Blown Away Read online

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  The Sentinel

  Courage Bay, California

  High Winds Strand Hang-Gliding Instructor

  An early-morning outing nearly ended in tragedy for Kara Abbott, part-time hang-gliding instructor with Courage Bay’s Fly with Frank flight school. Strong winds buffeted Ms. Abbott’s glider and sent her off course into a treacherous basin in the foothills of Courage Bay Mountain known as the Embrace. Her glider became tangled in a tree on the steep hillside, leaving her dangling from her wires above a 200-foot drop.

  Sergeant Cole Winslow of Courage Bay police department’s K-9 patrol and his four-legged partner, a German shepherd named Officer Braveheart, conducted the rescue with the help of parks director Gehlen Lester.

  According to Ms. Abbott, one minute she was tangled in the tree branches, the next she was sliding down a cable into Sergeant Winslow’s arms. This was the closest call she has had since taking up hang gliding several years ago. Ms. Abbott works full-time as a music teacher for the city of Courage Bay and is reconsidering her future as a hang-gliding instructor.

  Sergeant Winslow suggests that anyone planning to go gliding check weather conditions before setting out. The winds around Courage Bay Mountain are unpredictable and high gusts are not uncommon.

  * * *

  About the Author

  MURIEL JENSEN

  and her husband, Ron, live in Astoria, Oregon, in an old foursquare Victorian at the mouth of the Columbia River. They share their home with a golden retriever/golden Labrador mix named Amber, and five cats who moved in without an invitation. (Muriel insists that a plate of Friskies and a bowl of water are not an invitation!) They also have three children and their families in their lives—a veritable crowd of the most interesting people. With such a lovely family, irreplaceable friends and wonderful neighbors, Muriel and her husband have “a life they know they don’t deserve but love desperately anyway.”

  MURIEL JENSEN

  BLOWN AWAY

  Dear Reader,

  Love makes life worth living, but add a brilliant dog and it’s fun, as well. I grew up living in apartments and really missed having a pet, except for a brief period when we had a tiny fox terrier. Then I married Ron, who thinks if the dog is bigger than the children you have fewer discipline problems. We’ve had a long succession of large and wonderful dogs who’ve been as dear to us as our two-legged children. Fred, in residence now, is a three-year-old black Labrador that we rescued from the animal shelter. We had him a year when he blew both cruciate ligaments (I didn’t know what they were, either, but they’re necessary!) in his back legs and has had two surgeries that cost more than our first house. But he’s the dearest, sweetest dog. He fetches the paper, protects our cats and holds the sofa down.

  But even he isn’t as clever as Braveheart, the German shepherd in my book who helps save Kara so that she can fall in love with Cole. I hope you enjoy their Christmas romance.

  Good wishes!

  Muriel

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  OFFICER COLE WINSLOW raced through mid-morning traffic toward the cliffs that hugged the crescent-shaped coastline of Courage Bay, California. Behind him in the SUV’s cage, Braveheart of the Castle, aka Mel, a one-hundred-and-four-pound black and tan German shepherd, moved restlessly, his tension palpable.

  “Easy, Mel,” Cole said, turning inland instead of toward the beach. The panicked call from Fly With Frank had reported a missing hang-gliding instructor. Frank had watched as the woman was blown inland over the ridge by a strong gust and he had been unable to raise her on her cell phone since then. That was twenty minutes ago. With so many of Courage Bay’s police officers at the scene of a multiple motor-vehicle accident downtown, Cole and Mel were responding alone.

  Mel replied with a low, throaty bark. Cole recognized it as conversation. He and the three-year-old dog had lived and worked together for eighteen months, and so far, Mel was the best partner Cole had ever had. He was cross-trained for search and rescue as well as simple patrol and narcotics detection.

  As Cole followed the road that led into the green foothills, he scanned the trees and brush rising around him, for some sign of the woman. The sail of the glider was yellow and red, according to Frank’s description, the woman tall and fit.

  “She can take care of herself up there,” Frank had said, the fear audible in his voice, “but the wind can slam you into the hillside and splinter you. Find her, Cole. She’s got an eight-year-old boy.”

  Cole heard a vehicle behind him and checked his rearview mirror to see Gehlen Lester’s battered Jeep. Gehlen was the city’s Parks and Recreation director and a member of the city’s High Angle Rescue Team. His hobby was climbing and he’d done it all over the globe. Cole had thanked the fates that he’d been able to locate his friend on a Saturday, when he was usually off on some adventure. Gehlen was the only member of the five-man team Cole had found this morning. He pulled to a stop at the base of a steep slope.

  The cliffs before them rose straight up about three hundred feet. Gehlen parked behind him, and Cole leaped out and ran around to the back of his vehicle to open the tailgate for Mel.

  The dog flew out as though shot from a cannon, then waited, bristling, for a command.

  “Any idea at all where she could be?” Gehlen asked, shouldering a backpack. He was average in height, but wiry and tough. Married three times, he was a favorite with the ladies. At least, those who weren’t married to him…

  Cole pointed to the highest ridge. “Frank says he saw her disappear over there and go down on a gust. She’s probably trapped somewhere in the Embrace.”

  That fold in the hills had earned the name because the ridge curled in on itself like an embracing arm, creating a concealed paradise of live oaks, big-leaf maples, and madrone. There was a pool on the far side of the Embrace that figured in a Native legend about a woman seeing the man of her dreams reflected in it. Or something like that. But horses were needed to make that climb.

  Gehlen frowned worriedly. “Well, let’s hope it carried her outside the curl of the ridge. If she went in, she may very well be at the bottom. Nothing for the wind to do in there but slam her around.”

  “Then we’d better know that before we start.” Cole pointed in the direction of the ridge’s base. “Mel, find!”

  Mel ran off, barking, and Cole and Gehlen hurried in pursuit. The ground was covered with chaparral, a community of fire-adapted shrubs, and the slope was sharp and uneven.

  Cole stopped halfway up to drag in air, and used the moment to scan the hillside. The land above them was more thickly wooded, and a bright yellow school bus could be lost among the dark green shadows, he thought fatalistically. What chance did a slender woman have?

  Gehlen smacked him on the back as he passed. “Wuss!” he accused. “I keep telling you to come work out with me instead of sitting in the Bar and Grill, swilling beer.”

  “I do not swill!” Cole followed him. “I have one, once in a while. You just always happen to come in when I’m there.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  They were both breathing heavily by the time they reached the entrance to the Embrace. The hills rose almost straight up around them like a wide-mouthed cylinder, the bright blue sky visible at the top.

  Cole scanned the green floor of the Embrace and saw nothing.

  Gehlen looked up, rotating his body as he scann
ed the trees and bushes clinging to the hillside.

  Cole did the same, lifting his binoculars and turning slowly, carefully.

  Suddenly Mel took off at a run, scrambling up the sharp incline, barking in controlled bursts. Cole had come to recognize the sounds as meaning “I’ve found something!”

  “What?” Gehlen demanded.

  Following the dog’s path, Cole moved the binoculars back and forth, occasionally adjusting the lenses to sharpen the image.

  If Mel was chasing a wood rat or a skunk, he was in trouble.

  But Mel was too much of a pro to do that.

  Cole just had to wait and see where he went.

  THIS IS A METAPHOR for my life, Kara Abbott thought, dangling limply in the harness she’d set out to test an hour ago. Hanging by a thread.

  She estimated that it had been about an hour since a gust of wind had turned her effort to check the new harness into every glider’s nightmare. She’d been slapped into the side of the hill, where, fortunately, her gear had taken most of the impact. But it now hung uselessly beneath her, its flying and landing wires caught in the same tree from which she hung suspended over a two-hundred-foot drop.

  The harness appeared to be uncompromised. She could probably hang here for hours without danger of falling to her death.

  But she didn’t want to. She had things to do. It was the first weekend in December. She’d promised Taylor they’d go to the Courage Bay Bar and Grill tonight for chili dogs and fries, then drive around town and look at the first Christmas lights.

  And she was cold. This was southern California, but the day was overcast and cool. She was also terrified.

  To stave off panic, she’d been reminding herself of all she had to do. But her brain kept going back to the question of what kind of tree had eaten her equipment and now held her captive. She couldn’t tell from where she was, but she was afraid to wriggle around and look, for fear she’d break the limb she hung from and go hurtling into the chasm.

  She was encouraged by all the mature oaks and maples she could see. Thick and sturdy, they could easily bear the weight of a moderate-size woman.

  In a flash of near hysteria, she wished she hadn’t eaten the chocolate Santa she’d stashed away for Taylor’s Christmas stocking. Chocolate went straight to her hips, and what she didn’t need at this moment was more weight! But she’d had a rough day at school yesterday, and the serotonin the chocolate provided had lifted her spirits. Teaching twenty-three seventh and eighth graders to take caroling seriously was a challenge.

  She hated to think that the issue of whether she lived or died might depend upon 1.3 ounces of chocolate consumed the night before. And the fact that she’d stupidly forgotten her cell phone in the car.

  But that had been her life. She’d fallen in love with a smart young man who’d decided several years into their marriage, after the birth of their son, that work was too demanding and he could make a fortune more quickly without the enslavement of a nine-to-five job.

  She’d continued to work as a music teacher, trying to honor her promise to him and hold on to the love she’d once believed in, while he pursued every get-rich-quick scheme known to man. When those ended up costing them money rather than making money, he tried selling insurance, selling cars, selling real estate.

  Danny finally connected with a dishonest Mill Valley developer who recognized a kindred spirit, and they went to jail together a year ago after a snob-appeal land development turned out to be a swamp deal—literally.

  That was the point when the love Kara had tried so hard to save disintegrated completely. She told Taylor that his father had left them to join the military and was serving overseas. Since Taylor was suffering self-esteem issues partly caused by Danny’s absence, Kara thought it safest to let him believe his father was still a good person. Or so she’d convinced herself. She knew lying to him wasn’t the best idea, but telling him the truth didn’t seem like a good option either.

  Of course, there was nothing that would put her in a good light as far as her son was concerned. She’d pulled him out of school in San Francisco and dragged him to Southern California, where he didn’t know anyone. He was having trouble making friends at his new school, and made it pretty clear that he considered Kara responsible for his father’s departure.

  She hung limply in the harness, wondering if a fall to her death would be so bad.

  Then the wind whooshed down the Embrace, dangling her over the long drop like some weirdly shaped fruit, ripe and ready to fall from the tree. Instantly she stopped feeling sorry for herself and became combative, angrily gripping her harness.

  “Fine!” she shrieked at no one in particular. “Fine! Hanging here like a ripe kumquat is still better than any day of my marriage!” And she was quitting this hang-gliding job the minute she got safely down.

  At that moment she heard a dog bark—or thought she did. Leaves rustled and her harness squeaked—and then she heard it again—a very distinct bark.

  It was dizzying to look down, but she made herself do it, and saw a black smudge moving against the vast sea of green. Two figures raced behind it.

  “Hey!” she shouted. “Up here! I’m here!”

  The dog barked again, and one of the figures waved something white to acknowledge having heard her.

  “Thank you!” she said, raising her eyes to heaven. “Thank you, thank you!”

  “THERE!” COLE POINTED to the red and yellow sail barely visible against the green wall of the Embrace. Mel was already halfway there.

  “Got it!” Gehlen gestured Cole to follow him. “There’s a trail in here. I use it to keep in shape.”

  Feeling a great sense of relief that they’d spotted her—and judging by her high-pitched shout, she was very much alive—Cole poked fun at Gehlen’s superior skills. “Show-off. I’d have climbed the Eiger, too, if my face didn’t chap in the snow.”

  “Again—wuss!” Gehlen returned.

  They set off again, the steep slope demanding careful selection of each step and handhold. Calling this a trail, Cole decided, was very generous.

  His thigh muscles were screaming by the time they stopped again, about three-quarters of the way to where the woman dangled from the branch of a tree like a Christmas ornament, her glider and its wires hanging all around her. Even Mel seemed to find the going a little rough, and he picked his way over an outcropping to find the meager trail Cole and Gehlen followed.

  “Smart dog,” Gehlen praised, studying the woman’s precarious position. “And thanks for your call, by the way,” he added dryly. “I can’t believe I left a woman in my bed to help you out.”

  “That’s because you’re such a noble soul,” Cole replied amiably. “And fate apparently chose to have pity on the woman in your bed.”

  “Fate never has to do that for you, because there never is a woman in your bed. And don’t try to pull that grieving widower crap. That was three years ago, and Angela cared more about her career than you, anyway.”

  Cole turned to his friend a little stiffly. But he couldn’t very well condemn Gehlen for speaking the truth, harsh though it was.

  “I thought you came to help me locate this woman, not psychoanalyze me,” he said.

  Gehlen was still staring at the stranded woman, who was having a conversation with Mel. The dog stood on an outcropping about twenty feet below her, barking to tell Cole he’d found her.

  “I did,” Gehlen said. “But since I don’t know how the hell we’re going to get her down, I thought I’d work on you a little while I’m thinking about it.”

  “Hey, puppy!” the woman called down in a voice that sounded both relieved and panicked.

  The two men exchanged a grin. Puppy was hardly the term to describe the mature well-trained German shepherd.

  “I’ll climb up behind and above her,” Cole said to Gehlen. “Once I hook her up to me and cut her wires, I’ll lower her down to you.”

  Gehlen shook his head. “I’m the better climber. I’ll lower her to y
ou. She’s pretty tall. You’ll have a better chance of holding on to her until we can swing you back to the trail.”

  “Swing me back?”

  “Yeah. You’ll have to hang on the edge of that oak, and I’ll send her to you on a line I run between us.”

  Cole wasn’t wild about the sound of that. “Really.”

  “Yeah.”

  He was somewhat comforted by the knowledge that Gehlen usually knew what he was doing. And he was probably right about Cole being the one to catch the woman. Long legs in khaki pocket pants dangled from the harness. He couldn’t distinguish her features, but he saw a lot of rich brown hair, a red jacket inside the harness, helmet and goggles slung over one arm, and serviceable boots treading air. She probably had a good four inches on Gehlen.

  “Okay,” Cole said. “I’m sure she’d rather be in my arms than yours, anyway.”

  Gehlen made a scornful sound and replied quietly, “Yeah. Maybe. As long as you’re upright. But the moment you’re horizontal…”

  “We’d be so up on charges if anyone could hear you.”

  “What do you want from me? I’m playing cops-and-climbers with you on a Saturday morning, when my plans were—”

  “I’ll owe you big. Get up there, will you, and help me get her down safely.”

  Gehlen adjusted his pack and forged ahead. Cole followed, whistling to Mel to let him know he was coming. Mel stood at the very edge of the outcropping, still barking.

  “Stay back, puppy!” the woman called nervously. “You’re going to fall.”

  “He’s okay,” Cole shouted up at her as he reached Mel, who continued to bark excitedly. “He’s trained to watch his footing. Are you hurt?”

  “No,” she replied. “Just stuck. Can you get me out of here?”