Chapter Text
Sam stands forehead to forehead with Ace, her occasionally patient mustang putting up with her silliness even though he hasn’t been pleased about being grounded along with her. Tempest whinnies, upset at Sam in the barn and paying attention to someone that isn’t her even though Sam had just spent twenty minutes petting her silky neck and scratching her behind the ears. She stops a moment later, which probably means Dark Sunshine had gotten sick of her daughter causing a racket. Ace shifts his weight, but still doesn’t move away.
Banning her from riding through October is just too harsh – it’s not like she’d known that a horse thief with a gun was going to be by the abandoned school bus when she’d gone to rescue all those poor roosters. She’d even asked Preston to come with her like Sheriff Ballard wanted. Sure, she’d left the ranch when she wasn’t supposed to, but how was she supposed to know that all that other stuff was going to happen? The punishment, in her view, didn’t fit the crime. Jen, always loyal, had agreed with her. Jake, pulled between being angry at her for getting into another dangerous situation and angry on her behalf for how everything had gone down with Mrs. Allan and Preston, had kept silent on it.
But being grounded from riding hasn’t meant much the past couple days. It’s been raining nonstop, what had started as a drizzle now coming down in bucketfuls, and the only break is the occasional hail that takes its place. It means all the animals that can are huddled together, the chickens in the coup and the horses in the barn. The cattle, however, are on their own. Big rains like this cause flooding which always takes some of their cattle with it, thousands of dollars just washed away. Sam had kept up with her chores even through the weather because she couldn’t imagine Dad’s reaction if she didn’t, but it left her soaked and shivering and thinking of the poor cows who’d be lost to the flooding.
Bryanna has mostly been staying on the couch and fretting, but there isn’t much else for her to do. At eight months pregnant, Sam doesn’t envy her step-mother one bit. She’s constantly sore, constantly tired, and with mood swings that keep Sam mostly in her room out of self preservation. If she’s not weepy, she’s angry, and Sam really doesn’t know what to do with either. Bryanna had talked down Dad from grounding her until Christmas, and Sam’s grateful, but she’s still left Bryanna to Gram since she seems to actually know how to handle her.
It’s all distracting, but not distracting enough. This time, none of her problems are the worst of it.
Abnormally heavy rains on top of a dry summer means worse flooding than usual. It means that several different places have succumbed to mudslides.
Most of it isn’t too bad. She worries about the wild horses, of course, and the other animals caught in this, but it’s the people and buildings that are the main concern. She knows at least one road is closed down and that a few homes in town have been destroyed and people hurt. One good thing about the ranches is that most of them are too far from the mountains for mudslides to threaten them, although that didn’t mean much when the flooding river threatens to sweep them all away.
Sam leaves the barn and lifts her hands to her eyes, ignoring the rain rolling off her hat and hitting her shoulders to squint in the direction of the La Charla River. It’s angry and frothing, spilling over the edges and threatening to overtake the bridge, but it’s not anything close enough to the barn for her to worry about it. While some of their cattle won’t be so lucky, their house is probably fine.
She turns towards the house and frowns, seeing a truck that hadn’t been there when she’d gone to the barn. What’s Luke Ely doing here? Is it actually Jake checking in on her? He’s done that before, but he’d taken the spare truck that all the Ely boys shared, not his dad’s. Besides, Luke runs the volunteer fire department and staffs it with his six youngest sons, Kit only escaping by virtue of living in Montana. She imagines all of them have been busy dealing with floods and fires and who knows what else since the rain started.
She hears raised voices when she gets onto the porch, which is impressive considering the rain drowning out almost everything else. It’s definitely not Jake. She hesitates, straining to pick up specifics, but all she can pick up is volume and tone. Damn. Dad’s definitely going to send her upstairs and she won’t get to know what all the fuss is about. She’ll have to ask Jake later, he’ll know for sure. She doesn’t think that anything stays a secret in the Ely house for long.
The shouting cuts off as soon as she steps in, which she’d expected, but the way everyone focuses on her has her freezing halfway through hanging up her hat. Bryanna is sitting at the kitchen table, one hand on her stomach and the other over her mouth, and Gram is standing behind her gripping onto her chair. Dad and Luke are standing, arms crossed, and their hard gazes make her want to shrink back. “What’d I do now?”
It’s supposed to be a joke, but Dad’s face tightens. What? She’s been here doing her chores and working through her English essay. She couldn’t have done anything wrong this time.
Luke rubs a hand over his face and she sees the exhaustion in the slump of his shoulders, in the way his hand is trembling just slightly.
“Are you okay, Mr. Ely?” she asks. He must have been worked to the bone between trying to take care of his own ranch and helping everyone else. “Here, have a seat, I’ll make you something hot to dri-”
“Sam,” Dad interrupts. “Go upstairs.”
It’s what she’d expected, but the look on Luke’s face when he drops his hand has her hesitating. She looks to Gram. “You’ll make him something, won’t you?”
“Sam,” she starts, then shakes her head.
She doesn’t understand what’s happening. Luke and Dad have been friends for decades. They’re neighbors. What could they be arguing about that’s so terrible Gram won’t even get him a cup of tea?
“What, you’re not going to tell her?” Luke snorts. “Considering you made Heck tell her how Louise died, I don’t know why I’m surprised.” Gram gasps as Dad’s eyes narrow. “Yeah, I heard about that.”
Sam shifts uncomfortably. She’d known her mother had died in a car accident when she was five, of course, but she hadn’t known the specifics until a couple months ago when she’d asked Sheriff Ballard for the details. After a phone call to her father, he’d given them to her. Her mother had drowned. Her car had flipped into the river and the impact probably wouldn’t have killed her, except she’d been upside down and unconscious and she’d drowned within minutes. Sam understands why no one had told her that when she was a kid, but she’s not a kid anymore. She’s a sophomore in high school, she’s old enough.
“My daughter,” Dad begins.
“My son,” Luke snaps.
Sam feels ice down her spine. “What about your son? Where’s Jake?”
Luke has seven sons. He could be talking about any of them.
“Honey, go upstairs,” Gram says.
Sam ignores her. She steps closer to Luke and Dad, uncaring of the mud she’s tracking into the kitchen. Gram’s silence on it is a bad sign. “Where’s Jake? Is he okay?”
“He’s missing,” Luke says. “We need volunteers to look for him.”
“We’ll go,” Sam says immediately, doing her best to push down on the panic and fear. It’s like when she thought that maybe Jake had gotten into a car accident after dropping her and Jen off at the parade except a thousand times worse. That time, she’d been mostly sure he was fine and figured she was being paranoid. This time, she knows he’s really in danger. Did he get caught in the floods? Did he stay out to take care of the ranch while his older brothers went out with fire truck? Jake’s a good rider and Witch wouldn’t abandon him, but in weather like this anything can go wrong. “What happened? Where do we start?”
Bryanna leans forward, reaching out for her. “That’s not – we’re not–”
“Of course we are,” she interrupts, them amends, “I mean, Dad and I will, of course. I know the hands are out trying to keep an eye on the cattle, but this is more important. We’ll start and when they come in, you and Gram can send them to join us.” Part of her wants to go riding out now to go get them and drag them along with her and Dad, but that’s time that could be spent looking for Jake.
“No,” Dad says. Sam stares. This can’t be about her being grounded, not with Jake missing. He can lock her indoors until Christmas, she doesn’t care, but she’s going to help find Jake. “Tell her the rest, Luke.”
Luke briefly closes his eyes then says, “He’s been missing since yesterday.” Sam feels her mouth drop and her stomach turn. That’s not possible. No way. Jake can’t have been missing for that long without her knowing. “The rains weren’t too bad yet. Slocum’s mare got out again and he asked Jake to go out and see if he could bring her back.” Slocum has plenty of mares, but Sam knows he’s talking about Hotspot. The mare had ran with her Phantom’s wild herd for months before she was returned to Slocum. “He didn’t come home. We don’t know where he is.”
None of that tells her why Dad doesn’t want to go. If anything, it just means they should be hurrying and not arguing about it. There’s a lot of ground to cover. Luke should have come to them first, not waited around, but she’ll let that go for now. Finding Jake is more important than getting mad at his dad.
“No, but you found the horse he was riding,” Dad says, voice hard. “Dead and half buried at the bottom of a mudslide.”
“Witch?” Sam gasps, thinking of the bratty, unflappable horse with her strong neck broken.
“Chip,” Luke says reluctantly.
That’s not much better. Chip is Quinn’s horse and he’ll be devastated. The friendly and hardworking horse dead is a tragedy, but, “You just found Chip, right? Not Jake?”
Jake could be perfectly fine. Just because Chip is dead doesn’t mean – it doesn’t mean anything.
Luke opens his mouth to answer, but Dad doesn’t give him a chance. “He wouldn’t get off his horse in this weather. Hell, you don’t even know where he was. The mudslide could have caught that horse at the bottom of the mountain or the top and it’d all look the same.”
“No,” she says, even though she knows Dad has a point. She’s not really talking about that.
“He could still be alive,” Luke says. His eyes are red. Sam feels like she’s standing on the salt flats, unsure if the ground beneath her is solid or something less stable. “Until we find a body–”
“You probably won’t until they can get an excavator out there,” Dad says quietly.
It’s like he’s hit her. No. They can’t give up, not like this, not on Jake. “Dad! Stop! We have to go out and–”
Dad slams his fist against the wall. Gram flinches and Bryanna’s eyes fill with tears.
Luke’s face is hard and unreadable.
“We’re not going anywhere,” Dad snaps. “There’s no sense in getting ourselves killed just to bring back his corpse!” Sam’s vision goes blurry. No. Just, just no. Dad takes a deep breath and his voice softens. “I’m sorry. Luke, you have no idea how sorry I am that you’re going through this. But there’s not.”
Sam doesn’t realize she’s moved until she hears the screen door slamming behind her. Gram calls out her name, Dad says, “No, give her time,” and then she can’t hear anything at all as she runs through the rain towards the barn.
She’s not aware of herself again until her arms are around Ace’s neck, his familiar horse smell grounding her and keeping her from collapsing right there.
It’s just not possible. Jake is older, smarter, better. He can’t be dead. He’s going to college next year and she’s been bracing herself for losing him for most of year, but she can’t lose him like this. She can’t lose him for good. He’s her best friend, he’s been her best friend her whole life. Some of her earliest memories are of Jake’s hand in hers. He can’t be dead.
Is this what Jake felt when she had her accident? When he left her bleeding and unconscious to go get help, when they didn’t know for days if she’d wake up from her coma? His overprotectiveness has always grated on her, but maybe she hasn’t been giving him enough credit.
He can’t be gone. Jake wouldn’t do that to her. He hates hurting her and he can’t stand to see her tears.
Dad’s been wrong before and he’s wrong about this too. Jake isn’t dead. If Jake were trying to track Hotspot, he’d need to get a good look at her tracks. Sam’s seen Jake tracking before. He can see a lot from horseback, but not everything, and the sun’s been hidden by clouds for days. If there were any tracks the rain hadn’t washed away, he would have needed to get off Chip to see them. He could have left Chip behind to follow the tracks on foot and then the mudslide had come before he could go back for him.
Except if that were true, where’s Jake? A day is enough time to walk back, even in this weather. Unless he’s trapped somewhere, blocked from leaving, but there hasn’t been any mudslides that would cut off –
Sam’s arms tighten around Ace enough that he pulls away from her and she lets them, standing there with her arms limp at her sides. She stares at a knot in the wood but she’s not really seeing it.
Jake was tracking Hotspot. She’d spent months with the Phantom, which means the first place she’s likely to run back to would be him. The rain had probably made any tracks useless, which meant Jake would been searching for her blind. Or, mostly blind.
There are caves and valleys in the mountains so numerous that most people have given up trying to find them all. There’s one cave that leads to the Phantom’s secret valley, the place he takes his heard to rest. She knows that no human knows the entrance, because if they did then her Phantom would have already been captured.
No human besides her, anyway. Jake doesn’t know it, but he knows the general area of one of the entrances. Once Hotspot returned to the valley, she’d be lost until the next time the herd ventured out. Chip is the only horse on the Ely ranch that’s faster than Witch and he’d need speed more than anything. If he were being smart about it, which she can’t imagine him being anything else, he would have ridden as fast as he could up to where he knew there was an entrance to the Phantom’s valley and waited to catch Hotspot as she arrived.
There are plenty of caves and trails in that area. There are things that distinguish them, but in the rain, without any decent visibility, Jake would have to go in to each one to figure out if he was getting close or not. Chip is fast and loyal, but he doesn’t like enclosed spaces. If Jake didn’t want to make him even more nervous than he would have already have been in the weather, he could have tied him off and gone searching on foot.
Sam has made a name for herself, however unwillingly, as someone who can think like a horse. People come to her for it, depend on her for it, and when she talks, there are people who believe she knows what she’s talking about enough to listen.
Can she think like Jake?
Is she right about this or just clinging on to foolish hope?
Does it matter?
No, she decides, nodding to herself. It doesn’t matter. She does know Jake, she can make a pretty good guess at what he’d think and what he’d do, but if she’s wrong, then it doesn’t matter. It’s a chance. If there’s even a chance that Jake is still alive, that’s enough.
She makes it out of the barn to see that Luke’s truck is gone and despair sweeps through her. Dad won’t listen to her. He’ll let her use the phone, but she doubts anyone is at the Ely house now. They’re probably all out looking for Jake. If she makes that call and no one answers, Dad won’t let her out of his sight, he won’t take her idea seriously, and then no one will be looking for Jake where he’s most likely to be.
It’s too big of a risk.
Dad had said to give her time, but Gram will be out looking for her soon enough.
She saddles Ace as so many thoughts go through her head that it’s almost like she’s not thinking at all, a deafening blankness overcoming her. She has to do this. No matter what.
There are saddlebags in the barn with emergency supplies already packed and she takes them, thinking of the first aid kit and jerky and water. She’s still not that good at roping, but takes a rope anyway, and almost sets off when she remembers that the hands keep sleeping bags in the bunkhouse.
She won’t need it. She won’t. But if she does, and she doesn’t have it, she’ll have to – it’s just better for her to have it and not need it, she decides.
The trip to the bunkhouse is nerve wracking, thinking that if anyone’s looking out the window just then, she’s screwed. But she makes it back to the barn without anything going wrong and secures the sleeping bag to the back of her saddle. Dallas’s spare rain jacket is on the hook and she pulls it on even though it’s huge on her. It’s better than going out in just her fleece.
If there’s any sound that will make it through the rain, it’s hooves on wood.
Knowing she’ll need a decent head start to get away with this, her heart is in her throat as she leads Ace out into the rain. She walks him across the bridge at a pace that clearly baffles him, especially with the churning water nearly lapping at his feet, but she keeps her eyes on her front door the whole time.
Nothing.
As soon as he’s across the bridge, she sends him into a gallop.
She knows the canyons and mountains better than almost anyone thanks to long hours of riding them, of following wild horses into and out of them. She just needs to get there and she’ll find a way to get up them.
The playa isn’t highly populated at the best of times. She doesn’t see a single person the whole ride, although with the rain and fog they’d have to be pretty close for her to notice them. All the ways that this is a stupid thing to do keep coming to her, one after another, but she ignores each one. It doesn’t matter. When she makes it to the edge of the trail up towards the valley, Ace shuffles back several steps. He’s heaving beneath her with the effort of getting her here so quickly and she leans forward to rub at the spot at the base of his neck. Her hat and Dallas’s jacket mean most of her top half is dry, but her legs are soaked through.
She tilts her hat back, squinting through the rain on her face. Water is coming fast and furious down the trail, which she should have anticipated. It’s the path of least resistance not just for people, but for water too.
All it takes is a press of her knees for her Ace to go forward once more, leaving that trail entrance behind. There’s a smaller stream of water a few miles down and she urges Ace up alongside it. It’s hard for her to recognize landmarks through the rain, but she knows the wide zigzag pattern of the stream of water matches the beginnings of a natural trail that she’s seen horses take before.
Ace isn’t a fan of any of the things she’s asking him to do, but she keeps her commands firm and relegates all her turmoil to the back of her mind. If she doesn’t hesitate, Ace won’t either. They’d just gone through Preston and Sheriff Ballard’s obstacle course for situations just like this. Preston had even brought up floods and rescues in his speech. Ace trusts her and his nervousness won’t outweigh her command. Well, to a point. But as much as Ace trusts her, she needs to trust him too.
Before he was her horse, Ace was wild, a mustang that lived in these same canyons and hid in these same valleys. He knows this land better than she does.
The further up they go, the more treacherous it gets. The water is moving faster up here without brush to break it up and she’s keeping Ace away from it, but it’s still too close for comfort. She’s so cold she can’t feel her fingers or her toes or her nose, Ace is struggling for every step he takes, and the mud is only getting deeper.
In the end, it’s the mud that stops her.
Ace slips, managing to right himself, but he stands there unmoving after, his eyes rolling back to look at her.
Her horse is terrified. He doesn’t want to be here.
She thinks of her good and loyal horse dead like Chip, killed for listening to her, and she can’t do it. She swings off his back, wincing as the mud oozes over her boots and creeps towards her ankles. Ace is muddy up to his knees, but he’s a lot heavier than she is.
He stays perfectly still as she takes the saddlebags and throws them over her shoulders, sleeping bag included. She unhooks his reins and ties them to her saddle, wary of them getting caught on anything and him getting stuck. Then she leans against him, forehead against his shoulder, and breaths in wet, sweaty horse. “Thanks, boy. You’ve done great. I’ll see you soon, all right?”
Ace is too good of a horse to leave her without a reason. He’ll follow her up this mountain if she lets him, and she doesn’t want to do this alone, knows that doing it without even a horse for backup is stupid even for her, but she can’t abandon Jake and she can’t endanger her horse. She takes a step back, raises a hand, and slaps Ace as hard as she can on his flank. It won’t hurt, not really, but it’s a signal every horse knows. Get out of here. Go home.
If by some miracle her family hasn’t noticed her missing the past few hours, Ace coming home riderless will be a pretty big clue. At least the tied reigns will let them know that she sent him back herself rather than getting thrown and left behind.
He bolts away, slowing after the first rush of movement, and then he waits. She keeps her mouth shut. When she doesn’t call him back, he snorts and begins his descent. She only watches him for a moment before turning and continuing her slow walk up, knowing that she has to be close.
The rushing water tells her where the trails she’s used to are, but she has to move around it or carefully walk across it to keep from being swept away. Her jeans are soaked to the waist, probably her shirt is too, but she’s too cold and wet and miserable to really tell the difference.
She nearly cries in relief when she comes across the first cave, then she does cry in frustration when she realizes it’s the wrong one. She stands in the shelter, dripping and freezing, and then turns around and goes back into downpour. She’s on the wrong part of the mountain, Jake wouldn’t have started here, this isn’t the entrance he knows. She needs to find her way to the hidden valley, through it, and then through the cave that Jake’s seen her exit from.
At least she’s not on the opposite side of the mountain.
It takes two more tries for her to find the right one, for her to recognize the sloping walls and path that curves one way then the other. She hurries, her small victory giving her a burst of adrenaline even though her shoulders ache from carrying the saddlebags and the rest of her isn’t much better off.
The valley isn’t the idyllic paradise she saw it as last, but it’s doing pretty good considering the circumstances. Water runs downhill rather than flooding and the herd is clustered together to keep warm in the shelter of several different clumps of trees.
The Phantom has his head lifted, ears pricked in her direction, but she’s not here for him this time. A human’s presence would normally send them scattering, but for better or worse, the Phantom’s always treated her as his. He doesn’t send his herd away, he doesn’t charge at her, he just watches her cross his valley and walk amongst his mares and foals without concern.
Part of her notes Hotspot cuddled up next to him, but she’s not here for Slocum’s runaway either.
She picks this cave correctly the first time. She’s far more familiar with it. Halfway through, she drops the saddlebags right where the cave branches off to the main path. It’s not practical to keep carrying them and this way she’ll know exactly where they are. It’s easier without them even though she still feels like her soaked clothes are weighing her down. When she finally makes it to the cave’s exit, she looks to her left, sees what’s basically a waterfall hurtling down the side of the mountain, then looks to her right and doesn’t understand what she’s seeing for a long, confused moment.
Mudslide. Luke had said mudslide, but from where she’s standing that’s an awful lot of rocks and not that much mud.
Her throat closes up. Seeing it is worse than hearing about it. Even if this is where Jake had been, how could he survive that? How could he still be alive under thousands of pounds of rocks and mud?
Sam takes a deep breath, forcing it slowly out through her nose. She holds a picture of the canyon in her mind. She knows this place, she just has to think. If Jake’s not here, if Chip was caught in the landslide she’s looking at, then Jake hadn’t made it to this cave yet. He’d been checking them one by one, just like she’d been doing. With visibility so low and never having been in the cave that led to the Phantom’s valley, he would need to check each one and think back to when he saw her leaving it to see if the inside matched his perception of the outside.
If he was on Chip when the landslide happened, he could be anywhere. But if he managed to get to shelter in time…
She only hesitates a second before setting her foot on the edge of the rocks and pulling herself up. The rocks shift ominously beneath her, but hold steady. There’s nothing secure or safe about any of this, but she doesn’t have time to worry about that.
Holding an image of the canyons in her mind, she carefully makes her way across the landslide, aware that any movement could send it all going again and she’ll be just as broken and dead as Chip. But there’s, not a cave exactly – or, well, it is a cave, but it’s pretty small and doesn’t lead anywhere, and if there’s any hope of her finding Jake, it’s there. She takes four more cautious, measured steps then looks back at the cave she’d exited from. It’s basically impossible to see from this angle even in good weather, which is how it’s stayed mostly hidden for so long, but she has the entrance to the Phantom’s valley seared into her mind. She’s in the right spot, she thinks. Hopefully.
She takes one more deep breath, gets to her knees, and starts digging.
~
When he hears rocks moving, he thinks it’s another landslide. He braces himself for either stone or water to come rushing in, not sure what he’d prefer to kill him and only hoping that it’s quick. Except nothing happens. There’s no sudden collapse of stone, no deluge of water. Just the tiny scrapping and scattering of moving rocks. The wind, maybe?
Jake drops his forehead onto his bent knee, so cold he’s stopped shivering, and almost wishes it were cold enough for hyperthermia to take him out. That’d be painless, at least, just drifting off to sleep when he hasn’t managed to sleep at all since he woke up to complete darkness and water slowly leaking into the cave from the wall of rocks. His ribs hurt, he can’t stand to put any weight on his right ankle, and his body is sore in a way that tells him he’ll be covered in bruises if he lives long enough for them to surface, which he’s not counting on.
Why didn’t he tell anyone where he was going? He hadn’t bothered, he hadn’t thought it would matter. He figured he’d either catch the Appaloosa or not and he’d be back home within a few hours either way.
He knocks his head against his knee. Stupid. Unbelievably stupid. Then again, even if someone knew his location, it might not change much. It’s only a matter of time before this precarious pile of rocks goes again, either burying him for good or letting in enough water to do the job. It’s not like they could get an excavator up this high. What would anyone even do, really, pick it apart by hand even while knowing that one wrong move could get them killed at any moment –
A scattering of stones fall from above him, causing him to flinch and scramble back. This is it, this is the end.
His boots are muddy.
Jake blinks several times, staring down in confusion. After he doesn’t know how long of total darkness, he can see his boots.
He looks up, eyes stinging at the column of weak light making it through. He can see the rocks blocking the cave that he’d previously only been able to feel and the water creeping towards him. Then more shifting rocks tumbling away from the growing hole and he thinks he catches the edge of a pale hand, a single thumb there and gone.
No, it can’t possibly – he’s dying and hallucinating, clearly.
Except then a pale face is looking down at him and he sees the shock rolling through him reflected on that familiar face before she’s grinning and yelling, “JAKE! Oh, thank god, I thought that – are you okay?”
At first, all he can do is breathe and stare. Then he’s exploding forward, pain forgotten as he stands right underneath the hole Sam has made and shouts up at her, “Have you lost your MIND? What the hell are you doing out here? Do you have any idea how dangerous this is–”
“So good to see you, Sam,” she interrupts mockingly. “Thanks for saving me, Sam, I’d be literally lost without you–”
“Get away from there!” he snaps. “This thing could go at any moment, you’ve officially lost it. If you’re there when it does,” he cuts himself off, breath freezing in his lungs. He remembers how she’d looked at eleven years old, blood pooling under her head and not waking up no matter how he screamed and begged. The thought of her crushed and bloody is a nightmare. “Get out of here.”
“Did you hit your head?” she demands. “Are you brain damaged? How are you planning to get out on your own, exactly?"
He’s not. Obviously. “Okay, you found me, great work. Now go tell whoever’s in charge.”
She winces.
Right. Of course. If there were someone in charge rather than Sam just going off on her own, half cocked without a plan, she wouldn’t be crawling on a rockslide waiting to happen. No one with two braincells to rub together would let that happen. “Just go.”
“Do you know what I had to go through to get here? How long it took to find you? I’m not leaving without you, you’re the one that’s lost it.” She looks behind her and then back through the hole. “I have a rope not too far away, but this isn’t stable enough for me to anchor it against anything. If I make the hole bigger, can you climb up?”
It’ll hurt like a bitch with his ankle, but it beats dying. “I can make the hole bigger myself.” Somehow. “Go now and wait for me.”
“Just start climbing,” she says, nerves entering her voice for the first time. It doesn’t help that she’s looking at something he can’t see.
He walks towards the rocks, wincing as his spike of adrenaline ebbs and he can feel how much moving so suddenly has hurt everything, but especially his ankle. “Why?”
“Less talking, more climbing,” Sam says, going back to widening the hole enough for him to make it through. Knowing that if his weight shifts the rocks too much, it’ll all come tumbling down makes him extra cautious. Killing himself with his own incompetence is one thing, but he can’t do that to Sam. He hears her moving above him, but puts the entirety of his focus on pulling himself up an inch at a time. Several times the rocks shift too much and he has to try another more stable path.
He’s in something close to the amount of pain he was in when he got the compound fracture in his leg, his arms are shaking from the exertion of climbing, and he’s stuck. He can’t go any further without something shifting dangerously.
“Come on,” Sam says, her mud covered hands appearing in front of him.
He stares at them uncomprehendingly. “I can’t. I’m too heavy, I’ll pull you down.”
“You won’t,” she says impatiently. “I’ll pull you up. Hurry.”
He shakes his head. He’s eight inches taller and at least fifty pounds heavier.
She waves her hands in front of him. “We don’t have time for this! Now!”
It won’t work. He’ll pull her down, they’ll destabilize the rocks, and she’ll be dead because of him.
“Jake!” she snaps.
He grabs her hands.
They lock around his as she throws her whole body back, dragging him through the hole she’s made. He kicks off from the wall, even though it’s precarious and stupid, and it gives him just enough of a boost make it through. He lands on top Sam, not able to break his fall because she hasn’t let go of his hands.
She lets out an oof of air and he manages to push himself up enough that he’s not crushing her. He gets exactly half a second of relief and Sam’s smile before she’s shoving him off her, scrambling to her feet, then grabbing his wrist to pull him up after her.
There’s a flare of irritation, but he doesn’t get further than opening his mouth to complain when he sees the rushing river of water right at the edge of the rockslide. It’s already knocking rocks loose and the stones beneath their feet are at best minutes away from being swept away in another landslide.
“ARE YOU CRAZY?” he shouts.
“Shut up, Jake,” she returns, still tugging him along towards solid ground. Which would be great and all, except in the distance he can see more water overflowing and wiping out anything in in its path.
Sam is practically running towards it for no reason as far as Jake can tell. One way or another, they’re dead. “Great, running from the water towards the water, great idea–”
“Just trust me!” she calls back, still not letting go of wrist as she puts on another burst of speed.
Every step is agony, but he shuts up and follows her. If the last thing he does is trust Samantha Forster, he’s okay with that.
As they get closer, he realizes where she’s leading him. It’s the stupid cave he was looking for in the first place. There’s a deep groan like something breaking and he doesn’t waste the time looking behind him. He knows what it is. The rocks and water and mud are all coming together again to make another landslide, just like he’d known they would.
They make it into the cave, but don’t stop running. This cave isn’t a dead end, but they still have to be far enough from the entrance to keep from being crushed if the landslide makes it this far over. At one point it looks like Sam is leading them headfirst into a stone wall, but since he doubts that’s her plan, he doesn’t say anything is proven right when she takes a sharp left then abruptly stops. She lets go of his wrist to lean over and brace her hands on her knees, taking in several greedy breaths. “We’re okay here.”
“Great,” he says, not sitting down so much as collapsing. His ankle throbs with every beat of his heart, his ribs are flaring hot and painful, his throat is scraped raw, and he’s going to live to see tomorrow.
Sam falls heavily down next to him, tilting her head back against the cave wall. He can see faint light at the end of the tunnel, enough to see her by, but it’s less bright than when he first saw Sam digging him a way out. The sun must be setting.
He can’t make out details, there’s not enough light for that, but he knows Sam so well he doesn’t really need them. She turns her head towards him, dark auburn hair plastered to her face. He thought he was going to die cold and alone. He thought that he’d never get to see her again.
It hurts his ribs, but he shifts enough towards Sam to pull her into a fierce hug, the kind he gives her when she’s scared him. He’s filthy and probably smells terrible, but she’s rainwater and clean sweat and the barest hint of the conditioner she uses. He presses his forehead against her shoulder, tightens his arms around her waist, and breathes.
“Hey,” she says softly, wrapping her arms around his back and leaning her head against his. She runs a hand up and down his back, soothing and warm. The only parts of him that are warm are the ones that are pressed against her “It’s okay, you’re okay.”
He realizes too late that he’s shaking. There’s a hot flash of embarrassment and he tries to pull away.
Sam just holds him tighter and repeats, “It’s okay.”
His throat is too tight to manage words, but he lets out a shuddering breath. Eventually he stops shaking, eventually the fuzzy panic dissipates and he’s just left exhausted and aching. He hadn’t let himself fall asleep in the cave, too worried that death would come for him while he was sleeping, but he’s not worried about that now. They’re not trapped, Sam’s got him, and it would be stupid to try and navigate their way out of here in the dark.
“Don’t fall asleep yet,” Sam says.
“Why not?” he grumbles. She makes a good enough pillow when she’s not talking.
“Let me look you over first,” she insists, slowly pushing him off her.
He groans and shifts back against the cave wall. Sam gets up, but doesn’t go far before she’s returning to him, a bright red sleeping bag in one hand and saddlebags in the other. Which reminds him, “Where’s Ace?”
“Is it broken?” she asks, kneeling next to his leg and gently pressing her fingers against his ankle through the leather. He hisses through his teeth and tenses, but doesn’t pull away from her. “I want to wrap this, but if it’s swollen so much that I can’t get your boot back on after, it’s probably not worth it.”
He flexes his foot back and forth experimentally then says, “It’s not broken.”
“This might hurt,” she warns before wiggling her hand inside his boot to poke at his ankle. He flinches, but she doesn’t do anything more than that. “Putting weight on it obviously didn’t help. Let’s see how it is in the morning, but we should probably leave it for now. Did you hurt your side?”
It was too much to hope that she wouldn’t have noticed his ankle injury while he was running next to her, but he’d thought he’d be able to keep his ribs to himself at least. “They’re fine.” He can’t quite make out her eyes, but he knows she’s glaring at him. “Bruised ribs, probably. Not broken.”
“You sure?” she asks quietly. He blinks. “Your breathing’s off.”
It is? He holds his breath then inhales deeply. He lets it out abruptly at a sharp pain, then repeats it, trying to focus on the exact sensations beyond exhausted and sore all over. He’s bruised his ribs before and this feels like that, the pain sharp but not exact, and it’s not the grinding pain Kit had described, and he’d know. Jake doesn’t even know how many times his eldest brother has broken a rib or three. “Pretty sure.”
She makes a sound of irritation in the back of her throat.
He hopes it’s too dark for her to see his smile. “I’m fine, it’s nothing that won’t keep.”
“It better be,” she says, then starts rifling through the saddlebags. “Here. Eat that, then take some painkillers. I think all that’s in here is Advil and Tylenol, but it’s better than nothing.”
There’s trail mix and dried fruit being shoved into his hands, then a water bottle. There’s a first aid kit that Sam is carefully picking her way thought, trying to make out each item in their rapidly disappearing light.
Nausea swamps through him and he almost refuses. It’s been long enough since he’s eaten that he’s not even hungry and the thought of eating almost makes him sick, but he knows it’s for the best. The water he drinks eagerly, only allowing himself two long swallows before he lowers it and reaches for what he thinks is dried apricots. He can’t afford to throw any of this up. “Did you leave Ace in the valley?”
Sam places four small packets next to him. “That’s half of what we have. Take that now and the rest in the morning.”
He slowly stops chewing and swallows, feeling the apricots the whole way down, which is unfortunate. “Sam.”
“He’s home,” she admits finally. “I mean, I hope so, at least. I rode him most of the way up here, but it was getting too dangerous for him so I sent him back.”
Oh, fuck. He can’t believe he forgot. “Did Chip–”
Sam squeezes his knee and he closes his eyes. “I’m sorry, Jake.”
As if nearly getting himself killed isn’t bad enough, he did get his brother’s horse killed. He loves that horse. “Quinn’s going to kill me.”
“Doubtful,” Sam says, voice still gentle. He almost snaps at her for it, but he swallows it down. He doesn’t care about horses like she does, as if they’re almost people, but he does care. Chip was a good horse. There’s shameful relief mixed in there too, that he rode Chip out here rather than Witch. He hadn’t known. He thought he was going to bring him right back. “Eat.”
He takes another bite, but it’s even more unappetizing than it was before. “We’re going to have a hard time getting out of here without a horse.”
“I have an idea,” she says, picking up the little packets and tearing them open. Once he’s finished the fruit, she deposits the little pills in his hands.
He tries to double check that she’s grabbed the right ones, but it’s too dark. “I don’t like your ideas.”
“Doesn’t stop you from going along with them,” she says and he scowls at the reminder of how her most recent idea had turned out. He’d gone to Trudy and Preston’s wedding because the whole family had been invited and he couldn’t get out of it, but he’s still not happy with that mess. Some wild horses weren’t always wild and bringing in a wild horse to treat its injuries without alerting the BLM isn’t the smartest of decisions, but Sam had just been trying to help. She hadn’t even known who Preston was when she’d done it and they’d all seen that horse running with the Phantom’s herd for over a year. How was she supposed to know it was Preston’s? Where the hell did Preston got off speaking to her like she was some heartless criminal when she’d just been trying to do the right thing?
Mom says he’s biased, which, maybe, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong. He’s been working on letting it go since everyone else has moved on, but hasn’t been that successful. If he’d actually taken a swing at Preston, maybe it wouldn’t still be bothering him so much.
He swallows the pills, takes another sip of the water, then holds it out to her. “You too.”
She pushes it back. “There’s another bottle. I’ll drink half of that and I have a disgusting protein bar all to myself. Finish the trail mix and the water.”
Jake frowns.
“You haven’t eaten in almost two days,” she says. “I’m okay. Finish that.”
Part of him wants to argue, but the rest of him is too tired. He can barely keep his eyes open as he eats the trail mix. Nausea has rolled over into hunger now that his body has been reminded that food exists, but thankfully he’s too tired to feel more than minor annoyance over that. He finishes off the water bottle and can’t quite get his hands to work when he tries to get the cap back on.
Sam takes it from his hands then tugs on his shoulder. “Lay down. Now you can sleep.”
At some point, she unzipped the sleeping bag so it’s lying flat next to them. He didn’t even notice. He lowers himself on top of it, careful of his ankle, but instead of laying down too Sam remains sitting with her back against the cave wall. “What’re you doing?”
“I want to dry off more first.” That’s right. She was out there in the rain for however long it took her to find him and dig him out. She tugs at the edge of the sleeping bag. “Closer.”
What she’s asking doesn’t make any sense to his sleep deprived brain, but he shuffles closer to her anyway. She shifts her legs to be underneath him so his head is in her lap, the sleeping bag still between them, and then leans over him to fold the sleeping bag on top of him. It seems to take him forever to blink. “Hey.”
They’re supposed to be sharing.
Sam runs the palm of her hand over the crown of his head then does it again. He wants to tell her that he’s not a dog, but he feels himself turning into it before he can get the words out. He tries to open his eyes, but for some reason nothing happens.
“Go to sleep, Jake,” she says softly.
He doesn’t mean to listen to her, but in the end his body doesn’t give him much of a choice.