Survival Instinct Read Online Free PDF Page B

shoulders. He held tight to her ankles as he stood, and then she cautiously straightened, crawling upward with her hands against the side of the building until she stood on eye level with the window. Grabbing tight to the sill with one hand, she lifted the old wooden lever-style latch and pulled the window open.
    “Good news,” she called down to Scott. “There’s no glass.”
    “Great. Can you make it in?”
    Though his words sounded steady, Abby was aware of how much pressure her shoes must be exerting on his shoulders. She tried to hurry.
    “I think so.” She dipped her head and shoulders inside, but most of her body still hung outside. “Mind if I step on your head?”
    “Do what you’ve got to do.”
    Abby put most of her weight on her arms and pulled herself up, stepping on Scott’s cap mostly for balance. She felt his hands change position on her ankles as he lifted herhigher, supporting much of her weight with the sheer strength of his arms. She scrambled to pull herself through the window and was glad to find rafters within reach of the window sill so she wouldn’t be forced to fall the entire ten feet to the floor.
    Her hips wedged in the window, but she barely had time to consider the embarrassment of getting stuck there before she shifted sideways and pulled herself through. Then it was simply a matter of dropping to the floor and letting her eyes adjust to the darkness.
    She tried the light switch. It was dead. Probably on the same line as the house, she reasoned. With the window open above her, enough overcast sunlight spilled in for her to identify a large lawn tractor, a workshop area, rusting old snow blower, sawhorses and gas cans.
    “Are you all right in there?” Scott called.
    “Yes,” she answered back. Much as she wished she could tell him she’d found something, there was nothing in the shed that looked like it would float. As she stood there, she realized all the items were for the maintenance of the area around the keeper’s quarters. Boats were more likely to be housed closer to the lake. Thanking God for at least providing her with a way out of the shed, she turned the dead bolt and stepped back out into the light.
     
    Scott did what he could to help Abby with her quick search of the outbuildings, but his enthusiasm for the search began to wane quickly. As Abby scrambled around, peeking in windows when she couldn’t find a key, he felt time and again the contrasting emotions of hope and disappointment as, in building after building, they came up with nothing.
    “I don’t want to sound pessimistic,” he offered after Abby shut the door on the last building in the area of the keeper’s quarters, “but wouldn’t someone who’d gone to all the trouble of cutting off our electricity and cutting the line on our radio probably check to make sure they hadn’t left us a boat?”
    “I suppose so. But they may have overlooked something. This is still a pretty big island,” Abby told him as they headed back down the road toward the dock. They’d both found decent walking sticks over the course of their searching, and with the extra limbs, were able to move a little faster down the slippery trail.
    Scott was glad Abby was keeping a positive attitude. He only wished his mother could be so resilient. He’d hoped they’d at least be able to find a boat so she wouldn’t be utterly crushed by the news they were unable to get in touch with the Coast Guard.
    Apparently Abby was thinking along the same lines. “You know,” she offered after they’d gone a couple hundred yards, “we’ll have to tell your mother that we might not get rescued today. I know she’s not going to like hearing it, but she’ll probably take the news a lot better if we tell her while it’s still daylight instead of waiting until it’s cold and dark.”
    “You’re right,” Scott agreed morosely. He sighed, unsure how much of his mother’s story Abby needed to hear in order to understand how to deal