Free Survival Instinct by Doranna Durgin

against the windshield, scraped against a verticle of dirt and vine and stone, tumbled in the rolling car, cold air on her face, cold rain on her face—
    Impact.
    At first she couldn’t breathe. Diaphragm frozen, lungs empty of air and burning, straining— I’ll never breathe again and I’ll die right here and now —and then the air rushed back into her lungs with a great whoop. The outrage began to sink in. How the hell had he found her? How fair was this, to find herself thrown over another embankment?
    From above—far above—came a nasty string of words.
    “How do you think I feel?” she muttered. But she got the idea. He hadn’t meant to throw her over the edge of anything. He probably still needed to return her to Barret. “Cree-ap.”
    A moment of silence passed, during which the errand geek was presumably contemplating his options. Karin took the moment to assess her situation, carefully not moving, not until she had a feel for the width of this uneven little outcrop. She stared up into the night sky, glad enough to see the waning moon. Slowly, she picked out vague details of her surroundings, allowing her peripheral vision—the best night vision—to feed her the details. The stunted rhododendron above her, the thick fall of foliage beside it that could only be invasive kudzu, the occasional glimpse of treetop in the otherwise open space to her left.
    But mostly, just that open space.
    Using only her fingers, she felt out toward the left and found gritty, sloping rock. She allowed her hand to creep over, and then her whole lower arm. She had about a foot before the ground rounded off and fell away.
    A pure luxury of space. Ha.
    Still, she thought she’d just stay as she was for a moment longer. A moment to get her breath and to listen in on the man who’d put her here.
    “Mr. Longsford—”
    The man’s voice rang out clearly, all deference and apology. Karin could picture him on his cell phone, leaning over the guardrail. There came a few ingratiating phrases of apology, and then he spelled out the situation.
    Actually, he fibbed. “She ran right at the guard rail,” he said. “She musta lost her bearings.”
    Well, she couldn’t blame him at that. Why take the heat? Parts of her, formerly numb from shock, started to hurt. All of her, actually, except the middle of her back, which just itched. She did a quiet inventory of fingers and toes, only then considering the ramifications of serious injury.
    Everything wiggled. She sighed with relief and found a few new aches in her ribs. Cold from the ground seeped through her jeans.
    “I can’t see where she is. But it’s pretty steep.” A pause, and then his voice grew louder. “Hey! Can you hear me?”
    She shouted some anatomically improbable suggestions.
    “Yeah, she’s down there.” His voice faded slightly as he stepped away from the guardrail. “She’s pretty far down. Nah, there’s no other traffic—hasn’t been anyone by since I got here. No problem, it’s a pull-off…people park here all the time.” As if he knew. The creep. Just trying to cover his own ass, now. “She might last a day, I guess. It’s awfully cold here.”
    You can say that again. Karin eased her knees up and left her feet flat on the rock, getting her legs off the cold ground.
    The man’s next few comments were just a murmur, and then he stuck his head back over the guardrail to say clearly, “You should have just come with us in the first place, you stupid bitch. Maybe in a day or two they’ll find your body.”
    “You’re leaving me here?” she said, more startled than she expected. She sat up, one hand gripping the roots closest to her—and in the process discovered shooting pains in her wrist. She vaguely remembered landing on the heel of that hand sometime during her fall.
    “Like I said, you should have come with us in the first place.” He didn’t sound the least bit sorry. Great. He’d not only thrown her down a gorge, he was being mean