Page 11 of Red Hunt

“Help.” My scream trailed off when my throat closed off and sobs threatened to burst out. Then the truck stopped. Silence. One last try.

“Help.” I could hear a car door open and close. Could I make myself known somehow? I tried to move, a sharp pain from the area of my ribs eliciting a moan.

“Hello, someone there?” an eerily bodiless voice shouted.

“Here.” My voice gave out again. Shit. This was my one chance. And now my voice bailed on me?

“Are you okay?”

A light flashed across me and settled on my feet, then me. I tried to turn around, but letting go of the tree wasn’t an option. I heard a slipping noise, the same that led me farther down the slope after my initial fall.

“Stay put, I’ll be with you in a second,” he said, and I panicked. I couldn’t hold on much longer. “Hurry, I can’t hold on much longer.”

It took him forever, seconds that felt like minutes, but then he was back.

“I’m here. Keep calm.” His words right next to me caused tears to well up behind my eyelids. I pressed my lips together. I needed to hold it together. Just for a little while. He hunkered down next to me and slipped something across my stomach. A rope? This stranger had a rope with him? What the hell?

“Ma’am, you’re secured. You can let go of the tree now. Are you hurt?”

Was I? I really didn’t know since I couldn’t feel much of my body. So, I basically had to trust him. Could I do that?

“If you’re not hurting, I can help you get up, and we’ll make the ascent together.” He grabbed my arm, and I froze for a second. Too much. Then I looked up at him, expecting the eyes of a monster. I couldn’t see much. But his eyes looked kind and his face rough…and oddly familiar. He pulled me to my feet as if I weighed nothing at all, but as soon as I got my footing and I balanced my weight to my left side…boy, that hurt like hell.

I might have screamed when I went down again.

“Ma’am, I’m PJ Max. I’d like to check out your legs.” He was named what? Who would give his kid three first names, and why did he use all three of those?

He took a knee, and before I even realized what he was about to do, he touched my leg.

Nooo. I couldn’t suppress the flood of agony and red-hot fear shooting through my body, and I flinched, which caused an even greater wave of pain to follow the fear shooting up my leg.

“Ma’am, I will not hurt you. I just have to assess the damage.”

That’s when it happened. It had been a long time since I went to the place deep inside my mind. A place where nobody except me could go. A place where nothing and nobody could touch me.

Even though they touched my body.

But I couldn’t respond.

I felt his hands on me. I could watch from a curious distance as if it wasn’t me he touched. Even the pain couldn’t penetrate and only simmered somewhere in the distance, ebbing and flowing.

I don’t know how long I stayed there. Wasn’t sure if it has been just a minute, or ten, or sixty. Time just floated by, like everything else until suddenly I zoomed back as if thrown out of a wormhole and back into the here and now.

“Ma’am, I don’t think I can move you. I’ll call Search and Rescue to help get you up, okay?”

I nodded. “Thank you.” My voice came out raspy, almost inaudible.

“I’ll be back in a sec. You just sit tight.”

I nodded again.

Numb.

8

MAX

The way up the mountain to my new home was a bitch to drive in the dark. Though, it would probably get better with practice. I had my window down so I could soak in the smells of the surrounding forest. A distincthoo hoosounded through the trees—probably an owl, or something like that, disturbed by my truck. It all immediately grounded me like nothing I’d ever experienced. I knew I would love the space. No people as far as the eye could see. But I didn’t expect the calm I experienced in nature.

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