Elsie set her backpack on the ground and moved closer.
“Sir,” she whispered. “I’m going to help you. Please don’t move if you can hear me.”
The man let out a low sound but did not speak.
Elsie studied the rope before touching it. Her grandfather had taught her never to fight a knot blindly. Every knot had a direction. Every rope had a weak point.
She found a fallen branch, wedged it carefully beneath the rope, and used her small body weight to ease the tension. Then she worked at the knot with trembling fingers.
It took several minutes.
At last, the rope gave way.
The biker dropped only a short distance onto the leaves below, but the sound made Elsie catch her breath. For one terrible moment, she feared she had made everything worse.
Then he moved.
One eye opened and found her face.
“You’re… a kid,” he muttered.
“I know,” Elsie said. “Don’t sit up yet. You’ve been upside down too long.”
The man blinked at her as though she couldn’t possibly be real.
“How old are you?”
“Old enough to know you need water.”
The Biker Named Wade
His name was Wade Callahan.
He told her that after she helped him drink from her bottle and wrapped his scraped wrists with cloth from her backpack.
Wade belonged to a local riding club. He had made the wrong people angry by refusing to share information that could have put innocent people at risk. Elsie didn’t understand the full picture, and she didn’t need to.
She only understood one thing.
The people who left him there might return.
Then the distant rumble of engines drifted through the trees.
Wade’s face changed.
Elsie heard it too.
“Can you walk?” she asked.
“Not well.”
“Then walk badly. We have to move.”
He looked at her.
“You’re bossy.”
Elsie pulled her backpack onto one shoulder.
“Grandpa said bossy is what people call you when you know what to do.”
For the first time, Wade almost smiled.
