by Stacy Gail
Lilah grimaced and sent Winnie a sheepish glance. “Sorry, Winnie.”
“As of now, you’re the one and only person in this house who can practically get away with murder,” Winnie assured her, though she was relieved to no longer be in the doghouse. “Being grumpy is no big deal.”
“What is a big deal is whether or not we call an ambulance to transport Lilah into San Antonio now, while the weather’s still goodish.” Dallas crossed her arms and studied Lilah like she was an interesting piece of art. “I vote yes.”
“Same,” Celia said from her position by the fridge.
Winnie held up a hand. “Me, too.”
“Yeah, well, this isn’t a democracy,” Lilah snarled at them. “I’m not leaving Green Rock until Fin and the others are safely back where they belong. Then, and only then will I leave this ranch.”
“I’m only a phone call away, unless I’m embroiled in another emergency,” Dr. Sharpe said with a nod. “Just know that emergencies are pretty much a given during bad storms. Don’t be surprised if I’m not immediately available.”
Lilah gave her a thumbs-up. “I’ll be fine.”
“You’d better be, lady,” Celia announced after the doctor had left, opening the fridge to retrieve a pitcher of sweet tea. “I may have had two babies now, but I have no clue how to actually deliver one. I’ll be happy to hold your hand and tell you to breathe until you want to bite my face off, but you seriously don’t want me in charge of the icky parts. I’d puke all over you.”
Lilah paused in her pacing long enough to snort. “You’d make a terrible veterinarian.”
Celia scoffed. “That’s probably why I’m not one.”
“Tell me I shouldn’t text Killian about this,” Dallas said, placing glasses on a tray and placing it on the island near Celia. “If he knew what was going on, maybe he could kick the roundup into high gear and get everyone home faster.”
“They’ve already had to kick things up into high gear now that the storm’s blowing in sooner than expected,” Lilah said, shaking her head. “They push themselves any faster, they’re going to make mistakes. Mistakes out there can be deadly. Don’t text him, Dallas, please. Just let them concentrate on the job at hand.”
“Which is exactly what we should do,” Winnie decided, hating the sense of helplessness creeping in. “Lilah, you’re a veterinarian. That means you’re the closest thing we have to a human doctor. If our roles were reversed and I was about to give birth but chose to make everyone crazy with stress by refusing to call an ambulance, what would you want to have here on hand to help me with an unexpected home birth?”
“Way to lay on the guilt trip while still getting things done, Win,” Celia said admiringly. “Nicely done.”
“Funnily enough, I’m not as appreciative,” Lilah remarked, pacing again. “But I’ll admit, getting prepared for any possibility is always a good idea. I can give you a list of what I’d like to have in a birthing room, no worries there. But at the same time, we should also think about how we need to secure the house for the storm. Do we still have the hanging baskets out on the verandah?”
“I can take care of that, and whatever outdoor furniture we’ve got scattered around.” Winnie headed for the door, happy to be moving. “Go ahead and get that birthing room list ready. That’ll be my next project.”
“I’ll help.” Dallas fell into step with her, and together they marched out the front door. “Gotta say, Winsome Smiley, I like the cut of your jib.”
That startled Winnie enough to glance at her. “Pardon?”
“Whether you’re dealing with an aggravated pregnant woman or an oncoming storm, you don’t get ruffled, and you don’t get pushed around. You’re amazing, so please do me a favor. Please, please, please, whatever Des did, don’t give up on him.”
“I’m… not,” Winnie admitted softly, heading out onto the porch. Immediately her hair whipped around in the wind, and she was shocked that she actually had to brace herself against the force of the gusts. “This morning I wanted nothing to do with him. But as the situation’s deteriorated throughout the day, all I can think about is how exposed he is out there in the middle of nowhere. I just want to get him back safe and sound. That’s the only thing that matters to me now.”
“Good.” Dealing with some hair issues herself, Dallas nevertheless headed toward the nearest hanging basket. “Funny how a crisis can put things into perspective.”
“No kidding.” She reached for a hanging basket, unhooking it as she glanced out at the horizon. Her blood ran cold as she stared at the unnatural darkness rising from the earth, darker even than the vicious sky above. “Hey, Dallas?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you know where the keys are to that tractor that was left behind?”
In the process of setting the baskets she’d gathered just inside the front door, Dallas looked over at her. “I think so. Why?”
“Because I’m good with a tractor, and I want to till the ground all around the ranch buildings to create a natural firebreak.”
Dallas went still. “Firebreak?”
“Uh-huh. I think we’re going to need it.” She pointed out toward the blackness beyond Green Rock’s working structures. “Unless I’m wrong, of course, and all that darkness on the horizon are storm clouds that are somehow coming from the ground up.”
In a heartbeat, Dallas was beside her, her peridot eyes glued to the horizon. “I’ll find you those keys.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Storm’s definitely here.” Stripping off the borrowed cowgirl hat, Winnie set it on the office desk and tugged the red bandana down from her face. Earlier that morning while trying to figure out how to escape the ranch, she’d been so upset she completely forgot that she had much more practical clothes up in the guest room. Once she’d calmed down, she’d wasted no time in trading out her walking shorts and impractical kitten-heeled sandals for jeans and boots. “Wind’s blowing the dust so bad out there I could hardly see what I was doing. But I think I got a fifty-foot cushion of tilled dirt between the ranch buildings and any organic groundcover. Unfortunately, that won’t spare us from embers that blow our way.”
“Celia’s hosing down the house’s exterior right now to combat that possibility,” Lilah said, her expression torn between stress and pain as she rubbed at her back. “Dallas went to the garage to see if there are any spark plugs that’ll fit your car in case we need to evacuate the kids, and I’ve called the fire department to let them know about the smoke.”
In the process to trying to twist her tangled hair into a braid, Winnie looked up. “What’d they say?”
“They already knew about it.” Lilah grimaced, whether from pain or the situation Winnie couldn’t tell. “It’s the Spitzer farm, about three miles from where we are.”
Winnie caught her breath. “Oh, no. I went to school with Liam Spitzer. Do they know what happened?”
“Apparently lightning struck a garage, and it was like throwing a match into a vat of gasoline. I was just out there about a month ago to deal with a rambunctious miniature horse named Ramona. Man, I hope everyone over there is all right.”
That made two of them. “Hopefully they were able to evacuate in time.”
“That’s just it, Winnie. Farmers and ranchers… They view things differently than they do in the city. It’s like they feel they are an inextricable part of their land. Evacuating isn’t something they can just do.”
A small snort escaped her. “I think at this point I need to remind you that I grew up out here in the boonies, right next door to Green Rock Ranch, yet I had no problem with, shall we say, evacuating when I was seventeen. Then again,” she added fairly, “my father was never a real rancher or farmer, and he didn’t give a lick about the Smiley homestead. He just held on to that property because he didn’t want the Brodys to have it.”
“Thank God you were enough of a rancher’s daughter to know how to run a tractor. I know we’re not safe, but I feel a whole lot better with
all that land you tilled between us and everything else.” Lilah hissed in a sharp breath, then let it out in a groan as she doubled over.
“Lilah!” Winnie leaped forward to half-carry, half-force the other woman into the nearest chair. “Okay, enough of this. I’m calling for an ambulance now.”
“I already tried,” she said between breaths, shocking Winnie. “When I called the fire department, actually. There’s exactly one ambulance in Bitterthorn, and it’s over at the Spitzer place right now. Then I called Dr. Sharpe. She’s out at Abel’s Market dealing with someone’s kid who’s having such a bad asthma attack from all the dust, the kid’s barely breathing. Then she has to get to someone else who got blown off a ladder while putting up storm shutters, hit their head and is currently unresponsive. I’m far down on her list.”
Winnie didn’t even bother to swear. “I’m seriously not going to mention that you should’ve gone when you had the chance, because I’m awesome like that.”
Lilah breathed out a rocky laugh. “Like I said, ranchers have trouble evacuating off their land.”
“Apparently that goes for their wives as well.”
“You’re not wrong.” Lilah interrupted herself with some deep breathing before glancing up at her. “By the way, remember that list you wanted me to make of everything I’d like to have in a birthing room?”
“If you say a table with stirrups and bottles of trippy knockout drugs, I’m going to have to disappoint you on that score. I was thinking more along the lines of boiling water and clean towels.”
“I did a little better than that. When I realized we’re on our own out here, I called a vet friend—my partner down at the clinic, Casey. He’s a total klutz, so he might fall over a nonexistent pebble and die before he even gets here. But if he doesn’t, he’s bringing everything we might need, from a fetal heart monitor to those trippy knockout drugs you talked about.”
Like magic, a weight lifted off Winnie’s shoulders. “He does know you’re not a cow or a horse, right?”
“That’s my hope.”
“Cool. And I can still provide boiling water if you need it. I won’t let you down on that score.”
Lilah’s laugh was part-groan. “You’ve been perfect from the get-go, Win. In fact, on my list of things to have in a birthing room, you’re right up there with Casey. At least you’re not such a klutz that you might drop my baby as soon as it’s born.”
Aw. “Now you’ve gone and cursed me to be all thumbs—"
“Welp, our men know we’re in trouble.” Celia swept in, looking like she’d been covered in a fine coat of reddish brown-tinted confectioner’s sugar. When she pulled down the yellow bandana that covered her mouth and nose to reveal the dirt encrusted on the upper half of her face, Winnie realized that was how she must look as well. “Killian apparently saw the smoke from the air and thought it was us, so he called D. She couldn’t figure out how to tell him we’re fine when we’re not, so she had no choice but to spill the beans on everything.”
Lilah came halfway out of her chair. “Including me?”
“Including you, though D swears she played it down. The upside is that Killian thinks they can be here within the hour, and a few ranch hands might be able to get here with trucks for us even sooner, so within the hour we’re no longer going to be stranded. By the way, we’re all in the doghouse for keeping quiet on that,” Celia added with a disgusted shake of her head. “Can you frigging believe it? You’d think they would realize they’re the ones who had stupid attacks and left us here without transportation, but no. It’s our fault for not telling them they had stupid attacks and left us here without transportation.”
“I tried jamming a spark plug from a commercial-grade, heavy-duty pickup into your Camry, Winnie,” Dallas said as she came in, peeling off work gloves and similarly coated in reddish brown dust. “Maybe someone with more muscle could get that sucker in there, but that someone isn’t me.” She glanced at Celia. “Did you tell them?”
Celia nodded. “I just hope those idiots out there are careful. It’s not even seven o’clock, but it’s as dark as midnight out there. With the drought as bad as it’s been, there are cracks and fissures all over the ground that they might not be able to see. And if they’re running their horses—”
“They’re Brodys,” Lilah said, though the way she reached out to grip Winnie’s hand spoke more truth than anything. “They grew up in the saddle, and they know every inch of this land. They know what they’re doing—” She interrupted herself with a sharp gasp, and the faint sound of a splash hit Winnie’s ears. “Oh, damn. My water just broke.”
While everyone went into motion to get Lilah into the bedroom behind the kitchen, it was all Winnie could do to keep from grabbing her phone to send a text to Des imploring him to be careful. She couldn’t do that to him now. She needed all his attention to be focused on getting back in one piece. That was all that mattered.
Well, that, and getting Lilah and her baby through this madness healthy and happy.
And making sure Green Rock Ranch didn’t burn down to the ground with every Brody inside.
Great.
No pressure.
*
“There it is, Smiley Lake.” Des squinted through the blowing dust, grateful that the wind had died down a bit now that the sun had finally set. Or, he assumed it had. It was pitch black out there with only moments of lightning to give him a picture of where they were going. Luckily the herd seemed to now be able to sense the water, because they were heading toward it without much help from them. Des only knew where it was because Rufus and Gus Anders had told them they’d leave the homestead’s floodlights on for them to find in the darkness.
As far as he was concerned, those two old codgers had earned themselves a damn fine vacation after all this.
“Remind me,” he yelled out to Ry, who was no more than three feet away from him. “Why the fuck did our ancestors think Black Angus was the breed to go with? Herding black cattle at nighttime is fucking ridiculous.”
“Usually you don’t herd at night, but desperate times, yeah? As long as we’ve got the bulk of them into a somewhat controlled environment, I’m not even going to worry about any strays we can’t fucking see in the dark. There’s Gus at the gate.” Ry stood up in his stirrups and waved, though Des doubted their former ranch manager saw him through the dust and dark. “Thank fucking Christ. I’ve never been happier to see that old fart.”
“The Spitzer place burned down to the ground,” Gus said by way of greeting as the endless sea of cattle poured through to get to the lake beyond. Gus had always been on the gloomy side, but in an emergency he could be counted on to be downright morbid. “Grassfires are popping up everywhere, from Cotulla all the way to San Antonio, thanks to the lightning strikes. And then there’s a report of a possible tornado north of Poteet.”
“Fuck,” Ry muttered. “Don’t you have anything good to report?”
Gus gave him a sour look. “Nope.”
“Of course you don’t,” Des muttered and looked toward the ranch just as a sizzling white vein of lightning struck beyond the tree line.
Beyond the tree line was Green Rock Ranch.
And Winnie.
Without another word, he wheeled his horse around and galloped all-out toward the faint orange glow in the distance.
*
“What was hit?” Huffing and puffing, with shoulders supported by Dallas, Lilah looked to Winnie in the doorway, her face bathed in sweat. Her friend and colleague, Casey Waller, adjusted the fetal heart monitor strapped to Lilah’s belly, tripped on his unlaced shoe and semi-crashed into the side of the bed, all of which Lilah ignored as if it were completely normal. “That sounded like it was right on top of us.”
“All I know is that it wasn’t this house, and that’s what’s important.” Winnie was already sliding the bandana back over her face and heading back out the door. “I’ll go check real quick and see what’s up, okay? Just relax and focus on your breathing.”
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“I can go with you,” Celia offered, rising to her feet.
“I’d be willing to bet the kids downstairs need you after that big boomer more than anything.” When she saw Celia waver, she popped a thumb’s up. “Remember, I was born a farm girl. I’ve got this.”
Her confident swagger vanished the moment she was out of sight, but she barely even noticed as she grabbed up her borrowed hat, slammed it in place and almost ran for the foyer. She couldn’t help but run; that clap of thunder sounded like it happened right outside. She wouldn’t have been at all surprised to open the door only to find the wraparound verandah was now nothing more than a smoldering ruin.
Maybe it wasn’t that bad, she thought, hating that her hand shook as she reached for the door. It was probably just lightning that was right overhead and hadn’t actually reached the ground.
Please, please, please, please…
The smell of dust was so overpowering she almost missed the dual scents of smoke and a hint of rain. Her heart pounded as she left the verandah, searching wildly for the source of that burning scent. Maybe it was just one of the pecan trees behind the house, she tried to tell herself so she wouldn’t completely lose her shit. That was still too close to the house for comfort, but a tree strike would be fine. She could handle a tree strike…
The scream of an animal yanked her head around to stare, horrified, at the Bachelor Pad a hundred yards or so away.
It was on fire.
“Fire!” She took the time to sprint back to the verandah to yell into the foyer. “Fire at the Bachelor Pad! Call the fire department while I get the animals out! Move!”
Move.
