Page 48

“Jesper!” I shout, water trickling off of me and pooling on to the floor. Nate’s uncle strides into the room, frown already tugging his lips downward. “That fucking horse is at the barn, but Nate’s not. And she’s hurt.”

“Show me,” he says immediately, and tugs on boots before following me out the door without bothering to grab a coat.

Annabelle is right where I left her when we get to the barn—head low and muscles quivering.

The other horses have perked up even more, and several thumps echo through the space as they kick at the stalls.

One of them is spinning in circles, desperate to be let out.

Agitation settles in the space like a fog.

Jesper switches out Annabelle’s bridle for a halter so quickly I miss it.

After securing her to a ring on one of the walls, he bends over and runs a hand gently down her back leg.

Blood is visible on her white coat, a long scrape trailing down her thigh.

I watch silently, hands curled into fists and nails digging into my palms. I feel as though I’m going to be sick, fear sitting oily and slick in my stomach.

“Marcos,” he says, straightening and looking at me. “Get her untacked for me, okay, son? I need to call over to the barracks, let the stable hands know what’s going on. All right?”

I nod, grateful to be given a job to do, hands shaking as I reach for the cinch strap.

Jesper is behind me, murmuring into the corded phone that’s attached to the wall of the barn.

I only catch one of every few words—"riderless” and “road” and “lamed”—ears ringing as I go through the motions Nate taught me so long ago.

“The boys haven’t seen him,” Jesper says after finishing the call, voice gruff and expression serious.

“What do we do?” I ask, just as another peal of thunder rumbles through the barn.

The horses are starting to get really worked up now, and Tuna’s shrill little voice carries over to us as he whinnies.

It doesn’t help my panic—hearing him yell like that.

I want to clap my hands over my ears, and block out the sound.

Jesper takes the saddle from me and brings it over to the tack room, not answering my question until he returns with a medical kit.

“Nothing,” he answers gruffly. “Nothing we can do at night, or in this storm.”

Finally losing the battle with my stomach, I walk out the open barn doors and vomit into the mud.

The roar of an engine distracts me from where I’m feeding Tuna.

He still needs to eat , Nate’s uncle told me gently, steering me toward the back of the barn with a hand on my shoulder.

I’m grateful for the distraction—standing and watching Jesper patch the scrape on Annabelle’s leg wasn’t helping me calm down in the slightest.

The door opens briefly as someone enters the barn. Slipping out of Tuna’s stall, I discard the bottle and approach where Jesper is still tending Annabelle. Axel nods a greeting at me before turning to Nate’s uncle. He puts a hand on Annabelle’s neck, stroking gently .

“I called everyone within fifty miles,” he says. “Dean Paulson said he’ll send as many riders out as he can in the morning. They’ll head up the trail first thing, assuming he didn’t change his plan after that text.”

“Good.” Standing, Jesper brushes his palms off down his jeans. “I’ll call my sister and let her know what’s going on. You’re ready to head out?”

“As soon as the sun rises,” Axel agrees, and glances at Annabelle’s lame back leg. “I told Dean he’ll need to send a rider up to the ridge, too, in case Nate took shelter up there and wasn’t able to walk down.”

“What?” I ask, bringing both men’s gazes to me. “Why wouldn’t he be able to walk?”

“Looks like she took a pretty bad fall,” Axel tells me carefully, dark eyes intent on mine as he gestures to the horse. “If he wasn’t able to get free of the stirrup, she might have fallen on him.”

My empty stomach heaves again, as I picture what sort of damage could occur from being crushed by a thousand-pound animal.

“Estoy seguro de que está bien,” Axel says softly.

I shake my head. A broken leg could be the very least of Nate’s problems. What if he hit his head?

Broke his back or his neck? What if he’s lying up there, unable to move, scared and alone?

I don’t want to think about the other possibility, but have no control over the thought when it comes. He could be dead.

“We need to go look for him,” I tell them, voice cracking. Jesper shakes his head, just like he did the last dozen times I’ve said this.

“We can’t, I’m sorry. Anyone I send out in this runs the risk of getting lost or hurt as well. We have to wait. ”

It makes sense. Distantly, I understand that this course of action makes sense.

But the fear and the uncertainty feel like razor blades in my stomach.

Waiting until morning feels like waiting to get medical attention for a gunshot wound, hoping that it’ll just stop bleeding on its own.

Nate could be alive right now, but dead in an hour.

“We have to try,” I plead softly, already knowing it’s futile.

“I’ve got to get back,” Axel says, eyes tight with worry. “We will be ready to go in the morning.”

He leaves the barn, briefly letting the storm inside as he goes. The slam of the door behind him echoes, and barely a minute later we can hear the engine of his truck. Jesper leads a limping Annabelle over to an empty stall, before turning and silently regarding me.

“Let’s get back up to the main house. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”

The rain stops around ten that evening. Sitting at the island in Jesper’s kitchen and attempting to work my way through a bowl of soup without puking, a thought occurs to me. Dropping my spoon, I pull up the weather app and look at the temperature low for tonight. Immediately, I wish that I hadn’t.

Propping my elbows on the counter, I press my palms into my eyes until it hurts. Nate is likely soaking wet from the storm, and the temperature could easily drop low enough for hypothermia to become a concern. A big one.

Sitting here, staring sightlessly out the dark kitchen window, my thoughts twist between Max and Nate.

I hope this isn’t the way my life will be—always having to watch as the people I love get hurt.

I think about the way it felt sitting in that hospital lobby, alone and frightened, knowing something terrible had happened to Max and hating myself because of it.

And now Nate, also alone and likely hurt; probably waiting for someone to come looking for him.

Waiting for help that isn’t coming, and won’t come until morning. Waiting for me.

By the time the sky starts lightening with the first weak glimpses of sun, my brain feels as though it’s been wrapped in cotton wool, foggy with exhaustion and dread.

When Jesper rejoins me in the kitchen, I’ve long since come to the realization that I will be completely useless in the search for Nate.

I can’t fucking ride well enough to be any help whatsoever.

In fact, I’d probably just slow everyone down.

Just like when Max was hurt, I’m incompetent and good for nothing but worrying.

“Let’s go, son,” Jesper says, pressing a hand to my shoulder as he passes. I push to standing as my legs automatically comply with the order, and trail after him as we leave the house, ground soggy beneath our boots.

“I’m not a good rider,” I remind him. “I’ll just slow everyone down.”

“We’re taking the truck,” he responds, clicking the key fob and sending light arcing across the dark yard.

“Axel and the rest of the guys have already left on horseback. We’ll drive the roads.

Slim chance he’ll have made it down on foot, and an even slimmer one that nobody will have spotted him if he did, but we can’t make any assumptions. ”

Without argument, I climb into the passenger seat and keep my gaze trained on the window.

My eyes already burn from a sleepless night, but I hardly blink as we drive slowly along the empty roads.

Every now and then, Jesper’s phone pings with a text message and he glances at it before continuing on.

I don’t ask. If the messages were good news, he’d tell me.

Several times, I think I see movement in one of the fields lining the road, but each time it’s nothing more than tall grass or a tree that’s vaguely man-shaped. We startle several deer, but see nothing else living.

Two hours of driving five miles an hour down abandoned roads and Jesper’s phone rings.

Fear so heavy in my throat I can hardly breathe around it, I watch as he brings it to his ear.

He listens for barely thirty seconds before dropping the phone back into the cupholder and swinging the truck around in a violent U-turn.

“They found him.”