The Woman Left Behind Read online

  Clumsily she reached behind her back. Boom had had her do this time after time; she knew where the pilot chute was, she had to pull it free.

  She pulled it.

  For an agonizingly long time that was really only a couple of seconds, nothing happened; their plummet down was as fast as ever, and her heart sank, because it hadn’t worked, the parachute hadn’t worked. Then there was a whoosh that she felt, a vibration that shivered through her harness, and they were jerked violently upward as if attached to a bungee cord. Somehow she had air in her lungs now and she screamed because surely, surely Levi and Boom would be jerked away from her. She grabbed for their hands—

  She felt them lose their grips on her harness.

  The horror she’d felt during the first two jumps was nothing compared to the awful sense of disaster that overwhelmed her, smashing into her chest like an avalanche. A guttural scream tore out of her throat, long and agonized, and her eyes popped open as she searched frantically for their falling bodies even though she knew there was no way she could reach them, nothing she could do to stop their headlong plunge to their deaths. Here she was swinging under that damn chute, and they were gone.

  Levi! Sobs choked her. She tried to scream his name, tried to turn her chute so she could look for them, tried to—

  The world stopped. Two canopies were floating down near hers, one slightly behind and below her, the other slightly above. Levi. Boom. With their own freakin’ parachutes.

  Rage filled her like whiskey, hot and potent. They’d tricked her. They’d made a fool of her. Yeah, they’d gotten her to control her own jump, but she freakin’ hated them for this whole miserable day and this was the cherry on top of the whole shit shake.

  Her arms were shaking violently as she grabbed the toggles, so violently that her parachute began swinging back and forth. Terrified, she turned them loose, then grabbed them again when she remembered she had to hold them. Looking down, she saw her feet swinging and way, way below them was the patchwork of the earth, thousands of feet down. The shaking got worse and desperately she switched her gaze to the horizon, the blur where sky met earth.

  She had to get down. She had to safely navigate all those thousands of feet of nothing but air, she had to steer this stupid parachute—and what moron first thought it was a good idea to jump out of a plane with nothing but a glorified umbrella to float him down like he was Mary Fucking Poppins—to somewhere close to the landing zone and then actually make it down without breaking a leg, her back, her neck, or any other bone, because she had to be relatively whole and unhurt in order to kill them, not just for scaring her to death but likely laughing while they did it, and on top of all that they’d made her dis Mary Poppins. People went to hell for less than that.

  Tears kept pouring down her face. She tried to stop crying, tried to wipe her face on her hunched shoulder, but every time she did the motion started her parachute swinging and she’d just now gotten the damn thing fairly stable. She could hear both Levi and Boom yelling encouragement and instructions at her, but she didn’t acknowledge them in any way, didn’t look at them, didn’t even scream at them to eat shit and die the way she wanted to.

  She had several minutes before they were on the ground. Technically she knew that was how long it took, though the descent had seemed so much longer the first two times—and this one felt even longer. In that short length of time she had to wipe away any sign of tears because damned if she’d let them know they’d made her cry, that she’d been so terrified for them.

  On the other hand, pride would carry her only so far, and in order to wipe her face she had to release one of the toggles. Not going to happen.

  Besides, the effort would have been useless. She couldn’t stop crying. Through the blur of her tears she identified the landing zone, jerkily pulled on the toggles to steer herself toward it. The ground was coming up fast, gaining in speed. She started to pull her feet up, then remembered she wasn’t tandem with Levi now, she had to land on her own feet. She choked on a sob, flared the parachute the way Boom had taught her, and her feet hit the ground.

  Her landing had none of the powerful grace of Levi keeping his balance and taking a couple of steps, it was more that she stumbled and went down, hitting knees first then tumbling flat on her face before the billowing chute pulled her to the side. She wanted to just lie there and sob, but there were things she had to do. She struggled to her knees and unhooked, scrabbled around to begin hauling in her parachute, which was streaming across the ground like some kind of giant amoeba. It felt as if the fabric was fighting her, trying to catch the wind again and pull free.

  She wanted to let the damn thing go, but controlling the parachute and pulling it in had been drilled into her by Boom. She hauled on it, scrabbling on her knees, throwing her weight back, digging in her heels. Her movements were clumsy, or the chore wouldn’t have been nearly as difficult. She was bad at this, spectacularly bad.

  Then she had the damn thing under control. She sat on her ass on the ground, pulled a handful of the nylon to her, and buried her face in it while sobs choked her and her whole body shook.

  She knew Levi and Boom were both on the ground, knew they had gathered in their nylon; she heard steps as one, maybe both, of them approached her. She didn’t look up.

  “Babe.” It was Levi. A hard hand grasped her shoulder. She twisted away from his touch, scrambled to the side, and managed to get to her feet even though she had to put a hand on the ground to brace herself. She felt a rock under her fingers and before she knew it she’d whipped her arm around and hurled the rock at him.

  He jerked his head aside barely in time to keep from being brained with it. He was too close, and she’d thrown thousands of rocks during her childhood. She saw him scowl, saw him start to bark something at her, then he saw her face and closed his mouth. Behind her Boom laughed; Levi held up a warning hand and Boom cut off the sound like slicing it with a knife.

  She stood there, crying and angry, clutching a fistful of nylon in one hand and her other hand knotted into a fist. She wished she had a whole supply of rocks to throw at them. She wished she had a hammer to throw at them. She wished she had her car here so she could just drive off and leave them standing here, because she wanted to do a lot of damage to both of them and there was no way she could unless they let her, which took all the fun out of it.

  “You jerks,” she gasped in a wobbly voice. She could barely talk, her throat was so raw.

  Carefully Levi said, “You should have known we weren’t stupid enough to jump without a parachute.”

  “I did!” she shot back, glaring at him through her tears. “On your orders! So evidently I was stupid enough.”

  Boom winced. “Got us there.”

  Levi was watching her as if she were a rabid squirrel, about to pounce on him. She’d had all she could take today, she was done. Swallowing hard, she turned her back on them and began gathering the parachute up in her arms.

  Their ride was there, and silently Jina marched toward the pickup. Logistically she assessed her options: if she got in the back of the king cab, she’d be riding beside one of them, and she didn’t want either of them that close. If she got in the front with the driver, they’d both have to get in back. Good enough. That’s exactly what she did, climbing into the front passenger seat and slamming the door before they even reached the truck. She held the parachute bundled on her lap and stared straight ahead.

  She expected to be taken back to that godforsaken Twin Otter—she was ready to blow the damn thing up, except they probably had a replacement—but when the driver asked, Levi said, “We’re done for today, take us to the truck.”

  The relief was overwhelming.

  During the short ride to the truck, Jina accepted the bitter realization that she had to do something. As much as she felt her dudgeon was justified, that wasn’t the way team dynamics worked, especially not a paramilitary team. Likely none of the guys would feel the way she did, or even if they did, they’d bury it unde