She went down in excruciating pain, biting down on a stream of swear words as her ankle bent in ways it wasn’t meant to. Tears burned in her eyes as she sat there at the side of the street, trying to figure out what had happened, but then she couldn’t think around the pain. It radiated out from her ankle, up her leg, down into her foot. She sat there frozen, dumbfounded, the breath squeezed out of her by the pain.

As she gradually came out of her stupor, her first thought was to get up before someone discovered her. She got her left foot under her and tried to baby her right foot into following suit but— No. Hell no.

Shit, this was bad.

With a slow, shaky inhale, she tried to maneuver to the curb, with the intent of pulling herself up to it to evaluate the situation. With some effort and a shit ton of determination, she made it and sat there on the concrete curb, panting.

“Sierra?”

She closed her eyes at the sound of Lee Barrett’s voice behind her, several dozen feet away. Her instinct was to brush off her injury and stand up to face her most recent hire, but the truth was, she was barely managing to get oxygen in and out of her lungs over the throbbing pain.

“Sierra!” he called again, concern creeping into his voice, and she heard his steps quickening to a jog across the grassy yard behind her. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she managed. “Sort of. I twisted my ankle.”

“Let me help you up,” he said kindly.

As much as she was wired to do it herself, she couldn’t deny she needed a hand, so she let him grip her arm as she got her left foot solidly under her again and tried to get her right one in position just for balance if not for support. Right foot was having none of it though, and she swore before she could stop herself, sitting back on the curb hard.

“That’s not good,” Lee said as Sierra squeezed her eyes shut against tears again.

“Hey.” Cole approached from behind, and she could tell he, too, was moving faster than a walk, and she hated that she was causing a scene. “What’s going on?”

“She hurt her ankle,” Lee said since she couldn’t get her voice to work, mainly because she was fighting so hard not to cry like a damn girl. “It seems pretty bad. I was just trying to help her stand.”

“She shouldn’t stand,” Cole said, aggravation in his voice. “I’ve got this. You go close up after the others.”

“You sure? I can—”

“Go,” Cole barked out. He came around to the front of Sierra, studying her face instead of her ankle, and she reluctantly met his gaze, trying to hide how much she hurt.