Tall, Dark and Devastating: Harvard's Education. Suzanne Brockmann

against the piercing blueness of the sky.

      She was moving toward the ground faster than she’d imagined.

      She knew she had to look down to pinpoint the landing zone—the LZ—and to mark in her mind the spot where Harvard hit the ground. She had little doubt he would come within a few dozen yards of the LZ, despite the strong wind coming from the west.

      Her stomach churned, and she felt green with nausea and dizziness as she gritted her teeth and forced herself to watch the little toy fields and trees beneath her.

      It took countless dizzying minutes—far longer than she would have thought—for her to locate the open area that had been marked as their targeted landing zone. And it had been marked. There was a huge bull’s-eye blazed in white on the brownish-green of the cut grass in the field. It was ludicrously blatant, and despite that, it had been absorbed by the pattern of fields and woods, and she nearly hadn’t seen it.

      What would it be like to try to find an unmarked target? When the SEALs went on missions, their landing areas weren’t marked. And they nearly always made their jumps at night. What would it be like to be up here in the darkness, floating down into hostile territory, vulnerable and exposed?

      She felt vulnerable enough as it was, and no one on the ground wanted to kill her.

      The parachute was impossible for her to control. P.J. attempted to steer for the bull’s-eye, but her arms felt boneless, and the wind was determined to send her to another field across the road.

      The trees were bigger now, and the ground was rushing up at her—at her and past her as a gust caught in the chute’s cells and took her aloft instead of toward the ground.

      A line of very solid-looking trees and underbrush was approaching much too fast, but there was nothing P.J. could do. She was being blown like a leaf in the wind. She closed her eyes and braced herself for impact and…jerked to a stop.

      P.J. opened her eyes—and closed them fast. Dear, dear sweet Lord Jesus! Her chute had been caught by the branches of an enormous tree, and she was dangling thirty feet above the ground.

      She forced herself to breathe, forced herself to inhale and exhale until the initial roar of panic began to subside. As she slowly opened her eyes again, she looked into the branches above her. How badly was her chute tangled? If she tried to move around, would she shake herself free? She definitely didn’t want to do that. That ground was too far away. A fall from this distance could break her legs—or her neck.

      She felt the panic return and closed her eyes, breathing again. Only breathing. A deep breath in, a long breath out. Over and over and over.

      When her pulse was finally down to ninety or a hundred, she looked into the tree again. There were big branches with leaves blocking most of her view of the chute, but what she could see seemed securely entangled.