LITMIR.BIZ

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that matched the girl’s own wails.

      Two traverse lines were anchored to the sky bridge platform situated a short fifty paces from the Treetops Hotel’s canopy-level patio. Nova’s group would use seated slings to pull themselves across five such rope passages to reach today’s observation deck, a wooden perch overlooking the nesting site of a showy pair of resplendent quetzals, birds famous for their reclusive habits and long, fancy tails.

      The quetzal observation deck—nestled among branches at the tops of figs trees, tree ferns and lianas—had been lowered into place two years ago by a blimp. Researchers needed a secure platform but couldn’t afford the cost of attempting from-the-ground-up construction in the heart of a jungle. By selling this tour to enough wealthy adventurers, Cosmos Adventure Travel was making the scientists’ quetzal research possible.

      For Nova, this was a win-win-win situation; she loved sharing a life of adventure and travel with fellow daredevils, she admired field scientists who searched for truth in dangerous places and she loved the beauty of birds.

      Yesterday, Jeeps had dropped her group here after a torturous four-hour drive from Costa Rica’s capital, San Juan. Aged sixteen to an athletic fifty-six, they pluckily climbed a 150-foot wooden ladder to the surprisingly elegant hotel, Treetops, named for its famous Kenyan predecessor. Nova’s adventurers would not touch Mother Earth again for ten days. Rooms were small for two people but fitted with comfortable beds and elegant native furnishings.

      “Bruce!” Nova called out. Her assistant waited for Robin on a platform out of Nova’s sight at the other end of the traverse line. “I’ll untangle her security line. You pull her the rest of the way yourself.”

      “Roger,” he called back.

      If Robin would just hold still, she should be in no danger, but Nova’s heart went out to her. After a day of travel and another day of orientation with father and daughter, along with this tour’s eight other clients, Nova had concluded that Robin had, more or less, been coerced into coming on this trip by her father.

      Charles Scott, a hard-charging CEO in the import/export business, wanted to share an adventurous vacation with his daughter in one of Costa Rica’s most beautiful rain forests. But not Monteverde, a secure tourist preserve with several miles of sky bridges. No. He’d chosen an isolated region of rain forest, used mostly for a Smithsonian-sponsored research project and, by special contract, also by Nova’s tour company, CAT. A trip here was expensive, exclusive, and not for the faint of heart.

      As Nova snatched up an extra sling harness and stepped into it, she again called to Robin. “I’m coming across on the other line.”

      “I’m dizzy.”

      In a calm, this-happens-all-the-time-voice, Nova said, “Stop moving, hon, and just sit tight.” And please, PLEASE for love of your life, sit still. “I’ll be over to you in just a few minutes.”

      The senior Scott, a veteran of seven CAT tours, had been acting as though he believed this experience would turn his aspiring artist and poet into a thrill-seeker like Nova. Robin was an only child. Dad had probably counted heavily on having a son.

      Nova pulled the sling’s harness over her shoulders as James Padgett, a pudgy, nervous conservationist from Panama, finished his thought out loud. “I’m going to quit working for the conservancy after this trip.”

      James, now is not the time to talk about quitting your work. Nova bit back the thought before it could escape her lips.

      James had been talking about the encroachment of cattle ranchers onto a strip of pristine forest preserve he’d worked years to save. His failure was obviously eating him up. When a man got that burned out, it was hard to care about anything.

      Nova snapped her sling’s metal ring, located over her diaphragm, to the carabiner of her harness line. “I bet you know, James, that if the good guys quit, it means the bad guys win. I hope you don’t quit. You’re good at what you do.”

      “Easy to say,” he muttered.

      And also true. Quitters are always the losers.

      “PLEEZE!” Robin yelled.

      Another carabiner, those cleverly designed metal loops that were staples for rappelling and mountain climbing, attached her harness line to a pulley on her traverse line. She checked it. It was secure. In moves she’d made hundreds of times, Nova climbed over the guardrail and onto the three-foot-square launch platform.

      Charles Scott elbowed his way past Padgett. “Robin,” he yelled, “Stop that screaming.”

      You jerk! A hateful memory of her stepfather, Candido Branco, flared into Nova’s mind. “Mr. Scott, she’s understandably afraid.”

      “If she’d pulled herself the way you said, the rope wouldn’t have gotten tangled and she’d be okay. She needs to learn to pay attention to details.”

      Her stepfather’s voice had always been soft, his words encouraging. Candido Branco had never spoken to her harshly. But then, there’s all kinds of abuse. I probably would have been less screwed up and my life would’ve been less screwed up if he’d just yelled at me.

      A magnificent butterfly—electric blue and iridescent green, with bright yellow spots on each wing—landed on her hand as she double-checked the carabiner linking her to the pulley. I’m thirty-three and Candido is finally losing his control over me. I hope Robin gets over her father a whole lot sooner.

      “Let me have your unipod a sec,” she said to Padgett, urgency and some disgust with both men putting a sharp edge to her tone. Padgett turned his back, and from his day pack she fetched a collapsible aluminum pole that he used to steady his camera while taking photographs. The camera platform at the tip end of the pole would make a serviceable hook.

      She hurriedly extended the unipod to full length, let the sling harness and traverse line take her weight, then let herself off the sky bridge. The movement disturbed a flock of violet sabrewings. They burst in a shower of green and purple, flapping from the crown of a towering strangler fig ten feet away.

      Nova started pulling toward the girl, Robin’s “I don’t wanna die” still ringing in her ears. There were lots of places to die. Lots of places and times already in her life where she had come close to dying. For her this beautiful place would actually be a good one.

      A shriek cut the air. Nova’s head snapped in the girl’s direction. Robin now hung, rotating slowly, ten feet below the traverse line. Merciful God!

      She had been saved only by her safety line from a fall that would surely have killed her. The harness line was still attached to the traverse line—but not to Robin. How could that have happened?

      “Robin, Robin,” Charles Scott yelled.

      Nova’s pulse beating loudly in her ears, she yelled, “Robin! Do. Not. Move. Do you understand?”

      “I…I do.”

      Pulling fast, her heartbeat pounding against her breastbone, Nova raced back toward the skywalk. Be calm! Be cool!

      Training and discipline took over, her thoughts sped up and her senses sharpened. Now, in addition to the unipod, she would need a length of nylon rope, a rescue pulley and possibly a replacement carabiner.

      That’s what safety lines are for. It will hold. It has to hold. Please, make it hold.

      “Novaaa!”

      Chapter 2

      “So, Mr. Cardone, who’s so important you have to fetch him out of the middle of the jungle?”

      The Huey’s flight engineer had left her place up front. She perched on the jump seat beside Joe. She’d removed her headset, looping it around the back of her neck, and was yelling over the beating of the chopper blades.

      With Costa Rican permission, Joe, the flight engineer, and the Huey’s two pilots had come inland from the USS Reagan, stationed off Costa Rica’s Pacific coast.

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