Horizons by Catherine Hart Page B

the devil?” Kelly muttered in confusion.
    At the same time, Sydney was shrieking and Gavin yelled breathlessly, “Got her! I got her! The kid’s okay!”
    “Thank God!” Zach’s voice floated down from above. As did the others, Kelly looked up, and gaped in horrified astonishment. Perhaps thirty feet overhead, Zach dangled upside down in mid-air, twirling slowly at the end of a vine which was wrapped around his ankle. The other end of the vine disappeared somewhere in the foliage at the top of a tree, no doubt attached to an unseen limb. Their immediate, amazed exclamations melded together.
    “Oh, my lands!”
    “How did he… ?”
    “What in the… ?”
    “Good grief!”
    “Get him down!” Kelly screeched. “We’ve got to get him down!”
    Again … “How?”
    And from Roberts, “Why? He didn’t want to let me loose. Besides, I think he looks real cute swinging around up there like a red-faced monkey.”
    “Toss me a knife, so I can cut this vine,” Zach hollered over the confusion below.
    “Dang, mate!” Frazer called back. “You’re hangin’ higher than most rooftops. Cut that vine, and the fall will surely break your neck.”
    “Climb it,” Gavin offered as a safer solution. “Haul yourself upright, and pull yourself up the vine, the way they do in rope climbing exercises in basic training. Once you reach a sturdy limb, you can work your foot loose.” By folding himself double, Zach managed to grab hold of the vine just above his ankle. The effort made him swing like a human pendulum, but at least his head was even with his foot now, the blood no longer pounding to his brain.
    “Be careful!”
    “Don’t untie the noose! Try to work your foot into it if you can, like a stirrup.”
    “Oh, God! I can’t watch!”
    Zach didn’t want to watch either, but necessity demanded that he keep his eyes open, no matter how dizzy it made him. Finally, his stomach lurching all the while, he maneuvered the loop over his heel and pulled himself into a standing position, losing his shoe in the process. Again the vine spun wildly, twirling him around like a top. He did close his eyes then, and fought to keep his breakfast down. The thick, twisted vine to which he clung with such desperation was old, dried out to the point of flaking, and creaked ominously beneath his weight—an audible warning of its brittle state.
    Praying as fervently as he’d ever prayed, Zach coiled his foot in the loop and his hands around the upper length, and slowly began to hoist himself upward, inch by perilous inch. Several times, his sweaty hands slipped, nearly sending him plunging to the ground. His sore shoulder ached, crying out for relief from the strain.
    At last his head cleared the lower cluster of leaves. Daring to look upward, Zach was dismayed to find that the vine was attached to a limb still well overhead. Not that he intended to climb that high. Nor would that particular bough, slim and limber as it was, provide the support he required. Upon viewing it, he was vastly surprised, and grateful, that it had sustained his weight thus far. Surely, it wouldn’t do so much longer.
    Still spinning, Zach spotted a larger branch some distance out of his lateral reach. It was the only one near that appeared sturdy enough to bear him. There was one major problem, however. In order to reach it, he was going to have to swing himself over to it.
    “Okay, I can do this,” he told himself, screwing up his waning courage. “If Tarzan could do it, so can I.” He deliberately blocked out the fact that Tarzan had purportedly been raised by apes and trained to such daring exploits from childhood—whereas he, Zach, was in his thirties and, though fairly fit, not at all used to acrobatic endeavors of this level. Desperately wishing he could let loose long enough to dry his perspiring palms, Zach sucked in a quick breath and began to rock back and forth. Above him, the vine and its thin support groaned in protest. From below, he heard