by Ellis, Tara
“I’ll still feel a lot better once we’re on the other side of that crest,” Sam answered. “Do you think we’ll be able to get a few more miles between us before it gets too dark? I might be overreacting, but I’m feeling nervous about starting a fire.”
Tom forced a smile and twisted in his saddle so he could talk to the older man. “Once we’re past this, they won’t be able to see a thing from the valley floor,” he said, waving a hand at the craggy rocks looming above them. “I didn’t see any tracks anywhere along the creek bed, so I figure they came up the valley from the other end. I’m almost certain there’s a trail a ways down there that heads east and connects to the freeway. I doubt they even know about this old trail. It’s not on any maps.”
Sam looked relieved. “Well, why didn’t you say that before?”
“It was kinda obvious no one else had been through there,” Ethan jested, never missing an opportunity to tease his highly intelligent friend.
“I was more focused on things like not falling to my death,” Sam retorted, happy to play along with the mock argument.
Tom glanced back again, comforted by the normal banter, and found Danny staring at him. “Thank you,” she said softly, while Ethan and Sam continued their lively conversation.
That wasn’t what Tom expected. “For what?”
Danny looked down at her hands, clearly not used to speaking openly about her feelings. “I don’t know if Sam and I would have made it without you.”
Tom waited for her to meet his eyes again so that he was sure she would know he was being honest. “Danny, I think you might have that backwards. You guys were doing pretty well before I, um…attacked you one night.” He grinned crookedly at her until she smiled back. “And I seem to remember you doing most of the saving.”
She blushed slightly, but didn’t look away. “That’s not really what I meant.”
Tom paused, not sure if he was interpreting her correctly. He’d never been very good at understanding women. “You know,” he said, his smile growing. “I hope you don’t think you’ll be getting rid of me that easily once we’ve made it to Mercy. I’m pretty sure I owe you a beer, and you owe me a story.”
Laughing, Danny nodded in agreement. “I think you might be right.”
Tango chose that moment to scramble up and over the final section of the trail, forcing Tom to turn back. Relief flooded over him as he was finally able to accept that they’d managed to avoid a confrontation with the gang of killers. Although they still had another day or two of hard riding ahead of them.
As he rounded a large protruding boulder and crested the top, Tom got a clear view to the west and the setting sun. His breath catching in his throat, he reined Tango in and sat for a moment, soaking it in.
“Yes!” Ethan hooted as he rode Lily past him at a gallop and made a large circle on the broad, grassy slope. Grace chased after them, barking, picking up on everyone’s excitement.
“Is that Mercy?” Sam asked, stopping next to Tom. As the only one in their group to have never seen the town, he had no idea what it looked like.
“I think it is!” Danny cheered, getting down from her horse and walking out onto the grass to get a better view of the valley.
“I thought it’d be bigger,” Sam joked as he slowly climbed out of his own saddle.
Tom stared out at the miniature buildings in the distance, located far below them in a wide valley, with two more mountain ranges between them. “It’s an old mining town,” Tom explained while dismounting. Tango was eager to graze on the lush green grass and it wasn’t worth trying to hold him back. “It used to be twice the size, back when the mines were still in operation. When they shut down, it almost turned into another ghost town until my great-grandfather proved how lucrative the land was for cattle.”
Ethan, having abandoned Lily to her own grazing, ran back over to where the rest of them were standing. Tom put an arm around his son’s shoulders, still shocked at how tall he was getting. Looking up at his dad, Ethan grinned and moved closer. “We did it.”
Not trusting himself to speak, Tom turned back to take in the view. If he ignored the clear delineation of dying trees, and the lack of movement on the roads below, he could almost imagine that nothing had changed.
A flash of light in the sky to the north taunted his thoughts, and he stared hard at the boiling clouds on the far horizon. Normally, weather systems didn’t come from that direction, but he was learning to expect the unexpected.
Danny moved up on his other side, and without thinking, Tom took ahold of her hand and pointed it toward the mountains on their left, rising up from the west side of Mercy. “There,” Tom directed, moving her hand up and down. “Close to half of that hillside belongs to the Miller Ranch.”
“It’s beautiful,” Danny breathed. Turning her hand, she intertwined her fingers with his, and Tom squeezed back, holding on tightly. It felt right, as they stood there on the bluff, with so many things still unknown.
Danny draped her other arm over Sam’s shoulders, and Grace loped around them all, before settling down in front of Tom. Staring up at him with her gentle brown eyes and lolling tongue, she made it all seem so simple.
Tom looked then at Sam and Danny, and finally Ethan. “You’re right,” he said, agreeing with his son. “We’re going home to Mercy.”
FLASHPOINT Book 5
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