LITMIR.BIZ

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kind of stricken, Willa.”

      She leaned into him, because she could. She needed someone to lean on at that moment. And Collin was so solid. So warm. So very much alive. “I’d been letting myself hope that at least no one had died—and I really liked Mayor McGee.”

      “I hear you. Hunter was a good man and this town could sure use him about now.” He pulled her a little closer in the shelter of his arm and turned them both back to the pickup, Buster at their heels. The dog jumped in back again and they got in the cab.

      As they drove across the bridge, Willa tried not to dread what might be waiting for them on the other side.

       Chapter Four

      It didn’t look so awfully bad, Willa told herself as they drove along Sawmill Street. In fact, there on the northern edge of town, things seemed almost normal. Willa spotted a couple of downed trees and some flattened fences, but nothing like the devastation they’d witnessed coming in.

      When they turned onto Main Street going south, they saw that the Crawford store parking lot was packed, people going in—and coming out mostly empty-handed. She supposed she shouldn’t be all that surprised. It wouldn’t take long to clear out the shelves of emergency supplies if everyone in town and most of the valley’s ranchers showed up all at once and grabbed whatever they could fit in a cart.

      The Community Church had its doors wide open. People sat on the steps there or stood out under the trees in front. Most of them looked confused. And lost.

      “Shouldn’t the Red Cross be showing up any minute?” she asked hopefully. “And what about FEMA and the National Guard?”

      Collin grunted. “With a lot of the state in this condition, the phones out and the roads blocked, we’ll be real lucky if a few supply trucks get to us in the next day or two.” And then he swore low. “Isn’t that the mayor’s SUV?” The old brown 4×4 was half in, half out of the town hall parking lot. It had definitely come out the loser in the encounter with the downed elm tree. The tree lay square across what was left of the hood. The driver’s door gaped open. A couple of boys in their early teens were peering in the windows.

      “That’s just too sad,” Willa said low. “You’d think they’d want it off the street.”

      “Damn right.” Collin muttered. “A sight like that is not encouraging.” He hit the brake—and then swung a U-turn in front of the library, pulling in at the curb.

      “Collin!” Willa cried, surprised. “What in the …?”

      He shouted out the window at the two boys. “Hey, you two. Get over here.”

      Both boys froze. They wore guilty expressions. But then they put on their best tough-guy scowls and sauntered to Collin’s side of the truck. They were the older brothers of a couple of Willa’s former students and when they spotted her in the passenger seat, they dropped some of the attitude and mumbled in unison, “‘Lo, Ms. Christensen.”

      She gave them both a slow nod.

      One of them raked his shaggy hair off his forehead and met Collin’s eyes. “Yeah?”

      As he’d already done several times in the past eighteen hours or so, Collin surprised her. He knew their names. “Jesse. Franklin. Show a little respect, huh?”

      Jesse, who was fourteen if Willa remembered correctly, cleared his throat. “We are, Mr. Traub.” Mr. Traub. So strange. To hear anybody call the youngest, wildest Traub mister. But then again, well, the Traubs were pillars of the Rust Creek Falls community. Some of that probably rubbed off, even on the family bad boy—especially to a couple of impressionable teenagers.

      Franklin, who was thirteen, added, “We were just, you know, checkin’ things out.”

      Collin leaned out the window and suggested in a just-between-us-men kind of voice, “You two could make yourselves useful, do this town a real big favor …”

      The two boys perked up considerably. “Well, yeah. Sure,” said Jesse.

      “How?” asked Franklin.

      “Head on up to the garage. See if Clovis has a tow truck he can spare.” Clovis Hart had owned and run the garage and gas station at Sawmill and North Buckskin for as long as Willa could remember. “Tell him the mayor’s SUV is still sitting in the middle of Main Street with a tree trunk buried in its hood and lots of folks would appreciate it if Clovis could tow it away.”

      The boys shared a wide-eyed look. And then Franklin said, “Yeah. We could do that.”

      “You want me to take you up there?”

      “Naw,” said Jesse, puffing out his skinny chest. “We can handle it ourselves.”

      “Good enough, then. Thanks, boys—and tell Clovis he probably ought to bring a chain saw for that tree.”

      “We will.” The two took off up Main at a run.

      “That was well done,” Willa said, and didn’t even bother to try and hide the admiration in her voice.

      Collin grunted. “Maybe, but do you think they’ll make it happen?”

      “You know, I kind of do. They’re good kids. And this is a way for them to help. And you know Clovis.”

      “Yes, I do. Clovis Hart respected Hunter McGee and he won’t like it that the car Hunter died in is sitting on Main with the hood smashed in for everyone to stare and point at.”

      She glanced toward the dashboard clock. It was 10:45 a.m. “So what do we do now?”

      “I was thinking we could go and see how your house made out….”

      She glanced over her shoulder, out the back window, past a happily panting Buster, at the Main Street Bridge. Someone had put a row of orange traffic cones in front of it to warn people off trying to use it. And one of her brother’s deputies was standing, arms folded, in front of the pedestrian walk that spanned one side. “It doesn’t look like they’re letting folks cross the bridge.”

      Connor glanced over his shoulder, too. “We could try heading back to the Sawmill Street Bridge, then going on foot along the top of the levee until we get to your street.”

      “That could be dangerous … I mean, with the breaks in the levee and all. We would have to go carefully, and we don’t know what we’ll find if we manage to get to my house. It could take hours and we would miss the noon meeting Hank mentioned. I do think we should go to that.”

      Collin faced front again, his big shoulders slumping, and stared broodingly out the windshield back the way they had come. “You know who’ll be running that meeting now Hunter’s gone, don’t you?”

      She did. “Nathan Crawford.” Nathan was in his early thirties, a member of the town council. Everyone expected him to be mayor himself someday. He and Collin had never liked each other. It was as if the two had been born to be enemies. Nathan was as handsome and dynamic as Collin was brooding and magnetic. Collin had always been a rebel and Nathan considered himself a community leader.

      Rumor had it that five or six years back, Nathan’s girlfriend, Anita, had gone out on him—with Collin. Word was Anita had told Collin that she and Nathan were through. But apparently, she’d failed to inform Nathan of that fact. There’d been a fight, a nasty one, between the two men. Some claimed Collin had won, others insisted Nathan had come out the victor. After that, the two had hated each other more than ever.

      Plus, there was the old rivalry between their two families. Nathan was a Crawford to the core. The Crawfords not only owned the general store, they were also as influential in the community as the Traubs. And for as long as anyone could remember, Crawfords and Traubs had been at odds. Willa didn’t really know the origin of the feud, but it seemed to be bred in the bone now between the town’s two most important families. Traubs didn’t think much of Crawfords. And the Crawfords returned the favor.

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