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And in the end, it was Trey who headed Cody in the right direction. When the big bay stopped in his tracks, his ears swiveling to the left in the moment before his head turned that way, Cody didn’t protest but looked himself. He didn’t see anything, but Trey’s ears were unmovingly aimed down slope. He knew better than to ignore a signal like that. The horse had heard something, and it wasn’t something fleeting, it was something that was holding his attention. But not scaring him. So harmless? Or familiar?
He slid the Ruger Mini Ranch out of the rifle sheath. Every Rafferty had used this starter rifle at some point, and he’d just never felt the need to go beyond it. Perhaps because Dad had fine-tuned the accuracy to where it wasn’t an issue. Or because recoil annoyed him if he needed to make a second shot. Spoiled by shooter video games, Chance had told him laughingly.
He slipped the reins over and down, and if a horse could roll his eyes at the downpour, Trey did.
“Quick as I can,” he promised the animal, who snorted as if emphasizing that idea.
He headed toward where the horse had been looking. He had to scramble sideways a couple of times to keep his feet on the rain-slick rocks that had eroded off the ridge and tumbled down to give the hill a coating of sliding pebbles. He went down on his left knee once, swore under his breath at the sharp pain, but got up. Looked around. Saw nothing.
He sucked in a breath and yelled out her name. Her first name, for one of the few times in his life.
“Britt!”
He wondered how far the human ear could hear in a downpour like this. Which end of the range would the rain drown out the most? For that matter, how far would a voice carry in this? What—
Stop it. No time for a rabbit hole now.
He went a little farther down. Stopped, and yelled her name again.
And got an answer.
Chapter Nineteen
The first time she’d heard it, Britt was half convinced she’d imagined it. The pain was pretty intense and her mind could be playing tricks on her. Funny, she’d always thought that if pain like this went on long enough, you’d get used to it, or the nerves would get tired of being in an uproar and it would ease up, or at least seem like it. But between her wrist and her leg, the signals never seemed to relent. She could barely think at all. All she knew was there’d been a sharp sound, that damned boulder had started down the slope, and Ghost had gone insane.
And then she heard it again. Her name. Somebody really was calling her name. Through the noise of the storm she couldn’t tell who it was, didn’t care. All she cared about was that she had help. She wasn’t going to be trapped for hours out here, pinned by this damned boulder, soaked and shivering. Hours she would have probably spent telling herself that eventually somebody would notice she hadn’t come home, that a search would start, that she wasn’t going to die out here.
She sent a fervent “thank you” to whoever was in charge of cowgirl heaven and called out in answer. “Over here!”
It was another moment of that time blurred by pain before it occurred to her more than one call might be appropriate. Or at least some more information.
“By the rock slide!”
They would know what that meant, whoever it was. Dad, or one of the hands, would immediately put together the fact of the slide with the fact that she couldn’t move and realize she was trapped. She didn’t think one person could get this boulder off of her, but at least they could go for help. She hadn’t even been able to make a call; if there was a deader cell spot in these hills than this, she didn’t know where it was.
She heard the scramble of boots on the wet rocks. A tall, agile form in jeans, a slicker, and a cowboy hat came around the boulder that was crushing her ankle.
“Damn,” she heard him say.
And then he lifted his head as he looked from the boulder to her face. And beneath the brim of the hat she saw who it was. And almost echoed his fervent oath.
Cody.
Cody the damned Coder. Didn’t it just figure? Sitting there in the pouring rain, her right foot pinned with the boulder atop her ankle and with her aching left wrist cradled in her lap, all she could think was that her luck was truly down the suckhole of life today.
Some distant part of her mind registered that she’d never seen him in a cowboy hat before. She had a very brief moment to be annoyed that it looked good on him before another roll of pain overtook her.
He knelt beside her, setting something down beside him as he did. “How bad?”
“Bad enough,” she said through gritted teeth. “Wrist is hurt. And the obvious.” She looked toward the boulder about two feet across that had her right ankle and foot trapped. She didn’t know how much of the pain was from the pressure and weight of the big rock, and how much might be from actual damage. Either way she wasn’t liking it much.
He moved to look. He leaned down to peer closely at where she was pinned. Put a tentative hand on the boulder, although she could have told him he wasn’t going to be able to move it, even with his muscles. He looked from a different angle, then another. She was about to ask him what the heck he was doing when he looked back at her. She saw an expression on his face she’d never seen before, and through the pain it took her a moment to realize this was probably what he looked like when he was at his beloved computer, his eyes a little distant as he worked out something in his head.
All of Last Stand knew he was smart. It was impossible not to with his history of clever tricks. But she’d never seen it in action up close like this.
And then, as if he’d made a decision, he moved. And she was startled when she saw him lean over to pick up what he’d set down before.
“Going to put me out of my misery?” she grated out as he lifted the small rifle.
