by Sharon Sala
Beyond the hills thunder rumbled. Toni looked up and frowned. She wanted a bath, all right, but not the kind that accompanied thunder and lightning. Anxious to beat the oncoming storm, she tossed the last of her tools into the wagon and jumped on the ATV.
She was miles from home. And pulling this load, it would take her a good twenty minutes to get to safety. She squinted, assessing the buildup of storm clouds now evident over the treetops, and made a bet with herself that she would be wet before she got home.
The ATV roared to life. Moments later, Toni was speeding past her new quarter mile of fence, racing storm clouds toward the home that sat high on a hill above Chaney Creek.
A couple of miles down the road, she came to a sliding halt in a cloud of dust. Some of her fence posts had bounced from the back of the wagon onto the ground, forcing her to stop and go back for them.
“I don’t know why I'm hurrying,” she grumbled to herself. “There’s no one at home to care whether I'm late, wet, or both.”
Feeling a little sorry for herself and aching through her shoulders from the long day of stringing barbed wire, she stomped back to her ATV and slipped it into gear. Rain or not, she would take her time about getting home.
By the time she reached Chaney Creek, the sky was as black as the inside of a devil’s heart. Thunderheads rolled with increasing intensity as the wind within them continued to blow. The quickening breeze lifted the thick, loose hair from Toni’s neck as she contemplated the load in her wagon against the steep hill ahead of her. She would have to go very slow to save what was left of her posts. Carrying them up the hill by the armload didn’t appeal to her at all, not even if she were physically strong enough to do so.
Before she had made any decision, the rains came. All at once and without the warning of a few early droplets to let a body know that it was time to run. Toni sighed and lifted her sweaty face to the torrent, letting Mother Nature cool her weary body.
She looked back at the wagon again and then once more at the steep path leading to her home. Her decision had just been made for her. She might succeed in getting the ATV up the hill, but in this downpour, she also might not. The hill was mostly red clay, and when it got wet, it was, as her brother Justin always said, “slick as snot.”
She parked beneath the overhang of a large spreading oak just as a tremendous explosion rent the air. Stunned by the intensity of the sound, she jumped out from under the massive branches before a fork of lightning could find its way to this tree and fry her along with it. Squinting against the oncoming darkness and the downpour of rain in her face, she looked at the rim of the next hill and saw a huge, orange ball of fire spiral into the sky.
“Good Lord. Lightning must have struck something awfully big.”
Reassured by the fact that her home was in the opposite direction, Toni started to run.
The path was slick, just as she feared it would be. Her shirt and jeans were plastered to her body. Had any of her past, fair-weather suitors gotten a glimpse of the generous curves she normally kept hidden beneath nondescript clothing, they might have been tempted to give her one more try. But they weren’t and she was alone and running like hell in the near dark toward the hill above Chaney Creek.
Lightning flashed again. This time it was close. Too close. Toni froze in place. In shock over the near miss, and momentarily blinded by the flash, her vision cleared only to present her with another, more frightening dilemma than being caught in a storm. Someone had fallen into Chaney Creek and was being swept downstream.
“Oh, my God!” Toni pivoted on the path and ran down the hill toward the flooded waters of the creek, unable to believe her eyes. “Hey! Hey! I'm here! Swim this way! I'll help you.”
But the man gave no indication of having heard her. And the closer he came, the more convinced she was of his distress. Only the upper portion of his body was above water. His arms were wrapped around a piece of log that bobbed in the foaming water like a float on a fishing line. It was all that kept him afloat. His eyes were closed. He moved only where the water took him. It was obvious to Toni that if he survived, it would not be under his own steam. With no thought for her own safety, she waded into Chaney Creek after him.
Normally, the creek would have had a hard time wetting her ankles, but the rains were heavy, and the runoff from the hills above had increased the trickle in the creek bed to a torrent. Now when she ran into the water, she was at once knee-deep in a current that nearly swept her off her feet. In spite of the rain that continued to pour, the roof of her mouth went dry from fear. One misstep and she would be as lost as the drifting man, unless she was careful.
Moving faster, but choosing her position with care, Toni waded into the path of the oncoming man and his half-submerged log, readying herself for the grab. It should have been simple, really, for a woman as strong as Toni Hatfield. Any one of her brothers would have bragged about her physical ability as they would of an equal’s, but that bravado didn’t take into account the now waist-high water, or the size of the man and the log.
With her arms outstretched and her legs braced against the impact, she caught both man and log and was instantly swept off her feet by the blow.
She went under as swiftly as she’d entered Chaney Creek. Water went up her nose and in her eyes as she struggled to right herself. She had strength and stubbornness on her side, not to mention the fact that she’d grown up playing in every twist and turn of this old creek. Water or no water, Toni Hatfield was in familiar territory. She reached up, connected with cold flesh and wet wood, then pulled herself from under the water by sheer determination.
It was almost completely dark. The only light that Toni could count on now was the intermittent flashes of lightning that briefly brightened the sky. But the man was too big to miss, and the water too deep and too swift to fight. And yet fight she did.
Unwilling to give up, Toni wrapped her arms around the man and the log and started treading water, riding with the current as she swiftly calculated how fast and how far they were being swept downstream. Lightning flashed again, and Toni went weak with relief. She recognized the huge, overhanging limbs of the tree just ahead. It was the big willow above the outcrop of rock that she often stood upon to fish.
If she could only steer herself and her cargo toward the side, she might have a chance. The outcrop had to be just below the surface of the water. It would be the foothold that she needed to save them both.
Just when she thought she had made it, the log bobbed, then hit something with such force that Toni was almost thrown free.
“No, damn it, no!” she screamed. Frustration and fear were battling neck and neck as she struggled to stay afloat. But the moment she shouted, she instinctively shut her mouth before she swallowed too much water.
Sheer strength and muleheaded determination kept her from releasing the man and his buoy. But with the impact came the realization that she was holding on to more than a body. The groan that she’d heard had not been her own. He was still alive!
Toni reacted without taking time to think, aiming the log toward the bank. When the outcrop of rocks bumped her shins, sending shafts of pain rocketing to the roots of her teeth, misery had never been so welcome. She scrambled for a firm foothold, churning water and scraping what skin was left on her palms, as she grabbed at the low-hanging limbs with her right hand, while clutching the man with her left.
Lightning streaked across the sky. Thunder followed. Rain pelted her body, while the floodwaters once again rushed up her nose and into her throat.
“Turn it loose,” she screamed, trying to make the man release the log that had kept him alive so far. He didn’t respond; he had a death grip on the broken stub and was in no condition to think of alternatives.
Toni groaned as her wet hands kept slipping on his cold, slick clothes and skin. “Oh, my God, I'm going to lose him.”
And then something floated past and blessedly jammed them both firmly against the creek bank. It was all the edge that Toni need
ed. She crawled onto the submerged ledge and slipped her hands beneath his armpits and pulled. It was the unexpected movement that slid the man’s hand free of the stub.
With a grunt, Toni fell backward onto the bank with the man in her arms. Halfway out of the flooded creek, she lay unmoving, with the back of his head against her cheek. And when he groaned again, she started to shake.
Okay, mister, you're out. Now, what in the world am I going to do with you?
Only one thing came to mind. She had to find a way to get him up the hill and into her house, or he would drown faceup in the downpour as surely as he’d chanced drowning in the flood.
She rolled him over onto his belly and pulled him the rest of the way up the bank, then waited for the next lightning flash to tell her where she was.
When it came, she groaned. The water had taken her a good quarter of a mile from where she’d parked the ATV. Toni leaned down until her mouth was against the curl of his ear.
“Don’t move,” she said, convincing herself that he could hear. “I'm going to get help.”
She got to her feet. Ignoring the tremble in her legs, she navigated the trees along the bank. No more than five steps from where she’d started, she turned and looked back just to make sure he was still there. Even in the dark, even in the downpour, the size of him was impossible to overlook.
“My God,” she muttered. “How did I just do that?”
But no one answered, and when she turned, her eyes were focused on the path in front of her.
Chapter 2
It was so dark beneath the trees that she could barely make out the path. Toni gripped the handlebars on the ATV with stubborn force and squinted, wishing that the headlights on her vehicle were brighter and stronger. Although she had lived here all of her life, she found herself now losing her bearings and knew that it was panic that had her so rattled. No one had ever depended upon her for their life, or on her ability to find her way through the woods at night.
It was only after the headlights on the ATV caught the shape of the man’s body that Toni realized she’d been holding her breath.
“Thank God, he’s still there,” she muttered.
She slipped the vehicle into park, then left it running with the headlights centered on his body. Her legs shook as she dismounted the four-wheeler as she would a horse. The wagon she pulled was now empty; the fencing equipment had been left behind beneath the tree where she’d first parked.
Toni gauged the distance from the empty wagon to the man and groaned beneath her breath. She was going to have to drag him again, and as tired as she was, and as big as he appeared, even a yard would be too much. Her hair was matted and cold against the back of her neck, and her clothes stuck to her body with muddy persistence. But she knew her discomfort was nothing compared to his state. She’d come this far with him, it was too late to give up now.
The rain had all but stopped. The wild blast of wind from the passing storm was down to a mere whistle through the trees, but the roar of the flooded creek still echoed in Toni’s ears. Lingering horse tails from the storm clouds drifted across the sky, baring the half-moon and its weak glow for added light by which to see. She knelt by the man she’d dragged from the water and ran her hand across his forehead, then gently down the side of his face. He was so cold and too still.
The features of his face were cast in repose as he lay flat on his back with his arms out, unmoving. Toni shuddered. It was too close to the expression that her father had worn just before they had shut the lid on his casket.
“Mister, can you hear me?”
No answer. Not even a groan. That fact alone was enough to send a shiver of worry across Toni’s senses. There was no way of guessing how long he’d been in the water, or even how he’d gotten there. The blood on his face looked black in the moonlight, and seeped from a cut somewhere in his scalp, running down his forehead and across one closed eyelid. Even in this half-light, he looked blue with cold.
“Okay. I did this once, I can do it again.”
She slid her hands beneath his armpits and started to pull him toward the now-empty wagon. Without the buoyancy of water to aid her in moving him, his deadweight was almost impossible to budge.
But Toni had been told all of her life that she was a “big girl,” and that big girls didn’t need any help, they could do anything. And so, because she believed that she could, she did.
She maneuvered what she could of him into the wagon, then collapsed in a heap upon the ground and contemplated the fact that while he was in the wagon, there was an awful lot of him left hanging over the sides. It seemed impossible to consider, but he looked even bigger in there than he had on the ground.
His shirt and jeans were torn, and only half of his jacket was still on his body. The backs of his knees lay across the wagon’s shallow sides, leaving the lower half of his legs and his feet to dangle down to the ground. One of his arms was jammed against his side, but the other was over his head and limply aimed toward the ATV. Try as she might, there was no way that all of him was ever going to fit, and she had yet to negotiate the steep hill leading to her house. The thought made her shudder.
“Okay, mister. We're going to take a little ride. And while I'm a damned good driver, if I say so myself, I suggest you hang on. The first step is a doozy.”
Her attempt at humor was lost upon the unconscious man. He didn’t even flinch when she slipped the ATV in gear and began to wind her way back through the trees toward the path that led up to her house.
True to her fears, the “slick-as-snot” path had them moving sideways as often as moving forward, but eventually, Toni made it. When she reached the top of the hill and saw moonlight reflecting off the rooster weather vane on the roof of her house, she breathed a quiet sigh of relief.
The front porch of her house had two steps. Toni took the ATV and her wagonload of man straight up both.
Unloading the man was much easier than loading him had been. She simply unhooked the wagon and let it tilt. He rolled onto the porch without so much as a thump.
“Sorry,” Toni muttered, although he didn’t seem to hear or care whether she made an apology or not. She stepped over his prone body, opened the front door and turned on the lights. At least now she would have light by which to maneuver. Just a little farther, and she would have him safely inside, out of the night and the inclement weather.
Once again, Toni assumed the position and pulled. He slid easier on the porch planks than he had on the wet ground. Three hefts and one agonizing grunt and she had cleared his long legs of her front door before slamming it shut.
Moments later, Toni was on the phone in the hall, calling for help. Unfortunately, she didn’t even have a dial tone with which to argue.
“I should have known.” She replaced the receiver and hoped that the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach had nothing to do with the man’s ultimate destiny. The phones and electricity in the area always lost power during storms like this one. “But at least I have light.”
No sooner had the words come out of her mouth than the lights flickered and died. If it hadn’t been so tragic, she thought, it might have been funny. But Toni had no way of knowing how badly this man was hurt, and the last thing she wanted was to have dragged a dead man up the hill and now be stuck with him for the night.
Water squished in her tennis shoes as she felt her way along the hall toward the kitchen. With a flashlight and two candles in hand, Toni headed back to the living room and the man sprawled upon her floor.
Candlelight was supposed to be romantic, not traumatic, but that was exactly what Toni felt when she knelt at the big man’s side.
“Please don’t be dead,” she begged.
Her voice was just above a whisper as she touched the side of his neck, searching for a pulse. When it jumped beneath her fingers, she fell back on her heels, sighing with relief.
She needed an extra pair of hands, another someone to hold the flashlight so that she could better see what she was f
eeling. And what she felt was man—a whole lot of man. From the breadth of his shoulders to the width of his chest. Hard and wide, but cold and wet.
When he shivered beneath the brush of her fingers, she breathed a littler easier. Any sign of life was better than the lack of response that she’d had from him so far.
“I should get a blanket,” she told herself as she traced the length of his arms, telling herself it was to test for injuries, when she knew full well she was daunted by the man’s size.
It was when she pushed his jacket aside to feel his rib cage for possible broken bones that she sensed his focus returning. His head jerked, and he inhaled long and deep as his fingers clenched and reclenched in slow motion.
Toni shuddered, mesmerized by the latent power in him. It was like watching a volcano building for an eruption. He groaned, and lifted his left arm. Candlelight reflected off the circle of metal dangling from his wrist.
Handcuffs! She’d fished a man out of the flood who’d been handcuffed!
“Oh, Lord, what have I done?” Toni tumbled backward in shock. If she hadn’t been so stunned, she might have crawled away in time to prevent what happened next. But she was and she didn’t and it happened anyway.
Toni gasped. For a man who had been all but unconscious only moments ago, he moved awfully darned fast. Before she could blink, he grabbed her by the arm. Raising himself onto one elbow long enough to prove who was boss, he hit the open end of the handcuff against her wrist and squeezed.
The click was loud. Metallic. Ominous. Toni looked down in disbelief at what the man had done, then watched as he swayed precariously on his elbow before passing out with a thump.
“Oh, my God.” Toni looked, but couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
He’d handcuffed them together!
She yanked, and succeeded only in hurting her wrist. When she tried to crawl away from him, she went no farther than the length of his arm.
