Rachelle McCalla - Out on a Limb

Her eyes followed the shiver that ran down her arm at his touch, and settled on the place where his strong calloused hand covered hers. Her heart gave another gasp. “Somebody tried to kill me, Cutch. From your land. And now you’re trying to stop me from calling the sheriff? I don’t think so.” She jerked her arm away and looked at him with begging eyes, wanting him to explain, wanting him to say something that would make everything right.

But he hadn’t been able to do that eight years ago, and she doubted he could do it now. She knew better than to spend even one more second getting any closer to him than she already was.

is a mild-mannered housewife, and the toughest she ever has to get is when she’s trying to keep her four kids quiet in church. Though she often gets in over her head, as her characters do, and has to find a way out, her adventures have more to do with sorting out the carpool and providing food for the potluck. She’s never been arrested, gotten in a fistfight or been shot at. And she’d like to keep it that way! For recipes, fun background notes on the places and characters in this book and more information on forthcoming titles, visit www.rachellemccalla.com.

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Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you…Do to others as you would have them do to you.

—Luke 6:27–31

Special thanks to my father, retired City of Norfolk Police Sergeant Brian M. Richter, and to my brother-in-law, Page County Sheriff’s Deputy Charles McCalla, for answering all my questions about ballistics, bail and meth. And thank you for keeping the places we live safe for all these years. You make the world a better place every day.

Thank you to all the powered hang glider enthusiasts and pilots of small aircraft who’ve taken the time to post videos and instructional materials for every conceivable flying procedure on the Internet. I couldn’t have written this book without your help. You make me feel like I can fly.

Thanks also to all the wonderful people at Steeple Hill, especially my editor, Emily Rodmell, for doing such a bang-up job on my books. I feel so tremendously blessed to work with you all!

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 FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

LETTER TO READER

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

Elise McAlister wouldn’t have paid any attention to the sound echoing up from the hills below her if she hadn’t felt a sharp sting as something grazed her leg. Even then, putting two and two together took her a moment, because the situation went so far beyond anything she’d experienced flying before—or even heard of anyone experiencing. Nobody would really attempt to shoot down a hang glider, would they?

Pop! There it was again.

A spray of shot punched through the fabric of her right wing. The powered glider listed heavily.

“Lord, help me,” Elise began to pray as she looked down, frantically trying to assess her situation. Only moments before, she’d been enjoying her Saturday morning flight, soaring peacefully above the scenic Loess Hills of southwestern Iowa, lost in thought and equally detached from any navigational landmarks. Now she was going down and didn’t even know where she was.

Pop!

Elise braced herself for this hit, almost relieved to hear the spray take out her motor instead of what remained of her wings. She could glide without a motor. She couldn’t stay aloft without wings.

Her hang glider sagged in the air, and the wind messed with the damaged wing, creating drag. Elise spotted a gravel road in the distance. At the rate she was going, there was no way she’d make it—not with all the treetops she’d have to pass over. She was losing altitude fast enough as it was.

Without the steady purr of the motor behind her, she could hear the wind flapping through the torn fabric of her right wing—and below her, the distinctive chinking of metal on metal as a gunman racked the slide on his shotgun. In her mind’s eye, she could picture the empty shell kicking out and falling to the ground as a fresh shell was loaded into place, ready to be shot. Sure, she’d taken her dad’s twelve gauge out plenty of times, but she hadn’t been shooting at anyone.

A dust cloud rose where the gravel road topped a nearby hill. A vehicle was headed this way. If they saw her go down, maybe they could help her—unless they were with whoever was trying to shoot her down.

Blam!

They were getting closer. Elise heard the shots rattle through the thick canopy of leaves below her before ripping through her Dacron again, this time tearing through her left wing. Grateful she’d at least begun to level out, Elise felt her stomach dip as the glider sank toward the treetops.

The jagged hills lunged up to meet her. Below, she could hear shouting, scrambling noises as her pursuers crashed through the underbrush. The gentle breeze, which had clocked in at a pristine six miles per hour when she’d checked it that morning, stilled to almost nothing.

The gun cocked again.

“Please, God, please,” Elise begged, knowing that, as low in the air as she was now, those shots were going to penetrate deeper. If she was hit again, it would do a lot more than sting a little.

Blam!

The shots tore through her wings again, and a couple balls slammed into the soles of her feet. Maybe her heavy steel-toe hiking boots hadn’t been such a bad choice for her morning flight, after all. She didn’t usually wear them for flying, but—

Whap! Trees leaves slapped her toes as she skirted the top of a high hill, causing her body to tilt and her wounded craft to tip unsteadily in the air.

Not good. The drag on her wings increased, sapping her momentum, pulling her down. With her pursuers clambering up the hill behind her, she didn’t dare go down in this valley. She’d be a sitting duck. They’d be on her before she ever got unstrapped from her harness.

“Lord, I really need your help now,” she whispered, her shoulders tensing as she tried to angle upward for maximum lift. She had nothing. No wind. No updraft. She was going down in this valley, and she could hear the gunmen crashing through the woods on the backside of the hill behind her. They’d be on her in a moment.

The next hill careened toward her, its tree-covered sides a mess of fingerlike branches, ready to grab her out of the air and hold her captive until the gunmen caught up to her. Praying hard, she tried to guide her damaged wings upward.

The trees moved closer. She could see each branch. She could see each leaf. She braced herself.

The updraft hit her face at the same second it caught her wings, lifting her clear from the hilltop. “Thank you, God,” she prayed, almost-sobbing, instinctively running through the air as the treetops slapped her feet. Though she knew sudden thermal updrafts often occurred on hillsides, between the timing and her desperation, she felt as though God had reached down from heaven and pulled her up the side of the hill just in time.