A knock on her door woke her in the middle of the night. “Lori, Lori,” Virginia said from the other side of the door. “We have an emergency.”
Lori immediately sprang out of bed and flung open the door. Dressed in her robe, with an expression of fear tightening her face, Virginia shook her head. “One of the children is missing. He must have left after the camp counselors fell asleep. They’ve looked all around the cabin and the barn and can’t find him anywhere.”
Him. Lori had a sinking sensation. “Reese?”
Virginia nodded. “We have to find him. It’s still raining out there. The streams are overflowing and the road is rained out. Maria and Geoffrey are stuck in town, and Cash can’t get through, either.”
“Oh, no,” Lori said, feeling helpless. “Let me get dressed so I can start looking, too.”
“I would take out one of the horses myself, but my arthritis has been giving me a fit,” Virginia said. “Lori, I know the conditions are terrible, but our best bet is if someone takes Lady to do the search. She’s sure-footed, gentle, and can always find her way back to the barn.”
Lori’s stomach clenched. Virginia needed her to step up. Virginia didn’t know what she was asking, and Lori was terrified she couldn’t deliver. “You think Lady can do this?” Lori asked at the same time she was asking herself if she could do it.
“I do,” Virginia said.
Lori knew what she had to do.
Chapter Twenty-one
“The great thing about life is just when you think you’re headed straight for the dump, you hit a curve that takes you to paradise.”
– SUNNY COLLINS
Underneath her jeans, T-shirt, rain cloak, and hat, Lori broke into a cold sweat as she approached the barn. Rain pelted relentlessly against her vinyl raincoat. Armed with a lantern, flashlight, first-aid kit, and cell phone that would be intermittently useless due to lack of coverage, she wished she could just have a one-minute conversation with Jackson.
Just one minute and her heart rate would settle down, her breathing would slow, and she would believe that she could do what she needed to do. She hadn’t ridden a horse alone in years.
Lanterns flickered nearby as two of the camp counselors searched for the little boy. Standing outside the barn, Lori closed her eyes and imagined Jackson ’s voice. “You can do anything you want. Anything.”
Taking a deep breath, Lori stepped inside the barn.
Virginia and another camp counselor, Mrs. Aliff, greeted her. “Try the north pasture first,” Virginia said.
Lori nodded and walked toward Lady’s stall. “Hey, Lady, I’m counting on you.” she whispered.
Mrs. Aliff came to stand beside her. “We hope you can find him. He’s a pistol, but he means so much to everyone. His parents, the other children.” The woman sniffed back tears. “He loves running games, races, tag, and hide and seek.”
Pushing her own anxiety aside for a moment, Lori covered the counselor’s hand with hers. “I know he likes to run. He ran circles around me this afternoon,” she said and mustered a smile. “I think he’s tough enough that he’ll still be running circles tomorrow.”
“I hope so.”
“Lady and I will do our best,” Lori said, feeling her nerves rise inside her again. Hauling the saddle from the tack room, she strapped it on, followed by the bridle, murmuring to the horse all along. All too aware of the horse’s size and strength, she led Lady out of the barn and prepared to mount.
Swallowing over the ball of nerves in her throat that refused to go away, she fought the urge to run. Her body still wrapped in cold sweat, she fought the urge to panic, to splinter into a million tiny, useless pieces.
“Are you okay?” Virginia asked from behind her.
“I’m good,” she lied, determined to make it the truth. Placing her left foot in the stirrup, she swung herself into the saddle and slid her other foot into a stirrup. For a second, the ground began to waver and swim. Light-headed, she gulped in deep breaths of air. She couldn’t pass out. She couldn’t. She had to do this.
No time to waste, she told herself and nudged the horse into a walk. Clinging for her life, she took it slow and moved north or, for her, right. The rain continued without abating, with the wind slapping moisture on her face every few moments. It was messy and miserable, and Lori could only imagine how frightened Reese must be.
The unpleasantness distracted her from her fear, and she urged Lady into a trot. “Not too fast,” she said in a soothing tone. “I don’t want you to slip, but let’s not poke.” Then she began to yell. “Reese! Reese!”
Two hours later, riding Lady was the least of her discomfort. Her throat hurt from yelling, and she was certain not one inch of her was dry. Worse yet, she didn’t know where she was, and there was no sign of Reese.
“Okay, let’s turn around and try a different direction,” she said to the well-mannered mare. “If you were an eight-year-old boy, where would you go in the middle of a torrential downpour?”
Lady gave a nod and snort as if she knew better than to wander out in this kind of weather.
“You are definitely due some serious apples after this,” Lori said and began to call for Reese.
An hour and a half later, she didn’t know whether to keep looking or head back to the barn. Out of sheer frustration, she called out, “Hide and seek, Reese. You’re it. Can you find me?” She repeated it for over twenty minutes. Her voice grew husky, breaking on every other word, and she paused and swallowed a sip from her water bottle.
She began to yell again but heard a faint sound. Rain splattered loudly on her drooping hat and vinyl raincoat. “Reese?” she croaked. “Reese?”
She heard another sound, high-pitched but indecipherable. Her pulse picked up. “Reese?”
“One, two, three on you,” a voice called. “You are it!”
Lori’s heart nearly exploded in her chest as she turned Lady toward the sound of his voice. “Reese, where are you? Come here.”
“You are it,” he called, his voice closer.
Swinging the lantern around, she spotted a tiny figure huddled under a large tree. “Come here, sweetie,” she called. “Come here and let me take you home.”
Reese began to cry, and the sound wrenched at her. Lori slid off the horse and raced toward the child, pulling Lady behind her. Reese cowered under the tree, sobbing. “One, two, three. You are it.”
“Come here, sweetie. Let me take you home.”
Reese continued to wail.
At a loss, Lori put her arms around him and held him. “You’re okay. Wet, but okay. Don’t you want a ride with Lady? She’s very nice. She likes little boys. She wants to take us home.”
“Ride?” he echoed, sniffing as he stared at the horse.
Lori nodded. “You bet. Let’s go home.”
After she got both of them on the horse, Lori tucked Reese’s squirmy, wet little body under her raincoat and let Lady lead the way.
Jackson had been awakened by the phone call two hours ago. He’d been dead asleep, but it had taken only a moment for his heart to stop in his chest when Maria explained why she was calling so early.
Jackson had been in his car within two minutes. Driving through the constant downpour, he took his SUV off-road when the lanes were flooded. Rain shimmered down his windshield faster than the wipers could push it aside. Despite the vehicles he saw abandoned and the signs warning of flash floods, he drove on. He almost stalled out once but maneuvered out of the deepest waters. Sheer luck.
All he could think about was Lori. Although Maria and Geoffrey had been barricaded from returning to the ranch by flooded roads, Maria had learned that Lori had been looking for one of the campers for hours. Now Virginia feared that Lori was lost, too.
Jackson ’s stomach churned with remorse. He should have been there with her instead of focusing on this real-estate development deal. His pride had been mortally wounded when she’d insisted she didn’t want her family to know she’d married him. Determined to make her proud of him, he’d worked night and day to pull this deal together.