Free Freefall by Kristen Heitzmann

your companion?”
    She stared at him long and hard. “Are you asking whether the person I came hiking with hurt me?”
    “Might explain why he didn’t report your accident.”
    She swallowed. “And now he’s waiting out here to finish the job?” Hurt crept into her eyes.
    “Or he’s left the island.”
    She closed her eyes, tipped her face up to the soft rain shower that moved over them. Drops caught in her lashes like tears, but she didn’t cry.
    He shifted to ease a spasming hamstring. “Fear can block memory.”
    She lowered her chin, mouth set, brow creased. “I’m not afraid.”
    The tension in her body showed otherwise. Her strongest clues seemed to be sensations, and he guessed she felt something now. Why evade? “I’m not saying we should stop. Just trying to cover the possibilities.”
    Her shoulders dropped. She spread her hands. “Until now I wouldn’t have thought I could lose my entire past. I guess anything’s possible.”
    “You felt something.”
    She nodded. “But I can’t identify it. And I can’t let it stop me.”
    Again he got the unsought urge to keep her safe. Again he balked. He was here at Nica’s request. Aloha required it. Jade was a guest on the island and he an ambassador. Though that sentiment was less prevalent now, it had been drilled into him from his earliest days. “Aloha” means kindness, helpfulness, graciousness, and generosity. Whatever you have, you give. Whatever you can, you do . No room for selfishness, for acting shamefully, greedily, or stingily. There was a saying for someone who did: ‘A ‘ohe paha he ‘uhane —perhaps he has no soul.
    So he would help her, as far as he was able. But unlike Nica, he’d keep his eyes and mind open. “Let’s go.”
    They moved on through the valley, finding the path of least resistance. He kept expecting her to say, “This is it,” but she just kept plodding as shadows lengthened and the sun touched, then sank behind the mountaintops to their right.
    At last Jade stopped in a semicircular patch of ground between the stream and a grove of kukui trees. She turned to him. “I spent the night here.”
    “What?”
    “On this rock.” She walked over to a boulder beside the stream.
    “You were out here two days?”
    “I don’t know how long before this point, just that I woke up here and went on to Nica’s.”
    He looked up at the steep, lacy falls behind her. “You came down that?”
    Reading his doubt, she said, “I’m an experienced hiker.”
    Another definitive statement. “How do you know?”
    “Because I—” Her face flushed. “I remember Chasm Lake. I can see it. The cirque with the lake reflecting the diamond face of Longs Peak.”
    Her excitement seemed genuine.
    “Who were you with?”
    Her lips parted, then closed. “I hiked it alone. I do that sometimes. It helps me clear my head.”
    He frowned. “Then how do you know you weren’t alone this time?”
    “Because I remember. There was someone.” She shook her head. “I just can’t see who.”
    “Jade, if you were with someone, why would you leave?”
    She swayed. “Water.” She pressed her fingers to her forehead. “I can feel it pulling.”
    “Think you got separated?”
    “Maybe.”
    Then why wouldn’t he have come after her? He’d had four days. Unless he couldn’t. Cameron rubbed his beard. The evening was typically mild, cooler at this elevation than where they’d started in the valley, but well within the temperate range. As they said on the island, regarding the weather, “Sometimes same, sometimes little bit different.”
    That was a good thing since he hadn’t realized how far Jade had come. He’d planned for an emergency overnight, just in case, but he hadn’t known she’d been out there two days herself. She hadn’t said, and he hadn’t asked. She’d been all set to go alone, and he’d scrambled.
    He assessed the setting sun, the climb up the falls, and his energy level. Streams were unpredictable. A hard