An Arm and a Leg Read Free Page A

her back and scanned the area, hoping to spot one of the hundreds of landmarks she’d memorized from the annual two-week forest survival training her uncle Mike had put her and Tim through during their growing-up years. Just one landmark to tell her where she was standing, that’s all she needed.
    She should have paid attention to where she was going—shouldn’t have allowed panic to blind her to everything but the thought of putting distance between her and Tim’s murderers.
    Her eyes strained, pulling at their muscle-moorings, as if by sheer effort they could pierce through the dense foliage and thick underbrush. Gorge rose in her throat.
    She turned around again and again as renewed panic clawed its way through her chest. Lost. Like a death knell, the words rang through her mind: lost and alone.
    A gentle rain started up again as she considered her options. The good news was that the rain would keep most mountain predators and creepy-crawlies snuggled in their warm homes for a while. Although poisonous snakes would not yet have gone into hibernation, they tended to shy away from human contact unless cornered. And she had no intention of being either the cornerer or the corneree.
    A shiver ran across her shoulders as she remembered Uncle Mike’s stories of ill-prepared hikers who got lost in these mountains. Some of them, usually the ones who ignored the hikers’ cardinal rule by not telling at least one other person where they were heading, had never been seen again. And then there were the stories of bodies so gnawed by animals they were only identifiable through their DNA. But the most horrific story of all was about the hiker who became pinned under a boulder and had to sever his own arm with a penknife to escape.
    Frankie adjusted the hood of her nylon jacket. She was grateful for its protection from the rain, but underneath it, the perspiration-absorbing fibers of her cotton shirt pressed against her body, cooling it and making her a perfect candidate for hypothermia.
    And hypothermia impaired judgment. It made thinking difficult and increased the probability of an accident. She could fall victim to it and not even realize what was happening.
    Calm yourself, Frances. Fear sucks up your energy, and you’ll need every scrap of it before this is over. Remember what I taught you and you’ll find a way. The standing-right-next-to-her sound of her dead uncle Mike’s voice pulled her back from the edge of hysteria. She clung to its echoes, assuming it was only a memory stirred up by terror.
    Snippets of her uncle’s survival speeches floated through her mind as she worked her memory for the skills he had taught her and Tim. Her first job was to get out of the drizzling rain. She scanned her surroundings and spotted two fairly large boulders propped against each other, forming a kind of lean-to.
    Watchful of any other creatures that might have had the same idea, she approached the rock shelter. She picked up a long stick, poked it as far into the recess as she could and shook it around, banging it against the stone walls. When nothing moved or scurried out of the enclosure, she dropped to all fours and crawled in.
    Hunkering down with her back toward the opening, she curled into a ball. She pressed her knees against a semi-soft mass of what she assumed to be a pile of needle-covered branches and tried to get comfortable. She had to cock her head at an angle and push it up against one of the boulders, but at least the ground beneath her was dry.
    Frankie focused on her breathing. After a few minutes, she was surprised to find herself warming up. Her body stopped shivering, and she fell into an uneasy sleep.
    Dark dreams periodically jerked her awake, and she jumped, banging her head, elbows, and knees against the boulders. She dozed off and on, while the temperature outside the stone teepee dropped.
    Sometime during the night the rain stopped. Its cessation pricked Frankie’s subconscious, and she jerked awake.
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