Free Survival Instinct by Doranna Durgin Page A

about it.
    Left on the ledge? Alone? With no one the wiser? Karin shuddered. Time to get to work. “Don’t go!” she said, and fought back on edge of panic. “You need me.”
    He snorted.
    “You think I’m kidding? You’ve been exposed to a deadly disease.” Her mind slid right into scam mode, forgetting for the moment her precarious physical situation.
    “I don’t think so.” But he was a little closer now; she’d hooked him.
    Karin smiled into the darkness. “It’s new. The CDC has been keeping a lid on it. Mad Sheep disease. Why do you think my one goat has a bell collar on? She’s over it, but she’s still contagious—that part of the property is in quarantine. I’ve been vaccinated, of course.”
    “I’m leaving.” The disinterest in his voice wasn’t feigned. She was losing him.
    “What about the rash?” she said, talking fast and trying not to sound desperate. “It’s a little early for it to be a true rash, but I bet it itches.” Maybe not. He’d have to be terribly sensitive to the poison ivy oils to show symptoms this soon. Be sensitive, she thought at him. Be really, really sensitive.
    And after a pause, he said, “Keep talking.”
    “It’s only going to get worse. And it spreads along the nerve pathways—it can reach your brain in a matter of days.” Okay, so that was conflating shingles and poison ivy…but it sounded good. “Very few doctors know anything about it. I can tell you where to go for treatment.” She hardened her voice. “Of course, you’ll have to haul me out of here first.”
    And then what? He wasn’t likely to simply let her go.
    It doesn’t matter. It would be better than clinging to the side of a gorge cliff in the middle of nowhere, with no one the wiser and no one looking for her. She’d handle the and then what when she got there.
    Except he gave a snort of a laugh. “It’s not much of a rash,” he said. “I’ll go get myself some magic ointment at the drugstore. Meanwhile, you have a nice life. Or should I say, have a nice death.”
    “Bastard,” she muttered, but not so he could hear it. Not now. Now that he’d decided to leave her here, there were plenty of ways he could make this situation worse. She wanted none of it.
    And he wasn’t bluffing. His car engine started…and the vehicle drove away.
    Karin took a deep breath, ignoring the twinges in her ribs. “Cree-ap!” she bellowed into the open darkness.
    “Ap-ap-ap,” the darkness echoed back.
    All right. Think. So far, she was for the most part whole, especially considering how many things could have broken on the way down here. Her wrist would be a problem, but it wasn’t a jagged-bone kind of problem.
    Maybe things weren’t as bad as they seemed. Maybe she was already nearly at the bottom of this particular gorge. If she could slide her way to the bottom come daylight…
    Or maybe in daylight, she’d find a way to climb out, bum wrist and all.
    One thing she couldn’t afford to do was wait. Sure, people were going to notice her car, but this wasn’t a back-and-forth kind of road. This was an out-of-the-way, going-from-hereto-there road, the kind of road no one traveled twice in the same day or two. And she bet it would take a couple times of spotting her car before something bothered to think something wasn’t quite right.
    So…maybe things weren’t as bad as they seemed. Karin scrabbled around for a decent rock, something she could toss without effort but still big enough to hear on the way down. “Have a short journey,” she told it, and kissed it for luck. Then she tossed it out over the edge of her little cranny and listened to it bounce and hop.
    And listened.
    And listened.
    And slumped back against the cliff, not bothering to listen for the end of it. Softly, she said, “Oh, crap.”

Chapter 7
    H e wasn’t certain what woke him, not until the dog barked again. Even then, he almost let himself drift back into sleep. But the dog barked again, and Dave pried his