His body collapsing to the ground outside the Gulfstream as she pounded on the window, screaming his name.
As strong as Julian was, he wasn’t invincible.
He could be—
“Ma’am, you can’t be out here. Please return to your vehicle. No visitors are allowed into the Valley of Waterfalls today,” the cop said, curt and firm.
A cop behind the man shouted, “Get teams heading west along the upper bank and another team to scour the area from here to the Three Amigas waterfalls. If he survived, we’re going to find him!”
A group of five officers, dressed in SWAT gear and carrying rifles, headed into the jungle toward the mountain. Another group of a dozen or more officers poured out of the jungle, heading down toward the riverbank.
“Ma’am. Return to your car now!”
Mena stumbled, then turned toward the river as voices raised over the roiling waters. Emerging from a copse of dense trees, she watched Kendrick wave away two officers who approached him. Soaking wet, Kendrick looked haunted as he gazed back up at the mountain in disbelief.
Rushing past the traffic cop, Mena ran over to Kendrick. “What happened? Did you find Julian?”
“Mena? What are you doing here?” Kendrick asked.
“Do you know where he fell? Have you found him?”
Kendrick shook his head. A deep frown settled between his eyes. Mena forced herself to breathe.
“I tried to get him to turn himself in, he just …”
“He just … what? What! Tell me what happened to him!” Mena said.
“He wouldn’t listen to reason. He didn’t trust that I could help him out of this mess. I could have helped him.” Kendrick’s eyes were vacant as he spoke. “I should have just let him go. Why didn’t I just let him go?”
“What are you saying?” Mena asked. “What happened up there?”
“He jumped.”
“Jumped?”
“Off the mountain into the waterfall. He jumped instead of turning himself in.”
Mena took a step back, her head lifting to stare up at the mountains. The stunning waterfalls flowed freely from the various caves on the surface down hundreds of feet to the river.
“He jumped from the waterfall on purpose?” Mena asked, confused.
“He said he had to clear his name. He couldn’t turn himself in and he jumped. I don’t think anyone could survive a fall like that … not even him.”
Chapter Forty-Five
The trails on the Valley of Waterfalls were busier today, now that the police had moved their search for Julian downstream and reopened the hiking trails near the Heliconia Hotel. Mena looked through the binoculars. She could barely make out the Palmchat Islands Coast Guard dive team exiting the water, four men in wetsuits with oxygen masks walking out of the river.
Julian wasn’t with them. It had been a week since he’d jumped over the waterfall and he was still missing. Rumors were gaining traction that even if he’d survived the fall into the rough waters of the Pourciau River, he’d probably drowned, caught in a riptide common in this area. Others surmised that he may have made it to shore, but died from injuries sustained or from lack of food and water in the jungle.
Mena refused to even consider any possibility that ended with Julian dead. She knew he was still out there … alive. Wouldn’t she know it if he were dead? Feel it somewhere in the core of the love that connected them? Like a light dimming within her that had lost connection to its source.
She kept reminding herself that Julian was a highly trained special operative. An ex-Navy SEAL. The elite group had to have prepared him for situations like this. He could be waiting until the cops and SWAT teams gave up the search for him. But why hadn’t he called her to let her know he was okay. She kept the burner phone with her at all times. It lay silent.
“How much longer are you planning to stay here?” Beaujean asked, interrupting her thoughts.
Mena glanced at the sun, still high in the sky even as the afternoon waned. “Not much longer. I was going to walk down to the corner store to get some snacks and then head back to the house.”
“I mean in St. Mateo,” Beaujean said, his tone blunt.
