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“—your phone?”
“What?” Damn, she was foggy. And cold. Another shiver went through her. The rain seemed to be easing up, but she was soaked to the skin, and what dirt there was under her had long ago turned to mud.
“Where’s your phone?” he repeated.
She had no idea what her phone had to do with anything, given there was no kind of signal out here, but far be it from her to question her rescuer. Even if it was her most hated Last Stander.
“In my jacket pocket—ahh!” She winced as this time her ankle and foot protested her movement.
“Just hold still and let me get it.”
He pulled the phone out, and she noticed then he had a roll of elastic wrap in his other hand. Amazement stabbed through the pain as he straightened out her hand and proceeded to use the phone itself as a splint, wrapping the stretchy bandage tightly around both phone and wrist. And it worked; not only could she not bend it, the pain even eased a little.
“Major points,” she conceded, and was taken aback at the smile that got her.
But then he went back to his horse, untied a latigo and lifted down the rope it was holding. He came back but stopped at the boulder that had her pinned.
“Whoa,” she said. “Shouldn’t we wait for help? That’s too big for one man to move.”
“But not one horse,” he said, not even looking at her as he, oddly, seemed to measure the boulder with a length of the rope, and then again, and again.
“Yes, but—”
“They probably heard those shots, but maybe not. And even if they did, they won’t be sure who found you, and therefore where you are. They’ll only know that when everybody else makes contact or shows up back at your house. You want to wait that long?”
No, she didn’t. Wasn’t sure she could. She’d always thought herself fairly tough, but this was coming perilously close to turning her into a whiny wimp. And in front of the last person on earth she’d want that to happen. Although she had to admit, if someone came by and told her this was a Cody imposter, she was out of it enough—and he was acting different enough—that she might just believe it.
She snapped back out of the fog when he leaned back over the boulder and she realized what he was doing. He’d rigged up a net of sorts with the rope, somehow knotting it so that it formed a very loose mesh. And she realized not only what he was going to do, but that it might actually work. This must have been what he was working out, when he’d gotten that almost spaced-out look on his face.
He slipped the hand-tied net around the boulder so that it would be pulled sideways. That puzzled her until she realized that if he’d pulled it back, not only would it drag across her foot, but if for some reason it slipped, it would be heading right for her, and with momentum. Enough to smash her completely. The shiver that went through her then wasn’t from the cold of being soaking wet.
He walked back to his horse. Wrapped the rope around the saddle horn, then patted the horse solidly on the neck.
“It’s just a heavy calf, Trey ol’ buddy. You just do what you always do and we’ll be good.”
He came back, which also puzzled her, because she thought he would have stayed with the horse to guide him to pull back. Then he knelt down behind her and she realized he was there to pull her clear just in case things went haywire and the boulder slid free.
In other words, Cody the nerd, the geek, the extreme tech-head, was doing everything an experienced ranch hand would do. Cody the Coder was also a cowboy.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she muttered. Then, more firmly, “Yes. Do it.”
He shifted until he had a knee either side of her hips. A disconcertingly intimate position, or at least it would be if not for the circumstances. Of course, if not for the circumstances, it wouldn’t be happening.
“Trey! Back!”
The horse immediately began to move. In the same moment she felt Cody’s hands slip under her shoulders, firmly but not pulling. Not yet. But the contact accomplished something unexpected. It distracted her, for the moment at least, from the pain. Or maybe the boulder had already moved. She looked that way, and indeed saw that it had shifted slightly. That was a relief, somehow, that it was actually the boulder shifting that was easing things a little, because the idea that it was Cody touching her, holding her in essence, was more than a little unsettling.
“Back,” he called out to the horse again, who was still, slowly, backing up in an arrow-straight line.
She felt the pressure ease a little more, until she thought she might actually be able to move that leg. If she pushed off with her free leg, she could—
“Hold on another second,” Cody said, as if he’d read her mind. And he was so close she felt the tickle of his breath in her ear, and a shiver went through her. The cold, of course. That’s all it was.
Trey backed up farther. And the boulder slipped a little more to the side.
Trey backed. Another two steps.
