Slade and Kally: Letting Go of the Reins, Book 1

by AE Rought

  The blade reflected the dome light when I opened it. I cut through the belt and then dropped into the backseat along with the scattered papers and French fries. My shoulder crunched and my knees came down into my face. The sudden displacement of weight tipped the car onto the roof. I screamed, though no one could hear. The burden of the under carriage was too much, the metal frame crumpled and the windows shattered.

  Pain spread in thick waves through my shoulder, up my neck and down my spine when I pulled myself through the back window. I lay in the cold snow, sweating with fright and exertion while snow melted on my face. I was grateful to be alive, though gratitude was the last thing I expected.

  Cold sarcasm rose suddenly, given birth by the chills wracking my body. “Yeah, sure. Drive down a road to nowhere in the middle of a snowstorm.”

  A groan escaped me when I rolled onto my stomach. Pain characterized every move when I clawed away from the vehicle and stood and I wasn’t certain where it originated. Spots of light danced in front of my eyes and a detached numbness sluiced through me. I only wished it had taken the pain with it. Everything hurt, but somehow, I was disconnected from it. I wiped sweat and blood from my forehead and surveyed the wreckage.

  “What the hell am I going to do now?”

  My phone was buried beneath the mass of twisted metal, my clothes, or what was left of them, were in the trunk, which resembled an accordion. My snowbound surroundings offered nothing more than a picturesque winter night, a broad stretch of land and a long barbed wire fence.

  “Fences lead to houses.” At least they do in Michigan.

  From where I stood, any house would be a long walk. Not one building was visible. I wiped the sweat and trickling blood from my face and set out along the fence. Chills crept up my spine and then trembled through my whole body. My teeth chattered, and I clenched my jaw to stop it from rattling my head. Every jiggle made my head throb. The uneven ground proved treacherous beneath my feet, but solid underneath my ass when I fell. I kept moving. Eventually, I would find someone who could help me.

  Goose bumps coated my skin, my breath rose in thin plumes and my feet were numb in winter’s grip. I kept looking for a house, a car, anything to show signs of life. I must have marched along the loneliest road in Wyoming, because my search proved to be more hollow than the new moon above me. Then, running on the inside of the fence and off into the property, I found a path. I took off my sweatshirt, threw it over the barbed wire and scrambled over the fence and face first into the snow.

  The barbs released my shirt from their nettled grip, and I pulled the holey sweatshirt back on. The path was narrow, meandering over the uneven terrain and in-between stands of aspens and pines. Hillsides poured into little valleys dotted with scraggy bushes and full Christmas tree pines before climbing again. After the third or fourth incline and fast slide down the other side, I noticed my chills were gone. A detached feeling replaced them. I raised my hand to the cut on my head. It was dry. Either the cut had frozen, or the blood just wasn’t getting there.

  Even I knew in my frozen, muddled consciousness, decreased blood flow and no more chills were dangerous.

  Drowsy weight settled in my limbs. My eyes drooped, then flew open wide at the sight of a light and a low roofline. It was a small building, maybe just a barn. At least it could provide shelter. I left the path I had followed and plowed through a flat field of pristine snow. Yards from a roofed cattle pen, my left foot slipped and sank. I didn’t realize until icy water gushed over my calves and into my boots, that I’d floundered into a pond. Instinct ticked in my muscles, and I fell backward instead of face first into the frigid depths.

  Mud seeped through my clothes, caked my scalp. Water dripped from my body when I crawled from the muck. I managed to collapse on the bank, where the damp mud held me in a wet embrace and fresh snow blanketed me. I panted, watching the plumes of my breath rise in the faint blue glow of the halogen lamp while the cold soaked into my bones, into my guts, which lay inert beneath my skin.

  Irony struck me like an icy club. I’d left Matt because I was afraid he’d kill me. Now here I lay, dying. A sick, strangled laugh escaped me. Though a ray of light flashed across the pond, black fields encroached on my vision and a chilly invitation to a long cold sleep tempted.

  “What in the world?”

  A voice rang in the little snow filled dell. I lifted my head from my icy bed and saw a man in a low profile Stetson hat riding toward me on a white horse. The image of him sitting astride the horse framed in snowfall was etched like ice in my mind. He trained the beam of his flashlight on me and our gazes locked. “Gid-up!” He spurred the horse and it charged around the edge of the pond I’d stumbled into.

  The man dropped from the saddle and pushed his hat from his head. He nestled his Maglite into the snow so that it shined on me. Steam rose from his dark hair, and his expression flared hope in me. His eyes were polar ice blue and angel robe soft. No matter how I wanted to look at his face forever, my eyelids sagged. His hands were clear in my hazy vision. Hands weren’t always good. Matt had hit me with his hands. A little knot of fear tightened in my gut, but this man was gentle. “Come on, girl. Stay with me.”

  “Car crash.” I muttered. I couldn’t say more. Nothing came out but a shaky breath. He nodded, and a frown knit his brows together.

  He pulled the gloves from his hand and patted my thighs and arms. “You’re soaked to the bone and freezing.”

  I wanted to nod my head in agreement, but my fine motor skills were frozen too. His fleece-lined jacket smelled of Stetson cologne when he pulled it off, the scent of sweat sweetened with fabric softener rose from his long underwear shirt. “Let me help you.”

  I couldn’t have fought him if I wanted to. I had no strength left. My field of vision narrowed when my eyelids drooped again. He wadded the shirt into a soft mass and patted my face dry. Despite the sting of his shirt against my cheek, I was grateful for his touch. My head lolled to the side while he wiped down my arms. I was less appreciative when he used the shirt to sop water from my shoulders and chest. Pain blazed from my shoulder socket and radiated through my arm and chest. A weak cry escaped my lips, but the onset of hypothermia had iced over my tear ducts.

  “Hush now.” He stopped, placing a warm hand on my cheek and shushing me. “We have to get you dry you before you freeze to death.”

  It might be too late.

  He stood, more silhouette than man to my increasingly fuzzy vision. Putting his hat back on, he bent to wrap me in the clothing he’d removed. I couldn’t feel him touching me. I was beyond feeling, slipping into the numb, quiet dark. The pain eased. The cold eased. My vision failed. There was only me and him. His chest was the last thing I saw when he wrapped his arm around my back. The last thing I felt was the warmth of his bare skin.

  Me and him.

  Me.

  …black…

  Slade and Kally: Letting Go of the Reins, Book 1

  Chapter Four

  He had always hated accident calls like this when he was on the force. The only ones he had hated worse were accidents involving little kids.

  This girl was barely conscious and going hypothermic. Slade knew if she didn’t get warmed soon her chances of survival were slim. Even her breath was cold on his skin. Whistling for his quarter horse Jack, he scooped his arm beneath her legs and lifted the limp woman. Despite the blood and mud, her hair still smelled like jasmine. At times like this, the small details made each call different, made each victim unique.

  She was wet dead weight in his arms and slipped in his grip like his mother’s oiled holiday turkey. Bracing her butt on his thigh, he trussed her up with his long underwear shirt, using the sleeves like handles. His boot slipped on the edge of the pond, and instinct made him squeeze her tighter. She struggled and whimpered. “No…please don’t hurt me again.”

  Slade had been an officer with the Hulett P.D. only three months ago. There were times he had cared about the victims, and there were times he hadn�
�t, but this girl’s unconscious cries for mercy cut right into his heart. She was unlike any victim he’d ever helped before.

  The blizzard solidified beside him in the form of his horse Jack. The stallion knelt and Slade eased the girl up into the saddle. She slumped over the pommel and against the horse’s neck. Jack rolled a brown eye in her direction and nickered softly. Slade patted his neck. “It’ll be all right. Up, Jack.”

  Jack stood and Slade pulled up into the saddle behind her. He knew he needed to contact the main house. He’d need help when he arrived there. This wasn’t a normal call, and there wouldn’t be EMTs showing anytime soon. Sundance was at least thirty minutes away in good weather. The girl in his arms didn’t have an hour. He leaned to pull his radio out of the saddle bag and the girl pitched sideways. Slade dropped the reins, trusting Jack to take them home. He held the nameless young woman tight to his chest with one arm, smelling jasmine and blood while he paged the ranch house with the other hand. “Slade to home. Anyone there?”

  His father’s voice crackled through the speaker. “Pine here. What’s the emergency, son?”

  “I found the source of the cattle’s fussing.” He looked at the girl, her face had an eerie blue tint, and her features were almost elf-like. She looked breakable, a bisque porcelain doll in his arms. “There was a woman floundering in the cow pond on the back eighty.”

  Disbelief rang in Pine’s voice. “Come again?”

  “I’m bringing in a young woman. She’s hypothermic, Dad. Please start my truck and get some warm blankets.”

  “Roger, Slade. We’ll be ready.”

  His family’s willingness to pitch in, to help out someone in need, was something to admire. He was always impressed with his parents’ capacity to care. I wish they just didn’t care so much about the ranch.

  If it wasn’t for the ranch and his brother Beau’s dreams of expansion, he wouldn’t have quit the force and come back to help his parents. He’d be out somewhere, maybe even in Gillette, in a cruiser, responding to an emergency call. He lifted his eyes to the sky. God, he loved the rush of stepping on the gas, heart racing with the thrill of the unknown. The excitement had been hard to quit.

  The girl moaned, and his mind snapped back to the very real emergency call he clutched to his chest. Frail, blonde with blue eyes and bruises he knew damned well didn’t come from the car wreck. She mumbled again and he shushed her, patting her shoulder. “It’s okay, girl. I’m here.”

  And maybe I’m here because of this—to help Mom and Dad, and to find her. Slade knew his parents didn’t check the perimeters like he did, and they wouldn’t have noticed the stir the cattle were making on the back eighty.

  The lights were on in the last house on Rancher’s Row. The small ranch house resembled the main house, just lacking the wing of guest rooms and office space. Jack whinnied when Slade’s godmother stepped onto the porch. The woman in his arms flailed wildly at the horse’s greeting and mumbled something unintelligible. Slade placed a hand on her cheek, holding her snug against him so she could not hurt herself or his horse when he spurred him forward toward the main ranch house.

  She quieted, hardly responsive, and Slade knew lessened consciousness was never a good thing in a medical situation. Training told him it might take some of the suffering from the victim, but he knew from experience it sure as hell made reviving them more difficult.

  Light bathed the snow in front of his parent’s ranch house. It had a quiet beauty all lit up on a snowy night, it was a shame he hadn’t paid the house much attention in a long while. He reined in Jack on the long side of the circle drive. His parents were waiting on the porch and his godparents drove in right behind him. His father hurried to help, stronger than his gray hair suggested he might be when he lifted the woman from Slade’s arms. His mother met him beside the truck, her arms loaded with blankets and clean clothes for him.

  His godmother scurried up, her dark eyes wide with interest. “So, you’re bringing home strays now? This is the first girl you’ve brought home in two years, Slade.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Wasn’t like I could leave her out there.” Please don’t ask if I plan on keeping her…

  Humming voices rode the surface of my murky haze. His voice anchored me to some sense of reality, but jostling roused me from my stupor. I woke to find bright lights glaring down from a rooftop, snowflakes falling on my face and commotion all around. A panicky sense of suffocation rose in me, and then there he was, silent and soothing, holding me and wrapping me in a warm blanket. “I’ve died or I’m dreaming, because chivalry is alive and well in Wyoming.”

  His face warmed, a smile crept over his lips, and then he broke into a full laugh while he tucked the blanket corners around my face. “For being frozen silly, you have quite a sense of humor.”

  My brain was too sluggish to produce a smart retort. Even my fears were quiet. I couldn’t formulate a reply, or ask what was going on. I focused only on the connection to my cowboy hero and hung limp in his arms. He settled me into the front seat of a battered blue and white Dodge pickup and pulled the safety belt around me. A woman with graying hair and soft blue eyes appeared beside him with a thermal Henley shirt, which she hastily pulled over his head, and handed him a new jacket. Then, she turned to me, leaning into the cab of the truck to tuck a quilt scented with lavender and sage over the blanket swaddling me. She stroked muddy strands of hair from my face. “There you go, sweetie. Now, don’t you worry, Slade will take good care of you.”

  Slade? What a name for a cowboy.

  She turned to my dark-haired savior then, shoving him toward the truck. “Hurry up, boy. Get her to the hospital in Sundance.”

  Hospital? No! What limited consciousness I had screamed in revolt. I didn’t have any money, any insurance, any way to pay for treatment. I shook my head. My eyes couldn’t remain open and the fog of sleep took me back into its depths.

  I slept through the drive to Sundance but awoke on a gurney beneath blazing hospital lights when my damp clothes were cut away. Hands attached to any number of ER attendants poked, prodded, jabbed in IVs and pasted sticky pads on my skin, connecting me to monitors. People shouted vital signs. A nurse with a kind face and strong hands dressed me in a scratchy hospital gown before they wrapped me in a heated air blanket someone called a “Bear Hugger”.

  The only source of true comfort in the storm of emergency room activity was Slade’s face peeking around the curtain’s edge. I kept him in my sight, the last familiar and soothing thing. He turned from watching me and the clock to looking through the crowd of ER attendants. A nurse in a pink scrub suit hurried past his point of observation and Slade caught her by the sleeve. “How is she, Leanne?”

  “What are you doing in here, Slade? Get your butt out to the waiting room and I’ll come out with an update when we have one.”

  “Bullshit. We’ve known each other since the second grade. The least you can do is tell me if she’s gonna be okay.”

  Leanne cast me a swift, appraising glance. Her face softened and then she scanned the clipboard in her hands. “Yeah. She’ll be fine.” She held the clipboard out toward him. “What’s her name?”

  “I have no idea. I found her dripping wet and freezing by one of the cow ponds on the back eighty. The girl could hardly talk, but my mom called her Fate.”

  Leanne snorted, cracking Slade on the shoulder with her clipboard. “And I’m an angel. Now get your rear out of the way!”

  No! Slade, don’t go…

  He did. With one last look at me and a tip of his Stetson, he was gone. The room closed in, suffocating me, swarming with faces, wires and tubes. I tried to retreat into the sleepy haze swirling in the back of my mind, but the doctors and nurses demanded my attention. Answer this, blow into that, “don’t worry, this won’t hurt a bit…”

  Yeah, right.

  By the time I had been wheeled into a private room, my arms were flesh-toned pin cushions. I could have been a character in a Tim Burton movie. I lay in the dark room
, trying to center myself. My life had become a whirlwind with all solid footing gone. Images of Matt and his fists swirled with views out of my car window and the picturesque ranch I had stumbled onto. The one constant in the storm of visions was the quiet strength, and gentle face of Slade. I latched onto his image and drifted off to a more peaceful, restorative sleep.

  Fresh snow covered the trenches her car had dug, but they were enough to catch Slade’s eye. He switched on his flashers and pulled off on the shoulder of Route 24, pumping the brakes to keep the Dodge from sliding too far. The spare flashlight in the glove box was ancient. He pulled it out and checked the battery. The beam of light cut through the snowfall. Yup, works fine.

  Slade followed the tracks off the pavement, walking a straight line through her car’s crazy loops, and then slid with one hand against the embankment wall for balance. The car was ass end down in the culvert, flames still sputtering in the crannies of the underbody. The front license plate was plain blue with white digits and in the middle of the line at the bottom it read “Michigan”.

  Skirting the flames, he scooped up everything he could find—a jacket, cell phone and some girly stuff. He aimed the beam of the flashlight in a search pattern up, down and across the culvert. Nothing caught his eye.

  Guess the fire got the rest.

  Slade was wrong. Scrambling back up the slope he kicked the snow off from an orange teddy bear laying not more than a foot from the muddy trench in the side of the culvert. He brought the bear to his nose. Jasmine.

  She had smelled like jasmine and bloody mud when he’d found her.

  A girl from Michigan hypothermic in his pond…

  Bruises not consistent with a car accident.

  Traveling with a stuffed animal…

  He piled her belongings onto the passenger seat along with the clothes and blankets Mother had insisted he bring home. Climbing behind the wheel, he tipped back his hat and scratched his head. The police officer side of him wondered what the hell a girl from Michigan was doing on the road to Hulett in the middle of a snowstorm. It just didn’t make sense. The stuffed animal part he understood. It must have sentimental attachment. But Hulett? Hulett had great hunting. From what he found at the accident site, she wasn’t here for hunting. They had a hell of a rodeo in the summer, too. It was far from summer.