Unbound: (InterMix) Read Free

backpack and gathered a water bottle
     and compass. Before striking out from Glasgow she’d bought a GPS tracker, a clip-on
     device that she now moved from her bag to her pants pocket. It wouldn’t do much aside
     from lend her a vague sense that she was still tethered to some human being, someplace.
     And if she perished out here, well, they might just find her before the crows did.
    With that cheerful thought, she started back up the hill.
    Yesterday the cottage had seemed no more than forty-five minutes’ hike. She should
     have come upon it by now, surely. Or was panic making a snail’s pace feel like a sprint?
    But finally, after seeming hours—stone walls, red door. A tiny house no bigger than
     her apartment appearing beyond the rise.
    “Thank you thank you thank you . . .”
    A spasm of nausea curled her body. She groaned until it passed, sucking desperate
     breaths through clenched teeth. Her arm ached as she dug the whistle from her pocket
     and brought it to her parched lips. She blew. Barely a wheeze at first, but she puffed
     into it with every step, the cottage growing closer, closer. She’d make it. She might
     have to crawl, but she’d make it.
    The blowing triggered a head rush, and a hundred paces from the little home, she fell
     to her knees again. Her temple wailed as she got back up, but something else screamed—anger.
     Panic. Frustration, that no one had heard her and opened the door. Had she imagined
     that smoke?
    No, someone maintained this place. The thatch on the roof was too tame, a broom leaning
     against the doorframe not weathered enough to have been abandoned here. It must be
     a holiday cottage. Please don’t let its renters have picked yesterday to head home . . .
    “Hello?” she shouted, staggering the final few yards. Her fist thumped the heavy wooden
     door with a rattle, compounding the ache in her arm. She pounded and shouted, the
     impact as weak as her voice. “Hello! Please! I’m hurt.”
    An aluminum sign was hung to her left, the kind you might buy at a hardware store.
No Soliciting.
Too exhausted to make sense of it, she put her lips to the whistle and mustered a
     mighty breath just as the door swung in.
    The man clapped his hands to his ears, wincing. Merry was so startled she let the
     fob fall from her lips. Blue eyes widened, aimed at her bleeding head.
    “Hello,” she said dumbly, feeling drunk, stabbed in the guts at random intervals by
     the cramps, stabbed in the temple by her throbbing cut. “I may be dying. I’m not sure.”
    The door opened wider. A dark-haired man was steering her inside, around a corner.
     Something hard slammed into her butt and legs—a chair seeming to rise up from the
     floor to collide with her body. She gripped the seat at her sides with both hands,
     convinced it was floating, that she’d flip over and tumble off if she didn’t hold
     tight. She wanted to lie down. On the nice, solid floor, where maybe the world would
     stop rocking this way. She tried to slide her butt from the seat, but the stranger
     stopped her, pinning her shoulders.
    “No, no. Stay put.”
    “I need to lie down.”
    “You can’t. You’ve had a nasty knock on the head.” He crouched before her, hand still
     clamped firmly to her shoulder. Gently drawing back the skin above and below her lids,
     he peered at her eyes. “You’ve not got double vision, have you?”
    “No, just a terrible headache. And everything’s spinning. And I’m nauseous.”
    He continued to scan her eyes with his blue ones.
Gray-blue like the lochs, and the autumn sky just before dusk,
Merry mused, still feeling drunk. Cold like slate, hard and sharp. His overgrown
     hair untamed, like the wild heather.
Whoa, deep.
    The man covered her eyes with his warm hands, then took them away. “Your pupils are
     good.” The scent of tea sweetened his breath. God knew what hers smelled of.
    He’s hot,
she thought idly, a thought so inappropriate given the circumstances, she