LITMIR.BIZ

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know I haven’t.” She made a face at him. “Is there anything else you’d like to ask? Because if you’re done criticizing me, I want to get started.”

      “I wasn’t criticizing you, I was being rational. We obviously can’t drive through all this debris, so we’ll have to walk. And the easiest way to get hurt is to not be sure-footed enough. You may have to climb or jump.” He studied her tailored outfit, making note of her slim skirt. “Do you think you can do that?”

      “I can do anything that will get me to my daughter,” Maya said emphatically. “I’m going now, whether you come or not.”

      Tommy wiggled in Greg’s arms so he lowered him to the floor, keeping hold of his thin wrist so he wouldn’t run away.

      “Let go,” the child whined. “I have to go find Charlie. He might be hurt.”

      Lots of people might be, Greg thought. He said, “We’ll all look for your dog while we walk over to the church to get Ms. Logan’s little girl. Maybe Charlie went there to guard all the other kids.” He could tell by Maya’s grim expression that she wasn’t buying his theory but as long as Tommy did, that was good enough for Greg.

      “O-okay. But if we see Charlie he gets to come, too.”

      “Absolutely,” Maya told him, taking his hand and bending to look him in the eyes. “You have to be really good for Mr. Garrison and me, okay? It’s very dangerous out there and if you got hurt, you couldn’t keep looking for Charlie. Do you understand?”

      The child nodded soberly, amazing Greg with his sudden acceptance of adult authority. Apparently, if there was a valid reason to obey, Tommy was capable of controlling himself enough to do so. He just wished Maya had interceded in that sane and practical manner before the wild kid had splashed mud all over the sidewalk.

      Realizing how trivial his thoughts were in light of the disaster that had just descended upon High Plains, Greg began to chuckle quietly.

      Maya arched her eyebrows and gave him a withering look. “What in the world is so funny?”

      “I am,” he said, shaking his head and following with more self-deprecating laughter. “I was just thinking about not wanting mud splashed on my office. Right now, I’d willingly settle for a little mud on the outside if that was all that was wrong.”

      “I know what you mean,” she said. “But if you keep me standing here wasting time for one more minute I’m going to scream. Are you ready to go?”

      “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

      He left Tommy in her care as he shouldered the damaged front door to force it partway open. Then he motioned and held out his hand.

      When she took it to let him assist her and the boy through the narrow opening, he noticed that her slim fingers were clammy and trembling. Considering how scared she must be, especially in regard to her daughter, she was handling her feelings pretty well.

      Greg hadn’t been a praying man for a long, long time, but under the circumstances he was tempted to try it, just this once. All he wanted to ask was that Maya’s bravery be honored by a safe reunion with her child. If her God really existed, really cared, she deserved that much at the very least.

      Chapter Three

      Maya would have run all the way to the church if there had been any way to safely do so. Stepping gingerly and wending her way through the rubble, she was awestruck. So many loose building bricks littered what had once been the sidewalk they had to take to the center of the street in order to pass.

      Whole structures had collapsed, and many of those that hadn’t actually fallen had been stripped of portions of their facade, making them barely recognizable.

      Broken glass lay everywhere. Cars were smashed, some lying on the sidewalks and lawns where they’d been dropped like discarded toys. Since she couldn’t see any occupants inside the wrecks she could only hope their drivers had sensibly run for cover before the worst of the storm had overtaken them.

      Piles of jagged refuse were heaped against the windward sides of anything solid, not to mention the rubbish floating in the High Plains River, near where the lovely, quaint gazebo had stood mere minutes ago.

      Greg put out his hand and stopped her. “Wait here with Tommy a second. I think I see movement inside the pie shop. They might be trapped.”

      There was no way Maya could bring herself to argue with him when he was bent on doing a good deed. All she said was, “Hurry.”

      She knew without a doubt that people could be hurt all over town. Dying. Suffering. That thought cut her to the quick. Many of her friends and neighbors might be in dire straits—perhaps even worse—not to mention her brother Jesse. For the first time since the onset of the tornado, Maya thought of the Garrison family, too.

      As soon as he returned and reported that the folks in Elmira’s diner were all right she asked, “Do you think your father is okay?”

      “Probably. He’s too mean to die.”

      “What an awful thing to say!”

      “Just quoting him,” Greg answered, continuing to lead the way east along Main Street. “He’s been saying that for years. Besides, the estate is pretty far out of town. I don’t imagine it was in the storm’s path. At least not this time.”

      “I wish I could say the same for the Logan ranch,” she replied. “I suppose there won’t be any way to tell how Jesse and Marie are until communication is restored.”

      “Maybe we can hitch a quick ride out that way later and you can see for yourself.”

      She shook her head, then pointed. “Not unless that bridge is in better shape than it looks from here. The whole roadway is blocked up by big pieces of houses and goodness knows what else.”

      “You’re right. That probably means the rescue units from the other side of the river won’t be able to get to us without going miles out of their way, either.”

      “I know.” She sighed. “It’s going to take us weeks just to dig out, and that will be only the beginning. No wonder so many people are just wandering around in a daze. It boggles my mind, too.”

      “I can help with the rebuilding,” Greg told her, leading their little group in a circuitous path that avoided loose wires that were dangling between battered telephone poles. “My lumber yard and hardware wholesale can supply resources, even if they’ve sustained some damage.”

      “That should be profitable, too.”

      Maya knew she shouldn’t have taken his offer so negatively but she’d worked for the man long enough to know that he was fixated on the bottom line: net gains. It wasn’t his fault that that was the way his mind worked, but she did see it as the reason he’d been so successful when he was barely thirty.

      He sobered and glowered at her. “This isn’t about business, it’s about survival. I’m not going to try to make money from the misfortunes of others, even if my father’s opinion of me suffers as a result.”

      “He wouldn’t understand?”

      “No. That old man has never approved of anything I’ve done, which is the main reason I told him I was leaving High Plains for keeps, years ago.”

      “It must have been hard for you to come back.”

      “Yes, it was. If my cousin Michael hadn’t phoned and told me Dad was terminally ill, I’d still be enjoying my studio apartment with a view of Lake Michigan, instead of standing in the middle of this horrible mess.”

      “With me,” Maya added, giving his strong hand a squeeze. “I’m really sorry you have to go through all this but I’m glad you’re here. If you hadn’t been, who knows what would have become of me in this storm.”

      “I hope you’d have had the good sense to duck.”

      Maya

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