Page 14 of Last Chance Cowboy
It was pretty. Pristine and quiet out here, and she let out a slow breath, glad that she had made the decision to come out there.
She should do this more often. Really, she could do it every day after work.
Okay, maybe that was a little bit overkill, but it wasn’t the worst idea.
The trail wound steeply up the mountain, and sweat beaded across her skin, and she found herself thankful for the cloud cover. She’d assumed it would be an easy hike, since it was suggested for guests, but maybe she was even less outdoorsy than she’d realized. This was on her, probably, for assuming this would be like a casual walk around town.
She felt a raindrop land on her nose, fat and unexpected, and then there was a rumble of thunder in the distance.
She frowned.
She hadn’t thought that it would actuallyrain. It had been a very dry summer. And the day had been so warm earlier.
Oh well. It was warm. At least, that was what she thought for the first few minutes, and then it began to feel very cold. Because the rain started to fall thick and fast and the windbegan to pick up. She hadn’t realized she would be walking into a thunderstorm. But it seemed like no one had realized that since they had all gone out on a trail ride.
She didn’t start getting worried until the trail became muddy and slick.
It wasn’t terribly high up, but it was high-ish, and there was a hill at the other side of the trail, with the mountain on the other side.
That was when she decided she was turning around. She couldn’t do the whole loop, not in this weather.
She took a breath, and turned around, and began to walk back down.
She was annoyed that she had been thwarted. It felt like a metaphor. A metaphor for her life.
She had tried to do something cool, and she had failed at it. She had tried to step out of her comfort zone, and it had gotten even further out of her comfort zone, and she had to quit.
She was exasperated, but she didn’t want to be the dumb girl in the first fifteen minutes of a crime show who got herself killed because she didn’t listen to her intuition.
That meant quitting.
But she was still mad about it.
Then the ground disappeared from under her feet.
She was falling, sliding, the dirt biting into her legs, a rock gouging her knee, as she tumbled down the embankment. She reached blindly around her, trying to grab something, trying to put the brakes on her descent, but she couldn’t grasp anything. The ground was too soft, and there was nothing to hold.
She fell the last foot off the embankment. A hard rock stopped her and sent her tumbling to the ground, debris, rocks, and mud landing on top of her, burying her lower half.
She struggled and found that the soft ground wrappeditself around her leg, grabbing her and pulling her more deeply into the earth. Her ankle was throbbing, and she was sure she was bleeding, and that debris and mud were getting into her cuts as the wet ground persistently shaped itself around her legs.
She struggled against the rocks around her hips, trying to reach into her pocket. But her phone wasn’t there.
Damn the shallow skirt pockets. They had slid out while she was falling, she was sure.
Fear gripped her chest.
But she had sent a text to Marlowe letting her know where she was.
So, somebody would find her.
But when?
Because she didn’t live on the ranch, she lived by herself. Because no one had been expecting to see her tonight.
For the first time, she felt terrified.
She was getting pelted with rain, she was sitting there in abject misery, and getting more and more frightened as time ticked on. It could’ve been an hour, it could’ve been four hours. It could’ve been five minutes. It was darker than it should be because of the clouds, and she couldn’t see the sun. And she was beginning to get panicky.
