Total pages in book: 144
Estimated words: 139029 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 695(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 463(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139029 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 695(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 463(@300wpm)
She raised the shirt to her eyes, trying to remove the dried glob. A speck of light began to appear. Working up enough spit so she could wet another spot, she was eventually able to work both her eyes open. The pain almost made her stop to take a rest, but she couldn’t bear the sound of one of the children in her care crying out in need.
Slowly opening her eyes, Jessie looked around, blinking at the blurry rocks and trees surrounding her. Disoriented, she couldn’t understand where she was.
Her survival instincts forced her erratic breathing to slow and allowed her to get her bearings.
Several heart-pounding moments passed before she could grasp that she was alone on a rocky mountainside and the cries had come from her. She was so high up that she could look down and see the tops of trees below her. The only thing that had stopped her fall had been a large rock that her tennis shoe was caught on. The pounding in her head warned her not to look up to see if she could scoot upward.
“Be calm … Just be calm,” she encouraged herself. The first thing she needed to do was get her foot free.
As she reached for her foot, it dawned on her that she wasn’t wearing pants. Jerking her hand back, she brought it to her hip, discovering she was only wearing panties.
Sobbing, she laid her aching head on her knee. Taking deep breaths of air, she tried to remember falling. She knew for damn sure she hadn’t gone out hiking in only a thin T-shirt, panties, and tennis shoes.
As her mind drew a blank, she took several more deep breaths to calm herself.
Self-preservation was something her brother had told her about when she was just a little girl and he had sneaked her out to go hunting with him. She had strayed off the path he warned her to stay on and had gotten snarled in one of the traps that her pa had set to keep the Porters off their property.
“Help me, Holt!”
Holt leaned down, laying his shotgun on his knees as he watched her struggle out of the barb wire.
“Stay still!” His harsh command had her immediately moving. “Get yourself out.”
Dumbstruck that her big brother wasn’t helping, she started crying and yelling for Asher.
“Jessie, listen to me.”
Hearing the grim tone, she stilled.
“You want to know what makes some people survive in accidents and others die in the same accident?”
“How?”
“They used their heads and didn’t panic. Think about how you’re going to get out of the barb wire and do it. Asher and I won’t always be around when you’re in trouble; you have to know how to handle it when you are.”
It had taken over an hour to get out of the trap, and the experience and others that both Asher and Holt had made her go through were going to make it possible to get out of this mess!
The thought of her brothers being heartbroken if she died out here alone spurred her on. Gritting her teeth, she used her foot to push the rock off her shoe. It took several tries before it budged, sending the rock and smaller ones tumbling down the steep mountain. Managing to hold on to a smaller tree, she kept herself from falling over after it.
Gasping, she wiggled her foot, relieved that only the shoe had been caught.
“What should we do, Jessie? Should we go up or down?” Placing a hand on her forehead, she turned slightly to be able to look up. Bile rose in her throat at how far she had fallen. Had she been in a car wreck and thrown from the car? That didn’t explain why she was in her panties, nor did she see the wreckage of a car below her.
“Down it is.” The sound of her voice somehow gave her assurance that she wasn’t alone.
Shimmying down, she carefully began working her way down the mountainside as rocks and twigs scraped the back of her legs and bottom, but she didn’t stop.
The journey down was excruciatingly slow. She thought to yell out for help in case someone was looking for her. However, a sixth sense she had never experienced before warned her to be silent and to get where she couldn’t be seen.
Halfway down, she stopped to rest, tugging at the bottom of her T-shirt to wipe the sweat off her forehead that had been irritating her. Trying to focus her blurry vision, she registered it was covered in dried blood. Stifling the surprised scream at the discovery made her even more wary not to be seen.
She gingerly managed to get her shirt over her head, turning it inside out to wipe her sticky forehead. Seeing the wet stain of red nearly had her keeling over.