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She sat up, slung the rifle scabbard on her back again, got her saddlebags. Mud had splattered into her mouth when she’d fallen the second time, so she spat it out. Then, on elbows and knees, she began crawling. She tried to keep her injured ankle from banging into anything because it hurt like a son of a bitch if she didn’t, but she kept going even when pain made her grind her teeth together.
She made progress, slow and steady and miserable, but progress all the same. Then her right hand hit nothing but air, and she stopped just short of tumbling over an unseen sheer drop. Panting, she eased back. What was she supposed to do now? How wide was this drop? Was she on the edge of a precipice? She waited for a flash of lightning, and after a few seconds of darkness realized that the heart of the storm had moved on, because the lightning wasn’t nearly as intense or frequent as it had been. Briefly she debated turning on the flashlight, just long enough to see what she was facing. Was the chance worth it? Right now, she was invisible; Chad had no idea where she was. But the flashlight might well pinpoint her position for him. On the other hand, she was stuck unless she could see what kind of obstacle was in front of her.
Before she had to make a decision, a flash of lightning very obligingly lit up the landscape for her. The drop in front of her was straight down—for a few feet. Three feet, max. Getting down without putting any weight on her right foot was going to be tough, but she wasn’t going to let this little cut in the earth stop her.
She dropped her saddlebags, heard them plop in the mud below. Then she unslung the rifle scabbard and carefully let it slide down. Then she turned around, spinning on her belly in the mud, and slid over the edge, her good foot feeling for the ground, her hands digging into the mud to steady herself until she had solid earth beneath her. She stood there a moment, balanced precariously, and took a deep breath. Maybe she wasn’t moving quickly, but she was moving in the right direction: down.
The mud beneath her feet shifted, and the world was yanked out from under her. Helpless, she simply fell. She slid and tumbled through the mud, grabbing at anything, everything, and finding only more slippery mud and the occasional rock. She tried to dig in her left heel, tried to jam her fingers into the earth, but she continued to slide and roll. There were rocks, and she tried to grab them, but they were there and gone so fast she couldn’t manage. The edge of one of the rocks sliced her palm; her head slammed dangerously close to another.
And then she stopped, her momentum halted by mud. She lay there, panting, and once again took inventory. No, nothing was broken. She felt battered from head to foot, but everything other than her ankle seemed to be functioning. How far had she fallen? The slope hadn’t been horribly steep, but it was steep enough. Her rifle and saddlebags—which held her flashlight, pistol, and protein bars—were up there.
She had a choice. She could crawl up, or she could crawl down. She could keep going, or she could retrieve her stuff.
Neither option seemed like a good one, but one was definitely worse than the other. She needed the saddlebags, needed her food and the pistol. She needed that rifle. She couldn’t leave her weapons up there.
It had been tough enough moving down the mountain with a damaged ankle; moving up was torturous. Her progress was measured an inch at a time, and every muscle in her body screamed at her to stop. She’d gotten banged up in the fall, and now gravity was working against her instead of with her.
What had taken seconds to do—fall—took an excruciatingly long time to navigate in reverse. She didn’t want to think about how long it took her to climb back up, so she didn’t; she just climbed. Every minute was precious, but she didn’t have any choice. She didn’t just crawl; she dragged herself up, a cursed inch at a time. She used her left foot to find purchase and push. She grabbed rocks with her bloody hands to keep herself from sliding back down. She clawed her way up, her fingers digging deep into the mud. Mud crept beneath her slicker, through her sweatpants, into her boots. Cold rain continued to beat down on her. All Angie thought about was her goal: her rifle, her flashlight, her pistol. Food.
Do it or die.
Do it or die.
She did it.
A bush gave her something to grab on to; she clutched it, pulled herself up, and then she was there, at the small shelf that had fallen out from under her. She wanted to cheer, but she stayed quiet. Even when she’d been falling, she hadn’t screamed. Her survival instincts had kept her quiet—aside from the occasional thud—and they kept her quiet now. She’d celebrate late
r, when she was off this mountain.
She could reach her gear. She dug her left foot deep into the mud, bracing herself so she wouldn’t slide back down before she had a good grip on the saddlebags and rifle. They were both safe, just a couple of feet way from the divot in the slope. She felt a brief spurt of triumph as she grabbed the rifle and slung it over her shoulder, then the bags.
She might not have made a success of her career as a guide, but she had never been a quitter, and she wasn’t quitting now. It was tempting to sit down and rest, but she didn’t let herself, because she wasn’t a quitter.
Instead, she held on to her gear, positioned herself, and started a controlled slide back down the hill—on her ass, this time, half sitting so she had more control. Yeah, a controlled fall. She held the rifle up, trying to keep it out of the mud as much as possible, though she wasn’t certain how it could get any muddier than it already was.
Then she was at the bottom of the slope, and the only way forward was on her hands and knees again. Angie started crawling.
Do it or die.
Dare heard the thunder well before the rain arrived. It woke him from a sound sleep and he lay in his warm sleeping bag, listening as the storm got closer. What the hell was he doing out here? He couldn’t fish in a thunderstorm. Wasn’t the rain supposed to last a day or two? He might be stuck here in camp for a couple of days, with nothing to do except twiddle his thumbs and curse himself for being an idiot.
He never should’ve listened to Harlan. He should be at home, he should be in his own fucking bed, where the rain would sound soothing instead of threatening. But he wasn’t; he was here, and if he had it to do all over again … damn it, he’d still be here.
He should be asleep. Generally, under the right circumstances, he liked storms. The room was completely dark, except for those moments when flashes of lightning showed at the very edges of the shuttered window, and when the rain began he expected the sound to soothe him right to sleep. He couldn’t stop himself from thinking about Angie, though. Were the tents in the camp she’d leased sturdy enough to withstand the storm? He imagined they were, because it wasn’t like they didn’t get thunderstorms up this way now and then, and the campsite she’d leased was frequently used, but still … tents and storms weren’t a great combination.
Then a sharp sound echoed through the mountains and Dare bolted upright. That wasn’t lightning, that was a pistol shot. He’d heard small arms fire too often to be mistaken.
A second shot followed the first, then more, and even with the windows shuttered tight and the storm raging around him, he knew those shots had come from the direction of Angie’s camp. Damn it, what was going on out there? A rifle shot wouldn’t have been so out of the ordinary, but a pistol … in a hunting camp, the only legitimate reason he could think of to use a pistol was if something unexpected happened, and you couldn’t get to your rifle.
What could have happened at Angie’s camp that was unexpected?
Some very ugly possibilities occurred to him.
He didn’t think twice, but turned on a single light, a battery-operated lantern powerful enough to light the entire upper level, and began dragging on his clothes. When he was dressed he grabbed a slicker and his hat, the sat phone and his rifle. He grabbed a heavy-duty flashlight and switched it on before turning off the lantern. No more than two minutes after he’d heard the second pistol shot he was descending the ladder into the horse stalls below.
The horse snickered as Dare saddled up quickly and efficiently, slipped his rifle into the scabbard, and dropped his sat phone into a saddlebag. Before he stored the phone he gave a fleeting thought to calling someone in town, Harlan or the sheriff, but what would he say? I heard a shot and it seemed to come from Angie’s camp. Fat lot of good that would do. It would cost him precious time he didn’t have to waste, and no one was coming up here in the dark anyway. No, he was here, and this was on him.
He opened the big double doors and led the horse through them. It danced nervously as he closed and bolted the doors, but calmed a bit when he mounted up. Dare pulled the brim of his hat down low, pointed the flashlight toward a stand of trees and the narrow path there, and headed toward Angie’s camp.
