by Vicki Tharp
Boomer didn’t have a weapon. Not even his knife, for fuck’s sake. Idiot. What the hell were you thinking? No, that wasn’t right. He was thinking all right, but with his dick and not his brain. He hadn’t even brought his damn leg. And that chapped his ass worse than sweaty underwear under fatigues.
The coarse grass and scrub dug into the bottom of his foot like razor wire, making hopping hurt like hell. As soon as he hit the rocks, it wouldn’t exactly be stealthy. On his hands and knees, he shuffled over to one of the few trees that grew around the stock pond and dug around in the underbrush.
The first stick he found was too short and brittle. He searched again and his hands brushed against a branch a couple inches in diameter. It wasn’t quite long enough to use as a makeshift cane, but it would have to do.
Behind him, Sidney blew a short, soft whistle. He turned around, and as he did he heard the first thuds of hooves coming their way. Sidney had his shorts in her hand and made like she was going to throw them to him. There wasn’t enough time.
As he waved her off, Eli and Angel trotted by on an intercept course with the strangers, snorting with their tails high in the air. He knew the moment the horses had crested the rise around the pond, because there came a couple of shouts and a rapid-fire conversation in Spanish. Then, in English, a third voice called for quiet.
Boomer’s heart rate crept up to the high end of normal. At least three distinct voices. He had to assume they were armed. Even in the best of circumstances, he wouldn’t want them spotting Sidney in her underwear, and it wasn’t just to protect her modesty.
Outnumbered, with only the thick branch for defense and one good leg. As much as he preferred a good offense as a defense, it would be suicidal to think he’d could take them all if he had to.
Number one priority was her safety. Crouching, he turned toward her. She’d managed to get her shirt on, though it was still wet and clung to her body. She was attempting to shimmy into her jeans, but she was out of time.
She looked up, and he made a cutting motion across his throat. She stopped her struggle. He pointed to her, then pointed to the waterfall. She followed his motion, and her eyes owled. She shook her head.
But there was no other cover, no other choice. Just because he could no longer hear any hoof beats didn’t mean they weren’t coming. It meant they weren’t stupid enough to boldly trespass when there were two unknown riders nearby.
If it were him, he’d have dismounted and approached on foot. To Sidney, he mouthed the word “Now,” pointing emphatically.
When she edged toward the water, he wanted to kiss the ground and praise every God that anyone had ever praised before. When she was waist-deep in water, she looked back at him, then pointed at the waterfall.
He shook his head. She narrowed her eyes and her lips went flat. He was too far away to make it in time. He puffed his cheeks and pretended to hold his nose, then made swimming motions with his arms. She nodded and sank down, swimming underwater to the relative protection of the waterfall.
Staying low, he crab-walked as best he could with one leg and the branch to another large, flat rock to use as cover. With luck, the men would move on. But he heard the unmistakable swoosh, swoosh, swoosh as the men trudged through the stream to the head of the waterfall.
He pressed tight against the rock, peeking out from down low. Three men stood at the rock ledge over the falls.
Boomer caught a flash of movement. Sidney. The cascade of the water almost completely obscured her. She’d be safe, for now, if she didn’t die of hypothermia first.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Up to her neck, hiding behind a cascade of water, whatever warmth had returned to Sidney’s body by lying out in the sun was gone. Her teeth chattered and her muscles shivered beyond all measure and control. The curtain of water blurred the view. Above her came the rapid-fire Spanish of several men, though the crashing water made it nearly impossible to pick up what they were saying. Well, that wasn’t the only reason: her Spanish was rudimentary at best.
She recognized caballo and ropa, horse and clothes, because some of the stable hands at her parents’ farm had come from Mexico.
She had no idea what these men wanted.
She had no idea where Bryan had gone off to.
She had no idea how much longer she could stay in the water.
Every nerve burned, like a total-body freeze brand. She had a death grip on the rocks behind her to keep her from leaping out of the water and into danger. At least she thought she had a grip. She couldn’t really feel her fingers to know for sure.
Her blood flowed sluggishly, her red cells sticky in her veins, like a warm tongue on a metal pole in the deep freeze of winter, even while her pulse pounded like Niagara Falls behind her eardrums.
The men jabbered above her, but not in such a way that she thought they’d discovered Bryan. However, there was little cover for him to hide. A few large rocks. A couple of scrubby trees. Why hadn’t he dived in after her? What was she going to do if they found him?
Then the voices faded and she waited. And waited. Then she felt a change in the swirl of the water around her legs. She braced. Ready to run, ready to fight. Then Bryan broke the surface next to her. He held a finger to his lips and she choked back an excited screech.
Grabbing her hand, he tugged her along the fall line until they came to an area where there was still good cover but the water wasn’t coming down as fast, as thick. It gave them a clear sliver of the world beyond.
A violent shudder racked her body. She couldn’t stay in the water any longer; she’d have to take her chances with the strangers. She bolted for the shoreline. Bryan must have had a tight grip on her hand, because she made it one step before he jerked her to a stop.
“Easy,” he whispered.
Over the roar of the water, she’d barely made out the word, but even though he hadn’t spoken very loudly, the single word was powerful, confident, and it stepped her back from the ragged edge of her sanity.
He slipped behind her and pulled her against his chest. Compared to the icy water, his body heat felt like seven suns on her back, even as tiny quakes and shivers shook his body as he wrapped his arms around her. More to keep her from bolting to the shore and giving them away, she suspected, than anything else, but at this point she would take what she could get.
Then the men came into view, down by the rock they’d laid their clothes out on, Sidney and Boomer’s loose reins in their hands. Three men that they could see. Rifle scabbards attached to their saddles, pistols on their hips like a spoof of a spaghetti western, except not nearly as funny.
One of the men picked up her jeans. They looked around, and the one with the red bandana, twiggy legs, and a barrel chest straining his buttons gesticulated to the other two. They climbed the rock where she and Bryan had lain, scanning the area, for them, she presumed.
Twiggy spouted words again. Agua and rápido were the two words she understood. Water. Fast. One of the other men jumped down from the rock and started tugging off his boots with a violent string of what sounded remarkably like curse words.
Before he got a toe in the water, Eli whinnied, high and full of distress, then plunged into the pond and bulldozed through the water.
“Shit,” Bryan muttered. “He’s coming straight for us.”
“How do we call him off?”
“We can’t. If he gets close enough, I want you to climb on and get the hell out of here.”
“What about you?” Sidney asked.
“Don’t worry about me.”
“Bry, he can carry both of—”
“No. You go. Alone. If they give chase, Eli can’t outrun them with both of us on his back.”
Eli was about ten yards away, swimming now as the pond got deeper. Water spilled over his back, his head held high, the whites in his eyes showing, his nostrils flaring, and his harsh, rapid breath
s beating the surface of the water.
Bryan pushed her lower, over to where the waterfall screened them better. “Get ready,” he said when Eli was a few feet away.
She couldn’t feel her fingers, and her arms hung like cold slabs of sausage at her sides. With the hypothermia, did she have the strength to climb on? More importantly, could she stay on?
Eli’s mane lay on the side toward her, his head and neck blocking her from the men’s view. Digging deep, she focused all her will, all her intent, on her grip as she reached out.
“You’ve got this.” Bryan gave her a little push as she grabbed for Eli’s mane. With the dexterity of thick oven mitts, her fingers refused to obey. This was their chance—she couldn’t blow it. She couldn’t let Bryan down. She wrapped a fistful of mane around her hand.
“T-thatta g-girl.” Bryan grabbed her hips to give her a boost. “N-now throw y-your leg o-over.”
Something smacked into her hand and Eli’s mane was ripped from her weak grasp. A rope. One of the men had lassoed her horse.
Eli called out, an indignant scream of fury. Struggling and fighting against the rope, he thrashed his neck, kicking out until the rope bit into his flesh and Sidney feared it would either cut off his air or break his vertebrae. In his fight for freedom, a rear hoof thumped her in the thigh. She felt the pressure, not the pain, but her leg still collapsed beneath her.
Then Eli was gone. Out of reach. She opened her mouth to scream her frustration, but Bryan’s hand clamped down on her lips before she uttered a sound.
They were taking her horse.
She couldn’t let that happen. Eli was all she had. She thrashed against the hold Bryan had around her, an unyielding cage of flesh and steel.
Then, after what seemed like a matter of seconds and at the same time dragged on eon after eon, epoch after grinding epoch, the men were gone, and Eli with them.
“L-let me go,” she ground out. The muscles in her jaw hurt from all the chattering, her molars seconds from shattering under the unrelenting pressure.
With a hand on her back that she could barely feel, Bryan guided her to the shore. “Wait here,” he said as he slipped past her to climb out first. “I want to make sure it’s safe.”
At that point she didn’t really care if it was safe or not. Staying in the water another second wasn’t going to happen. She started to climb out and the water fell away. Gravity knocked her to her knees, but that didn’t stop her either.
She crawled hand over hand over the rocks. The jagged edges dug into her skin, bit into her fingertips, which were wrinkled and blue from the wet and cold.
Over his shoulder, he hissed, “Get behind that rock and stay down.”
She pressed herself against the sun-heated rock. Closing her eyes, she sighed. She’d never been so close to heaven before.
Bryan grabbed a thick stick to use as a makeshift crutch and hobbled to the rock across from her, where their clothes lay in a heap. He climbed up, crouching at first, then slowly standing, making sure no one was around. When satisfied, he gathered up the clothes, tossed them down, and followed them to the ground.
“They’re gone.” His words were flat, ringing hollow in her ears like the dong of a cracked bell.
In her head, she heard, “Eli’s gone.” Her heart rate didn’t elevate, there was only so much adrenaline could do against the weight of her devastation.
Eli was gone.
Dread sat heavy in her gut, a blob of molten fear and insidious, burning, churning hatred.
As sad and miserable as it made her life sound, Eli was her world. He’d brought her up when she’d been at her lowest. A calm, quiet strength that didn’t care who her parents were, or what they’d done.
She didn’t care what she had to do, what she must risk, what she must face.
She would get him back.
She had to.
* * * *
The journey back to the ranch was arduous. Soon, the sun would glide behind the mountain ridge and dark would hit hard. Sidney’s shirt was dry, but her jeans were still damp and sanded her inner thighs like eighty-grit sandpaper against an overripe peach.
With every step, the bruise on her thigh throbbed. The bottoms of her feet were blistered and stung as if she’d screwed up the coal walk at a Tony Robbins seminar.
At least she’d stopped shivering. She could have been in worse shape, so she wouldn’t complain.
Bryan hadn’t complained.
No one word.
His breath was ragged. His shoulders sunburned. His right palm gouged bloody from the end of the branch he used as a cane—the T-shirt he’d placed over the end only helped in the beginning—and he wasn’t complaining. Wasn’t giving up.
He put one foot in front of the other, figuratively. It wasn’t pretty. By the hard set of his jaw, it wasn’t easy. It sure as hell couldn’t be any fun.
She admired his strength, his determination.
“I still don’t understand why you won’t let me go ahead and bring help.”
He didn’t bother looking at her. “We stick together. I don’t want you out here alone in case they come back. Besides, not much farther now.”
Not too long after, they topped a hill, and the back of Bryan’s cabin came into view. The clunk-scrunch, clunk-scrunch, of Bryan landing the cane then hopping ahead ended abruptly. Sidney stopped and looked back. He swayed before he caught himself, sweat streaming down his face, veins corded on his forearm as he caught his balance. He closed his eyes and sucked in a long, deep breath and blew it out with a dark guttural howl of victory that sent chills skittering up her spine.
A huge grin split his face. “Can I buy you a beer?”
She smiled back at him, relief giving her a spurt of newfound energy. “Thought you’d never ask.”
That howl Bryan let out must have traveled through the air like the low moans of a humpback whale, because it wasn’t a minute later that Santos came cantering past the cabin on his horse, Taco.
He let out a string of expletives she would have to have Bryan translate for her sometime.
“Qué pasό, amigos?” Santos’s horse skidded to a stop when he jumped out of the saddle.
Sidney grabbed the reins while Santos secured Bryan’s right arm around his shoulder and tossed the makeshift cane aside. Then Santos let loose a battery of excited questions, all in Spanish and all too rapid for her to catch a word of it.
Bryan laughed. “Gonna have to slow your roll, buddy. The one word I caught was idiot.”
“What the hell, man?” Santos boiled it down to simple English.
“Get me back to the cabin, get a drink in my hand, and I’ll fill you in.”
“Can you ride?”
“Better than I can walk.”
Santos gave him a leg up on the horse’s offside, and for the briefest of moments a combination of sheer agony and numbing exhaustion flitted across Bryan’s face. Then he caught her eye and flashed her a grin that released a bevy of bees in her belly and made her think of rude, crude, lascivious things she longed to do to a man who didn’t want to be strung along.
But when he smiled at her like that, it made her want to give him, and her priorities, a shake, rattle, and roll.
When they made it back to the cabin, Bryan poured himself out of the saddle and Santos was quick enough to catch him before he landed on the ground in a puddle of fatigue.
She tied Taco to a rail near a water trough, then turned back to the men. There were still a couple dozen strides and three steps Bryan needed to navigate up to the cabin porch. “I’ll help get him inside,” she said.
Bryan looked toward the cabin, hopeful and pensive, as if the hike was as daunting as a trek across the Sahara in the middle of a sandstorm.
“I’m good here.” Bryan collapsed onto the log in front of the dead fire from the other night. His aim was
off and he slid down the side of the log, landing on his ass, the bark crunching under his weight as it peeled the top layer of skin off his back. The scrape turned rosy-red as blood oozed out. He didn’t seem to notice.
“I’ll grab us some water and that beer.” Sidney said as she stepped onto the porch.
Santos held the two-way to his mouth and muttered something into it, but she was too far away to make out the words. Someone squawked something back to him, equally as unintelligible, but the gist, she figured, was Santos letting someone know they were safe.
Too tired to make the trip up to the barn and change out of her jeans, Sidney made herself at home in Bryan’s cabin, rummaged through the locker at the foot of his bed, and came away with a pair of his sweats. She didn’t blame him for what happened that day, but she figured he at least owed her some dry clothes.
She toddled to the bathroom, shucked her jeans and underwear, and sighed with relief when she found a big bottle of baby powder to sprinkle on her chafed thighs. The sweats were warm and dry and butter-on-a-hot-day soft against her angry skin. She rolled the waistband down and the legs up and called it good.
By the time she made it back outside with Bryan’s cooler packed with some bottles of water and a few beers, Mac and Hank were walking down the drive. Bryan struggled to get up as Mac approached.
“Sit your ass down, Marine,” Mac ordered.
Bryan disobeyed and stood anyway, balancing on one leg. Mac socked him in the arm, not too hard, but hard enough. He grinned and pulled her into him with an arm around her neck like he was going to give her a noogie on the top of her head. Instead, he kissed the side of her head with a loud smack.
Mac wrestled free.
“You okay?” Hank asked Sidney.
Sidney set the cooler down next to Bryan and plopped down on the log. She opened her mouth to tell them she was fine, but “I don’t know” tumbled out.
Now that the sun had set, the air cooled and a violent shiver shook her.
“Cold?” Hank asked.