Chapter 73

73

She couldn’t get in the doors. Dylan somehow managed to climb over a pile of logs or something and could just reach a window that was broken out. It should have been boarded up a long time ago. She ignored the cold, and she ignored the broken glass slicing into her coat.

Dylan pulled herself inside. She wasn’t stupid—her footprints in the snow would be a clear path right to where she was, but the barn was big enough that as long as her hair didn’t give her away, she could maybe find someplace to hide.

Or she was going to be a sitting duck.

Either result was possible.

She just kept hoping that she was going to get lucky tonight, and that she hadn’t used up all the get-out-of-trouble-free cards she’d collected just in the last few months alone.

She wanted to build a life with her cranky cowboy.

She wanted half a dozen Fletcherlings.

She wanted to teach people in Masterson County how to fly cowboy drones.

She wanted to watch all of her sisters get married and have baby Talleylings too. She wanted to fix things with her dad and tell the old poophead she loved him again.

Dylan wasn’t about to give up yet. Dylan was never going to give up.

She was getting back to Fletcher and her family, and nothing was going to stop her.

Dylan slipped into the barn, the biggest one—it seemed like it would be the best place to find decent hiding places, after all.

And fell to the hardpacked mud floor. Mud that covered bricks or something. Concrete.

She felt the bone in her arm crack when she landed on it. Dylan rolled to her side and puked from the pain. She stayed on the ground probably far longer than she should.

Dylan forced herself to her feet. She had to hide.

Until Fletcher came for her. She knew he was coming—she checked her watch as she pressed the button to get some sort of light. There was no cell signal where she was or internet, but she had light.

Her sisters had always had her back, after all.

Dylan stepped deeper into the darkness.