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“What?” she said, thinking she must have heard him wrong.
“The ice is breaking,” he repeated simply. Alarm bells should have been ringing in her ears, but his voice sounded so calm.
Frowning, she shot a look toward the other side of the lake and took note of how far it was before spinning around to look behind to see how far they came. They were sitting straight dead center in the middle.
Ryan said something, but she didn’t quite make it out for Jay was hollering at the horses, trying to make them move faster. They barely took a couple strides, when the wagon gave a little lurch and they were forced to stop moving altogether. The animals braced their hooves and pulled with all their might, but it was to no avail. The wagon would not budge.
Ryan leaned over the side of the wagon and hollered up to Jay, “One of the wheels has broken through.”
Jay cursed beneath his breath before telling his brother, “Get up here, Ryan, and grab the reins. I’ll try to free her.”
“Right.” Ryan took Jay’s seat as his brother leaped from the wagon and ran over to the wheel giving them problems.
Erika looked anxiously behind her to see what he was doing. Fear had begun to tease her horribly. It didn’t help matters that the ice was still groaning loudly.
“Get those horses moving, Ryan,” Jay shouted. His face grimaced hard, turning it completely red, the veins in his neck nearly bulging, as she felt the wagon actually lift from the ground. She was shocked to realize he had literally used his strength to budge it out of the hole it had created in the ice.
Ryan lifted the reins and brought them down hard, yelling at the animals, but the wagon still did not move. The horses only got more excited causing the harness to rattle violently as they struggled within their restraints. Fear began to rise in Erika’s throat. Her eyes shot to the back of the wagon where Jay struggled to free the wheel.
Then all of a sudden the agitated animals reared and, without warning, the front of the wagon rose in the air. Having nothing to grab hold of, Erika’s arms flapped wildly about until she felt herself unexpectedly thrown from her seat. She cried out as she went airborne. Someone called her name and then she felt the painful impact of the ice as she hit it hard.
Lying motionless on the ice, silence fell around her. Then a distant, almost muffled snapping sound began to reach her and she realized it was coming from beneath her ear. The one pressed against the ice.
Jay began cursing madly and shouting something that made absolutely no sense to Erika. She attempted to raise her head, but felt a horrible throbbing sensation, so laid it back down. A set of hands were all at once upon her and she raised her eyes to see Jay looming over her. His mouth was moving and she had to focus hard to make out his words.
“Get up, Erika.”
She blinked and felt tears sting the back of her eyes. Pain. Yes, she felt pain.
“Dammit, girl,” he swore again, and the next thing she knew she was swung up off the ice and into his arms. Like a rag doll, her head and body thrashed about in his arms as he made a dash for the shore. Only vaguely did she realize he was running. At one point he seemed to have lost his footing on the ice and she heard him curse violently. She considered reprimanding him, but when she went to open her mouth, nothing came out.
Only then did Erika begin to panic. She blinked several more times, trying hard to focus on something. The first th
ing to register in her brain was that Jay Colby had a much larger neck than she remembered. The next was that her head hurt painfully. As well as her hip and one of her elbows.
Then suddenly, she was no longer moving. Jay had reached the other side of the lake and placed her down on a bank of wet and cold snow. The thought of complaining evaporated when the terrible throbbing throughout her body took over and she simply didn’t have the strength. The miserable pain in her head had her raising a hand to touch the spot that hurt, but found instead that her lovely Parisian hat had gone lopsided. Unconsciously, she whimpered and attempted to fix it.
“Are you okay?”
She looked up to see Jay studying her. An intense look darkened his eyes and caused a funny sensation to penetrate Erika’s gut. Her entire body felt like it was broken, but somehow she managed to nod vaguely. Then a horrified thought struck her.
“Ryan?”
The look in his eyes vanished. Before he could reply, she heard Ryan’s wonderful and familiar voice crying out to her from a short distance. “My God, is she all right? Erika, sweetheart?”
“I think she’s fine,” Jay said with little emotion. “That monstrosity on her head saved her skull from cracking open.”
She shot him a look, but Ryan knelt down beside her, blocking his brother. “Does it hurt?”
Nodding, she whined, “And my hip and my elbow.”
A loud crashing noise from the middle of the ice brought all three heads around. In disbelief, they watched as the ice finally shattered and the wagon, along with the horses, fell beneath its surface. With horror, Erika watched the horses kicking frantically for their lives, shrieking horribly, however the weight of the wagon and the freezing temperature of the lake finally took their toll. Then all went still and the lake was silent once again.
A large, painful lump formed in Erika’s throat as she stared out at the frozen lake. Nobody said anything. Then Jay got to his feet and pulled Erika up, forcing her to stand. “Can you walk?”
She wobbled trying to gain her balance, but froze at Jay’s question. “What?”
“We’ve got to get moving.”
