The Rancher and the Rock Star (28 page)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

T
HICK, VISCOUS AIR
had turned the afternoon into a sauna when Abby reached home and poured herself out of her car. The small sense of relief over finding a job at the tiny office supply store in town was overshadowed by frustration that a whole week’s new salary wouldn’t fix the dead air-conditioning in her car. Smearing her hair back from where it clung to her forehead in damp clumps, she looked for signs of life from the kids.

She hoped they were in better moods than when she’d left that morning.

Not that she could blame Dawson for being plain angry with his parents. Neither Gray nor the mysterious Ariel seemed able to converse like adults and reach any positive outcome. When Dawson had received an e-mail confirmation that his flight to England had been booked, he’d called his father in a rage. All Gray had done was say he’d fly back with him and work things out face-to-face. Dawson’s two-day temper tantrum even had Roscoe avoiding him.

Kim’s anger was more mysterious. Something had happened the night of the concert, and she refused to talk about it. Abby sighed. Dealing with one teenager was difficult. Dealing with two was like navigating a minefield on a rhinoceros.

She reached the back door, and Roscoe crawled from a cool spot under the granary, his tail wagging half-speed in the heat. “Hello my gorgeous boy.” Abby accepted a welcome-home kiss, and he ambled back to his dug-out.

Across the field a bank of dirty, silver-gray clouds boiled low on the horizon. Above them, the sky glowed sickly olive green. A niggle of concern edged into her mixed pot of emotions. The heat, the color of the sky, the odor of ozone and overripe grass spelled tornado watch. She changed her mind and called Roscoe into the house. Once inside, she called for the kids. Silence answered.

Switching on the kitchen radio she heard only music, no warnings. Dawson and Kim had to be in the barn, and Kim knew enough to keep an eye on the weather. Abby headed for her room, punching the TV remote en route.

The work-out clothes she donned were blessedly cool—a pair of microfiber blue short-shorts Gray had once hinted she should wear everywhere, and a pink tank top. Twisting her thick, soggy hair behind her head, she stuffed two chop-sticky spikes through the knot to keep it off her neck. After slipping on a pair of ancient tennis shoes, she returned to the living room in time to hear the special weather report she’d feared.

Listening to the counties on the watch list, Abby tied her shoes and spied her camera on the end table next to her chair. The sight caused a fresh wave of sorrow. She couldn’t think of taking pictures without thinking of the darkroom. She couldn’t think of the darkroom without memories of Gray’s kiss.

Nor could she forget he was directly responsible for putting photography back in her life.

But it all broke her heart afresh every time a memory surfaced.

The TV meteorologist reached Faribault County, and Abby sighed. If there was going to be a thunderstorm, she’d put the horses in the barn to avoid hail and thunder. If there was going to be a tornado, their chances were better outside, where they wouldn’t get trapped in a falling building. A frisson of nervousness traced through her stomach.

The sky had deepened to a thrashing-ocean green, and the clouds now appeared close enough to touch when Abby headed for the barn in search of Kim and Dawson. Instead of the kids, she was shocked to find Ed bent over Kim’s new tack trunk.

“Hello young one,” he said. “Success?”

“I got the job at Brenda’s.”

“That okay?”

“It’ll have to be for now.” She loved Ed—so blunt yet so non-judgmental. “What’s happening? Where are the kids?”

“Dunno.” He looked up. “I figured they were inside.”

“No. Did they go riding?”

“I think all the four-leggers are here. I came to fix that bad hinge on this trunk, and I found a few nails to pound along the way. One of the stall doors was hanging kinda poorly.”

“Oh, Ed, I don’t pay you enough for you to keep bailing me out.”

“You don’t pay me nothing, missy, and you better not ever try.” He harrumphed when she kissed his craggy cheek.

“I love you, Ed. So, where are my wayward children? There’s a tornado watch.”

Fifteen minutes later, they’d searched every inch of the barn and pastures. All horses were accounted for. All tack was in place. Still, Abby didn’t panic until she went back up to Kim’s room and found several drawers ransacked and her daughter’s teddy bear and pillow missing. A search of Dawson’s room also turned up a missing pillow as well as no sign of his laptop.

“Oh, dear God, Ed. He’s done it again. He’s run away and taken Kim with him.”

“Those crazy kids. Did they leave a note?”

No note, no messages on her computer, nothing could be found. At last, Ed picked up the phone and dialed his wife. When he smiled, Abby realized just how terrified she’d been.

“Sylvia says she left you a voice message about an hour ago.”

“Oh my gosh, how stupid of me.” Abby lifted the cordless off its base and heard the beeps indicating a new message. “I never checked.”

“Hi Abby,” the message said. “Just thought I’d tell you your two crazy kids are sneaking around up here with backpacks and pillows. They’re hunkered down in the new tool shed out back now, and I figure I’ll let Ed go talk to ’em when he gets back from your place.”

Relief filtered through her even as frustration boiled. She was going to strangle that boy to within an inch of his life.

“I’ll go up. Wanna come along?”

“You know what? You give ’em what for, send them back, and I’ll finish the job.”

He grinned with the kind of relish only a trusted older person could pull off and left Abby to monitor the weather and the phone. He’d been gone just long enough to walk home, when Abby heard the faint but gut-wrenching warble of a civil defense siren. She’d never liked the undulating moans of those alarms, and this time her kids were in harm’s way. She waited impatiently for Ed to call with news they were safe. She jumped when the phone rang.

“Ed?”

“Abby?” His voice was too quick, too clipped. “Abby, them kids aren’t here. Sylvie says she saw them go into the shed an hour ago and never saw them come out. But they’re gone.”

“Noooo.” She wailed to match the sirens. “Ed, please, check your basement. Check the extra rooms. Maybe they got nervous about the weather and are hiding until it blows over.”

Kim and Dawson weren’t anywhere at the Mertzes’. As the winds increased with each passing minute, and as the TV and radio confirmed there were three tornados on the ground within ten miles of Kennison Falls, Abby dissolved into unadulterated hysteria.

She called 911, and the dispatcher promised that even though all emergency vehicles were out and the children weren’t considered missing if they’d only been gone an hour or two, police would keep an eye open for two teenagers exposed to the storm. She knew she had to call Gray. He’d be rightfully furious if anything happened and he hadn’t been told. She imagined her own anger in the reverse situation.

The wind howled like Halloween. In the ugly, eerie dimness, tree branches whipped all the way to the ground. Her fingers trembled as she dialed the number Gray had given her. The one Kim had used to call about Gucci.

Tears clogged her throat. How could she have ignored the unbelievable lengths Gray must have gone to in order to get her horse back?
Oh, how come you don’t answer?
She got the voice-mail message: “Hey, you’ve reached Gray’s phone. Sorry it’s not really me. Leave your message and number and I’ll call you back.” His voice brought tears. The wind’s howl turned to an official roar.

“Gray! It’s Abby. I need you to call me. Kim and Dawson have run off in the middle of a tornado warning. It’s about six o’clock.” She sobbed, feeling like a fool—she who prided herself on being the rock in a crisis. “We can’t find them and you need to know . . . I’m sorry.” She was just blathering. “Please call back.”

She hung up. She redialed two more times. And then she remembered the piece of paper Spark had handed her before she’d left the party three nights ago. She jumped for her purse on the counter and dug frantically until she found her wallet. There. Spark’s cell phone number. She tried to still the violent quivering in her hands as she pressed the numbers. A small branch flew past her window.

“Hello?”

Abby sobbed with relief. “Spark? Spark, it’s Abby.”

“Darlin’? Wha . . . wrong?” The line was static-filled and broken.

“I need to find Gray. He’s not answering his phone.”

“Calm down . . . went to . . . mother’s. Now tell . . . what’s happen . . . Dawson?”

“Y . . . yes,” Abby struggled to stay calm. “He and Kim have run off, and we’re in the middle of a huge storm. T . . . tornadoes just miles away. Gray . . .” She knew from the dead air she’d lost the call. She dialed again, but there was no response. Cell phone, land line, everything was gone.

A crash resounded from outside, and Abby screeched. A horrifying noise, like a jet about to land where it shouldn’t, roared toward her, and she called Roscoe desperately. He came. She called Bird, and even he came. Two slinking, shivery mounds of helpless fur. She grabbed them both to her and hunkered next to the innermost hallway wall. Bird growled. Roscoe leaned into her, licking her neck, as nervous as she was—Dorothy and Toto.

“Please Lord. Please Lord. Please Lord.” She chanted the litany hoping God could read the rest of her prayer from her head. “Please, please, please . . .” The air smelled like ozone and smoke. She chanted until the jet flew straight over her head.

T
HE AFTERMATH WAS
pristine sunshine and glistening leaves like the movie
Twister
. Abby stood in her yard, shaking but alive, and Roscoe wagged his tail as if he’d protected her all along. Bird disappeared, no longer needing her. A disaster of twisted branches and leaves carpeted the lawn, and the rickety corncrib, as well as the garage roof, were no more. Her wildflowers lay sprawled flat like drunken party goers. Her heart wouldn’t leave her throat as she forced away images of what might have happened to her daughter and Dawson.

She sprinted to the barn, praying she’d missed the children somehow. Three-fourths of the shingles were gone, and her old silo was ground into rubble, but the barn was intact, the hay was safe, and all the horses, although agitated, were fine. But all her searching and desperate calling turned up no sign of the kids.

She dashed back up the driveway and past her house, panic fueling her strides. It took her and Roscoe five minutes of mud-slogging before she saw from a distance that Ed and Sylvia’s house still stood. Panting with her first spark of relief, she reached the top of the road, and a sob broke from her throat. Sylvia’s gorgeous lawn and flower beds looked like ground zero for a monster-truck rally. The small arena Ed had built for Kimmy when she’d been a little girl lay in a pick-up-sticks mess. She spotted her beloved neighbors, moving robotically through their shredded yard.

“Abby!” Sylvia met her half-way across the muddy expanse. “You’re all right. Thank the Lord.” The older woman gathered her into a fierce embrace.

“And you, too. Did the kids?” she asked, her heart wild in her chest.

Sylvia’s sad, gray headshake sent Abby’s stomach into her toes as fresh horror built. No, she thought. No, they couldn’t be lost, not today, it would be too cruel. “Tomorrow is July twenty-fifth,” she said, her whisper strangled.

Eleven years to the day since the accident.

“We’ll find them.” Sylvia wept, stroking her hair. “We’ll find them, honey.”

After another scouring of the Mertzes’ house, shed, and grounds turned up no sign of Kim or Dawson, they abandoned their houses and headed for town in Ed’s truck.

What greeted them was horror.

Only a fourth of beautiful Kennison Falls remained. The town’s residents filled the streets, milling like zombies, some sobbing, some sorting through the debris of a hundred bomb blasts. Twisted streetlamps littered the road, and the tatters of Independence Day flags lay in desecrated heaps. The year-old water tower was a tall amputated stump, and not a single old maple stood along Main Street.

Sylvia stared, ghost-faced. Ed’s rounded, old knuckles protruded skeletally as he gripped his wheel. Abby buried her head between her knees, her stomach heaving in disbelief and panic, and Sylvia stroked her back with a heavy motion. “They’re all right, honey. They’re all right.”

By dark everyone knew about the missing teens, and the town’s numbness was wearing off. As far as anyone could tell, Kim and Dawson were the only two humans unaccounted for. The toll on businesses, vehicles, venerable old trees, and landscaping was much higher. Dewey’s station was gone, the little library and its wonderful lions were gone, ten homes had been flattened. And, worst of all, the Loon Feather was a shell. The kitchen stood intact, three-and-a-half dining room walls remained, and several fragments of the huge mural remained, but half the roof had collapsed, along with the front entrance. There was no sign of her photos. No trace of Lester and Cotton’s cage. Even while she fought the horrifying knowledge that she was on the verge of losing another child, Abby wept for the stupid birds.

When it was too dark to continue searching, Karla tried to talk her into coming home with her, but Abby insisted on returning with Ed and Sylvia in case the children found their way back. Once she made sure her animals were safe and fed, and Sylvia had ensconced her on the couch with a thick handmade quilt and a gallon of tea, Abby finally allowed herself to bawl in earnest. After there were no more tears left, she didn’t feel better, but Ed stopped keeping vigil.

The pounding irritated her through the fog of a fitful sleep. She didn’t realize it was the door until the sharp, electronic bong of the doorbell frightened her awake.

“Kimmy???” She threw off the quilt and yanked the front door open with no care for caution.

Her breath caught. Gray stood on the porch, his eyes a wild mix of grief and concern. “Abby, Abby, thank God. You weren’t at your house, and I panicked.”