Deadfall Read Online Free PDF Page B

it you feel the familiar, dizzying pull of a memory coming on. In an instant you are back on the island.
    He’s kneeling out on a cliff with his toes gripping the edge, and looking at something down below. Beyond him is the ocean.
    When he stands he swipes his hand over the side of his face. You notice the muscles in his chest, the subtle V just above the belt of hisshorts. The gash beneath his shoulder looks better. The salt water has helped it heal.
    “We might be able to swim part of it. If we can climb down . . . That way we don’t have to go back through the woods.”
    You go to him, standing at the ledge. The drop is fifty feet, maybe more. You reach down, feeling the cliff face, the uneven grooves where you’d put your hands. Rocks jut up from the shallows. A fall would kill you.
    “We have to jump,” you say. “They’re going to be waiting for us on that path.”
    Rafe turns back to the supplies, all tucked inside the cloth bag you share. He ties it to one of his belt loops and you’re reminded of how little you have—two papayas and avocados, a few bamboo tools.
    There’s a snap, a crack. You both hear it at the same time and turn, looking into the trees above. The hunter is crouched in the leaves. The top of his head just visible.
    You don’t look at Rafe. “Now,” you say.
    You jump from the ledge, hurtling yourself forward with all your force. Rafe leaps a moment later. You’re falling . . . falling.
    “You remembered something,” he says, studying your face. “What was it?”
    He comes toward you, pulling his shirt back on. He offers you the last of the water.
    “How’d you know?”
    “You looked scared,” he says.
    “It was a flash of the island,” you say. “We were on a cliff and we were about to climb down.”
    “But then we saw him. He was hiding in the trees above us,” he finishes for you.
    You want to say yes, yes, that’s exactly what happened in the memory, but you can’t even manage that. There’s a hard knot in the back of your throat.
    “That was the day you messed up your foot,” Rafe tells you. He reaches down, pulling your left sneaker between his knees, and eases off your shoe. When your bare foot is exposed you see the mark you’ve seen so many times before. It’s just below your last two toes. The skin is raised and pink, in a teardrop shape.
    “We were okay when we hit the water,” he says. “We both went in feetfirst and we were far enough out that we made it past the rocks. But when we got to the shore he shot at us. You were running and your foot must’ve caught something. There was so much blood.”
    His fingers graze the scar, tracing the edges of it. Then they move to your ankle, circling the bone. He lets his hand linger there.
    “What happened . . . ?” you ask, but you already know.
    “I carried you up the beach.”
    “What else?” you ask.
    “I don’t want to keep telling you stuff just so things can go back to normal.” He sets your leg down.
    “That’s not what you’d be doing. I just want to know about us.”
    “Us.” He repeats it, smiles.
    You stare down at your hands, working at a piece of skin around your thumb. “The other memories I had. We were together. We were somewhere in the forest and we were . . .”
    Rafe doesn’t look at you. This is the closest thing you’ve seen to him being embarrassed, the subtle flush in his cheeks. “What do you want me to say?”
    “I just . . . I don’t know if I’m supposed to feel guilty about things, if I, like, did something wrong.”
    “What do you mean?”
    You think of Ben, of everything that happened between you: the night on the beach, his lips cold when he pressed them against yours. Lying beside him on the couch in his living room. The feel of his hands slipping beneath your shirt, moving across the bare skin of your stomach.
    It’s hard to think of it now, knowing what you know about him. He was working for AAE. He betrayed you.
    How much does Rafe need to