There was no way down, and she had left her cell phone on the kitchen counter. She was stranded. She looked over at her neighbor's property, but that was three acres away, and neither of their vehicles was in the carport. She'd have to wait until someone came home to yell for help.
Pragmatic about her choices, Josie cranked on the chain saw and finished cutting up the limb, rolling the larger chunks off the roof edge and let them hit the concrete below. When she was finished, she hunkered down as close to the edge of the house as she could get to shelter herself from the whipping winds, but the situation got worse. Rain began pelting down in large drops, and the wind was moving with such speed that it gave hard water a new definition. The rain hurtled down painfully as the temperature dropped thirty degrees in less than a half hour. She knew if it started sleeting or dropping hailstones, she was in deep trouble, and might have to make the decision to jump. Hail was a sure sign of an impending funnel touchdown.
Chapter 10
Jack was driving as fast as he could while dodging missiles of trashcans, signs, flimsy patio furniture and whatever else flew into his path. He wasn't chasing the storm. The storm was chasing him. The sky was darkening, and the clouds were heavy and rotating dangerously. The air pressure was so low it made Jack's ears hurt. He had seen a funnel snake out of the clouds, but as he held his breath, it disappeared back up into the cloud formation. He'd grown up in tornado alley; he knew the signs and the danger. He had called Josie once, but after that, he had not been able to contact her. He tried the sheriff's office. She'd called in but had not returned yet. Josie was rarely without her cell phone, and that scared him.
He broke every speed limit on the country roads, driving the thirty miles back to Rawlings. He screeched to a stop after sliding his Jeep into the open garage next to Josie's truck, quickly punched the button to lower the door and ran for the house. He shouted for Josie several times, but there was no answer. He went to the basement door shouting for her, but again, there was no answer. Looking out the kitchen door, he saw that the deck chairs, grill and other items were missing, that meant she had been putting things inside. He stepped out into the blasting winds and nearly tripped over large chunks of newly cut tree limbs. He saw the ladder lying across the deck.
"Josie!"
"Jack!" At the sound of her answering response, he looked upward to see her on her hands and knees up on the porch roof hanging on for dear life against the powerful winds.
Jack lifted the ladder, slammed it up against the roofline of the porch and saw her leg go over the edge of the roof. "No!" he shouted. "Your weight won't hold the ladder against these winds. I'm coming up!" He climbed the ladder fighting against the strength of the gale force winds. He was five feet from the roofline when he yelled for Josie to come down. Her legs came over the top, and she found her position in front of him as he held her steady until they were five or six feet from the ground. The wind caught the top of the ladder, and it began to move on its own.
Grabbing Josie firmly by the shoulders, Jack shouted, "Jump right!"
Josie did not hesitate, and they tumbled to the deck. Jack covered her with his body as the heavy ladder crashed, bounced and missed his head by mere inches. He was on his feet in seconds, grabbing her by the waist of her jeans, hauling her to her feet with a vice-like grip around her waist. He heaved her inside the house and slammed the door shut behind him. Something smashed a window somewhere in the house, and when Josie turned, he grabbed her by the back of her shirt and pushed her toward the basement door.
"Down, now!" he shouted as something heavy hit the side of the house. They scrambled down the steps as the electricity flickered.
Josie opened a cabinet at the bottom of the stairs and pulled out two flashlights, handing one to Jack. "This way," she said calmly, leading the way through a maze of rooms until they came to a heavy wooden door. They opened it and followed a narrow bricked hallway to another door, which she opened, and they went inside the storm shelter. "Better light a lantern in case the electricity goes off. It usually does for a while."
Jack followed her instructions, turning the wick down to conserve the oil until the power did go off.
Josie rummaged through a plastic storage container and pulled out a flannel shirt and a pair of jeans for her, and a large man's shirt she handed over to Jack. "This will be too big for you. It was my uncle's. I should have changed out all this emergency stuff, but I never got around to it. I brought some clothes down for Alex and myself a while back. I'm sorry, but I never thought to add some of yours. The water is fresh, and the food in the plastic tubs isn't that old." As Josie was explaining, she was drying off on a towel and shivering.
"How long were you stuck up on that roof?" Jack demanded.
She checked her watch. "A little more than an hour." She pulled off her jeans and shirt.
Jack took the towel and briskly rubbed her down from head to toe. When he finished, she took off her wet bra and panties, and pulled on the dry jeans and shirt. The storm door entrance leading down from the backyard banged and rattled, so Jack took one of the flashlights to check the fastening lock. When he came back, Josie was pulling out an old hot plate and plugging it in, making coffee in an old-fashioned campfire coffee pot. She got the coffee going, but she was still rubbing her arms and shivering with cold. He found another towel in the clothes box and wrapped it around her tightly, holding the two ends together. He turned her to face him.
"Why were you on the roof?" he demanded.
"Because a branch came down, and I didn't want it to blow off onto the deck and ruin it. It would have smashed through the deck and the hot tub," Josie admitted.
"You were raised in tornado alley the same as me. Why the hell would you go on a roof in tornado conditions? I called and told you to head for the basement. Why didn't you get your ass down here?"
Josie heard the fury in Jack's voice, but so far, he was controlling it. "For the same reason you were on the highway instead of going into a shelter in Mangum. You said there was a touchdown there. You were in a lot more danger than I was, but that didn't stop you from driving back here."
"Don't try to deflect this onto me."
"I'm not," Josie insisted. "Jack, we're both responders. We don't run, and we don't hide. We take action. My action was to cut up the tree branch before it did any more damage. Your action was to head back here."
"Only because I knew you'd be too much of an idiot to take shelter," he interrupted.
"I'm an idiot because I do the same thing as you? How does that work?" Josie demanded her temper rising. "I'm an adult and I make adult decisions. If you disagree, tough!"
"Tough!" Jack repeated. "What would you have done if I hadn't shown up? Damn it, you were stuck up on the roof 16 to 18 feet off the ground without a way to get down. When I got here, the winds had to be at least fifty miles an hour."
"The winds weren't that strong when I went up," Josie exclaimed, pulling loose from him and pouring them both a cup of coffee. "In the worse-case scenario, I would have dangled from the porch roof and dropped about eleven feet."
Jack set his cup of coffee aside. "At best you would have broken a lot of bones, at worse—I don't even want to think about it."
"Well, I didn't have a lot of choices. It didn't happen, so don't think about it," Josie snapped.
"It doesn't work that way," Jack said, taking her coffee cup and setting it aside. "I know you don't think there's a difference between men and women, but there is. Men should be strong enough or macho enough, whatever the hell you want to call it, to protect their women. I told you to go to the basement for your protection." He pushed his fingers into the waistband of her jeans and pulled her to him, unbuttoning and pushing the jeans down, gripping her buttocks one in each hand. Josie leaned into him thinking it was a prelude to sex, but he had a different idea. With one quick movement, he put his foot up on a footlocker and yanked her over his knee. Two more yanks and her jeans were to her knees, and she was bare butt naked.
"No!" Josie screamed and began to fight, but it was not going to do her any good.
That first crack on her bare ass was painful and nearly had Josie toppling over on her head.
"You don't listen, and you don't think ahead," Jack complained. "You jump in not considering the consequences. The consequence this time is getting your ass set on fire because you were irresponsible and put your life in danger—again!"
Jack punctuated several of his words with hard smacks. His last word was said with anger and with a spank hard enough to make Josie yelp, and he was not finished. He took his time making sure he covered every inch of her trim backside. Jack had been trying to get the idea of consequences across to Josie since she was eight years old. He had not succeeded, and she obviously had not learned on her own. That didn't mean he had given up the battle. He did not stop whacking her bottom until he was satisfied with its warm red color.
His hand, which Josie concluded had to be bionic and made of steel, laid into her again and again, landing each spank exactly where he wanted it to land. Josie determined he would not see he was hurting her. She was thirty-three years old, not a child. If he saw she would not buckle, maybe he would get it through his thick head she was not going to conform to his macho domestic crap. That idea lasted about two minutes as her bottom started to heat up. It felt like it was on fire. Before long, she was grabbing for anything that would help her escape from his hand. She gritted her teeth and clenched her fists, but it was no good. After the first cry had escaped from her throat, there was no stopping the torrent. After the first tear had fallen, there was no stopping the flood.
The continuous whacks of his hand were painful, and she had to get him to stop!
"Stop, Jack! Stop! Please. I swear I will not do it again. I swear I won't!"
Jack stopped, but he did not release her as she tried to wiggle free. "You say that Josie, but I don't believe you. This is so you remember." He shifted her position and applied a dozen or more smacks to her already reddened backside before he loosened his grip.
"This time you will remember, and you'd better not forget again," Jack warned. "I know you haven't had anyone in your life to care what happens to you, Josie, but I care! Get that through your thick skull. Your life is important and damn it, you can't keep taking risks."
"I won't. I promise," Josie sobbed, as he released her and pulled her into his chest to cry.
Jack rubbed her shoulders, leaned over to give her jeans a yank.
"No, don't!" Josie's hands went around to prevent him from pulling up the jeans over her sore backside.
They stood together for a while as her cries quieted. There was a loud crash over their heads, and they both ducked and looked up although there was nothing to see except a low-beamed ceiling with newly installed steel beams. The electricity flickered and went out.
Jack let go of Josie and turned the oil lamp up, then lit another.
Josie went to the box of clothes and found a pair of old fleece pajama bottoms, removed her jeans completely and pulled the soft pajamas up over her tender parts.
Jack lifted one eyebrow. "Hello Kitty?"
Josie smiled weakly. "I'm surprised you even know that cartoon character." There was another loud crash.
"Does this shelter have a hatch or someway we can look outside?" Jack asked.
She nodded. "It has a homemade periscope my grandfather built in when he constructed the shelter. He was a Navy man during the Korean War. I played with it when I was a kid, but I don't know if it still works or not. It's funny how we never think of these shelters until we need them and when we need them it's too late to check everything out." She showed him the periscope, and Jack worked the levers to raise it above ground level.
"Ingenious," Jack commented, "but I can't see much. Vertical rain and its dark outside, which means we're in the thick of it. The winds are whipping things around. We could be on the edge of a tornado or inside one for all we know."
"I should probably install hi-tech cameras with battery back-ups," Josie said, shivering. "That's a project I'll definitely complete, provided the house is still standing when this is over."
Jack rummaged through the boxes, found some blankets and wrapped one around her. He tossed some old patio cushions on the floor. "We'll sit it out," he said. He sat down and patted the cushion beside him.
"You sit, I'll lie here on my stomach," Josie muttered.
Jack smiled. "You're not going to make me feel guilty."
"I wouldn't dream of it," Josie snapped. "Jack, why do you have to spank me?"
"Because you matter to me, and I can't stand the idea that you never think of your safety first. You can't take chances like that, Josie. I won't let you, and I will keep repeating this lesson until I get it through your thick head or, in your case, through your tender bottom."
"It's not right, Jack!"
"If you want a metrosexual man in tune with his female side, you picked the wrong guy, sweetheart," Jack said. "I know that, for the last fifty years, society has preached there are no differences between the sexes, but I don't buy it. The guys I know have a built-in instinct to protect women and families. In the military, that instinct carries over to the innocent victims, and we bring it back with us.
"I won't allow you to put yourself into dangerous situations. I've lost enough in my life. I can't lose you now that we're back together. We've both given up dangerous jobs. We need to work harder on creating some nice, normal boring lifestyles. Christ, Josie how many times have you been hurt since I've been back?"
"Normal and boring sounds good to me, it's what I was trying for when I moved back, but it hasn't happened yet," Josie insisted. "Jack, I'm not walking around trying to get hurt, and I'm not particularly accident prone. I got thrown from my horse! How many times have you been thrown in your lifetime? If you ride, that's part of the risk you take. The situation with Jolene was the first time that I've ever been hurt in the line of duty."
"Would you like to try recounting again," Jack snapped.
Josie gave a sigh. "I'm not talking about what went wrong with the sting operation. I'm talking about being a cop. I was a cop for two and half years in Oklahoma City, and I never got hurt. I've been a cop here for over a year, and it was a black eye, not a bullet."
"I hate it," Jack said, not bending. "I hate the possibility that you could get hurt. It gets me right in the gut!"
"No more than I hate the idea of you being hurt. I felt like my life was suspended while I was waiting to hear if you were one of guys that was hurt on your last mission. It works both ways, you idiot," Josie exclaimed. "You worked in dangerous assignments for years. I'm afraid you'll get tired of the slow pace of Rawlings, that you'll take off and re-up again."
He shook his head. "That's not likely. After the last few missions, I'm done with it. If I want adventure now, there's a heck of a lot I haven't seen right in here in the U.S. We can take a vacation to Alaska, or the Grand Canyon, or a bunch of other places I'd like to see. I was thinking that after we get settled in maybe we buy one of those RV things, take Alex and maybe even Buck with us and go traveling."
Josie nodded, smiling as she thought about it. She looked up at him seriously. "What happened to make you want to give it up, Jack? Was it something awful?"
Jack looked away and nodded. "I lost three of my men. Three of the very best. They were good men, good friends. One of them stepped on a trip wire. Have you ever heard of the term pink mist?"
Josie shook her head and leaned against him.
"Pink mist is an explosion so intense it vaporizes the human body," Jack said. "You don't have time to respond or a chance to stop it. The bomb went off, and pink mist showered the rest of us with the remains of our friends. I'd heard of it happening before to other teams. I'd thought it was never going to happen to my team—not my guys." Jack gave himself a shake and stiffened. "We finished our mission and we got the others out alive, but something curled up and died inside me. I was done. I couldn't handle it anymore. That's
why I gave up my commission."
"You went back for one last mission," Josie said.
"Yeah and it was good to know I could do it again, but I didn't want to be there anymore. At our level, we mostly get to pick our missions. We know what we're going into, and we do it willingly, but I didn't volunteer for the last one. I did my duty and came back to you.
"I told you that my last mission was complicated, on many levels. For the first time in my Navy career, I used a critical situation to my advantage. They needed my skills and knowledge to pull off the mission. I needed three more months of duty to qualify for my twenty-year retirement. I was too close to that pension to walk away from it and damn it—I'd earned it. I was willing to do it until they called me back. Strictly by accident, I overheard some bean-counting weasels saying I was a fool to come back for the last mission and walk away from a pension because I was only outstanding ninety days to earn it. They were laughing about it, and that pissed me off.
"The negotiations weren't pretty, and there was a good chance I could have been court-marshaled but I stuck to my guns. I had some powerful, high-ranking officers backing me up too. They got their mission, and I got my full retirement package. It took some complicated bookkeeping, but I was determined that they weren't going to use me when I wasn't medically cleared for a mission and get away with saying I didn't fulfill the requirements for my retirement package. The damn bean counters will try anything when a guy gets that close… they're weasels, every damn one of them.
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