When Lightning Strikes

"Damn!" Killian cursed and yanked back on his reins. The black slid to a bouncing, clattering stop on the edge of a sheared rock slope. Thousands of tiny pebbles rattled and rained down the crevasse beside them. The two riderless horses behind him slowed, then halted.

Lainie yanked back on her reins to keep from ramming into Captain's huge, spotted butt. Her horse stopped dead, sending Lainie crashing into the saddle horn. The leather horn drove into the tender flesh of her stomach. She gasped hard, tried to find a breath.

"We'll have to go back. Shit."

Dully Lainie lifted her head and followed his gaze. Ahead of them was a narrow, high-walled canyon that seemed to have magically appeared between two immense, twisted rock spires. She'd been staring straight ahead and hadn't seen the opening. The space between the two stalagmitelike towers was invisible until you were directly in front of it.

She could see that ordinarily it would be a hell of a getaway door. But not today; now there was a huge, triangular rock wedged into the opening.

"I take it that rock is a new addition to the entrance," Lainie said tiredly, retreiving the canteen from her saddle and opening it. She took a drink, letting the sun-warmed, metallic-tasting water soothe her aching, dust-clogged throat.

He grabbed his own canteen and took a long drink. "Yeah," he growled, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. "It's new."

"So, what now?" She glanced around. They were on a slick sandstone ledge. The trail was one horse wide, a skinny path of level dirt gouged along the side of a textured

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stone mountain. A gaping maw of red earth slid down to their right, slumping into a valley of shale and fallen rock. Far below, a thread of brown water pushed through a band of dying green.

He didn't even bother to look at her. He twisted in his saddle and gazed back at the thin, inhospitable path through which they'd just come. "We'll have to backtrack and make a run for it."

"Backtrack? A run for it?" That didn't sound good. In fact, it sounded really, really bad. "We haven't exactly been walking." She peeked down at the crevasse and shuddered. "And it's no place to run."

He pulled back on his reins. The black dipped his head and hunkered down, picking his way backward.

Lainie watched in horror as the riderless horses followed suit. She saw their big, muscled backsides moving toward her. She gripped her reins and shook her head. "I don't think so. Uh-uh. I am not backing out of this canyon."

Her horse dropped his head.

"No," she whispered. "Please, no ..."

The four horses backed up; their slow, clomping steps rang through the air. Lainie clung to the saddle horn, her eyes squeezed shut. The rapid-fire thumping of her heart drowned out the horses' plodding steps.

"Lainie!"

Killian's shout roused her. She opened her eyes and stared at him, breathing hard.

"You have to turn."

Lainie looked down to her right. The world dropped away from her, slid in a red-rock wash one thousand feet below. "Oh, my God ..."

"Don't panic?"

She gasped. "Don't panic? I'm on the edge of the frigging world and you're telling me not to panic?"

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"Calm down. Here's what you do. Very gently, press your right foot against the roan's side, then gently pull back on the reins."

Lainie let out a trembling breath. She wanted to do as he asked, even tried to, but she couldn't move. She couldn't breathe. "I ... can't."

"Yes, you can. Try."

She bit down on her lower lip and looked at him. She felt foolish and stupid, but she couldn't move, couldn't do as he asked. Some heroine, she thought with disgust.

He looked at her, and the gentle understanding in his eyes surprised her. There was no censure in his gaze, no disgust or impatience; there was only concern and something else, something that made her heartbeat speed up and her throat go dry. He knew what it meant to be afraid, really truly afraid. And he knew how hard it was to conquer that fear, how impossible it was sometimes to find the strength to go on.

"You can do it," he said softly.