Running Blind (28 page)

“If you could see your expression,” Zeke said, his own voice low, but coming in plain through the headset. His eyes were heavy-lidded, intent.

Mentally she shook herself, took a step away from him, squared herself with the target. “Like this?” she asked, two-handing the pistol as she brought the sights on target.

“Just like that.” This time he didn’t step up behind her, didn’t show her where to put her hands. They had already been over the loading and unloading, the safety or lack thereof, the trigger and hammer and all sorts of things. This was a revolver, the big one Kenneth had provided for her practice. She lined up the sights and pulled the trigger. The barrel kicked upward, and just as she’d been told she pulled it down, found the sights, pulled the trigger again. She shot until the pistol was empty, then they examined the target.

The good news was that she’d hit the cardboard with every shot. The bad news was that only three shots had actually been anywhere in the bull’s-eye.

“You’ll get better,” Spencer said in encouragement, seeing her disappointment.

“Damn right I will,” she said, her jaw setting. “Let me see that automatic.”

By the time Zeke called an end to the session, she’d blasted away four targets, and burned through more ammunition than she wanted to think about. Reluctantly she agreed that they had to stop; the men had work to do, and so did she. But she’d found her weapon. As right as the revolver had felt when she picked it up, the automatic had been even better. It was harder to load, harder to shoot, but she’d been more accurate with it. With some more practice—a lot more practice, probably—she’d be able to hit the target at least half the time.

And she wouldn’t be helpless the next time Brad caught
up with her. She didn’t feel invincible, but neither did she feel so vulnerable and frightened. That could be a good thing, or a bad thing. She wasn’t going to do anything reckless out of a sense of power, but it was nice to know she had some knowledge of how to protect herself.

Amazing what a gun could do for a girl.

T
HANK
G
OD
S
PENCER
was out of his sling and could drive the pickup, Carlin thought, though Zeke still had the young hand on light duty. She was deeply grateful, because that meant Spencer had gone into town with her today, and not Zeke. Anything that kept her away from Zeke was all to the good. It was rough on her nerves to be close to him. If he was with her in a small enclosed space like the truck cab for an extended period of time, she’d probably explode.

She felt as if she were on the edge of an explosion a lot these days.

They had just left Battle Ridge when it started snowing. “Great,” Spencer muttered. “It wasn’t supposed to snow until tonight.”

Carlin stared out the window at the mountains, already blurred by the snowfall. The winter weather system had moved in earlier than predicted—
hours
earlier. She’d hoped to be home with the groceries unloaded and put away before the first flake fell. Remembering how enchanted she’d been by that first snow, she could only mentally roll her eyes at herself. The white stuff had fallen several times since then, but around the ranch and in town where boot after dirty boot stomped through it, it never
stayed white for long. Instead it turned gray and mushy and then refroze overnight, coating everything in a sheen of slippery, dangerous ice.

And it was just November.

“We can make it back to the ranch, right?” she asked, because already the snow seemed to be getting heavier, and the shoulders of the road were turning white.

“Yeah, sure.” His easy reassurance would have been, well, reassuring, if he hadn’t immediately followed it with, “I hope.” That was Spencer, both optimistic and honest.

But he knew how to drive in this kind of weather, and she sure as hell didn’t, so she had to trust the first part of his statement.

The other times it had snowed, she’d been safely at the ranch. This was the first time she’d been on the road when the weather turned nasty, though she supposed to a seasoned Wyomingite this didn’t really qualify as nasty. It was pretty much weather as usual … she hoped. Now she knew why Spencer had added that qualifier.

The roads seemed to be fine—at least for now—so she relaxed and watched the scenery. She never got tired of the mountains. The views still took her breath away, in all seasons and all weather. The mountaintops had stayed white for a few weeks now, but watching the snow begin to cover all the slopes was almost hypnotic. The interior of the truck was nice and warm, and the rhythmic sound of the windshield wipers made her sleepy, but in a good kind of way. Looking out at the snow and knowing how cold it was, while she was dry and warm in the truck, gave her the same kind of cozy feeling being curled up in front of the fireplace provided.

They left the paved road and for the first time they hit some ice; the tires spun a little, but Spencer held the truck
steady and they regained traction. He slowed some, so he wouldn’t have to use the brake as much.

Huh. That wasn’t good. They were still a good distance from the ranch, and the road would only get worse as it climbed in altitude. No longer sleepy, Carlin sat up and paid attention, though there was nothing she could do to aid Spencer’s driving other than silently willing the tires not to spin.

They started up an incline that had never seemed treacherously steep before, but today Spencer slowed down to almost a crawl, and still the tires spun and grabbed, every inch a victory. Carlin gripped the armrest. “Ruh roh.”

Spencer grinned at her Scooby imitation, though the grin was short-lived. “We’ll be okay,” he said, just as the truck bounced in a rut, then slid sideways on the icy road. “Maybe.”

He had to cut that out. It worried her when he cut the legs out from under his reassuring statements. “Take it easy,” she said, though of course the admonition was useless. “We have precious cargo.”

“We do?” he asked in surprise, blinking at her.

“Watch the road!” she yelped. “The eggs.” She peered through the window at the narrow road ahead. “I’ve got six dozen eggs in the backseat.” She couldn’t seem to buy enough eggs to keep Zeke and his men happy. Eggs, bread, and milk: those were the staples she went through the fastest.

Spencer gripped the steering wheel and leaned forward, intently watching the road. He looked a little worried, a totally new expression for him. Seeing anything other than happy optimism on his face was such a departure, Carlin decided she should be concerned, too.

“Do we need to go back?”

He gave her an appalled look, and she got the feeling she’d somehow challenged his manhood. “No, we can
make it. But I should’ve put the spikes in the truck this morning, before we left.”

Vintage Spencer: optimism, honesty. “Spikes?” What did they need spikes for? She had a vision of long spearlike things to drive into the ice as they climbed sheer frozen walls, or something like that. There was a lot to this Wyoming-winter stuff that a warm-weather person like her didn’t know.

“For the tires,” he clarified. “Can’t drive with them on dry roads, but when there’s ice it makes for a good grip. Don’t usually need them this early, and I figured we’d be home before the roads got bad. This looks awfully icy.” The worried expression came back. “The boss is going to kill me for forgetting the spikes …”

“We’ll get home fine,” she said, borrowing his optimism, as if saying the words would make it so. But she didn’t want him to think she doubted him. She
didn’t
doubt him, but ice was dangerous. Snow … 
meh
. She’d already become blasé about snow. Ice was in a different category. The inherent danger of driving on ice made every muscle in her tighten in preparation for whatever might happen.

She didn’t need bad weather to make her tense, these days. She stayed on edge, wound tight, and when she felt as if she were jumping out of her skin it wasn’t because she was afraid of Brad, it was because being close to Zeke had every cell in her body on alert. She wanted him. She couldn’t have him. God knew she was in too deep as it was! In the beginning she’d looked at this job as a way to hide through the winter, a chance to sock away some money for the next time she ran. And now here she was with friends, and a place that felt like home, and a man who teased her and taught her to defend herself and looked at her as if he wanted the same things she did.

And Zeke was a man who went after what he wanted. Carlin hadn’t needed Kat’s warning to make her wary of
him, because any woman with one working brain cell would have been able to tell that he wasn’t someone who accepted defeat, he took a situation and shook it, mauled it around, until it suited him. Funny—Brad hadn’t accepted “no” for an answer, either, and yet the two men couldn’t be more different. Brad couldn’t conceive of any woman not wanting him. Zeke looked beneath the surface and somehow saw her potent reaction to him. He
knew
somehow, damn it, that what she said and what she felt were two completely different things. Brad was a danger to her life. Zeke was a danger to her emotions.

The road climbed around a curve, and the tires spun again, jerking her attention back to the present. Spencer let off on the gas, let the tires do their job, and they regained their momentum again. Carlin looked around, trying to figure out where they were. She’d been this route often enough that in good weather she could look around and have a good idea how far she was from the ranch, but the snow changed everything. She didn’t recognize any landmarks; one snow-covered mountain or ravine looked pretty much like the next one, and she hadn’t been paying attention to the passage of time. The truck’s digital clock told her they’d been on the road almost an hour. In normal weather, they’d already have been back at the ranch.

Spencer slowed down more and more as the road wound up and down through the mountains, eventually going more down than up. The weather didn’t get any better, though. Visibility decreased by the moment, until they could barely see a few feet in front of the truck. Carlin found herself leaning forward, as far as the confines of the seat belt would let her, as if by going on point she could somehow extend her vision and see through the thick, wind-swirled snowfall.

The sound of the tires changed, and looking out the side window Carlin saw they were crawling across a bridge,
and suddenly she knew where they were, but wished she didn’t. Even in good weather, this section of the road gave her an uneasy feeling. Immediately after crossing the bridge the road took a sharp left turn, and to the right was a steep ravine, the land falling away for a long, long drop to where a pencil-thin creek wound its way down the mountain. Because the snow was so heavy she couldn’t see the drop, much less the creek, but she knew it was there and her heart began racing, her right hand tightened on the armrest and her left one on the edge of the seat.

Right at the end of the bridge the tires began spinning again, and the rear end of the truck began swinging to the right, toward the ravine. Spencer reacted swiftly, taking his foot off the gas, gently steering to the right to get in front of the spin, but he didn’t have a lot of room to maneuver and as they bumped off the bridge the two right tires were on the shoulder. Carlin’s heart jumped into her mouth and she closed her eyes.

“We’re good,” Spencer said, his voice a little higher than usual. He blew out a breath as he feathered the gas and his steering, trying to ease them back onto the road.

He might have made it, if it hadn’t been for the deer. It came bounding out of the snow so suddenly that one second it wasn’t there and the next second it was. Instinctively Spencer hit his brakes; the deer was right
there
, in front of the truck. The brakes locked, the tires lost traction, and the truck began sliding back and to the right, toward the ravine—and then they went over.

Carlin screamed, seeing nothing but the ghostly deer as it seemed to turn in mid-bound and disappear back into the snow. Time turned into molasses, every second stretching out unbearably. She saw Spencer’s ashen face, his eyes wide, and she felt a deep ache that he was going to die so young, without having the chance to get married, have kids, have a life. She saw the snow swirling, silent and beautiful. She saw the limbs of an evergreen
drooping under the white weight. She saw her own hand, reaching out, as if she could claw the air and hold them in place.

Then there was an impact that jerked her forward against the seat belt, which instantly jerked back and pinned her against the seat, and the truck crashed to a stop, hood pointed in the air.

For a moment Carlin could do nothing except stare up at the silent white bombardment of snow, coming down on the windshield.

“Are you okay?” Spencer asked breathlessly, his own hands clenched around the steering wheel.

“Ah … yeah. You?”

“Fine.” His voice cracked on the word. He was looking at the windshield, too.

Strange thought, but all of a sudden it was loud and urgent. “My eggs!” She started to turn toward the backseat, but at her movement there was a sort of groaning sound, and it came from the metal of the truck.

“Don’t move, Miss Carly!” Spencer was whispering now, and if he’d been ashen before, his face was now bloodless. “We … we’re kind of balanced.”

Balanced.
Balanced?

“How? On what?”

“A tree,” he said, visibly swallowing, and she realized he hadn’t been looking out the windshield, he’d been looking in the rearview mirror.

A tree. That was good. Except … 
a
tree. Plural, trees, would have been much better. “How big a tree?”

“Um … not big.”

She glanced out the side window, and nearly passed out from sheer terror. There was nothing there, just more white flakes, dropping down, down, down, to some resting place she couldn’t see. And all that was keeping them from plummeting down with the snowflakes was a not-big tree.

“Exactly how big is not-big?”

“Just don’t move.”

“Not that big of a not-big tree, then.”

He swallowed again. “It’s holding. It’s just that we’re kind of off-center.”