Race with Danger (Run for Your Life Book 1)

Read Race with Danger (Run for Your Life Book 1) for Free Online Page B

Book: Read Race with Danger (Run for Your Life Book 1) for Free Online
Authors: Pamela Beason
it and peer out into the churning river. I see Sebastian’s head, his long brown hair sleeked back like a river otter. He’s still riding the waves, moving way too fast as he approaches the bend in the river. He’s already past the point where I got out. Abruptly, his head disappears, and the rope yanks my harness to the side. I lean harder against the rope’s pull.
    Sebastian is now underwater at the end of the rope, just like I was. I pray the rope is swinging him in toward this shore like it did me. But he’s already further downstream than I was, and the rope configuration is different, and his life vest is well, dead.
    I hold my breath as I wait for him to emerge, scanning the water between the point where he disappeared and further downstream. If he unclips, surely I will feel the rope slacken, won’t I? But it could take a few seconds. Could the rope be caught around the base of the boulder where I wound it? I glance back at it. The rope, stretched around the rock a few inches above the ground, looks as if it could slide easily enough.
    Then I remember that Sebastian can’t unclip; he has to untie a knot to get free. I frantically search the water. Silvery splashes of water in the sunlight, waves rolling up and down, thousands of gallons surging past at an alarming rate. I feel lightheaded. I can’t get my breath. Oh God, oh God, If There’s Anyone Up There, is Sebastian drowning? Is he unconscious at the end of this rope?
    A shape emerges from the water. I think I see his face for just a second, but it vanishes so quickly that I wonder if I only imagined him surfacing. Did he get a breath?
    My heart pounds so hard that I think the suspense might literally kill me. But then I realize the whop-whop-whop noise is not only my heartbeats. Thunder is reverberating from overhead. A helicopter drops out of the sky, hovering over the river, its rotors kicking up sand in my face. A guy dressed in a wetsuit and an orange vest stands spread-eagled in the open doorway.
    No! While I don’t want Sebastian to die, the minute that frogman rescues my teammate will be the minute Team Seven is disqualified. The frogman tightens his facemask. He pushes a snorkel mouthpiece between his lips. I make a frantic crossed-hands motion to tell him to stop.
    Then a brown head bobs up only a couple of yards from the river bank, and Sebastian crawls out of the water. I wait until he’s firmly on shore. I unclip and, doing my best to shield my face from the flying grit with an upraised arm, jog toward my teammate, who is hunched on all fours, choking and gasping and spitting on the sand.
    The helicopter lifts a few feet but hovers overhead, its rotors adding to the deafening din in the river canyon. When I’m only a few feet away from him, Sebastian sinks back into a sitting position and turns. Still coughing, he raises his right hand toward the chopper, middle finger extended. Then he raises his left and echoes the sign. Only after witnessing Sebastian’s double bird does the frogman move back from the door. The chopper pulls up and peels away like some sort of malevolent dragonfly. It quickly vanishes over the cliff above us.
    In the absence of the mechanical noise and flying sand, the canyon seems almost serene. I glance at Sebastian. “You okay?”
    It seems like a lame thing to ask after all that drama.
    He coughs in response but rises to his knees, pauses to slick back his hair, and then pushes himself to his feet.
    “You’re bleeding.” He points to my leg.
    Sure enough, there’s a gash above my knee about four inches long. Blood is pouring down my calf. It’s amazing what you can do to yourself in the water and never feel it. We walk back to my pack and I dig until I find the GluSkin and hand it to Sebastian. I mop off the blood with a kerchief and then twist the water out and dry off the gash the best I can with the wrung-out rag. Then Sebastian takes the GluSkin, twists off the cap with his teeth, kneels, and squeezes a

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