Page 1 of Keeping Kara

CHAPTER ONE

Kara Guthrie was going to die.

Her life in the last two weeks had been surreal, like one of those damn crime shows on TV, except it was happening to her.

Two weeks ago, she had a job and people at work she would’ve considered friends, even if they weren’t especially close and didn’t socialize outside the office. Her work as an accountant wasn’t something she loved, but it paid the bills. Her true passion was writing. She’d self-published three books so far, thrillers. They’d sold decently, considering she had no money for advertising and didn’t have time for social media.

Growing up, Kara was often told she was a nuisance, ordered to be quiet, to stop being so annoying. So she’d spent a lot of time alone, writing down her thoughts, living in fantasy worlds where everything always turned out okay and her characters were loved, smart, and pretty. She’d also spent much of her childhood outside, away from the house, in the woods or up in a tree, reading.

So finding herself in a tree now felt familiar, at least. Except this time, she wasn’t avoiding her estranged mother—who didn’t have one motherly bone in her body.

She was escaping the man who’d decided if he couldn’t have her, no one could.

He’d kidnapped her, beaten her, raped her, and kept her locked up in a cabin off the beaten path…basically, so no one could hear her scream.

Not only that, he’d taken her phone and texted her boss, telling him that she’d quit. Then informed her landlord she was moving out and had all her belongings brought to the cabin where she was held captive. In just two short weeks, her kidnapper had upended her entire life, destroying everything she’d worked so hard to build.

And then it started to rain—and didn’t stop.

The small creek that ran behind the cabin had overflowed its banks and turned into a full-blown river. Kara had no access to the Internet or a TV or even a radio, but she’d had a feeling the raging weather was a hurricane. Or at least something close to it.

Nolan Colins, the man who’d claimed she belonged to him, who’d refused to let her break up with him, apparently wasn’t home when the water began to creep into the cabin. At least, he didn’t respond to her frantic shouts and pounding on the locked bedroom door.

She had no idea where he’d gone, but the bastard obviously knew how dangerous the weather had become…and he’d left her in that cabin to die.

Kara was lucky to escape. Although, perhaps “lucky” wasn’t the right word. Because she’d been swept into the water that destroyed the cabin, then thrown around like a ping-pong ball in the middle of an ocean.

She’d managed to grab hold of a tree, but the rain and wind didn’t abate. In fact, it rained harder and the wind grew more ferocious as she held on tight to a thick limb. She’d had to climb higher and higher as the water rose at an alarming rate.

It was dark now, but she could still make out the raging river below, and she could definitely hear the scary-as-hell sounds of pounding rain, whistling wind, and the creaking of debris in the water. Her entire body was shaking, and she was terrified that she’d lived through everything she had in the last two weeks, only to die in the floodwaters attempting to rip the tree from the ground and whisk it, and her, away.

Kara’s entire body ached. Her hands were torn from grabbing onto a branch of this tree while tumbling through raging water hours ago, her muscles were fatigued, and she was freezing cold from the nonstop wind and rain. She so wanted to make it through this, if only to go straight to the police station and report Nolan. To make him pay for everything he’d done. So he wouldn’t be able to do all of it to another unsuspecting woman.

A noise somewhere above Kara had her instinctively tilting her head back to look into the sky. It was difficult to see through the rain and the darkness…but bright lights in the distance had her thinking for a brief, irrational moment that aliens had arrived to save her. At this point, she’d welcome that. Nothing could be worse than what she’d just experienced at Nolan’s sick, perverted hands.

But it wasn’t aliens. There were two helicopters approaching. They had bright spotlights they were using to search the water.

She waved frantically, hoping against hope they’d see her.

To her amazement, they did.

One of the choppers paused and hovered over the tree she was clinging to for dear life. The spotlight almost blinded her, and she dropped her gaze immediately.

A tiny bit of the fear she’d endured for the last two weeks faded. It didn’t disappear altogether, because she wasn’t an idiot, but she trusted whoever was hovering above her. She had no choice. She had no idea how the hell he or she might manage to pluck her out of this tree, but she had no doubt that her rescuers would figure it out.

She vaguely wondered what her rescuer’s name might be. If it was a guy, it was probably something super-manly…like Zane or Axel or Jax.

Making a mental note to use the names of her rescuers in her next novel—as the heroes or heroines, of course—she abruptly lost her train of thought when she felt the tree shudder under her violently.

One moment she was looking up at the helicopter, and the next she was in the water.

The water won the battle against the tree that had saved her. It felt as if it had literally been picked up by the roots and thrown into the frothy, raging floodwaters.

Kara had time to take one breath before she hit the water and went under.

* * *

Arrow “Chaos” Porter was shocked when he spotted the person waving at the helicopter from the tree. It wasn’t the fact that someone was stranded; they’d been picking up desperate people for hours. It was more that he wondered how the hell she’d ended up in that tree, in particular. It was smack dab in the middle of the rolling and dangerous floodwaters.