Doranna Durgin - Survival Instinct

A pure luxury of space. Ha.

Still, she thought she’d just stay as she was for a moment longer. A moment to get her breath and to listen in on the man who’d put her here.

“Mr. Longsford-”

The man’s voice rang out clearly, all deference and apology. Karin could picture him on his cell phone, leaning over the guardrail. There came a few ingratiating phrases of apology, and then he spelled out the situation.

Actually, he fibbed. “She ran right at the guard rail,” he said. “She musta lost her bearings.”

Well, she couldn’t blame him at that. Why take the heat? Parts of her, formerly numb from shock, started to hurt. All of her, actually, except the middle of her back, which just itched. She did a quiet inventory of fingers and toes, only then considering the ramifications of serious injury.

Everything wiggled. She sighed with relief and found a few new aches in her ribs. Cold from the ground seeped through her jeans.

“I can’t see where she is. But it’s pretty steep.” A pause, and then his voice grew louder. “Hey! Can you hear me?”

She shouted some anatomically improbable suggestions.

“Yeah, she’s down there.” His voice faded slightly as he stepped away from the guardrail. “She’s pretty far down. Nah, there’s no other traffic-hasn’t been anyone by since I got here. No problem, it’s a pull-off…people park here all the time.” As if he knew. The creep. Just trying to cover his own ass, now. “She might last a day, I guess. It’s awfully cold here.”

You can say that again. Karin eased her knees up and left her feet flat on the rock, getting her legs off the cold ground.

The man’s next few comments were just a murmur, and then he stuck his head back over the guardrail to say clearly, “You should have just come with us in the first place, you stupid bitch. Maybe in a day or two they’ll find your body.”

“You’re leaving me here?” she said, more startled than she expected. She sat up, one hand gripping the roots closest to her-and in the process discovered shooting pains in her wrist. She vaguely remembered landing on the heel of that hand sometime during her fall.

“Like I said, you should have come with us in the first place.” He didn’t sound the least bit sorry. Great. He’d not only thrown her down a gorge, he was being mean about it.

Left on the ledge? Alone? With no one the wiser? Karin shuddered. Time to get to work. “Don’t go!” she said, and fought back on edge of panic. “You need me.”

He snorted.

“You think I’m kidding? You’ve been exposed to a deadly disease.” Her mind slid right into scam mode, forgetting for the moment her precarious physical situation.

“I don’t think so.” But he was a little closer now; she’d hooked him.

Karin smiled into the darkness. “It’s new. The CDC has been keeping a lid on it. Mad Sheep disease. Why do you think my one goat has a bell collar on? She’s over it, but she’s still contagious-that part of the property is in quarantine. I’ve been vaccinated, of course.”

“I’m leaving.” The disinterest in his voice wasn’t feigned. She was losing him.

“What about the rash?” she said, talking fast and trying not to sound desperate. “It’s a little early for it to be a true rash, but I bet it itches.” Maybe not. He’d have to be terribly sensitive to the poison ivy oils to show symptoms this soon. Be sensitive, she thought at him. Be really, really sensitive.

And after a pause, he said, “Keep talking.”

“It’s only going to get worse. And it spreads along the nerve pathways-it can reach your brain in a matter of days.” Okay, so that was conflating shingles and poison ivy…but it sounded good. “Very few doctors know anything about it. I can tell you where to go for treatment.” She hardened her voice. “Of course, you’ll have to haul me out of here first.”

And then what? He wasn’t likely to simply let her go.

It doesn’t matter. It would be better than clinging to the side of a gorge cliff in the middle of nowhere, with no one the wiser and no one looking for her. She’d handle the and then what when she got there.

Except he gave a snort of a laugh. “It’s not much of a rash,” he said. “I’ll go get myself some magic ointment at the drugstore. Meanwhile, you have a nice life. Or should I say, have a nice death.”

“Bastard,” she muttered, but not so he could hear it. Not now. Now that he’d decided to leave her here, there were plenty of ways he could make this situation worse. She wanted none of it.

And he wasn’t bluffing. His car engine started…and the vehicle drove away.

Karin took a deep breath, ignoring the twinges in her ribs. “Cree-ap!” she bellowed into the open darkness.

“Ap-ap-ap,” the darkness echoed back.

All right. Think. So far, she was for the most part whole, especially considering how many things could have broken on the way down here. Her wrist would be a problem, but it wasn’t a jagged-bone kind of problem.

Maybe things weren’t as bad as they seemed. Maybe she was already nearly at the bottom of this particular gorge. If she could slide her way to the bottom come daylight…

Or maybe in daylight, she’d find a way to climb out, bum wrist and all.

One thing she couldn’t afford to do was wait. Sure, people were going to notice her car, but this wasn’t a back-and-forth kind of road. This was an out-of-the-way, going-from-hereto-there road, the kind of road no one traveled twice in the same day or two. And she bet it would take a couple times of spotting her car before something bothered to think something wasn’t quite right.

So…maybe things weren’t as bad as they seemed. Karin scrabbled around for a decent rock, something she could toss without effort but still big enough to hear on the way down. “Have a short journey,” she told it, and kissed it for luck. Then she tossed it out over the edge of her little cranny and listened to it bounce and hop.

And listened.

And listened.

And slumped back against the cliff, not bothering to listen for the end of it. Softly, she said, “Oh, crap.”

He wasn’t certain what woke him, not until the dog barked again. Even then, he almost let himself drift back into sleep. But the dog barked again, and Dave pried his eyes open.

That he had to work so hard to manage it was enough to get him sitting up. The way he staggered when he got up…that triggered all his warning systems.

What the hell had she put in his whiskey?

And why?

Dave acted without thinking, stumbling down the stairs in his boxers to check Ellen’s empty bedroom, and then straight to the bathroom where he cranked the shower on full and cold.

The icy blast hit him hard; he managed to stay beneath it but only by snarling his best string of curses. Once he’d been through the litany twice, he figured enough was enough, and stepped out sputtering, reaching blindly for the nearest towel.

It smelled of shampoo and of Ellen.

Okay, that woke him up.

Peeling off the wet boxers was no fun at all.

From there he ran up the stairs-ran, because whatever she’d given him still hung in his system and he couldn’t afford to slow down-and pulled on clean underwear and a pair of jeans and an old Rochester Red Wings sweatshirt. He gulped down two of the caffeine pills he kept with his razor and ran back down the stairs and around to the back door, checking his watch on the way. Hours. He’d been asleep for hours.

He didn’t have to know what she’d given him, or why. He only knew he had to find her. She was more than his best hope to help Rashawn. Now she was in trouble, and it was his fault.

He shoved his way out into the cold night and discovered that leaving his coat in the car hadn’t been his best idea ever. The cold hit his wet hair and damp skin hard enough so his goose bumps might never fade. He fumbled for the car keys in the side pocket of the overnighter, hit the unlock key, and was never so grateful for the automatic interior lights. First things first: he threw his bag into the passenger seat and pulled on his dark Gore-Tex parka, listening to his teeth chatter.