LITMIR.BIZ

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mother will want you to leave this time,” Willow said. “I need to get you out of here to safety. You can trust me. I’m not going to hurt you.” She reached for Brittany, who cried out and backed away, staring at Willow’s arm.

      “But what’s wrong? What’s happening?” Lucy asked.

      “Preston’s cabin is on fire.” Willow forced her voice to remain gentle and reassuring, though she felt anything but calm. “We need to get you out of here because the cabin is too close to the lodge.”

      “A fire?” Brittany wailed.

      “It’s okay, I’ll get you to safety.” Willow would deal with the negligent mother later. She switched on the overhead light and reached into the connecting bathroom for a towel.

      In deference to the squeamish child, she wrapped her wound with the not-so-clean towel, then scooped the youngster into her arms and grabbed the older sister’s hand. “Girls, you’ll have to trust me. This way.”

      Brittany trembled in Willow’s arms, but held tightly around her neck and burrowed against her shoulder.

      There were more people who needed to be warned. Would she reach them all in time?

      Graham Vaughn snapped awake at the first trill of his cell phone on the bedside stand. He wasn’t on call tonight, but still he reacted instinctively, like one of Pavlov’s beleaguered animals, when he heard that particular sound. Somehow he’d expected to break that unwelcome habit when he left the practice.

      He’d obviously been demented to even consider such a possibility. After all, it wasn’t as if he’d stopped taking patients—he’d just stopped getting paid for it.

      He glanced at the numbers on his clock. Two thirty-five. He grabbed the cell phone, but didn’t recognize the number on the screen. A patient in trouble? He pressed the green button. “This is Dr. Vaughn.”

      “Graham, it’s Preston. I need help. My cabin is on fire and it could spread at any minute.”

      The news didn’t register for a moment. “Uh, Preston?”

      “Did you hear me?” The man’s voice rose in panic. “Fire!”

      Graham lurched from the bed and reached for the clothes he’d dropped onto the floor three hours ago. “I’ll be there. Have you called 9-1-1?”

      “Yes. Help is on its way, but there are two other fires in the Branson area tonight. They’re shorthanded. Hollister’s responding, but I think we’ll need some extra hands to help us evacuate, and the renters will need a place to stay tonight. Can you get here in time?”

      “I’m on my way now. Where are you?” Graham pulled on his jeans with one-handed awkwardness, then reached for his shirt, shoving his feet into a pair of sneakers. Preston was right—Graham couldn’t possibly get there in time to help with evacuation, but he was ultimately responsible.

      “Down below at Two B. I’m using Carl Mackey’s cell phone.” There was a sound of pounding, then Preston’s voice as he shouted for the occupant.

      Graham had purchased the lodge at a greatly reduced price last year and had invested a good deal of sweat equity in it since then. He’d spared no expense on safety, and in spite of the high rent, Preston, his manager, had filled all the units in record time.

      People liked to live in the country, except for times like this, when help was farther away.

      “Has it spread past the cabin?” he asked.

      “Not yet,” Preston said.

      “It shouldn’t. We took every precaution when we refurbished that lodge.”

      “You’re right, it shouldn’t spread naturally,” Preston said. “But this monster doesn’t look natural to me. I’ve never seen green grass burn either, until tonight.”

      “What are you saying?”

      “I’m saying this doesn’t look accidental. Look, I’ve got to go,” Preston said. “Rick Fenrow’s not answering his door, and I didn’t think he was scheduled to work tonight. Carl’s gone up to see if Rick’s car’s in the carport.”

      “Okay, but be careful. Don’t let anyone go back inside for belongings. And don’t you go back in for anything.”

      “No chance of that. My place is an inferno. If my sister hadn’t awakened, we wouldn’t have made it out. Got to go.”

      The connection ended. Graham shoved the phone into his shirt pocket, then immediately retrieved it. He pressed a number he knew well and grabbed his jacket on the way out the front door.

      He ran down the hillside from his house and pounded across the wooden dock that stretched out into the private cove that fed into Table Rock Lake. He was jumping onto his jet bike when the groggy voice of his friend splintered a half-conscious greeting through his cell phone.

      “Dane? Graham. Sorry to do this, but can I use your speedboat? I need to get to my rental lodge fast.” He explained the situation in terse, shouted sentences as he revved the motor of his jet bike and raced from the protected cove to the other side of the lake. The chill of the moist, early-spring air bit into his skin, and he realized he’d be frozen by the time he reached his destination.

      “I’m coming with you.” Dane Gideon’s voice barely carried over the noise of the jet bike. “I’ll meet you down at my dock.” The connection broke, and Graham shoved the phone back into his pocket as he faced the freezing blast of cold air that rose from the lake and mingled with the spray of lake water in his face.

      Moments later, pulling up to the dock at the boys’ ranch that Dane owned and managed, Graham cut the motor and drifted into an empty slip.

      The echo of another motor drifted across the surface of the water from the opposite shore. He glanced over his shoulder and glimpsed a set of headlights bobbing a quarter of a mile west of his own place, from the municipal dock at Hideaway.

      The residents of their small village, set along the shore of Table Rock Lake, depended almost as much on boats as automobiles for transportation locally. At this time in the early-morning hours, however, Hideaway slept.

      Graham looked up the hill to see the bouncing beam of a flashlight. Footsteps rushed down from the huge farmhouse that provided shelter for twelve boys. Okay, he saw two bouncing beams.

      “I called Taylor Jackson and Nathan Trask.” Dane’s calm but breathless voice sounded as he reached the dock, followed by Blaze Farmer, a college student and part-time resident of the ranch.

      “Is that who’s coming across the lake?” Graham asked.

      “That’s right.” Dane’s silver-blond hair gleamed in the flashlight and headlight glow as he and Blaze released the Mystique from its moorings and pushed it from the slip. “Get in. They’re going to follow us in Taylor’s Sea Ray.”

      Blaze rubbed his ebony hands together in obvious anticipation. “I think they just want to race. They’ve been threatening to go head-to-head ever since Taylor got his pride and joy, but I never thought they’d do it at night.”

      “We’re not racing,” Dane said.

      “Looks like it to me,” Blaze said.

      Dane waited until they idled past the no-wake zone, then gunned the motor and flashed his lights at the approaching boat. “We’re just leading the way.”

       Chapter Two

       A s Willow ran to the final apartment on the top level, she glanced over her shoulder to see a knot of renters gathered in the large gazebo in the middle of the lawn, watching the inferno. She prayed with fervent passion that it wouldn’t spread beyond Preston’s place.

      Something exploded within the maelstrom. Sparks rose in the night sky, mingling with plumes of smoke and flames. The roar intensified and the heat reached across the expanse

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