Page 9 of The Brave and the Reckless (Bravetown #1)

MOUNTAIN PASS RAILROAD

The road to Bravetown has never been easy.

Many adventurers have tried and failed to cross the dangerous mountain pass.

Nowadays a railroad leads straight into town, but don’t be fooled.

Passage won’t be smooth. The mountain terrain is steep, and dangers still lurk around every sharp turn.

Be prepared to encounter wild animals, sudden rockslides and menacing bandits.

E SRA

My right hip shot a sharp dagger up my side with every step from the park to the staff housing grounds. I’d made sure to wait until Renee and Mr. Grumpy Cowboy had rounded a corner before I’d hobbled back.

Okay, so maybe I had underestimated just how badly this could go for me.

As it turned out, falling off the horse wasn’t the only thing to be concerned about. Being thrown on to it? Also not something my joints enjoyed.

Where other people had naturally resistant tissue around their joints to secure them and keep them in their sockets at safe angles, my tissues were weak, and my body just stretched every which way.

Joints weren’t meant for that lack of support.

Back home, I had a whole variety of braces for my wrists, ankles and knees, which were always the first to cause issues, but how the hell was I supposed to stabilize my hips?

Even though everything desperately needed a wash, I squeezed myself into my tightest yoga shorts, followed by a pair of leggings and my snuggest pair of jeans. I’d survive walking around with a coffee stain on my right thigh.

The compression actually helped the pain, and a glance in the mirror confirmed that the layering did wonders for my ass. Win-win. I’d just sweat like a pig.

Definitely not a problem big enough to derail my perfect summer of freedom.

If I’d even mentioned so much as a new, unfamiliar twinge in my hips to my parents, they would have already booked me in with my doctor and found a way for me to never go near a horse again.

As if I wasn’t able to deal with a little bit of pain after all these years.

Plus, even with the jeans plastered on like a second skin, I still managed to slide my priority park pass in one of the heart-shaped back pockets. That was basically fate, right?

Wrapped up tight, I waddled my way back to the park.

My first stop was a popcorn cart disguised as a Conestoga wagon, where white cloth covered modern machinery.

The delicious smell of sugar and butter had beckoned me closer even from outside the turnstiles.

The man inside the wagon greeted me by name.

He’d probably been at the saloon for the big on-stage welcome.

I only smiled and nodded, and thanked him when he handed me a sparkling pink plastic bucket shaped like a cowboy hat, with a matching pink lanyard to carry it around my neck.

It was the most perfect popcorn bucket ever.

The other option, besides paper boxes, would have been a boot-shaped-bucket. This was much better.

Smiling to myself, I wandered along Main Street, shoveling down handfuls of the best popcorn I’d ever tasted. Possibly made better because it was (a) free, (b) from a glittering hat and (c) the first thing I’d eaten all day.

Despite the summer-season opening still being two weeks away, crowds began filling the shops and the attractions.

Kids ran around in Western costumes, horse balloons tied to their wrists, swinging horseshoe-shaped pretzels through the air.

I’d need one of those later. Meanwhile their parents snapped pictures and pointed between buildings and the park map in their hands.

I had a map saved on my phone, alongside a PDF with information on every attraction and character in the park, thanks to Vivi from the main office.

Between the slow crowds and my own standing-and-reading outside buildings, my hips got a fair amount of rest. By the time I made it to the far end of the park, where the deep ochre mesa formation jutted into the sky behind the railroad station, I even felt good enough to be thrown around on a tiny high-speed train.

The staff members here were dressed like old-timey train conductors, in dark blue uniforms with gold buttons.

After checking my pass, they waved me past the main line and into the train station through a separate line.

Just like the inside of the saloon, everything in here was perfectly on-theme.

Old suitcases were piled into a corner, train schedules hung on the wall and a Wanted poster at the end of the queue warned people of Ace Ryder and his gang of bandits.

I was almost at the roller coaster when annoyed exclamations behind me made me turn.

“I’m so sorry. I’m just here to make sure my little sister doesn’t have to ride alone.

” Sanny apologized to the family behind me as he climbed over the banister.

His arm curved around my shoulders to prove to a red-faced mother that we really did belong together.

Still smiling, he turned to me, brows raised. “Something you want to tell me?”

Wow. Word spread fast. Hadn’t expected Noah to be that much of a gossip.

Instead of confessing to my new job, I blinked up at Sinan, all innocence and fluttering lashes.

“Did you know that the mountain pass is completely artificial? The park was built on flat land. They just built a mountain for the roller coaster.”

“I got the same info folder you did, Ez.” Sinan rolled his eyes at me. “I’m talking about Annie Lou.”

“Oh, yeah.” I shrugged as if I hadn’t even considered that answer– let him feel ridiculous for the lecture he’d undoubtedly prepared. “Renee decided I’d be a great fit for the role. I’m surprised this place doesn’t do understudies.”

“I love you, but you can’t even ride. How do you expect to pull off the stunt? You’ll end up getting hurt.”

“I’ll learn.”

“Esra— thanks, Paul.” Sanny maneuvered us past a conductor, through the turnstile and into one of the carriages. “Here, sit on this side. You’ll get the better view.”

I took my seat and stowed my empty popcorn bucket away between my feet. “Look, I’m grateful you got me a job here, but you have to actually let me do the rest from here on out. I can look after myself.”

“Can you?”

“Yes.” I rolled my eyes at him. Sanny was five years older than me, which meant Mom and Dad had always roped him into their overbearing ideas of keeping me safe.

He’d eased up a lot when he’d gone off to college here in Tennessee, but a certain protectiveness had been ingrained in him so young, I wasn’t sure he’d ever let it go.

Still, I’d try to get him there. I wasn’t going to spend my whole summer appeasing his worries.

“I’ll come to you if I need help. Promise. Just let me do the thing.”

“Mom and Dad are going to kill me.” He took his hearing aids off and pocketed them deep in his jeans before folding the safety bar down across our laps.

A whistle blared through the air, Paul waved a paddle above his head, steam blew from the front of the train, and then we tore off.

The roller coaster seized around the corner and rattled up the mountain.

I got a panorama of Bravetown and blue skies for all of two seconds before we plunged into the belly of the mesa formation.

An explosion sent a ravine of rocks our way and the train zipped around another turn right before they hit us.

We went back up, past bears and coyotes, and tore down at breakneck speed.

The wind whipped tears from my eyes as I screamed and laughed at the same time.

My brain rattled around my skull, my lungs pumping hard to make up for the screaming.

The train eventually slowed down, and the station came back in sight. Right before we rolled in, the barrels next to the tracks sprang open. A group of life-sized dolls, dressed like outlaws, jumped forward, screaming– and I screamed back. Somewhere a flash went off.

It took me a moment to compute that I’d just been photographed during a jump scare. The same moment it took for the train to stop in the station and the bars to spring open.

“That. Was. Brilliant,” I gasped as we exited the building.

“I love the mountain pass,” Sanny laughed as he repositioned his hearing aids. “Definitely in my top three rides here.”

“Can we ride again? Wait, no, what are the other two?”

“Journey Downstream and Bootlegger’s Barrels.”

I waved my priority pass through the air. “How much time do you have?”

He checked his watch. “I have like an hour before I have to get in costume.”

“Good thing we can skip the queues.”

“Good thing, huh?”

I nodded. “And then I need to get one of those horseshoe pretzels.”

Sinan jogged up to the photo kiosk and got our picture, complete with a little paper frame with cacti and tumbleweeds on it.

While I was screaming my ass off, hair all windswept, he was cheesing directly into the camera.

He also brought back a plastic yellow star pin, which read brAVE where it usually would have said SHERIFF .

I fixed that to the lanyard of my popcorn bucket.

Journey Downstream turned out to be a little boat ride.

For a few minutes we disappeared from the park and drifted through nature’s wilderness.

Much to the delight of the three kids on the boat behind us, Sanny knew all the animal animatronics by heart and rattled off wildlife facts like their personal tour guide.

If the giddy little giggles hadn’t been infectious already, Sanny’s terrible bear puns would have done me in.

I bear-ly made it off the boat dry because I laughed so hard I almost slipped off the dock.