No. I stumbled, sinking to my knees in the claggy dirt.It’s okay. Maybe he didn’t make it back yet. Maybe he got stuck in traffic on the way home and never made it up the mountain.But even as the rationale screamed through my mind, my gaze fell on the twisted metal of an upturned car.
Fen’s car.
He’d made it home.
But he hadn’t made it out.
Another strangled sound escaped me. I fell forward, my hands joining my knees in the mud.No. This couldn’t be fucking happening.
Itwasn’tfucking happening.
I scrambled to my feet and sprinted back the way I’d come, leaving the ruined, impassable road behind. Paddy was long gone, but I knew where he’d headed—to the disused path behind the tree house that led into the forest. The one he and Fen both had warned me to leave well alone. With the road blocked, it was the only way down the mountain that didn’t require rock-climbing gear.
I’d never been much of a runner. Martial arts and sex had been my exercise of choice for most of my adult life. But I flew over the ground now, my feet barely touching the dirt beneath me, and I was on Paddy before I could reconcile with the hell I’d woken up to.
His expression hadn’t changed. “There’s no way down,” he said. “The whole fell is totally fucked.”
“Define fucked.”
“We can’t get down,” he repeated, as if my face was telling him I didn’t understand. Or that something deep inside me was refusing to try. “I’ve been calling Fen, but it’s not connecting, not even to the landline. Safia was calling the main house when I ran out.”
We dashed back up the mountain. Safia was on the doorstep, phone in hand, Lalla strapped in a sling on her chest. “Nothing’s working.” She flitted a wide-eyed stare to me. “You think it took out the mast?”
“Depends how far down it went,” Paddy said. “Who else can we call?”
“No one if our phones aren’t fucking working.”
Paddy turned away from Safia’s frustration and jogged back to the gate. He scanned the horizon, shoulders tense. “Rama, try your phone.”
It was still in the cabin. I ran for it and called Fen as soon as I picked it up, ignoring Paddy who’d trailed me across the yard. For a long moment, nothing happened, then the line crackled to life and it rang.
Once.
And cut out.
“Motherfucker.”I twitched, ready to hurl the phone at the wall.
The thought of Fen trying to call back checked me.
Breathing hard, I called him again and again and again. Nothing happened, not even a flicker, and I returned to Paddy with a heavy heart. “It rang once, now it’s dead.”
“At least something’s working, though,” Paddy grunted. “Try the house.”
“Which house? His?”
“Yeah. And the main house. One of the guys might pick up.”
Wishful thinking. Apparently that one ring was all we had. Every other call failed to connect, and then my phone lost signal. On shaky legs, I charged back to the treehouse and climbed the stairs to connect to the satellite Internet, but calls to Fen’s phone and any other numbers Paddy could think of still wouldn’t connect.
Trepidation filled my heart as I logged into my laptop and searched a local news site. Images of the dislodged earth at the foot of the mountain filled the screen, but the reports held no information of the fate of anyone above, only that any search and rescue operations were being hampered by inclement weather.
I glowered out of the window. The sky as far as I could see was crystal clear. “What inclement weather?” I growled. “It’s a fucking spring day out there.”
“It’s cold,” Paddy said. “The wet ground is going to be ice soon enough. Even if the road was useable, they’d need specialist vehicles to make it to Fen’s place.”
“ToFen, you mean. Who gives a fuck about his house?”
“You don’t know he was inside.”