Papa Beach put a hand on her shoulder and began to pray, both for Gray’s safety and well-being and Tessa’s peace of mind.
A sense of calm washed over her, though the tension in her shoulders didn’t go away.
He finished his prayer a moment later. “I already sent a text to Sheriff Turner. I told him it wasn’t urgent yet, but that we didn’t know where Gray was. He said to keep him posted and that if we haven’t heard from Gray within an hour of the storm calming down to let him know. If he has the manpower to send someone out sooner, he will, but they’ve had a couple of swift-water rescues already because people weren’t paying attention.”
“Turn around, don’t drown.” Tessa stared at her clenched hands. “There’s no creeks where he should have been. It’s much closer to the property line. He shouldn’t have gotten caught in rushing water.”
“Unlikely,” Papa Beach agreed. “I’m going to drive down the way and see if I can figure out where he went, an open gate or something.” He leaned over and kissed Tessa’s head. “I’ll keep you posted.”
“Thank you, Papa Beach.” Tessa leaned back against the couch and closed her eyes. “I just want him home.”
“Of course, sweetheart.” Mama Beach wrapped an arm around Tessa’s shoulders.
Tessa leaned against her, glad it only made her back ache and not the sharp pain it would have been a couple of weeks earlier.
Mama Beach began to sing softly. Old hymns that Mama Beach had grown up singing and knew Tessa loved, too.
Time passed, though Tessa couldn’t have said how much, but the storm outside lessened to just rain.
The doors to the house opened and Gray’s family poured in. Everyone but Sean and their parents trooped into the house.
“No one’s been able to get a hold of Sean,” Mia told them. “He said something about going out of town but not about being unavailable.”
“I’m sure he’s fine.” The way Mama Beach said it made Tessa think she knew something more than she was saying, but Tessa didn’t have time to dwell on it.
“Do we need to start a search grid or something?” Eli crossed his arms over his chest, his feet spread shoulder-width apart.
“I’ve got my security team already working with Jonathan Langley-Cranston,” Harrison told them. “Looking for likely spots he could have holed up. But I really didn’t know what to tell them to look for.”
Before Tessa could say anything, a knock sounded on the door. Madi answered it.
Tessa sat straight up.
It was the sheriff and two deputies.
This couldn’t be good.
They all gathered around the kitchen table. Sheriff Turner paced the kitchen. “You’re not sure which neighbor it was?”
Tessa shook her head. “No but the most likely answer is that the cows came from down by the Beach House. That’s where they usually come from. I think one of the gates might be wonky.”
The sheriff nodded at one of his men who headed outside. “We’ll start putting a small search party together. I’m sure he just holed up somewhere, but there were definitely some dangerous winds that went through here. I’m not sure exactly where he might be yet, though.”
“I was in the shelter. There’s damage all over the yard. Tree limbs and stuff. Maybe some siding missing, but nothing overly dramatic.”
“Good. The Beach House area might be a bit worse. I watched it on the radar earlier. When you zoomed in, the hook was more that direction than here.”
Tessa nodded. “That’s what it looked like to me, too.” She’d already shown the sheriff where the GPS on his phone said he had been, but that was the first place Papa Beach and the others looked, just to make sure he hadn’t been hit by debris on his way home then landed in one of the ditches on the side of the road.
Mama Beach walked into the kitchen. “Sean is on his way. He should be here in about fifteen minutes. He may have some ideas. They grew up exploring the farm with some of my other nieces and nephews and the Braverman cousins.”
“How did you get a hold of him?” Madi asked her. “He didn’t answer when any of us called.”
“It doesn’t matter. He’s on his way.” Mama Beach looked at Sheriff Turner. “How bad were the winds here? Straight line or twister. I don’t care. If you had to guess, how bad?”
The sheriff shook his head. “Mama Beach, you know I don’t like to guess.”
Mama Beach’s stern look made the grown man sigh.
“Fine. If I had to guess, EF0 or maybe EF1. Not good, but not as bad as it could have been. I’ve heard reports of an EF-3 near Spring Meadow. I doubt it was any higher than EF-1 here.”
“But he still needs to have been in a shelter of some kind, right?” Were there any shelters out there? Outside of the shelter behind the Beach House?
“It would be best. Protect him from debris.” He didn’t say anything about how safe he would be if a structure fell on top of Gray.
Tessa wasn’t going to think about that. Any structure out in those fields or woods had withstood winds far above what blew around a couple of hours earlier. They’d likely been standing for decades. This storm wouldn’t topple them. Would it?
At that moment, Sean walked in, accompanied by Tessa’s cousin.
Odd.
First, the barbecue. Then Brittany’s wedding.
Now showing up together in the middle of the night to look for Gray?
A sheriff’s deputy came in with a laminated map of the area.
Sheriff Turner helped him spread it out on the table. “All right. Papa Beach and the boys already looked through this area.” He made a circle with his finger. “That’s the last place Gray’s phone pinged according to the GPS finder on Tessa’s phone. We’re looking to see if we can get better data from the carrier, but I don’t have it yet.”
He pointed to the spot where the gate stood. “Best guess is that he herded the animals here. Papa Beach and the boys already checked the Beach House and the shelter there. One of my men already checked with the other neighbors, who haven’t seen him, but confirmed that’s where he likely headed with the cattle.”
The sheriff looked up at Sean. “I didn’t grow up on this farm, but one similar. There were several buildings out in the woods where someone might take shelter if they were desperate on a night like tonight. Can you think of any?”
Sean nodded. “There’s a couple of them.” He rested the palms of his hands on the table as he studied the map before pointing. “There’s one about here and another here. There’s one more I can think of off the top of my head, but I can’t quite remember where it is.” His finger circled a wooded area about a third of a mile from the road. “In here, I think, but I’m not sure.”
“We’ll start with the other two then work our way that direction. It makes the most sense to start with the other two anyway. I don’t have enough manpower right now for a full search party, but that’s where we start.”
The sheriff’s phone buzzed. “I have to take this. Try to remember where exactly that third one is.”
Tessa tried to think. She’d been out there with the boys most of the time but not all of it. She’d likely been to all of those sheds, probably even labeled them death traps at one point or another.
Sure, they’d weathered far worse storms than this, but a couple of them looked like a butterfly landing in the wrong spot would knock them over.
She pushed back from the table and struggled to stand. “I’m going out there.”
Sean moved into her path as she started for the door. “Tess, Gray wouldn’t want you out there. Not tonight. Not when you’re still recovering. He knows you would be if you were well. That’s enough. We’ve got several deputies, some of Harrison and Jonathan’s men, plus the rest of us. If we haven’t found him by daylight, we’ll have a lot more people here. But we’ll find him soon. I know it. You need to stay here and pray. I know it doesn’t seem like enough, but it is. I promise.”
Tessa knew Sean was right, but it physically hurt
to stay behind.
She went into the living room and sat in the recliner, carefully flipping the leg rest out. With her eyes closed, she blew out a breath, and ramped up the intensity of her prayers.
It might be all she could do, but she’d do it the best she could.
God, let him be okay.
It was all she could manage, but the intensity built with each repetition.
It would be enough.
It had to be.
18
Gray knew four things.
First, he was wet.
But given the thunderstorm raging around him, that wasn’t too surprising.
Second, he was cold.
Not too shocking since he was soaked to the bone, but still unusual for late August in southwest Missouri.
Fourth - or was it third? - he couldn’t see much of anything.
Since it was the middle of the night and clouds hung heavy over the Ozarks, that shouldn’t surprise him, but somehow it did.
Fourth - it really was fourth now, wasn’t it? - he was stuck.
Since the building had collapsed on him, stuck wasn’t surprising either.
Fifth, Tessa would find him.
Wait. He’d thought he knew four things.
Maybe Tessa would be the one to find him.
Probably not. Not with as much as she still hurt when she tried to do much, but she’d make sure someone else came to find him.
Did she remember where this shack was?
Sean would. Probably. But he’d been out of contact for the last couple of days.
This was one of several outbuildings they’d discovered in their days traipsing around the farm as kids. Maybe someone could get ahold of Sean or one of Tessa’s other cousins who’d been with them.
Groaning, he tried to shove the plank off of him, but it wouldn’t budge. Just as well. The way they were all situated, it could come crashing down instead. Fortunately, he was mostly covered and out of the worst of the rain. The mud soaked into his jeans, but at least he wasn’t trapped face down.
Hm.
That was a thought.
Were people ever trapped face down? Had he ever seen a movie where the person was trapped face down and survived?
How long would it take for a search party to find him? Were they looking yet? He didn’t know for sure how long it had been, but it was still the middle of the night.
Sheriff Turner probably had men on swift water rescues, because people could be stupid. Being trapped out here wouldn’t take high priority when there was so much more going on.
Of course, they wouldn’t know that he was only trapped and not hurt much worse.
He didn’t think he was hurt. Not badly. His left foot was stuck under something, but it didn’t seem too bad. Not broken or worse.
Hopefully.
He could handle a sprain or even a broken leg as long as that’s all it was and blood wasn’t pooling in his leg or some other dire situation.
His phone was in his back pocket. He didn’t have service when he took shelter in the small building, but maybe with the storm letting up, he’d manage a bar or two.
Twisting and turning and contorting as best he could around the debris holding him in place, he tried to reach it.
Finally, he let himself rest again. He couldn’t reach his phone. Maybe Tessa would remember to look for his GPS finder thing. She knew his password.
They should probably double check that they knew all of each other's passwords and things like that. He needed to get life insurance, so she’d have that to fall back on if something really did happen to him.
Pop Pop had left the land and a sizable sum of money to her, to them, but most of it had been earmarked for use to maintain the farm, not for her to live on, though the lawyer might be lenient. They shouldn’t count on it.
Would it be a bad idea to fall asleep? A nap sounded like a great idea, but what if he missed someone searching for him? What if he got hypothermia?
No. It was August. The low would be in the seventies. It wasn’t possible to get hypothermia in the seventies.
Was it?
Gray tried to think about it logically. The temperature wasn’t cold by any stretch of the imagination, but it was cooler than his body temperature. If he stayed wet and in an environment below about ninety-five, his body temperature would continue to drop.
But he also needed to be found before he dehydrated, probably a greater concern in the summer, especially once the temperature rose again during the day.
Unable to keep his eyes open any longer, Gray let his eyes drift closed and floated off to sleep.
Sean hadn’t figured on spending the night searching for his brother, but there really wasn’t another choice. Gray would do it for him.
At least Mama Beach’s call hadn’t come an hour earlier.
Though he did feel guilty about ignoring the rest of the calls, he was glad Mama Beach had known how to get through.
None of the other cousins who’d traipsed through the farm with them growing up were around. That meant Sean knew the area best.
He went to his SUV, which someone had thoughtfully returned to Pop Pop’s driveway, and dug out his boots from the back. Sitting on the porch, but out of the rain, he laced them up.
The front door opened and Tessa emerged.
“We’ll find him, Tess. He’s just holed up somewhere and doesn’t realize we’re all worried, or something equally innocuous.” Sean didn’t really believe that, but he had to say it anyway. The reality was that Gray had probably been hurt, or worse, but Sean wasn’t about to say that to his sister-in-law.
“I know.” She wrapped her arms around her stomach. “Thank you for coming.”
He forced a smile. “I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”
In fifteen minutes, he and several sheriff’s deputies, his uncle, brothers-in-law, and a few others working for Harrison and Jonathan started for the Beach House.
They stayed in groups of three and four as they fanned out across the field. Sean stayed with the ones tasked to search the shacks and sheds in the woods.
The first one had no sign of Gray having ever been there. It was still standing but definitely had seen better days.
Half an hour later, the second one was much the same, though it had weathered the storms of the last two decades better than the first.
Or maybe his childhood imagination remembered them being in far better shape than they actually were to start with.
“Where’s the last one?” Sheriff Turner asked.
They huddled together and pulled out a phone as the third man with them held his rain coat over their heads.
Sean pinched the map to zoom in. “It’s in this area somewhere, but I’m not sure. Not too close to the creek, I know that.” The creek only cut across a corner of Pop Pop’s land anyway.
The sheriff nodded. “All right. We’ll walk this way. Keep your eyes open.”
They all had heavy duty flashlights to cut through the dark and drizzle.
“Gray!” Sean called every few seconds as they walked. “Gray, can you hear me?”
They spread out about ten feet apart and kept walking toward the edge of Pop Pop’s property.
“Gray!” They were all calling for his brother.
They kept going then Sean saw it.
“There!” He pointed his light toward a heap of wood that used to be a shed.
The three of them ran toward it. Or tried. It wasn’t easy in the wooded area, full of mud and roots just waiting to trip a guy.
“Careful,” the deputy told him as Sean started to grab at the wood. “We don’t want it to collapse on him if he’s under there.”
“Gray!” Was that a groan he heard in response? Sean used his flashlight to try to peer in between the planks of wood, but he couldn’t see anything.
“Back up.” Sheriff Turner and his deputy evaluated the pile and started removing the wood.
A few minutes later, he turned to Sean. “I don’t think this is a new col
lapse. I think it’s been like this for a while. There’s spiderwebs under here and a nest of some kind for an animal.”
Sean turned, running his hand through his wet hair. “Then where is he?”
“Is there anywhere else he could hole up? Another shed somewhere?”
Sean shook his head. “Not on this part of Pop Pop’s property.” He wracked his brain. “Where else?” he muttered, eyes closed as he relived the days of running around this field.
He turned. “Wait. There’s one more, but it’s not technically on Pop Pop’s property.”
They huddled together as he looked at the map.
Across the creek. Down a little hill. Up another one.
“Over here!” Sheriff Turner’s light hit another small collapsed building.
“Gray!” Sean tried to hurry.
There wasn’t an answer, but he did hear a rhythmic banging start.
He breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s him!”
Together, the three of them carefully pulled the shed apart. A minute later, they found Gray.
“I’m okay,” he groaned. “Mostly pinned. I still have feeling in my feet, I think, except they’re wet and cold.”
“That’s good.”
Sheriff Turner keyed into his radio and told the rest of the search party Gray had been found. An ambulance was being dispatched. Those close enough would head toward the location.
Sean knelt next to his brother and held his rain jacket over Gray’s head to keep the water off of him as much as possible.
“I knew you’d find me.” Gray sounded a little on the weak side but not too bad. “I can’t really take a deep breath or move much at all, but I think I’m just stuck.”
Sean gripped his brother’s hand. “I’m so glad. Tessa will be, too.”
“Is she all right? Is the farmhouse? The Beach House?”
“Minor damage. Nothing big. Tessa’s fine, just worried about you.”
Gray seemed to relax. “Good.”
More people joined them which made moving the debris happen more quickly.
It seemed to take an eternity but surely didn’t. One of the deputies stabilized Gray’s lower leg before they moved a tree trunk off it. Only about eight inches in diameter, it had knocked the building over and trapped Gray.
Small Town Girls Don't Marry Their Best Friends: Contemporary Christian Romance (Beaches of Trumanville Book 3) Page 13