by Lietha Wards
Alex wasn’t asleep when Seth opened the door to his room after a brief knock. He was reading in bed. The look on his brother’s face let him know that something was wrong. He quickly sat up. “Seth? Is it Mom?”
He shook his head. “Is Angel with you?” He stepped into the room and looked around, not missing the stunned look on his brother’s face at the question.
“Of course not,” he said as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed. “Mother would have my balls. My bloody fiancée even has a separate room.” Like I’d let the bitch touch me, he thought to himself. He tossed his book on the nightstand. “Anyway, Angel wouldn’t be caught dead in any man’s room. Why the hell would you think that?”
“Because of the way you were looking at her tonight. I thought maybe—Oh, never mind!” he said, waving an arm.
“Ah, hell,” Alex sighed, running his hand through his hair. He didn’t think it was that obvious. Obviously, he had it so bad for the girl that he couldn’t keep his emotions out of his expression. He’d never had a problem with that in the past. It was surprising that Lucy didn’t notice. Then again, the woman was usually only concerned about herself and didn’t notice anything else. “What’s wrong?”
“George is on the phone. The girls aren’t home yet.”
“They left here hours ago,” he said in surprise, standing up abruptly and reaching for his jeans. “Call the sheriff and tell him that they’re missing. I’ll take the Navigator and start searching the side roads. Christ!” He remembered that Priscilla had been upset. What if she wasn’t thinking right? And she’d have driven Angel home. He felt his chest clench. Something was wrong—he could feel it through to the bone.
Angel.
“When did they leave?” Seth asked while his brother rapidly dressed. “Did you see?”
He glanced at his bedside clock. “Around nine-thirty.”
“Jesus, that was three hours ago.”
“Something’s wrong, I feel it in my gut,” he said, shoving his arms into his shirt and shooting his brother a worried look.
“What do I tell George?” asked Seth, rubbing the back of his neck. “He’ll lose it.”
“Tell him to get in his truck and come back this way slowly, looking for any signs that Priscilla’s car left the road,” he said in a subdued tone. “Wake the men too, Seth. Get everyone you can out there.”
“All right. Take your phone,” he said before he left.
About an hour later, Alex was driving up and down the side roads, looking for any sign of the two women. He knew how many lanes existed between their two houses, but they seemed endless when he needed to drive up and down all of them, especially with that shadow of panic that something horrible had happened to them. Some of them led to nowhere, and others looped back to the highway.
Seth phoned him and let him know that the sheriff and local deputies were there, and that they were mapping out a grid. He felt some relief, but it didn’t last. He rattled off the roads he’d already searched and hung up after telling him he’d be home in few minutes so they could organize a wider search with more men. The more roads he covered, the more worried he became. He couldn’t help feeling guilty. Priscilla had been very upset, and he’d sent Angel off with her.
Christ, he thought. If either woman got hurt, he’d never forgive himself. When he told Angel to take her sister home, he was angry because Lucy had come into his study while he was cleaning up. He’d been crouching down, picking up items off the floor, and placing them back on the desk. He was pretty sure he’d busted his laptop. That had kept him smiling until Lucy demanded to know what he was doing because he was supposed to escort her out to the party so she could make some sort of grand entrance. He decided to tell her the truth.
“I was making love to my girlfriend,” he said coolly, and gained some satisfaction at the appalled look on her face.
“Th-that paralegal?”
“Yes.”
“But she’s a—”
“I’m warning you, Lucy, if you say anything about Angel, our deal is off,” he growled. “She has more class than you could ever hope to have.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and lifted her chin. “And what about your mother?”
Alex felt his face heat up, and he tried to control his rising fury. “You are one cold bitch.” His hand curled around the edge of the desk as he fought the urge to strike her. Never in his life had he ever wanted to hit a woman—not until now. “Remember, the deal goes both ways. If you talk, you get nothing.” She had robbed him of his Angel, and he would never forgive her for it. The look on his face must’ve been fierce because she finally averted her gaze.
“Fine then,” she said in a more subdued tone and unfolded her arms. “But you need to at least look like we’re affectionate with one another. After all, we are getting married,” she reminded him.
“Just remember,” he snapped, approaching her and giving her a hateful stare, “that I tolerate your touch for my mother’s sake.” He took her arm and looped it through his.
A rock hit the undercarriage with a small clunk, bringing Alex back to the purpose at hand: finding the girls. There wasn’t even a moon out that night and it had gotten cold. Visibility was next to nothing, and his efforts to find them seemed fruitless. Then it started to rain.
Finally, he pulled the Navigator to the side of the road, shifted it into park, and rubbed his forehead with his hand. He had to think, and in order to do that, he had to calm down a bit. He kept having visions of Angel laying there bleeding and hurt—or worse—before he’d told her the truth about Lucy and Max. He’d never told her how much that day they made love in the grass really meant to him. Worst of all, he’d never told her he loved her.
One hand gripped the steering wheel and the other brushed though his hair. Get a grip, Alex, he told himself. Remembering that Priscilla had been upset over something about Seth’s girlfriend, guilt washed through him again. Maybe if he’d listened to her, she wouldn’t have been so upset. Unfortunately, she was driving because Angel didn’t drive. If she was upset and made a wrong turn, chances were it was on one of the side roads closest to her house.
The only one he could think of was the one that led down to the creek that ran through both of their properties, but it had washed out several weeks ago after a rainstorm. He was sure she didn’t know that. The only way he knew about it was from chasing a few stray cattle on horseback through a broken area in the fence. The road was makeshift as it was, and travelled along a steep cliff that dropped to the creek below. Lots of kids swam down there in the summer. It was too cold for anyone to swim there at this time of year, though—not that Angel and Priscilla did that much anymore. However, it seemed like the only logical course.
Hoping he was wrong, he shifted the SUV into drive and gunned the accelerator. Ten minutes later, he pulled the Navigator over at the start of the creek road and got out, walking along the edge of it where his headlights shone. Fresh tire tracks were visible in the barely used gravel. He swore, all the blood draining out of his face.
Pulling out his phone, he dialed home. They would need horses and supplies. He knew that he couldn’t go down there with the Navigator, not with the rain or the previous condition of the road. Hopefully, Pris’s car hadn’t gotten very far, but it was lighter than his vehicle. It just might have. As much as he wanted to rush down there right now, it wouldn’t do anyone any good to end up having to rescue him too. He would need the big dually, and it would be slow going. However, horses could move faster, and they could be there in less than an hour with support.
When Alex got back to the ranch, the men were already loading the horses in the trailer as he’d instructed them to do. He walked over and shook Derek Thorton’s hand—he was the local sheriff.
“If the women are down there, Alex, we can’t get the helicopter in until dawn,” he said with a worried expression.
“I know,” he replied. He managed to keep his voice steady, but inside, he was a mess. He caught hi
s brother’s look through the crowd and could see he was thinking the same thing. “We’ll take the horses down, and that way, we can check the road and see if the dually will make it.”
“That’s a good idea,” Derek approved. “Seth loaded what he thought he’d need in his saddle bags in case we find them.”
“We will find them,” Alex corrected him.
“Of course,” Derek agreed. Like everyone in town, he knew that the Harrisons and the Stanfords were close friends. This couldn’t be easy on them.
Alex spotted George, and the man looked like a wreck as he conversed with one of the deputies. He had to give it to him. If those were his two children, he doubted very much he would be able to function.
“Boss,” said a tall, lanky man named Jet. He was Alex’s lead ranch hand. “We’re ready.”
He nodded and turned back to Derek. “Is Jack going to meet us there with his dogs?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Let’s go, then.”
***
The dogs howled as the men mounted the horses after unloading them from the trailer almost half an hour later. They had powerful flashlights that Alex knew would hardly give them a damn inch of illumination thanks to the darkness and continuing drizzle, but he’d gone down the road after it washed out so he was a little familiar with it. What he didn’t tell George and the others who remained back at the ranch was that the washout had a sheer drop of about fifteen feet, with several feet of water at the bottom. If Priscilla’s car went off that way, it would most likely have flipped over on its roof, and the interior would flood with water. He internally shuddered, thinking he might find both of them dead.
In all, there were six men with him plus Jack Kester’s dogs. Before they mounted up, Alex told them about the road. He could see the strain in his brother’s face. It mirrored his own because he was thinking the same thing about Angel and Priscilla, but neither one of them wanted to say it aloud.
Within twenty minutes of unloading the horses, they were heading down the road. It was over five and a half hours since the women had gone missing. That was hours of time in which they could be suffering or have since died. A horrified shudder ran through his large frame. Alex couldn’t stop the overwhelming grief and guilt that struck him, and he knew he had to pull himself together. It wouldn’t do anyone any good if he fell apart. He directed one of his men to drive the dually behind them. It would help give them extra light.
Jack rode ahead, following his dogs, with Seth and Alex side-by-side behind him. The rest of the men followed, sweeping their lights back and forth across the road. It was easy to see the tire tracks of Prissy’s car in the thick mud. It started raining again.
“Christ, this is painstaking,” Seth finally said after about half an hour of silence and slow going. “Alex, do you—”
“I’m trying not to think about it,” he interrupted, knowing exactly what Seth was going to say.
“What the hell would cause Priscilla to turn down here?” Seth asked, sweeping the road with his light.
“Ask me that another day,” Alex answered grimly, unable to stop another surge of guilt. If he hadn’t been so angry at Lucy, he would’ve let Priscilla prattle on like she always did. Instead, he’d sent her away, upset, with his Angel.
The dogs became frenzied about twenty minutes later. Alex was suffering with how horribly slow they were moving, but they couldn’t go fast because it was too dark. They ran the risk of injuring themselves if they stumbled off the road.
“We have one!” shouted one of his men.
Alex nudged his stallion towards the side of the road and dismounted. The dogs had taken Jack off the road and about twenty yards into the brush. He’d been right about using the horses and the dogs. They wouldn’t have spotted her otherwise. His nerves were a mess, and he selfishly prayed that it was Angel. “Just one?”
“Yeah.”
He could hear Jack rewarding his dogs with encouraging words, and he rushed over to the mud-caked form as someone gently flipped her over from her facedown position. It was Priscilla. He needed to pray for forgiveness later because of the disappointment he felt that it wasn’t Angel. She was deathly pale. “Jesus.”
“Let me through!” came Seth’s voice. The men instantly moved aside. Seth knelt down on the wet ground and felt for a carotid pulse.
“Is she alive?” someone asked.
After a few agonizing seconds, Seth nodded. “Faint pulse and she’s ice cold. We need some blankets, and we need to get her out of here fast.” Her clothing was soaked through and caked in mud. He couldn’t even see whether she was injured.
Alex’s gut was in a knot. “Is she unconscious, Seth?”
“Yes, and by the looks of it, hypothermic. She can’t help us,” he answered Alex’s unspoken question.
Just then, the howling of the dogs increased. Jack was moving back and forth with them around Priscilla, trying to pick up her back trail. “We have her scent!” he shouted.
“Alex, I have to get Priscilla back to the road so we can get her out of here,” he said, giving his brother a helpless look.
He could hear the strain in his brother’s voice, and knew that meant they would be on their own looking for Angel. If she was hurt, they wouldn’t have Seth. “You need to go with Prissy,” he said knowing Seth needed to hear that. For all they knew, Angel was dead, but it was wrong to take the much-needed attention away from her sister either way. That thought sent a wave of anguish through him, the likes of which he’d never felt before in his life.
“I’ll get her in the ambulance, stabilize her, and come back. We should be able to get the four-by-four close to here without it getting stuck.”
Alex told him to go, and then went back up to grab his horse and follow Jack and the dogs.
***
Angel thought she was dreaming one of those falling dreams that made people twitch in bed to wake themselves up. However, the wash of pain that followed wasn’t part of any dream. She opened her eyes and couldn’t see anything. She felt cold and wet, and her chest hurt.
The car, she remembered. They were in a car and there was a loud noise. Her memory failed her at what happened after that. The baby! She felt her abdomen and did her best to concentrate on sorting things out through the haze. There was no pain and no discomfort from that area, so hopefully he was fine. She swallowed and it felt as if someone had pounded nails into her head when she did it, causing her to cry out. Releasing a sob, she blinked again, but still couldn’t see. Her eyes stung. Reaching up, she wiped them and felt something cool and sticky on her face.
“Prissy?” she croaked, but it wasn’t loud enough to carry, even in the car. The seat belt was firm across her chest, and pulled tight. It was causing her a lot of pain. She finally realized that the car wasn’t parallel to the ground. It was vertical, and she was hanging by her seatbelt just off her seat. “Prissy,” she repeated. There was no answer. She reached her other hand over to the driver’s seat, and it was empty. Oh God, where is my sister? A wave of terror went through her as she thought the worst. A wash of pain followed. Her head hurt, her chest hurt, and her left leg was in agony. Reaching forward, she felt the dash and a deflated airbag. Prissy’s would have gone off too, wouldn’t it? Where was she? Did she go for help?
Angel released another sob. Her head throbbed with every breath. She was beginning to understand her dilemma a little more. A slight breeze had picked up, and although she couldn’t see to confirm it, she knew there was no windshield. If she released her seatbelt, would she careen forward? She didn’t know if the car was on solid ground or hanging off something. She didn’t even know where she was. Despite the pain, she shivered as she got colder. How long had she been unconscious? Was anyone looking for them?
Tears started to fall from her eyes. Now she knew for sure she was vertical—they didn’t run down her cheeks, but slipped down her lashes and fell away. “Prissy,” she tried calling again, but the only thing that answered her was the slight
night breeze and the rustling of leaves. She winced at the pain in her chest and couldn’t speak above a croaked whisper. She could smell gasoline and the coppery scent of her own blood. What if the car caught fire? Horrible images of burning alive started to occupy her mind. Chastising herself, she tried her best to calm down and erase the images. This wouldn’t do her any good. Someone would be looking for them. She never stayed out late, and her father would get worried and call the Harrisons. At least she hoped he would.
It seemed as though hours went by as she waited helplessly. She didn’t know how long she’d been trapped there because she kept fading in and out of consciousness. However, she’d lost the ability to cry a while ago. The pain in her chest was increasing, and she began to wish she’d die just to end it. In addition, she began to hallucinate. She kept seeing Alex sitting beside her, telling her to hang in there. Reality would come and go, and she didn’t want to deal with it anymore. It was painful and cold.
My baby! She needed to stay strong for him. She forced herself to take deep breaths, regardless of the sharp pain that accompanied them. Seth had told her it was a boy. A boy! She couldn’t be selfish and give up. If this was the only part of Alex she could have, she wasn’t going to lose it. Her hand sought out the buckle of her seatbelt. She couldn’t stay here and die.
Howling reached her ears. Were those wolves she heard?
***
Jack’s dogs would get sirloin for a year after they spotted the back end of the car sticking out of the wash. Alex was off his horse before the rest of the men dismounted. His horse hadn’t even come to a full stop.
The car was almost vertical, with the front end buried in the water. He didn’t even hesitate, sliding down the slick incline to the passenger side of the car while praying to God that she was still in there and alive. She could have gone with Prissy and gotten lost.
