Tomorrow's Sun (50 page)

A branch snapped. Lexi’s pulse pounded in her neck. The thing was getting closer. Were there bears? A fat raccoon waddled past. She made herself think of rabbits and squirrels and fuzzy, harmless creatures. A wheeze whistled from her throat. She tried to quiet her breathing, but the harder she tried, the louder it got. Slow. Calm. Fear would make it worse. She tried to pray, but no words came to mind. She pushed herself to a stand. The stars came back. Bending over, she rounded her shoulders and rubbed the sore spots between her ribs. Adam had read about it once. Acupressure.

Another sound. Footsteps. She held her breath.

“Lex?”

So faint. Had she imagined his voice? “Adam?”

And then he was there, grabbing her arm, hugging her.

“Adam!” She wrapped her arm around him. “Ben might still be close,” she wheezed.

“Where’s your inhaler?” he whispered in her ear as his hand followed her arm up to the belt.

“He threw it.”

He rummaged in his backpack and handed her a candy bar. “Theobromine. Remember? Relaxes bronchials.” His knife snapped open and he sawed through the belt in seconds.

As Lexi’s arm dropped to her side, a deep, gravelly laugh boomed down the hill and ricocheted off the trees.

Walk faster
. Emily gripped a chunk of terra-cotta flowerpot she’d picked up at the campsite as she swept the woods with a flashlight beam. She craned her neck to the left, and her toe caught in a tangle of roots. She lurched forward, grabbing a sapling and catching herself, but wrenching her lower back as she did.

Faster
. She’d seen the blood on the cement slab. The ranger had tried to hide it from her and now she wished he’d been successful. She couldn’t dismiss the image. Her teeth dented her bottom lip as she kept her screams inside. The ranger’s reluctant assent to her joining the search was based on her promise to not make a sound.

Twelve more steps, gradually uphill, and her back cramped. She thought of the paisley cane at the bottom of the river as she painted the ground with her light, finally landing on a piece of wood the right length for a walking stick. With the stub of a branch, about three inches long, sticking out from one end, it looked like a long-barreled rifle.

“Why is it that you can hunt possum in the dark of night and paddle the river by day and I must stitch by candlelight and bake bread at sunrise?”

Hannah’s words occupied her mind and took the edge off her fear. She’d walked a dozen more steps when a light flashed at her. She held her breath. “Miss Foster?” The ranger’s hushed voice restored the cadence of her pulse. As he neared, the beam from his headlamp dipped toward something red in his hand.

Lexi’s inhaler.

“Oh God.” Emily’s hand flattened against her chest. “Lexi has asthma. This cold air…” She stifled a sob. Her fingers closed around the inhaler. She slid it into her pocket next to the pottery piece. The ranger nodded and walked away.

Minutes passed. Lightning flashed through the dense trees. The wind picked up. It smelled like damp earth and something else. Something out of place.

“Chocolate!” She whispered it out loud without thinking. A faint sound filtered through the brush.

Wheezing.

“Lexi! Where are you?” Her voice echoed. A louder wheeze answered. “Lexi!”

“Em—”

Her hand shook, her light swung wildly. She froze as it hit an expanse of white. A man. Ben. Huge arms wrapped around Adam and Lexi, fat hands curled over their throats.

“Let them go. Now. Or I’ll…” She raised the walking stick to her right shoulder and aimed it, and the flashlight, at Ben Madsen’s eyes. “Let them go or I’ll shoot.” The words hissed from her.

Wild eyes opened wider. Ben’s. Adam’s. Lexi’s. And her own. Her throat constricted. Black dots danced. “Now.” The fat fingers straightened and lifted slowly away. His arms stretched to the sky and Adam and Lexi ran toward her.

“Don’t move!” The ranger’s voice split the darkness.

And Emily’s legs gave way.

“Emily!” A wheezing sob ripped from Lexi as Emily slumped against Adam. Never in her life had she been so happy to see someone she thought she never wanted to see again.

Emily wrapped her in a one-armed hug and the strength seemed to return to her legs. “Here.” Emily opened her hand.

Lexi grabbed the inhaler, took two long puffs, and fell into Emily’s arms next to Adam. Nothing, in over a year, had felt so good.

A radio beeped in the hand of a man in a uniform. A staticky voice from the radio said, “The kids’ uncle is here.”

“Put him on.” He handed the radio to Emily.

Emily laughed over her sobs. “We found them. They’re fine.” She rested her head on Lexi’s.

Adam leaned toward the radio. “Emily found us, Jake. She found us.” His voice cracked and he turned away.

“Thank God.” Jake’s voice was like music. “Thank Emily.”

“Yeah.” Lexi nodded against Emily’s neck and hugged her tighter. “Thank
you”
—she laughed through her tears—“muchness.”

E
mily’s new walking stick echoed against the hillside as they followed the boardwalk in Johnson’s Shut-Ins State Park. Jake wrapped his hand around hers and lifted his face to the sun. Lexi sprinted ahead while Adam spewed facts about the reservoir breach that destroyed a portion of the park in 2005.

“One-point-three billion gallons of water. Imagine what that sounded like. It ripped out a chunk of the mountain and totally destroyed the old campground.” His mouth twisted in a grimace. “That would have been a worse camping trip than this one.”

Jake winked at Emily and she answered with a squeeze to his hand. “Unbelievable,” she whispered.

“Mm-hm.”

A nurse at the hospital had warned them that the kids might show signs of posttraumatic stress. So far, they weren’t displaying anything but relief.

“Imagine looking out your tent flap and seeing a wall of water pushing a ten-foot-wide boulder right at you. Bummer.”

“Ignore the boy.” Jake laughed. Emily’s look said she hadn’t missed the huskiness in his voice.

Lexi turned and gestured with a wildly arcing arm. “Come on. Can we get wet?”

Jake nodded. “You’ve got an hour. We’re meeting Mr. Greene at two.”

The twins ran ahead. Emily led the way to a flat-topped rock ten feet above the rocky riverbed and pulled Jake down next to her. “You’re going to be one of those
Wild at Heart
kind of dads, aren’t you?”

With feigned innocence, he took the stick from her and leaned over for a lingering kiss. When he pulled away, Emily giggled. “We got caught.” She gestured toward Adam, standing on a rounded boulder with his hands on his stomach and his tongue sticking out in the universal sign for gagging.

Lexi, sitting in an enormous hole in the rock carved by the east fork of the Black River, shot a thumbs-up and grinned at them like a girl with nothing more on her mind than the rush of water over bare legs.

Jake pulled Adam’s Swiss Army knife from his back pocket. He pulled out blades, smiling at the broken stub of the blade that had prevented Ben from taking the kids to Texas. He hunted for the one he’d used during the restless night in the motel.

Even though everyone was safe, he’d been unable to sleep. Hours of adrenaline and the weight of future responsibility had him pacing the floor while Emily and Lexi slept across the hall and Adam was under observation at the hospital. And then he’d remembered the stick in the back of his truck. Emily needed a remembrance of her courage, of the moment she’d pointed it at Ben. Did she see God’s faithfulness in what had happened last night? Instead of requiring restitution from her, He’d given her a chance to set someone free.

He smiled at her and carved a curled tail on the
y
in
Emily
.

Adam leaped to another rock and Emily stiffened. “That child had a ton of stitches in his head last night and here he is rock climbing.”

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

An adorably exasperated sigh hissed through her lips. “I’m buying you a stack of parenting books.”

He tipped his head toward hers, breathing in a sweet and spicy medley of deliciousness. “You taught kids their age. You could teach me all I need to know.”

She was quiet for a moment. “Teaching is different from parenting.”

Jake folded the knife and slid his arm around her shoulders. The words he wanted to say were premature. “I’ll need your help with the girl stuff,” he said instead. If it were up to him, he’d tack a “forever” onto it, but she hadn’t said a word about the house in St. Louis or about heading back to Wisconsin. For all he knew, she was on her way to California and this majestic place with the rush of dozens of waterfalls in the background was the setting for their farewell scene.

She’s waiting on you, lame brain
. The thought came in Topher’s voice. Jake smiled and pulled her closer. “So about that trim you’re going to refinish in the dining room…”

Emily laughed. “Subtle.” She turned until her lips were once again an easy kissing distance from his. “You can ask, you know.”

“I’m too scared of the answer.” He took an exaggerated breath. “Are you coming back home?”

Blond strands trailed across her cheek. “I’ve been thinking about that.”

He didn’t like where this was going. “And?”

“I want to do something significant with the money from the house.”

“Like what?” His voice rasped. From the moment he’d heard her on the ranger’s radio last night, he’d lost his grip on his emotions. “What are you thinking?”

“Maybe some kind of art scholarship for handicapped kids. Or maybe…I can’t believe I’m saying this. Maybe starting a preschool.”

Jake nodded, knowing his voice wouldn’t cooperate. She’d changed so much from the cardboard girl he’d first met.

“I can’t decide if I should withdraw my offer on the house in St. Louis or go ahead with it. It’s an amazing deal. It would be a smart investment, but”—she touched her forehead to his—“I hate the thought of breaking in a new contractor.”

The sparkle in her eyes banished every ounce of tension in his muscles. He laughed and realized his AWOL voice had returned. “Braden Remodeling has been known to do some long-distance work, but there would have to be some major restrictions in the contract.”

“Such as?”

“Such as Braden would have to go halfsies on the purchase of the property.”

Emily blinked once, then again. “That’s quite a long-term commitment.”

He leaned into her lips. “Not nearly as long as I’d like it to be.”

Her lips touched his then jerked away. “Wait a minute. That means Braden would expect to go halfsies on all decisions.”

“You betcha.” His eyelashes swept her cheek. “But no worries. I’m starting to like tearing down your walls.”