LITMIR.BIZ

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she’d helped to patch up various minor injuries, Cassidy was nowhere in sight.

      Had he gone back to the house for a moment? Or taken Wanda June home to be with her family on their neighboring ranch?

      But no, Wanda was still huddled into a blanket in the first aid tent, looking scared and forlorn and far younger than her sixteen years. In the stark light, her normally vibrant face was pinched and drawn.

      God, but it was a hellish night, Karen thought, swiping a tired hand over her face. Somewhere to the south, lightning rent the air like the vicious slice of a scalpel while thunder crashed and rolled in its wake. The trailing edge of the storm had finally moved out around six that evening, leaving chaos in its wake. Power in the Grand Springs area had been out since last evening, and according to the reports on the radio, many roads were closed and the emergency resources were stretched to breaking. It would go down in the history books as one of the worst storms to hit Colorado in a hundred years.

      A sudden movement to the left caught Karen’s gaze an instant before Rags stuck his cold nose against her thigh. Ignoring the mud, she dropped to her knees and threw her arms around the Australian shepherd’s shaggy neck. Oddly, the warm, pungent odor of dog and dirt served to soothe her in ways that nothing else could manage. Perhaps because she’d so often smelled that same combination on her daughter’s skin.

      “Oh, Rags,” she whispered. “She has to be all right. She just has to.” His tail wagged once, but his heart wasn’t in it.

      “Everything will turn out just fine,” she murmured, her voice hollow as she got to her feet again. As hollow as the comforting words she’d shouted down at Vicki only a few minutes ago. Words that echoed obscenely in the bottomless void where Vicki waited for someone to come for her.

      As though sensing her thoughts, Rags licked the hand that had fallen to her side, then turned to jog to the spot in front of the jagged hole where he’d been hunkered down almost continuously since Vicki disappeared.

      Her eyes filled with tears at the sight of her daughter’s beloved pet waiting patiently for his mistress’s return. And heaven help anyone who tried to make him move.

      Oh, baby, don’t give up, Karen prayed as she pulled the slicker closer to her throat. We’re coming. Daddy and I are coming for you.

      She saw Cassidy then, standing alone at the edge of the light, an intensely physical man who expressed himself with actions and kept his own counsel, taller than most, his large, well-muscled body a match for any there.

      She took a hasty step, then stopped, suddenly uneasy, as he tipped back his head and looked up at the sky. There was a look of stark anger about him that chilled her to the bone as she, too, stared upward.

      The overcast sky seemed as solid as the hard red Colorado ground, yet she knew those murky, threatening clouds contained enough water to swamp the ravine and half the ranch with torrents of angry, swirling, liquid mud, tearing down trees, scouring away precious grass, filling every crevice.

      “No,” she whispered, staring helplessly at the black hole in the ground. “Please, God, don’t let it rain again. Please, please, don’t.”

      * * *

      Standing alone at the edge of light, Cassidy Sloane fought down a fierce need to fall to his knees and beg whatever God might be listening to spare his daughter’s life. Not that it would do any good, of course. God had abandoned him a long time ago—and with good reason.

      Still, somewhere in his cynic’s heart, buried among unspoken longings and shameful secrets, he still hoped for a miracle. A reprieve for an innocent little girl whose only “crime” had been a desire to see the top of a cloud from the edge of the butte.

      The need to plead came again, stronger this time. Almost as strong as his need to lash out at that same God. Or fate. Or even the damned weathermen who hadn’t foreseen the monsoon-like deluge.

      As though issuing a parting taunt, thunder rolled again, more distant this time, and off toward the eastern part of his land where the stream feeding his meadows hooked toward the south.

      His tired gaze fixed in that direction, Cassidy was startled from his dark thoughts by the sound of a gruff voice calling his name. Heart thudding, he spun around to find a familiar bearlike man bearing down on him.

      Lieutenant Brendan Gallagher of the Grand Springs Fire Department stood a good two inches taller than Cassidy’s own six-one frame and still carried most of the muscle he’d developed while representing Burke Senior High at the state wrestling finals three years running.

      “How much longer, Bren?” Cassidy demanded when the man was still a half dozen strides away.

      Gallagher swept off his battered orange helmet and set it atop a cluster of oxygen cylinders. “Two, three hours, if the rain holds off.”

      “That’s what you told me two hours ago, Gallagher!” Cassidy realized he had raised his voice, drawing startled looks from some of the nearby volunteers dispensing coffee and sandwiches to the exhausted men. The Ladies Aid Society from one of the churches, someone had told him.

      Gallagher moved a massive shoulder. “Maybe less. Hard to say exactly.”

      At the exchange of words, one of the volunteers stepped away from the fire department’s mobile canteen and came toward the two men, holding out two large white foam cups filled with steaming liquid.

      “Coffee, Lieutenant?”

      “Thanks,” Gallagher muttered before eagerly lifting the cup to his lips.

      “Mr. Sloane?” The plain-faced woman in an army surplus poncho thrust a cup toward Cassidy. “Would you like some?”

      “No.” The clipped word had no sooner passed Cassidy’s lips when he realized how ungrateful he’d sounded. “No, but thanks for offering,” he said, tempering his response. Tact was Karen’s forte. Not his. But that didn’t excuse unprovoked rudeness.

      “You’re most welcome.” The woman hesitated before adding in a kindly tone, “I just want you to know that we’re all praying mighty hard for your little girl.”

      Cassidy’s throat worked. Asking for help for his child had been easy. Accepting it for himself was all but impossible.

      “I appreciate that, ma’am. Thank you.”

      The woman’s eyes were shiny with unshed tears as she touched his arm, then turned away to return to the beat-up wagon.

      Short of patience under the best of circumstances, Cassidy nevertheless forced himself to wait while the other man drank greedily. After brutally long hours of digging, with only occasional breaks, Brendan looked played out. But in spite of his leprechaun eyes and choirboy’s smile, Bren Gallagher was tempered steel, with ice water in his veins, and, according to men who’d worked under him, one tough man to cross.

      At the moment, Cassidy didn’t care what kind of reputation Bren carried. Nor would he let himself think of Bren as a friend. No, pared to the basics, Brendan Gallagher was simply the man keeping Cassidy from his daughter. His feisty, bright-as-a-new-penny Victoria.

      Vicki to her mom. Vick to him, more often than not. His little tomboy with angel eyes the same shade of dark brown as his own, though without the jaded remoteness he glimpsed in his shaving mirror on a daily basis.

      Was it only this morning at the breakfast table when she’d flung her arms around his neck and begged him to let her ride out with him to check on the horses in the south pasture?

      Afraid for her safety in the lousy weather, he refused and, instead, ordered her and Wanda June to stay within sight of the ranch house. For once Vick had done what he asked, wandering through the wet fields in a wide arc less than a mile from home.

      The next time he heard her voice, it had come from far below the surface where she was wedged between slabs of icy granite like a cork in a bottle, calling feebly for help. When he answered, he’d gotten no reply.

      Since then, the only

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