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Chapter One
McKenzie
I stand at the edge of the rocky ledge, ready to step off and probably plunge to my own death in the crystal blue water seventy-five feet below. But I’m here to do a job, and dammit, I’m going to do it, even if my heart is pounding and I’m pretty sure I’m about to pee my pants, vomit, or maybe both. Who in their right mind jumps off perfectly solid ground into a waterfall? Especially one this high?
My brother, that’s who. He’d gotten every ounce of thrill-seeking DNA in the Prescott family, leaving none for me. He’d started his bucket list when we were kids, and over the years, he’d added to it and then systematically began ticking off each item on the list, starting with becoming a Navy SEAL. That had enabled him to check off quite a few other things as well—meeting the president, learning to sail, skydiving, parachuting, learning another language, riding in a helicopter, flying a Cessna, and kissing a girl on every continent, not counting Antarctica. And not just kissing, he’d added with that slow and easy grin of his as I’d covered my ears and hummed. No little sister wants to hear the sordid details of her big brother’s sexual escapades, particularly when they’re as legendary as my brother’s apparently were.
He’d finished some of the things on the list with his band of brothers, the men who served on his SEAL team with him, and who were just as crazy and just as addicted to adrenaline as he was. My brother had done more living in twenty-eight years than most people do in a lifetime.
But then he died, killed in Pakistan during a covert mission that according to U.S. officials never even happened. I swipe the back of my hand angrily across my eyes. I am NOT going to cry. Not today. Not here in Costa Rica with Jorge, the adventure tour guide I hired through the hotel where I’m staying, watching me with concern in his dark chocolate eyes. I somehow managed to pull myself out of the whirlpool of grief long enough to get here, and I’m determined to not let it pull me under again.
I take a deep breath, trying to beat back the panic. This is for Liam. Liam, who will never tug my hair again or flash that mischievous smile of his at me, which when we were kids, usually meant I was going to end up in trouble, or on one particularly memorable occasion, in the back of a police car. This is for Liam, who will never finish his bucket list.
Jorge’s soft-spoken voice interrupts my thoughts. “You okay, senorita? You want to do this, yes?” He looks about as skeptical as I feel, probably because I have a death grip on his arm. And to be honest, I don’t look like the kind of girl who’d jump off a seventy-five-foot waterfall. I look like the kind of girl who’s more comfortable at a Tupperware party than in the jungle.
I loosen my grip and nod. I can do this. For Liam. I close my eyes and step off the ledge.
…
I wake up to the sound of pots clanging and hushed voices murmuring in the next room. My head throbs and my cotton-like tongue feels like it’s two sizes too big for my mouth. I open my eyes and look around the unfamiliar darkened room. It’s small but tidy, with white tile floors, simple curtains that billow slightly from the breeze wafting through the open window, a small side table, and a set of plastic shelves. I’m lying in a twin-sized bed, wearing a soft cotton dress that definitely isn’t mine. Oh God. Where am I?
Panic starts to close in, and I suddenly can’t breathe. My heart starts racing, and I feel clammy and sweaty all at the same time as a wave of nausea rolls over me.Dammit, McKenzie, this is not the time for a panic attack!Then again, maybe it is. Maybe I’ve been kidnapped like the women my best friend Charlotte told me about when she tried to talk me out of taking this trip. Maybe I’m about to be sold into some sex trafficking ring or held ransom for drug money.
Consumed by an overwhelming need to get the hell out of here, I throw off the lightweight blanket and sit up abruptly. Unfortunately, my head doesn’t agree with this plan, and everything goes black for a few seconds.
As my vision clears, I catch a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye and look up in time to see a little girl of about ten, whom I hadn’t even noticed sitting in the corner, scamper out of the room. A minute later, Jorge enters, accompanied by a woman with long, dark hair tied back to reveal a round face, smooth olive skin, and clear brown eyes.
“Senorita, are you okay?” Jorge’s gaze is filled with concern. I wonder if he always looks like this or if it’s just when I’m around. I remember that same expression of trepidation mixed with wariness when we were at the top of the falls. Oh my God. The falls. It all comes rushing back to me in a flood of memories: my fingers digging into Jorge’s arm as I contemplated the seventy-five-foot drop into the frothy, churning water below, the roar of the rapids, the welcoming cold mist of droplets cooling my skin, which was sweaty from the three-mile hike up to the top, and the determination and love for my brother that finally compelled me to step off the edge of sanity and into the chaos below.
What struck me first was how loud it was—much louder than I expected—as water pounded against water, the sound almost like gunfire. Then I realized there actuallywasgunfire. Suspended in air over the deep pool below me, I caught a blurred glimpse of black moving through the trees, and another figure in camo facing the falls, a machine gun in his hands. It was completely surreal, and I watched with a curious sense of detachment, like I had a front row seat at a Tom Cruise movie.
Not for long, though. My attention was diverted by the more immediate and disturbing realization that I had just jumped off the top of a freaking waterfall and I was currently freefalling through the air toward my certain death. When I first researched waterfall jumping, I read accounts from people who’d done it. They said that jumping into the falls was peaceful, like becoming one with the waterfall and you were just a drop of the whole. Me? I felt nothing but terror all the way down.
After what seemed like forever, I finally plunged into the clear blue pool below, and as the water closed over me, the world stopped. It was eerily quiet after the cacophony above, and for a second, I wondered if I was dead. Unlike the chaos of the falls,thiswas peaceful, and I just wanted to stay there, wrapped in the comforting embrace of liquid blue silence with no memories to haunt me.
Then Jorge was there, dragging me up out of the water, fear in his eyes as he searched my face.
“Are you okay? Were you hit?” he demanded in his thickly accented English.
“What? No! I didn’t hit anything but the water.” Euphoria and pride flared through me as I realized I’d actually just jumped off a waterfall. I gripped his shoulders and practically shook him in my exhilaration. “I did it, Jorge! I did it!”
I followed his gaze to my shoulder, where a stream of red rivulets trailed down my arm to my fingertips before dripping into the water, where it slowly swirled into pink before dissolving entirely into the endless blue. The last thing I remember was Jorge’s voice from far away saying, “Senorita?”
At the memory, my fingers tentatively touch my shoulder and encounter a thick bandage made of gauze and tape.
“What happened?” I ask, willing myself not to freak out.
“A bullet grazed your shoulder,” Jorge explains.“Gracias a Dios!”He makes the sign of the cross over his faded T-shirt. “It could have been so much worse.”
I stare at him, not quite comprehending what he’s saying. The gunfire had been real? “A bullet? How did I get hit by a bullet jumping off a waterfall?”
“There were several men,” Jorge tells me. “I don’t know where they came from. They weren’t there, and then they were. They started shooting as soon as you jumped.” He scrubs his hand across his face. “I thought they’d killed you when you didn’t come back up after you hit the water. They must have, too, because they disappeared as quickly as they appeared. I managed to get you out and carried you here. To my home.”
He nods at the woman at his side. “This is my wife, Rosita. She doesn’t speak very much English, but she works as a nurse at the hospital in San Jose, and she bandaged your arm. You were in shock, so she gave you a sedative. She said sleep would help you heal.”
I glance from my shoulder to Rosita. “Gracias.”
She nods slightly, but she doesn’t smile back.
