“Yeah, but there are other entrances. There’d have to be to get those stockpiles and equipment down there, right?”
“Right.” It was possible, but it didn’t feel right. He had a bad feeling the surprise Kate had been planning involved him, and something had gone terribly wrong.
He angled the truck toward the mountain as the snow picked up, falling harder and faster by the hour. “Call Sanctuary. Ask Church to gas up the snowmobiles and have Cage double-check the perimeter cams.”
“You’re thinking something happened.”
He nodded. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Kate
Kate’s first thought was that she had died. Everything was white and still and so peaceful.
Then, her brain came back online and, with it, her ability to feel.
“Ow.”
A sharp blade of pain sliced through her skull. Her entire body ached, and when she tried to breathe, it felt as if someone were plunging knives into her side.
She was also extremely cold.
The last thing she remembered was rolling sideways down the mountain after the jerk who had been riding her bumper clipped her back end. What the hell had that been about? Road rage because she was doing forty in a forty-five zone?
“Well, fuck him,” she said into the empty space. If there was ever a time to let the F-bomb fly, this was it.
She wiggled her fingers and toes, just to be sure she could. Everything worked, except for her left arm. When she tried to move it, so much pain washed through her that she had to swallow the urge to vomit.
The good news: she was alive and relatively coherent, and none of her injuries seemed to be life-threatening.
The bad news: she hurt all over and was going to freeze to death if she didn’t do something soon.
She didn’t know how long she’d been out, though it must have been some time. The windows were covered in snow, but there was enough backlight making it through that it had to be daytime. She did a quick calculation, subtracting the time she’d left from the approximate sunrise, coming up with a hell of a lot of hours.
She also didn’t know exactly where she was or how precarious her current position was. She knew only that the right side of the Jeep was lower than the left side, as if it were propped against something. Was the vehicle hovering at the edge of a drop-off? Would the slightest movement send her careening over?
She stretched her right arm and felt around in search of her phone, but apparently, her good luck only extended so far. Her phone, wherever it was, must have been dislodged from the holder during the impromptu loop-the-loop and was out of immediate reach.
Next, she called out a few times and laid on the horn, expecting no answer and receiving none.
She had no choice. She had to move.
With some difficulty and more use of the F-bomb, she managed to release the safety belt and then very carefully reached down and pushed her seat back to give her more room to maneuver, adding a banged-up knee to her list of injuries when her leg protested. Thankfully, the Jeep remained solidly in place.
So far, so good.
She braced herself against the pain and tried unsuccessfully to open her door, awkwardly reaching across her body with her right arm. It wouldn’t budge. Given the angle, she didn’t try the passenger side, just in case she was hanging over a precipice.
Holding her broken arm tightly against her body, she crawled into the back inch by inch, crying the whole time because it hurt so bad. An eternity later, she reached the back window and it swung open without issue. She peered out and took in the situation.
More good news: she appeared to be firmly wedged between two massive trees on a medium-grade downslope and didn’t have to worry about upsetting the balance and plunging to her death.
More bad news: she was stuck on the side of the mountain in the middle of nowhere, and it was snowing like hell.
She forced herself to calm down and think rationally. She wasn’t helpless. She was an outdoorsy girl with skills. Also, she kept a winter kit in the back of her Jeep for emergencies.
First things first. She had to get warm. She extracted the extra hat and scarf from her emergency kit and put those on. She’d already been wearing fleece-lined driving gloves, so she had that covered, which she counted as another positive because there was no way she’d be able to get anything over her left hand now.
Then, she popped a few over-the-counter pain tablets, made creative use of the ACE bandage to fashion a makeshift sling of sorts, and draped the heat-retaining, foil space blanket around her shoulders like a cape.
Next, she opened the back door and climbed out, wincing when she put weight on her left leg, and then she limped around the vehicle to further assess the situation. Her Jeep was dented on both sides, but the front and back were untouched, and she didn’t detect any damage to the fuel tank.
She cleared the snow away from the tailpipe, vomited when another wave of nausea hit, and then climbed back inside. After engaging the emergency brake, she gritted her teeth, depressed the clutch, popped the manual shifter into neutral, and murmured a prayer as she turned the key once and then twice. The third time was the charm. The engine turned over, and she made a solemn promise to only buy Jeeps again for the rest of her life.
While waiting for the defroster to heat up, she searched around the interior for her phone again. After an hour, she finally found it wedged under the passenger seat. Getting it out was one of the most excruciatingly painful things she’d ever done. She was glad her power windows still worked, so she could vomit out the side twice more before the deed was done.
The upchucking did nothing to improve her headache, which had now progressed from switchblade to ax-blade level. Nor did it relieve the throbbing pain from bruised/cracked ribs.
Nevertheless, she triumphantly held the phone in her hand as she sagged against the seat, happy to be in an upright and static position once again. She exhaled—slowly—and tried to wake up the screen, only to see a flashing, empty battery symbol in response.
There would be no calling for help. Not today.
She made a mental note to add a portable, battery-operated phone charger to her emergency kit along with something more powerful than OTC painkillers.
Instead of focusing on the negatives, she chose to think of the positives. She had enough fuel to provide hours of warmth and plenty of food—not just the high-protein snack bars in her emergency kit, but also the steak and shrimp dinner she’d made to surprise Chris. She also had several bottles of water, and if those ran out, she was surrounded by plenty of snow that would work just as well.
Though she wasn’t hungry, she forced herself to eat something and then downed a few more tablets since she’d thrown the others up. Then, she sat back, closed her eyes, and waited for her stomach to calm and the painkillers to do their thing before she attempted additional heroics.
When she opened her eyes again, the clock on her dash told her it was mid-morning. Surely, someone must have noticed she was missing by that point.
Right?
Though the more she thought about it, the more she realized that might not be the case.
She hadn’t been around to open the store, but folks might assume she’d taken the day off to take her dad home from the hospital.
Luther was unreliable at best. If he was still upset with her, he wouldn’t think twice about showing up late or not at all, just for spite.