4

WHEN HAD TY TURNED into such a jerk? “Oh my gosh, Brette, what happened to you?” Even as the words left his mouth, Ty wanted to yank them back. Or maybe reach out and clamp his hands over Brette’s ears. No, no—

Appropriately, her eyes widened, her mouth opened. He cringed. “Oh, Brette, I’m so sorry. I . . . I don’t know why I said that.”

She took a breath. Then her eyes started to glaze, and she looked away. “No, it’s fine. No big deal. I know I look . . . different.”

Around him, the searchers were loading up their breakfast plates and shoveling food down as they outlined their search grid.

Ty had lost his appetite. “It’s not fine. I can’t believe I said that—I’m so sorry.” He longed to take her hands, no, to pull her into his arms.

Tell her that she was safe, that whatever had happened to her would never happen again—

“I forgive you. Now, please just leave me alone.” She ran her hand across her cheek, intensely focused on her camera.

He deserved that, he knew it. But he couldn’t move, permanently affixed on his knees right in front of her.

Until Gage’s hand on his arm dragged him to his feet. Gage, who wore such a fierce, protective expression it made Ty wonder just how much Gage knew.

And then he found out. Because Gage hauled him out onto the front porch, closing the door behind him.

“Seriously?” Gage said. He had his long hair tied back in a low man bun, wore a bandanna around the whole mess, looking less SAR and more hitchhiker. Except for the seriousness in his eyes. “Dude, she had cancer.”

Ty stared at Gage. Cancer.

“Yeah.” Gage pitched his voice low. “She took off because she had breast cancer. She’s been in and out of the hospital for the past year and a half. Had some pretty major surgery, if you know what I mean.”

Oh. Oh. Then, wait one doggone moment . . . “She had cancer and you didn’t tell me?”

He realized his voice held an edge, but he couldn’t stop his emotions from running roughshod over his common sense.

“She asked Ella to keep her condition private. She didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for her.”

“She did this alone?” His voice had turned into a growl. He shook his head, darkness like a fist inside him. “I don’t care what she said, she shouldn’t have been alone.”

Gage didn’t move. “You better step back, pal, because I don’t like the way you’re looking at me.”

Ty took a breath, his jaw tight. Yeah, maybe, because he had a visual right then of slamming his fist into his best friend’s face.

He turned and walked away from Gage, down the porch. Cancer.

“It wasn’t my idea not to tell you. And let’s remember that she walked away from you.”

Ty glanced at him, not sure he shouldn’t act on his first impulse. Still, maybe this was his fault, at least partly. “She took off because she didn’t want me paying her bills.”

Gage had caught up to him. “Huh?”

“You and Ella weren’t there—you were on the mountain searching for her brother—when Brette got really sick.”

“I remember, she had appendicitis.”

“Yeah. And I know it was only forty-eight hours, but we . . . we got close.”

Gage raised an eyebrow, and Ty didn’t contradict him. He relished the memory of their late-night conversation and the way she had let him kiss her when she woke from surgery. “So close, I thought we had a future.” He turned away. “She didn’t have any insurance. And when I found that out, I paid her hospital bill.”

“Whoa, that’s—”

Ty rounded on him. “C’mon. Besides, my family has a foundation for these kinds of things. But she was . . . furious.”

“You barely knew each other, Ty. That’s a pretty big step. What is it with this girl?”

Ty’s voice dropped. “I knew her enough. And I’ll tell you what’s with this girl . . .” He stepped back, blew out a breath, and dredged up the raw, frustrating truth. “I can’t shake her, Gage. Yeah, I only knew her for two days, but there was more than that between us. And I can’t get her off my mind. Maybe it’s because she has nobody else—”

“She has Ella.”

Ty’s mouth tightened.

“I’m just saying, she wasn’t completely alone. But . . .” Gage nodded. “Okay, I do get it. I couldn’t forget Ella either, regardless of how much I tried to kick her out of my system. But clearly Brette’s not the person she was eighteen months ago, and maybe it’s time to let her go.”

Ty folded his arms. “By the looks of her, maybe it’s time I step in.” He glanced over his shoulder. “What’s she doing with this Jonas Marshall guy, anyway?”

“She took a picture of a tornado last summer, in Colorado, and it ended up being sort of an internet sensation. Jonas runs a storm-chasing team, and she’s hitched on with them this summer to be their reporter-slash-photographer.”

And now Ella’s words yesterday made horrifying sense. “You mean, she’s been chasing tornadoes all summer? Risking her life?”

“She needed a job.”

Ty closed his eyes.

“You can’t fix everything, Ty.”

He didn’t want to fix everything. Just the things he could do something about. Like find Chet. And be a friend to Brette.

He wanted to weep at the haunted look in her eyes. “When I met her, Brette was . . . she was full of life. She searched for the good in people, wanted to write about heroes, and change the world just a little by her inspirational stories.” He met Gage's eyes. “The woman I see sitting in there is dark and shadowed and hurting. And . . . it’s killing me.”

Despite himself, his emotions bled into his words. “I’ve been praying for her for nearly a year, bro, and for some reason, God brought her back on my radar today.”

“Because Chet’s missing,” Gage said. “That’s why we’re here.”

“We’re here because someone needs help. It’s not just Chet. Or Creed.”

“Or me.”

Brette stood on the porch, barefoot and holding a glass of juice. She set it on the railing. “Talk a little louder, I don’t think the people in Missouri heard you.”

“Sorry,” Ty said, but frankly, he didn’t care who heard him.

He cared about her, and it wasn’t a secret to anyone who knew him.

Maybe, however, she hadn’t gotten the message. He advanced toward her, ignoring Gage’s warning look. “Brette, I’m sorry for what I said in there. But you should have told me that you were sick. I . . . I could have helped.”

She drew in a breath. “See, that’s the problem. Yeah, you would have helped. You would have dropped everything to take care of me, and I would have been helpless to stop you. I could barely crawl to the bathroom to throw up. Sometimes I just slept in there because I was too weak to go back to bed.”

“Brette—”

“I would have started depending on you. Needing you. And yeah, you would have paid my massive bills, and then suddenly I would have looked up and you would be so far in my life I wouldn’t be able to breathe without you.”

“How is that bad?”

“Because I don’t want to be dependent on anyone, Ty. I don’t . . .” She closed her eyes, pinched the bridge of her nose. “It’s never wise to depend on someone . . . they’ll always let you down.”

“That’s not fair—”

Her eyes flashed. “My parents trusted Damien Taggert to invest their money, and he destroyed them.”

Right. The author of the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, and the man to whom her parents had given their life savings. The savings they might have used to fight her mother’s cancer. When all else had failed, her father had taken his life, trying to make it look like an accident in hopes of giving her the life insurance policy.

“I’m not seeing how I’m like Damien Taggert,” Ty said quietly.

Her mouth tightened. “When I met you, you swept me off my feet. For the first time, I’d found a real hero. And then I found out you lied to me.”

Ty opened his mouth to defend himself, but she held up her hand. “And it’s not because you’re a thief, like Damien, but because you care. Too much. You care too much, Ty.”

She could have punched him with less effect.

“Listen, I get it. You were protecting your friend Jess, aka Selene Taggert, when you said you didn’t know her. But you didn’t think twice about paying my bill.”

“I was trying to help.”

“You’re always trying to help. And all of that is gallant, but . . . that’s my point. You’re the kind of guy who wants to fix everything, but you can’t fix this.” She fanned her hands over her body.

“I don’t have to fix it. I just wanted to . . . I wanted to help.”

“I don’t want your help.”

He stared at her, the words digging in, finding root. “Okay, Brette. Fine. You’re right, you don’t owe me an explanation. Or even a footstep into your life. But I’m here if you need me.”

She shook her head. “You just don’t give up, do you?”

Kacey pushed out the door, onto the porch. “You ready to go, Ty?”

Not hardly. “Yeah.”

Brette glanced at Kacey. “I’ll go with you. We need aerial shots so we can blow them up and see if we missed anything.”

“Good idea,” Kacey said and stepped aside as Jonas, Ned, and Garrett, along with a few of Ben’s bandmates, walked past them and headed to parked cars.

Ben came out, put his arm around Kacey, and drew her aside. Ty heard the conversation as he headed inside. “You’re so tired, honey. Are you okay to fly?”

Brette hadn’t said she didn’t have feelings for him—in fact, it sounded like the opposite. “I would have started depending on you. Needing you.”

Maybe he did care too much. Except, was there such a thing? And sorry, but the last thing he would do is let Brette down.

As long as he had strength in his body, he planned on being the guy who showed up, stayed the course. Rescued.

She didn’t know him, not at all. And he barely knew her. But he knew one thing. God had brought her back into his life. And Ty planned on showing her exactly who he was.

The guy who cared so much he brought the people he loved home.

Really, she didn’t know who she was anymore.

Brette put the earphones on and heard Kacey’s voice over the coms, checking in with her passengers.

“All set,” Brette said, her gaze on Ty, who sat in the other pilot seat, helping Kacey run through her checklist.

Yep, she simply hadn’t believed her own words when she’d stood on that porch and neatly taken poor Ty apart. Ripped to shreds all his good intentions, deliberately wounding him.

He hadn’t deserved it.

Because Ty was a good man. Kind and sweet and sacrificial, and when he’d been on his knees before her, his pale green eyes had looked at her with such longing, she nearly forgot her common sense and threw herself at him.

Nearly told him how it had broken her heart to leave him.

Sometimes she let herself imagine what it might have been like to stay, to cling to him. To let him be the hero she’d seen he could be.

But that what-if included her hair falling out in clumps in his hands, him scraping her off the bathroom floor, holding her as her body was racked with the dry heaves.

Cancer was embarrassing, heart-wrenching, and thoroughly exhausting, for the caregiver as much as for the patient. And Ty would spend himself for her, just like she had for her mother.

She’d seen that truth in his eyes when she’d woken after surgery to see him sitting by her bed. He wasn’t walking out of her life. And she couldn’t take him into the darkness with her.

They finished their preflight check and Kacey fired up the chopper. Brette had only ridden in a chopper once—with Eason. Unfortunately, the memory dragged up all the good reasons she needed to shut the door on Ty.

Despite how good he looked, with that dark hair tousled and nicking the collar of his shirt. He wore a T-shirt, a pair of jeans, and hiking boots and looked every inch the guy who could save the day.

Keep the storms from destroying her world.

Worse, the man had an addicting kind of smile, and she probably needed to avert her eyes around him.

Ty handed back a map, a search grid of the area to the south of Highway 7, the first possible escape point.

Ben, Jonas, and the rest of the searchers would take the highways and side roads around Duck Lake.

The power of the bird hummed through her as they took off. They rose above the baseball field, then higher, until they soared over houses, the main street. Not high enough for the cars to turn to Matchbox, but it afforded her an ample view to snap a wide shot of the destruction.

“I’ll fly along the highway, first one side, then the other. If you see something and you want me to come in closer, let me know,” Kacey said.

They lifted over the tiny town of Chester, then headed west. She snapped a shot of the Marshall vineyard, and then Kacey angled them along Garden Avenue.

The sun had turned the fields a rich emerald, still glistening with the dew. From this angle, Brette got a view of the totality of the tornado’s power—trees torn from the roots now strewn on metal buildings, machinery upended, fencing wadded and tangled. Like a spoon, the twister had dragged through the road, carving out a trough now filled with water and debris.

Brette took a picture of the destructive trail through the fields. The crops were squashed and ripped as if trampled by the legendary blue ox.

The carcasses of cows and a horse bloated in the morning sun.

They flew past a family digging through the splinters of what had once been a garage. A damaged silo spilled a half-year’s harvest of sorghum onto the earth.

She took a shot of a car trapped in a copse of trees and even pointed it out to Ty. He nodded, and Kacey flew in for a closer look.

A pickup, rusted, its back end filled with water.

They flew on and finally hit the highway. In the ditch, a giant power line stanchion was mangled like a twisty tie. She imagined herself being chased by a tornado—where would she go?

Definitely not toward the dilapidated gray barn, its slats strewn across a barren yard. Or toward the steel feed bins, now gutted.

It gave her a moment of pause. Where did someone go for shelter when they were facing death?

She glanced at Ty, those wide shoulders. He navigated for Kacey as they worked the search grid.

“I used to be a pilot.” She didn’t know why, but the words he’d spoken to her eighteen months ago shifted through her. That, and the fact that although he hadn’t told her everything, he’d been willing to tell her the story of his accident, the one that had destroyed his knee and nearly gotten Chet King killed.

She hadn’t thought about how this search might dredge up memories, even a desperation to find the man he’d nearly killed, to save his life, again.

“We were caught in a tornado this summer and we had to get out and hide in a ditch,” she said into her mic.

Ty turned in his seat, his eyes hard in hers.

So maybe she shouldn’t have said that, but . . . “What if Chet did that? Maybe his car got swept up, and he’s just wandering around in a field.”

Ty paused. “Good thinking.”

She focused on the ditches but saw nothing that looked like a gray Taurus.

They repeated the search along the next stretch of highway, this one farther west and untouched by the tornado.

“Where to now?” Kacey said, glancing at Ty.

He ran his finger along the highway. “Let’s follow the tornado’s path north.”

Kacey took them along the highway, where the funnel had jumped the asphalt, and then north toward the school.

Brette spied Jonas talking with a cop in the parking lot of the school. A small group of what she assumed might be worried parents wandered around the debris. Jonas looked up, tenting his hand over his eyes.

They followed the highway toward town, taking the trail through the festival grounds. She took shots of the upturned RVs, the tents strewn across the mud, the remains of the snack shacks. She spied the building where Ben and Shae had hidden out, a warehouse in the middle of the parking lot. Toppled semis lay like carcasses glinting in the sunlight.

They flew farther north, toward Duck Lake, and the destruction lessened, with only a house or two in the path. A suburban pocket of new construction, however, lay in splinters, an entire neighborhood of uninhabited, newly developed houses down to two-foot boards.

The road to the housing development dead-ended in a depressed culvert jammed with construction debris. An excavator had fallen on its side, the treads like feet against a drainage culvert.

“At least the neighborhood was still uninhabited,” Ty said in his mic, voicing her thoughts.

Duck Lake glistened in the distance, on the other side of a two-lane paved road. Off the side of the road, an abandoned farmhouse had lost its roof. Giant elms, probably once planted by an industrious owner, littered the drive like sticks after a storm, the branches turning to gnarled hands reaching heavenward in supplication. A windmill miraculously missing only a few of its blades blew in the breeze.

As they drew nearer, she spied a glint of metal hidden under the great branches and focused on it. Snapped a shot, then looked at it.

“Get in closer to that car.” She leaned up, pointing to the tree off to their right.

Kacey angled the chopper toward the tree, hovered above, and Brette took another shot. The tree had fallen smack on top of the car, crushing the roof. She handed her camera up to Ty. “That look like a Taurus to you?”

“I don’t know. But it’s gray. Kacey, can you put her down?”

Kacey angled the chopper away, to a nearby field.

Ty was out nearly before the rotors stopped spinning, Brette on his heels. The air still smelled of fresh-cut grass, so much torn foliage and dirt in the wind. The car’s hood was pancaked beneath the broken trunk of the elms, encased in its scruffy arms. Ty scrambled over to the car. Peered in the window. “There’s someone in here!”

Oh no, no . . .

She remembered Chet from her time in Montana. Kind, wise, in his early seventies. Salt-and-pepper hair, blue eyes like his son, Ben—and with his wry smile, he sort of reminded her of Harrison Ford, the recent version. Please, please, let him be alive.

Ty was pulling at the door.

She peered in the other side.

Crushed along the front seat, a man lay unconscious. “Hey there!” She pounded on the hood, trying to wake him, but he didn’t move. Cracks webbed the front glass.

“I can’t get the door open.” Ty climbed onto the hood and peered into the glass. “It doesn’t look like Chet, but . . . this is definitely a gray Taurus.”

“Maybe it’s the owner.” She glanced at the farmhouse. From here, she could see that another elm had crashed through the roof in the back, tearing through the house. Glass littered the lawn, and curtains were blowing through the windows. But otherwise, the place looked deserted—the grass was jungle high, vines were snaking through the siding, and the paint was peeling off the porch.

“I don’t think he belongs here. He might have been trying to get away from the storm.”

And only managed to trap himself in his car. Her thoughts ran back to the near miss in Dodge, the way she’d fought Jonas’s help.

“I’ll call the team,” Kacey said and ran back to the chopper.

“Do you think he’s dead?” Brette said.

“I don’t know, but we need to get in there and assess him. I think I can go in through the back window.”

“Ty, be serious. That tree is heavy, and any shift of weight could make it fall farther.”

He slid off the hood. “I am serious. He needs help, and I’m not just going to stand here and wait for the team to show up.” He jogged toward the chopper and returned with a large duffel bag.

He set it down, opened the bag, and dragged out a blanket, gloves, and what looked like a long, curved wrench. “Aw, I love ya, Gage.”

“What is that?”

“It’s a rescue tool—sort of a wrench and pry bar.” He picked up the blanket and headed to the back of the car. “Okay, listen, you watch the tree. Tell me how much it moves.”

How much, not if. Oh, she didn’t like this.

Kacey was running back to him. “Ty, what are you doing?”

He stepped up to the back window, put on the gloves, and shoved the pry bar into the frame. “Getting inside.”

The window broke, shattering in one solid, webbed piece as he worked the bar into the frame, but the safety glass kept it from exploding out. After managing to tear it free from the frame, he grabbed the glass and peeled it out in nearly one piece. It fell onto the lawn.

“I’m going in.”

“Oh, Ty, please be careful.” Brette couldn’t help it, nor the tone of her voice as he stretched his lanky self over the trunk, then slid into the hole made by the back window. The tree had crushed the roof onto the front bucket seats, but Ty was able to scoot into the back and crouch into the well of the backseats.

Kacey pointed the flashlight into the depths of the car, which was shadowed and creaking with the adjustment of Ty’s weight.

“He’s wedged over the console,” Ty said. “I think I can reach his carotid artery.”

He pressed his arm through the opening between the seats.

If she’d doubted it before, watching Ty maneuver his way into the tiny compartment told Brette one thing. Yes, he cared, too much, but didn’t people need rescuers in their lives, people who wouldn’t give up on them?

“I got a pulse! He’s alive!” Ty backed out just as she heard a siren mourning into the midafternoon air. A police cruiser, followed by Jonas’s Suburban, kicked up mud as the vehicles turned into the farm drive.

“We have a fire truck on the way,” the patrolman said as he got out.

Ty had turned back to the victim and was speaking in low tones.

“We need chainsaws, chains, and muscle,” Kacey said as Jonas ran over.

“I have a toolbox in the bed of my truck,” Garrett said and headed for his truck.

Moments later, they had assembled and gripped one end of the tree as Garrett Marshall attacked it with the chainsaw.

One section of the massive elm separated from the roots, guided to the ground by the team.

Jonas climbed onto the hood and took the chainsaw and safety glasses from his father and attacked the massive trunk from the other side. The other side fell, leaving only the trunk that dented the car.

“Let’s get this tree off the roof!”

Ty was still inside.

“I’m not leaving him,” he said, looking out the back window at Brette. “He’s awake, I think. He’s got ahold of my hand.” He glanced out at his team. “Try not to kill me!”

Not funny.

A truck pulled in, and in a second, Gage and Ben piled out.

“Get him out!” Ben said.

“It’s not Chet,” Kacey said, intercepting him, her hands on his shoulders.

“But this is his rental vehicle,” Ben said. “I recognize the plates.”

Indiana plates. Yes, maybe a rental. Brette took a picture of the team fighting with the tree.

“Let’s see if we can roll it off the front,” Garrett said.

The team, including Kacey and the cop, braced themselves on one side, Jonas, Ned, and Garrett on the other, and on the count of three they picked it up and rolled it over the hood. It smashed onto the ground with a lethal thud.

Gage went to work on the driver’s door. “No good—we gotta go through the back.”

In a moment, he’d wedged the back driver’s side door open. “Let me in, Ty.”

“No. I got an idea—can you rip off the back of the driver’s seat? Or maybe put it down all the way? We could maneuver him out through the back.”

Gage was already reaching inside for the drop handle. The seat fell back. Ty did the same with his side.

“Let’s get a collar on him before we move him,” Gage said and handed a pressure cuff to Ty.

Ty took his pressure.

“His pulse is weak, and he’s lost a lot of blood,” Ty said through the broken window. “Slide in a backboard.”

He worked on the collar while Kacey procured a backboard from the chopper. Gage and Ben moved the victim’s legs onto the board as Ty held his head steady, then in one motion they rolled him onto the board.

“Slide him out—I’m stuck in here,” Ty said.

The man came out of the car, Ty balancing his head. He bumped his own on the car getting out, and Brette winced.

They put him on the ground, and Gage dropped down beside him to check his vitals. Brette put down her camera, a little woozy at the man’s injuries. A dislocated and severely lacerated shoulder, a head trauma from the ugly hematoma over his eyes, and internal bleeding, given the bruise that turned his skin a deep red along his stomach.

“Who is he?”

The patrolman walked over. “Oh, wow. That’s Craig Nelson. He’s one of the assistant coaches for the cross-country team.”

“What’s he doing in my dad’s car?” Ben asked.

“His BP is low—we need to get him to a hospital,” Gage said, removing the cuff. He flickered his phone light over the man’s eyes. “His pupils are unequal but reactive. He’s got a serious head trauma.”

He stood up. Looked at the patrolman.

“There’s a clinic in Winthrop, but the closest trauma hospital with a helipad is the Ridgecrest Medical Center in Waconia.”

“Call them,” Ty said. He walked over to the chopper, and as Brette watched, he began taking out her seat, along with the one next to it. He dumped them on the grass.

Ben picked up one end of the stretcher, Gage the other.

And just like that, they’d loaded Craig into the chopper, secured him to the floor. Gage got into the back, and Kacey strode toward the chopper.

“I’m going,” Ben said. “I need to know if he knows anything about my dad.”

Ty had caught up to him. “Ben—listen, I’ll go. Kacey needs a copilot—”

“Give it up, Ty. We all know you’re not flying this chopper anytime soon. I need to be there, find out what happened. Gage will come with us. You take the truck and keep looking.”

Brette wanted to flinch at the look on Ty’s face, the intake of his breath, the way his mouth tightened. She searched for fight in his eyes, but he blew out a breath, nodded. “We’ll keep you posted.”

Huh.

Ty stepped away from the chopper as Kacey fired it up.

By the time the fire engine had arrived, the bird had lifted off and was soaring into the blue.

Ty cupped his hand over his eyes, watching it go. Jonas pulled a map out of the glove compartment of his vehicle and spread it over the hood, ready for a new search grid.

But Ty kept watching the chopper, so much raw worry, even a hint of regret on his face, that Brette couldn’t help but wonder if that was the expression he’d worn when she walked out of his life.

And heaven forgive her, a weak, pitiful side of her desperately hoped so.

Ben wasn’t sure how, but he’d managed to make everything worse. Instead of spending the weekend, right now, married to his beautiful fiancée, enjoying the first night of a very overdue honeymoon, he was pacing the waiting area of Ridgecrest Medical Center. Alternated staring down the hallway toward the ICU and turning to look out the window at the manicured lawns and the parking lot.

Occasionally his gaze landed on Kacey, who’d curled up on the waiting area love seat, her head on her hands, collapsed into slumber.

He sat down on the chair next to her, wanting to run his fingers through her curly hair, trace the way it ribboned down her neck. She slept hard, falling completely away within seconds of putting her head down, a practice probably honed from her years in the military sleeping on cots, dirt, or wherever she could find shut-eye.

They’d lived such different lives. The regret could consume him if he let it, the way events had played out sixteen years ago when their daughter Audrey was born. He’d managed to rebuild their life into something close to what they’d dreamed of during their teenage romance.

Almost.

He leaned forward, scrubbed his hands down his face. If he hadn’t been so intent on rebuilding his music career too, if he hadn’t decided to start a record label in the nowheresville of western Montana, their lives might be perfect right now. Okay, maybe he would be shuttling back and forth to Nashville to resurrect his career, probably going out on tour for a few months at a time. But the choice to start his own label also meant he had to manage the album production and releases of the fledgling artists he’d signed. It meant investment, which meant capital, which meant him practically living on the road to scrub up enough cash with his own talents to float the launch of the rookies he’d signed.

And yes, when those rookies sold albums, the money eventually made it back to Mountain Song Records, only to be recycled for more advertising, more production costs.

He leaned back, exhausted with the numbers.

With his life.

With the longing to leap off the hamster wheel and just be a husband. A dad to the most amazing daughter on the planet.

And a son to a dad who’d already had one brush with death.

He couldn’t go through this again.

Lord, please, please let my dad be okay.

Ben pulled out his phone and texted Ty. Have you found him? He’d been a little rough on the guy back when Ty suggested getting into the chopper, but Ben offered desperation as his excuse.

Ty texted back in moments. No, sorry. Still looking.

Maybe his incoming text had awakened Kacey, because she sat up, blinked. She pulled the ponytail holder from her hair and finger combed it. “Is Craig out of surgery?”

“Yeah. They said they’ll let me know when he wakes up.”

“Has his family been notified?”

“I don’t know. I left that to the police. But it’s been nearly four hours since we got here . . .” He sighed and she looked over at him.

“My dad’s been missing for nearly twenty-four hours.” He shook his head. “He’s so resourceful. The fact that he hasn’t gotten to help . . .”

To his horror, his throat tightened, his eyes burned. He looked away from her, blinking.

“Babe.” She came around in front of him, kneeling before him. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll find him.”

“It’s all my fault.” Shoot, his voice emerged just a little wrecked. But, there it was. “I screwed everything up.”

She frowned.

He met her beautiful eyes. “I thought I could juggle our lives and figure it out, but . . . I’m in over my head, Kace. I never see you, and Audrey’s growing up without me. And my dad . . .” His voice broke, and he closed his eyes. “He’s out here because of me. And I can’t live this way anymore.”

Kacey put her arms around him. “We don’t have to talk about this right now, Ben.” She tucked his head on her shoulder. “It’s okay, I get it. I’ve been . . . I agree. It’s . . . hard. Too hard.”

He closed his eyes, his hand over his mouth to keep himself from completely unraveling. Took a shaky breath.

“Shh,” she said, and he leaned into her embrace. He wanted to stay like this forever, no more goodbyes, no more long-distance phone calls and Skype sessions. He wanted to go out on the searches with her and maybe someday have more children, and finally move into the home he’d purchased for them, let her fill it with all the things that made Kacey exactly the woman he loved. Always loved, from the first day he’d met her.

He lifted his face and caught hers in his hands, the emotions thick in his chest. Her eyes widened only a moment before he leaned down and kissed her. Something sweet and lingering, reacquainting himself with the taste of her. Salty skin from the long hours she’d already put in, but beneath that, he savored the deeper, familiar fragrance that belonged to the woman who would be his wife. His hand went to her hair, his fingers tangled through it. He backed away, touched his forehead to hers, still trying not to cry. “Wow, I love you.”

Tears glistened in her eyes as she nodded. “I love you too. I always will, no matter what happens.” She took a breath, and he noticed how it shuddered out, as if she might miss him just as much.

The need, the hunger for her rose through him, made him lean toward her. But she stopped him, taking his hands in hers. “I just think, though, we shouldn’t make it any harder than it is.”

Oh. Right. Because seventeen years ago they’d walked down that road, went too far, and well, he would never call Audrey a mistake, but they were trying to walk a different path this time around.

He nodded, but really, what did she think would happen here in the waiting room?

Still, maybe the last thing they needed was him stirring up temptation. “Okay.”

“Okay,” she said, her mouth a tight line.

A nurse emerged from the double doors. She wore a lavender uniform, her blonde hair in a ponytail. “Hey. I’m Jen. You wanted to see your brother?”

Ben startled just for a second before he realized his lie had circled back around. “Yeah.”

“He’s awake but a little groggy, but I’m sure he’ll be glad to see family.”

Kacey gave him a sidelong glance.

They followed Jen down a hallway, through double doors, and found Craig in a bed in the recovery room, attached to an IV, a heart monitor, and oxygen.

The chill in the room raised gooseflesh on Ben’s arm, seeped into his bones. Kacey slipped her hand into his.

“Can I talk to him?” Ben asked.

“Yeah, go ahead. I’ll be at the desk if you need me.” Jen headed across the room to a counter flanked by monitors.

Ben stepped up to the bed rail. “Uh . . .” He leaned close. “Craig. Can you wake up, buddy?”

Eyelids flickered and the man rolled his eyes toward Ben. “Who are you?”

Ben glanced at the nurse, but the mumble wouldn’t reach the desk, so . . . “I’m one of the guys who found you. You were in a car, under a tree.”

“Mmmhmm.”

“But the car—it belongs to a guy named Chet King. He’s . . . my dad. And I’m looking for him. How did you get the car, and . . . where’s my dad?”

Craig looked at him, blinking heavily. “Um . . . he . . .”

His eyes closed.

“Aw, c’mon, stay with me.”

Craig’s eyes opened again. “Who are you?”

“We found you,” Kacey said, her voice a little rougher than Ben’s. “What were you doing in that car?”

He looked at her. “I was trying to get away.”

“From the tornado?”

“Mmmhmm.”

“But where did you get the car?”

“From the ole guy . . . I wen’ to the house. I wanted to fin’ a shelter, but he pulled up. Tol’ me to keep driving . . .”

“It’s like talking to a drunk man,” Kacey muttered.

Craig, however, ignored her. “I didn’t wanna go. He said we had no time . . . and then, it was there. Ri’ there. So loud. An . . . He leff me there.”

Ben stared at him. “He left you there?”

“He leff me. Just leff me. So I hid, but . . . storm was too big. I got in the car . . .” His eyes closed. “So loud. So . . .”

“Where is the van? And what happened to the old guy?”

“Dunno,” he said, his eyes still closed. “They leff me.” He took a long breath, sighed. “The kids . . . they leff me!” He closed his eyes, emitted a snore.

Ben took Kacey’s hand. “C’mon.”

He nodded to the nurse as they left the recovery area and headed out past the waiting room, all the way up the stairs to the roof. He dialed Ty.

“Anything?” Ty said, without greeting.

“Yeah. I think I know what happened. I’ll bet my dad saw the clouds on his way to the B & B. Maybe he even turned around, but somehow he met the van of kids. Sounds like Craig had pulled up to the farm, hoping to find a storm shelter. Maybe my dad saw him and realized they didn’t have time, that their best bet was to keep driving, outrun the storm, but the driver didn’t want to. It sounds like my dad made the hard decision to leave him there and take off with the kids.”

“He took the van?”

“Apparently.”

“And where did he go?”

“I don’t know. Craig said the twister was on top of them, so my guess is, as far away as he could get.”

“Okay, we’ll map it out, come up with a new search grid. Are you coming back?”

Ben looked at Kacey still holding his hand. “Yeah. We’ll meet you back at the Marshalls’.”

He hung up and shoved the phone into his pocket. Kacey glanced at the chopper. “I need to do my preflight check.”

“I know. But first . . .” He pulled her to himself, his arms around her, holding her tight, just needing to hang on for a moment, to feel something solid and real and permanent. Something that wouldn’t disappear when life swept in and knocked him over.

“Babe,” he said, putting her away from him, meeting her eyes. “Thank you for being here, for staying with me, for flying out through the night from Montana. I don’t know what I would do without you.”

She touched her hand to his cheek. Sighed. “I’ll always be here for you, Ben.”

Then she kissed his cheek in the soft place right below his eye, and he sighed, a long release of the regret and fear wadded up in his chest.

Then she turned and headed to her chopper.

The first thing he planned on doing after he found his father was to marry the woman he couldn’t live without one day longer.