Rekindled by Tamera Alexander Read Free Book Online Page B

he see? He commanded his arms and legs to move, but they too proved traitorous.
    As the steady thrum of pain grew louder inside him, Larson begged for waves of slumber to carry him to the place where agony was a distant memory, and where Kathryn waited.
    His prayer answered, cool wetness slipped through his lips and down his throat. Murmurs of voices, far away, moved toward him through a distant tunnel. He willed himself to reach out to them, but he couldn’t penetrate the veil separating his world from theirs.
    Sweet oblivion drifted over him, luring him with her promises of peace and escape. He embraced her whisper and surrendered completely.
    When he awakened again, Larson sensed a change. Exactly what, he couldn’t figure, only that his surroundings were different. He was different. For the first time he could remember, he felt the flutter of his lids and knew he was awake. He slowly opened his eyes.
    Darkness still hung close, cocooning him like a thick blanket. But this time it wasn’t for lack of sight.
    Flat on his back, he sensed his body stretched out before him, somehow different from how he remembered. He tried his voice, and the muscles in his throat chastised the effort. The back of his throat felt like crushed gravel, and when he tried to move his body, hot prickles needled up his arms and skittered down his legs. He braced himself for the hot licks of pain to return and once again quench their thirst. But none came.
    Pain’s thirst had apparently been slaked, at least for the moment.
    He lay in the darkness, listening for sounds, for anything that might yield a clue to where he was. More than anything, he longed for the voices he thought he’d heard before. Or had they been part of the dream?
    One reality was certain—he was alive.
    He strained to recall his last memory preceding this nightmare. The recollection teetered on the edge of his thoughts, just out of reach. He shut his eyes in hope of bringing it closer. Scraps of disjointed images fluttered past his mind’s eye. Shadowed and jumbled, they wafted toward him then just as quickly drifted away, like ragged tufts of a down blanket ripped and scattered on the wind.
    He flexed the fingers on his right hand and lightning bolted up his arm and ricocheted down his leg. He gasped for breath. But with the pain came clarity.
    Bitter frost. His legs and feet going numb. Hands aching with cold.
    Darkness. Needing to hide. A voice . . . wickedly taunting.
    Brilliant light, more intense than he had thought possible.
    The metallic taste of fear scalded the back of his throat, and he pressed his head back into the pillow. Memories from that night crashed over him. The stranger at the camp, the gunshot to the man’s chest, but not from Larson’s own rifle. Then clawing his way through the frozen night in search of a place to hide.
    Cool lines of wetness trailed a path down his temples and onto his neck. O God, were you there that night? Are you here now?
    Then came an image so lovely, so breathtakingly beautiful, that his chest clenched in response.
    Kathryn .
    He tried to call her name, but the effort languished in his throat. How was she? Was she safe? Did Kat know where he was and that he was hurt? Or did she think him already dead? Wetness sprang to Larson’s eyes, but oddly the sensation didn’t seem foreign to him. And what of the ranch? He couldn’t let all that he’d worked for be wrenched from his grasp—especially when success was so close this time.
    His thoughts raced. The sale of cattle this spring was crucial. The increased demand for meat to feed workers in the mining camps would bring more sales, which should result in enough money to nearly pay off the loan they owed on the land. And it would also cover the second loan he’d secured this past fall—a loan Kathryn knew nothing about. He hadn’t wanted to worry her. He’d needed some extra to carry them through the winter months and had mortgaged their homestead, the last thing that