Flash of Fire by M. L. Buchman

Author:M. L. Buchman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc
Published: 2016-02-16T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

“Dog meat, Hamilton!” Robin screamed from where she had managed to back paddle and save herself—an eddy current at the side of the raging river. In a pool perhaps twice the length of her tiny little kayak, it slowly whirled her in a clockwise circle every ten seconds.

Large rock.

Cliff face.

A little bit of grass.

More cliff face.

A roaring menace of Class III rapids pounding over rocks.

More roaring menace, ultimately launching itself off a ten-foot-high waterfall into more psychotic roil of Class III madness.

Large rock.

Cliff face.

A little bit of grass.

She let the kaleidoscopic whorl continue until she was starting to feel a little nauseous. With an ill-timed flick of the paddle, she almost launched herself out into the maelstrom rather than moving to the side of the current as she’d intended.

Robin managed to recover before she shot out of her safe haven. Her next attempt to move to the edge of the whorl so that she could grab on to the cliff wall threatened to launch her once again into the death-and-destruction zone.

So she sat in her toy-sized boat twirling in slow circles, contemplating the various forms of murder she would be perpetrating on one Mickey “Blue Eyes” Hamilton, if by some miracle—like maybe a Star Trek transporter beam—she was rescued.

Getting a helicopter in here safely would be a hell of a trick and getting back out even harder.

No way to climb the cliff even if she abandoned her kayak. Hell, a gecko with its sticky little feet probably couldn’t scale this sucker.

A sharp bleat, only a little louder than the thunderous river, had her looking upward. A baby mountain sheep, still more fuzz than fur, was looking down at her from an impossible perch several stories above her. Then it laughed at her again and scampered away up the cliff.

Fine!

There was still no way to climb up the sheer—

Just to drive their casual arrogance home, a mother sheep with huge, curling horns went scampering up after her kid.

Double fine!

She glared back down at the eddy, where she was tucked into the only refuge from the mini Niagara Falls and—not being some crazy breed of mountain sheep—would be stuck here until the end of her days.

On the next spin around, she eyed the tiny clump of grass. Which was just that, tiny. Only if she wanted to live the rest of her life in fetal position would she fit there. But better that than the Rapids of Doom. She was designing her tiny grass hut, built season by season from carefully nurtured grass fronds, when another slow spin revealed Mickey coming toward her.

He’d been leading the way all day. Had graduated her from flat water to Class I, which basically meant the water was moving on its own rather than standing still.

After lunch, and some more splendidly mind-numbing sex, he’d introduced her to Class II. A little rough water, a rock to dodge, a couple of one-foot drops, just enough that she could feel herself go partially weightless.

Ah, but she had been young and naive then.

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