole and Gehlen hurried in pursuit. The ground was covered with chaparral, a community of fire-adapted shrubs, and the slope was sharp and uneven.

Cole stopped halfway up to drag in air, and used the moment to scan the hillside. The land above them was more thickly wooded, and a bright yellow school bus could be lost among the dark green shadows, he thought fatalistically. What chance did a slender woman have?

Gehlen smacked him on the back as he passed.

"Wuss!" he accused. "I keep telling you to come work out with me instead of sitting in the Bar and Grill, swilling beer."

"I do not swill!" Cole followed him. "I have one, once in a while. You just always happen to come in when I'm there."

"Yeah, yeah."

They were both breathing heavily by the time they reached the entrance to the Embrace. The hills rose almost straight up around them like a wide-mouthed cylinder, the bright blue sky visible at the top.

Cole scanned the green floor of the Embrace and saw nothing.

Gehlen looked up, rotating his body as he scanned the trees and bushes clinging to the hillside.

Cole did the same, lifting his binoculars and turning slowly, carefully.

Suddenly Mel took off at a run, scrambling up the sharp incline, barking in controlled bursts. Cole had come to recognize the sounds as meaning "I've found something!"

"What?" Gehlen demanded.

Following the dog's path, Cole moved the binoculars back and forth, occasionally adjusting the lenses to sharpen the image.

If Mel was chasing a wood rat or a skunk, he was in trouble.

But Mel was too much of a pro to do that.

Cole just had to wait and see where he went.

THIS IS A METAPHOR for my life, Kara Abbott thought, dangling limply in the harness she'd set out to test an hour ago. Hanging by a thread.

She estimated that it had been about an hour since a gust of wind had turned her effort to check the new harness into every glider's nightmare. She'd been slapped into the side of the hill, where, fortunately, her gear had taken most of the impact. But it now hung uselessly beneath her, its flying and landing wires caught in the same tree from which she hung suspended over a two-hundred-foot drop.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Blown Away by Muriel Jensen Copyright © 2004 by Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.. Excerpted by permission.
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