Chapter 1 The Gravity of Bone #13
You lose the right to know him.
The words echoed in his head, sharp as broken glass.
Ryder gripped the steering wheel. His knuckles turned white.
"I'm sorry, Leo," he whispered. "I'm just a pirate. Pirates don't stay."
He turned the key.
The engine roared to life. It sounded loud in the morning quiet. Too loud.
He put the truck in gear. He eased his foot off the brake.
The truck rolled forward. Gravel crunched under the tires.
Ryder Stone drove down the long driveway, past the barn, past the round pen where he had almost killed himself, past the gate.
He turned onto the county road. He turned south, toward Billings. Toward the bus. Toward Tulsa.
He didn't look back.
If he looked back, he would turn into a pillar of salt. Or worse, he would turn around.
He drove into the gray morning, leaving his heart in the rearview mirror, convinced that breaking it was the only way to keep it safe.
The first drop of rain hit the windshield.
Then the second.
And then, the sky opened up.
CHAPTER 9: THE RIVER AND THE ROAD
I. The Deluge
Ryder was twenty miles out of Oakhaven when the sky fell.
It didn't start as rain. It started as a solid sheet of gray water that slammed into the windshield with the force of a hammer. The wipers of Cole’s truck thrashed uselessly against the onslaught. The world outside dissolved into a blur of wet asphalt and rising steam.
Ryder slowed to forty. Then thirty.
The radio, which had been playing a low country hum, cut out. Static hissed, sharp and angry.
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
The Emergency Alert System tone pierced the cab.
"The National Weather Service has issued a Flash Flood Warning for Oakhaven County and the Stone Creek Basin.
Rainfall rates exceeding three inches per hour are causing rapid rises in all local waterways.
Residents in low-lying areas should move to higher ground immediately. Do not attempt to cross flooded roads."
Ryder gripped the wheel.
Stone Creek Basin.
That was the ranch. That was the valley.
He looked out the side window. The drainage ditches were already overflowing, brown water churning violently alongside the highway.
He thought about the ranch. Cole and Maya were on the hill. The house was high. They would be fine.
He thought about the town. Elena’s house was on the edge of the creek. It was elevated, but the road to it wasn't.
She’s fine, he told himself. She’s smart. She’ll stay inside.
He kept driving south. Towards Billings. Towards the bus.
But the knot in his stomach—the one that had formed when he packed his bag—tightened. It wasn't just guilt anymore. It was a primal, vibrating instinct. The same instinct that told him when a bull was about to turn back.
Something is wrong.
He looked at the passenger seat. His gear bag sat there, zipped tight. The ticket to his future.
He looked at the plastic bull in the cup holder. Bodacious.
"Damn it," Ryder growled.
He hit the brakes. The truck hydroplaned, sliding sideways on the slick tarmac before the tires caught. He wrestled the wheel, swinging the nose of the heavy Ford around in a wide arc across the double yellow line.
He slammed the accelerator.
He was going back.
Not because he was staying. But because he couldn't leave while the sky was trying to drown the people he had left behind.
He drove north, fighting the wind that tried to push the truck into the ditch. The rain intensified. It was a biblical deluge.
His phone buzzed on the seat.
He snatched it up.
Elena.
His heart stopped. She never called him. Not since the day he arrived.
He swiped the green button.
"Elena?"
"Ryder!" Her voice was a scream, barely audible over the roar of the wind on her end. "Ryder, is he with you?"
Ryder went cold. "Who? Is who with me?"
"Leo! Is Leo with you?"
"No. I'm... I'm on the highway. I left, Elena. I told you I was leaving."
"He's gone," she sobbed. The sound was a jagged tear in the fabric of the world. "I went to his room to check the windows because of the storm. His bed is empty. His backpack is gone. The window is open."
"He ran away?"
"He left a drawing," she cried. "A drawing of the ranch. He's coming to find you, Ryder. He thinks... he thinks he made you leave. He thinks if he learns to ride the horse, you'll stay."
Ryder felt the blood drain from his face, leaving him lightheaded.
"He's walking to the ranch?"
"He has to be. But the creek... Ryder, the creek is over the banks. The bridge on County Road 9 is underwater. If he tries to cross..."
"I'm coming," Ryder shouted. "I'm ten miles out. I'm coming."
"I'm in the car," Elena yelled. "I'm trying to get to the lower road, but the mud is too deep. I'm stuck."
"Stay there!" Ryder ordered. "Don't get out of the car. I'll find him. I swear to God, Elena, I'll find him."
He threw the phone down.
He floored the gas pedal.
The truck roared, the engine straining. Ryder leaned forward, his eyes scanning the gray chaos of the road.
Ten miles.
Ten miles between a six-year-old boy in red boots and a river that was currently turning into a monster.
"Run fast, Leo," Ryder whispered, his voice shaking. "Run fast, little man. But don't you dare go near that water."
II. The Empty Room
Thirty minutes earlier, Elena had woken to the sound of thunder that shook the foundation of the bungalow.
She sat up, her heart racing. The room was dark, lit only by the strobe-light flashes of lightning. Rain was hammering the roof like buckshot.
Leo.
Her first thought, always.
She threw off the covers and ran down the hall. The floorboards were cold.
She pushed open the door to Leo’s room.
"Leo, honey, it's just a storm," she whispered, reaching for the light switch.
The light flickered on.
The bed was made. But the lump under the quilt was too small. Too still.
Elena ripped the covers back.
Pillows. Three pillows arranged in a line.
"Leo?"
She spun around. The closet door was open. His red raincoat was gone. His red boots were gone.
She ran to the window. It was unlatched. The screen was pushed out. A puddle of water had formed on the sill.
"No," she breathed. "No, no, no."
She saw the paper taped to the glass.
A drawing. In crayon.
A big red truck. A stick figure with a cast. And a smaller stick figure holding a rope.
Underneath, in wobbly block letters:
I CAN BE brAVE TO.
Elena stared at the note. I can be brave too.
He had heard them. He had heard the fight in the barn. He had heard Ryder say he was leaving because he needed money. He had heard Elena say Ryder was selfish.
Leo had interpreted it with the logic of a child: Ryder is leaving because I was scared of the dog. If I show him I'm brave, he'll stay.
Elena grabbed her keys. She grabbed her coat. She ran out into the storm, screaming his name into the wind that swallowed it whole.
She drove toward the ranch, but the world fought her. The dirt road had turned into a slurry of mud that sucked at her tires. Her sedan bogged down two miles from the house.
She sat in the trapped car, watching the water rise in the ditches, and dialed the one number she had sworn never to call again.
And when he answered, when he said I'm coming, she didn't feel anger. She didn't feel betrayal.
She felt the only thing that mattered: Hope.
III. The River
Ryder reached the bridge on County Road 9 ten minutes later.
Or rather, he reached the place where the bridge used to be.
The concrete span had collapsed. The creek, usually a polite trickle twenty feet below the road deck, was now a brown, churning monster that had risen thirty feet.
It was tearing at the banks, swallowing willows and fence posts whole.
The roar was deafening—a physical vibration that shook the truck cab.
Ryder slammed the truck into park. He peered through the rain-lashed windshield.
Where are you?
He scanned the tree line on the far bank. Nothing but gray rain and black trees.
Then, he saw it.
Downstream. About fifty yards. A flash of red caught in the branches of a fallen cottonwood tree that was snagged in the middle of the torrent.
Ryder’s heart hammered a frantic rhythm.
Red raincoat.
"Leo!"
Ryder didn't think. He didn't grab his crutches. Crutches were useless in mud.
He kicked the door open. He grabbed the door frame and vaulted out, landing on his good leg. He ignored the scream of protest from his broken femur as he dragged it forward.
He slid down the embankment.
The mud was slick as grease. He fell, sliding uncontrollably on his back, tearing his jeans, scraping his palms raw. He hit the bottom of the slope near the water’s edge.
The noise was terrifying. The water smelled of earth and violence.
Ryder scrambled up. He looked at the tree.
Leo was clinging to a branch in the center of the river. The water was rushing over his waist. His red boots were gone. He was screaming, but the sound was swallowed instantly by the roar of the flood.
The tree shifted. The current was pushing it. If the snag broke loose, the tree—and the boy—would be swept downstream into the rapids.
Ryder looked at the water. It was freezing snowmelt.
He looked at his cast. A ten-pound weight of fiberglass and padding. In the water, it would be an anchor. It would drag him down.
I can be brave too.
Ryder grit his teeth.
"Hold on, Leo!" he screamed, though he knew the boy couldn't hear him.
Ryder stepped into the water.
IV. The Anchor
The cold was a physical blow. It punched the air out of his lungs.
Ryder waded in. The current hit him at the knees, trying to sweep his legs out from under him. He leaned into it, driving his good leg into the rocky bottom.
The water rose to his waist.
His cast filled with water. It became heavy, agonizingly heavy. It felt like a concrete block strapped to his shattered bone. Every step was a battle against physics.
Pain is just noise.
He pushed forward. The water was chest deep now. He was ten feet from the tree.