WILD GIRL Chapter 7 Now: Kent in the Valley

NOW: Kent takes Abalo home

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WILD GIRL

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

NOW

Kent found himself leaning back in his seat, his foot pumping the brake, his hands tense on the wheel as the four-wheel-drive truck rolled downhill into Waimalia Valley.  The lowest gearing still roared harsh as he navigated a twenty-five to thirty-five percent grade, one of the steepest in the world. Hopefully, no vehicles were coming up because in addition to being steep, Honoka’a Road was narrow: a cliff damp with seepage embedded with boulders on one side, a drop of thousands of feet into the valley on the other. 

“Pick your poison, this road—a mudslide or a free fall.” Manuel Abalo’s dark eyes tightened with amusement at Kent’s discomfort. “I drive it four times a week. You get used to it.” 

“It’s fine,” Kent said, though his truck was yelling that it wasn’t. Damn, he’d need to get the brakes checked and the engine lubed after this, if he even made it out without a breakdown. 

He glanced past Abalo’s silver-blanketed form at the view. The wide, flat delta at the bottom of the valley ended in the half moon of a long rocky beach. The wall of the valley across soared equally high, reaching their current elevation, the cliff opposite them scored with waterfalls. 

Far below, the olive-green branches of the river came together into one mighty snake which burst into the ocean beneath the waterfall cliff, a fan of greenish brown against the turquoise water. A flock of nene geese flew across the vastness below.

“The tourists love this crap,” Abalo said, pointing to a ti-leaf-wrapped offering on an overlook rock as they bumped past it. “The tour operators in the vans stop and tell stories right here. Make the folks think it’s all authentic and shit.”

“Who says it isn’t?” 

Kent regretted being baited into responding as Abalo grinned maliciously. “I know the guy who leaves the offerings. Says it boosts the tips.”

Kent bit back anything further. Abalo would see a defense of faith as weakness, but Kent had experienced too many mysterious things not to believe there were forces beyond his own understanding.

They passed a stone that had tumbled loose from the wall, still covered in moss. A giant African tulip tree towered beside them. Its crown was studded with large orange blossoms that lit the leaves like flames. 

The truck made it over a ledge in the road, then lost traction and began to slide—the tread was more worn that it should be for tackling a slope like this. Kent gritted his teeth and swung the wheel inward, toward the cliff. Abalo grabbed the dash and braced himself.