he knew without a doubt that his instincts were on target. She must be prevented from risking her well-being. He didn’t know why he felt so protective of her all of a sudden but he did. And he was stubborn enough to insist on getting his way. This time.
In the next war of wills they faced, maybe he’d let her win, or at least think she had. In this case, however, he was not about to back down. Lives hung in the balance.
As Maya stood beside her boss and stared at the havoc the storm had wrought, she was speechless. Breathless.
The town gazebo had become a scattered mass of wood that looked like a carelessly tossed handful of splintered matchsticks.
The usually pristine, well-manicured green grass of the park that paralleled Main Street and bordered the High Plains River on the opposite side was strewn with all kinds of materials, including puffy, pink shreds of fiberglass insulation that had apparently been torn from houses nearby. To release that kind of interior construction, Maya knew that roofs and sidewalls of homes had to have been ripped apart.
And the formerly beautiful trees. She was astounded. “What a shame. Look at the poor cottonwoods.”
“All the more proof that you wouldn’t have made it to the church in one piece,” he reminded her.
She hated to agree but he was right. Many of the trees that had lined the riverbank had been toppled, with nearly their entire root balls sticking out of the ground. Those that were still standing had limbs broken away or their whole tops twisted off. The remaining leafless branches were draped with black tar paper and other flexible materials that flapped frantically like ugly, misshapen flags.
Sheets of corrugated tin had been ripped from roofs and bent tightly around the windward side of the more substantial portions of some of the trees, as if squeezed in place by a giant, malevolent hand. If no one in or around High Plains had been killed in this storm it would be a wonder.
Raising her gaze to the horizon across the river, she gasped. Her hand flew to her throat. The danger wasn’t over. Her boss had been right about that, too. A wall cloud lay just above the northern hills. And it looked as if it was located directly over her brother Jesse’s Circle L Ranch!
As she watched, the solid line at the bottom of the black horizontal wall fractured. Dark masses began to drop lower into the lighter sky in several places. At first they just looked like more clouds.
Then, one of them became a finger of spinning chaos and snaked downward, moving as if it were a double-jointed talon with a razor-sharp claw at its base, ready to tear at the land below. To rip everything it touched to shreds. To kill anything—anyone—in its path.
Dear Jesus. Maya prayed, pointing, trembling. “Another tornado!”
“I see it.” He slipped his free arm around her shoulders and gave her a supportive squeeze. “Don’t worry. That one’s a long way from here. Judging by the direction everything is moving, it won’t come anywhere near us.”
“I know,” Maya replied, having to fight the lump in her throat in order to speak. “But my oldest brother and his family live out there.”
“Where?”
She shivered, glad he had hold of her as she took a shaky breath and made herself say, “Right at the base of that funnel cloud.”
Greg wished he could control nature, make the storm go away for good. Fortunately, the overall turbulence didn’t seem as if it was going to last much longer.
As they stood and watched, the snaking cord of the latest funnel cloud thinned, broke into sections, then retreated back into the ominous ebony cloud cover until there was no more sign of it.
The worst of the local wind and rain had tapered off, too, leaving stifling humidity. Greg wasn’t sure whether he was still soggy from his trip outside to rescue Tommy or if he was beginning to perspire, now that there was no electricity to run the air-conditioning. Probably both.
He looked Maya up and down, ending his perusal at her feet. “You’ll need some sensible shoes if we’re going to hike to the church from here. Are those all you have?”
“They’ll be fine. I’m used to wearing heels.”
“I know you are. The problem is the mess in the street, not your shoes.”
“I used to keep an old pair of sneakers in the trunk of my car. Unfortunately, I took them out last week.”
“I doubt it matters. Have you checked our parking lot?” He had not done so, either, yet judging by the damage to Main Street, the area at the rear of nearby stores and offices was probably just as big a disaster. If her car happened to be drivable, which was doubtful, there would still be no safe routes in or around High Plains, at least not for a while.
“You 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
