But what if she got lost? What if she’s hurt?
I get in my truck and drive too fast on roads I probably shouldn't be driving on. The wipers can't keep up. The truckslides on a switchback near Tucker's gate and I correct on instinct and keep going. The rain is coming down so hard it sounds as if somebody's dumping gravel on the cab.
I dial her number again on the speaker. Voicemail. "What’s up with your damn phone, Laurel?"
I head up the fire road that hugs the back side of the ridge, because that's the way Riot likes to come down off the high meadow when he's done. It’s a long, gentle slope.
But if she got caught up there, she'd take the most sensible route out. And the most sensible route, when the sky is throwing daggers, is the one that ends at…
…the line shack.
Old man Fleming built the thing sixty years ago for cattle drives. Nobody's used it for anything but storing busted fence wire, some rusty tools, and maybe a first aid kit, since I was a teenager. Still, it's got a roof and four walls and a stovepipe, and it's tucked into a stand of pines about a mile and a half from where Laurel was headed.
I take the spur off the fire road, the truck pitching over rocks, and there it is through the rain—squat, gray, listing slightly to one side like an old drunk.
And there in the lean-to off the back, head down and munching on some grass, is Riot.
Thank god.
I park the truck as close as I can and half-fall out of the cab, hat pulled down, the cold rain hitting me square in the chest. I grab one of Riot’s rain blankets from the trunk in the truck bed and lurch across the soaked grass to the lean-to.
“Hey buddy.” He blows out a breath at me when I touch his neck. Laurel’s removed his saddle and he’s untacked enough to be comfortable.
I toss the blanket over his back. “Good boy," I tell him. “Laurel inside?”
He snorts and I take that as a yes.
I make it to the door of the shack, and wrench it open.
Laurel is on her knees in front of the rusted potbelly stove with a fistful of damp kindling and pure, focused fury on her face. Her hair is in a soaked rope down her back. Her flannel is plastered to her shoulders. There's a smear of soot across one cheekbone.
She looks up when the door bangs open.
"Beck?"
"Hi, darlin'."
"What are you doing?" She gets to her feet, kindling forgotten. "Yourankle—you drove up here inthis?"
"Couldn't reach you. Phone went straight to voicemail."
"I guess there’s no service up here. I tried." Her voice cracks just a little, and that tells me she was scared.
I limp across the floor as she stands, and pull her into my arms. She wraps her arms around me and we just hold each other.
"You're soaked," I say.
“Quite.” She chuckles. “Riot’s under the lean-to.”
"He’s settled. I put a blanket on him.”
“Good, I was worried about him.”
“Don’t be. He’s a trooper. Been in much worse. And the lean-to will hold. We're not driving out of here in this anyway—those switchbacks'll be running like a creek by now."
"So we're stuck?"
"Yup, but there’s no one I’d rather be stuck with than you."
