Page 4

“Where the hell is she?” Atlas asks, the panic evident in his tone.

“Are you sure we should be following Tank?” Luc asks, sounding unsure that we’re doing the right thing.

To be honest, I get it. We’ve been following him for a while now, and there’s still no sign of her.

“Trust me, he’s taking us to her,” Rage shouts over the raging wind. “He’s a horse. It’s in their instincts to shelter in weather like this and not risk themselves. The fact that he came to us and is leading us back into the woods means he’s doing it for a reason.”

“He’s right,” Pete adds. “I’ve seen it before. Back at Blackbreak when one of the riders came off and was pretty badly injured, the horse came back and got help.”

I nod.

I trust Rage, he knows the most out of all of us when it comes to horses, but I have to admit that it's hard. It’s Ever, and she’s missing and most likely injured.

We fall silent again as we race through the trees, following Tank and Rage. Tank is definitely running with purpose, whether that’s in the direction of Ever or not, I’m not sure.

Chapter Two

Trick

This storm is one of the worst ones that I have seen in a very long time. I’m grateful that it’s not a snowstorm, but that doesn’t lessen the risk of hypothermia at all. It’s really fucking cold, she’s been out here for a while, and it’s raining, which just makes everything so much worse.

We have no idea how far out she is.

Which means we have no idea how long she’s been injured, and I would be incredibly surprised if she isn’t injured.

Tank is a big horse, and falling off him under normal circumstances would hurt, falling off him in these conditions is bound to mean that she is injured pretty badly.

I really fucking hope that I’m wrong though.

We continue riding through the storm, following Tank and keeping an eye on our surroundings, there’s a very good chance that Ever hasn’t stayed wherever she fell off.

Unless she’s seriously hurt.

My mind is an absolute bastard sometimes.

She is okay.

She has to be okay.

The longer that it takes to get to her, the harder it is to hold onto that hope though.

Tank starts to slow down, and Rage is leaning forward, talking to him, as Tank’s ears flick back and forth as he listens to him. He only carries on going for a short time until he suddenly stops, pawing the ground and throwing his head around.

“I’m guessing that means that this is where she came off?” Atlas asks Rage.

Rage nods. “From his behavior, I would say yes. She’s not here now though.”

“Let’s check and see if we can find anything, or which way she’s going,” I say. It’s the first indication that we have of her.

Everyone climbs off their four-wheelers and starts to search the area, and honestly, this is one of those times where I am so incredibly glad that we have the training that we do.

“I would say that she fell off here, the depression in the ground is person-shaped, although with nothing else to go on it could be where an animal has laid down or something,” Riot says with a dark frown.

“There’s no blood, so that’s good,” Cash says. “Now we just need to figure out which way she went.”

“This way,” Luc says, as he points to a kind of track. “This would be the logical choice apart from the way that we came in, and we know that she wasn’t along there because we would have seen her. There are a couple of broken branches, and I think I can just about see a footprint. What do you guys think?”

We all move to where he is and have a look for ourselves to see if we can see what he can see or if he’s blinded by wishful thinking.