“I know what this is about,” James said, in mock revelation. “You’re thinking that if I come out there, you and I can get back together, patch things up. That I’d bring you back to New York and we’d all be one big happy family again.”
Indignation surged through Tara, rendering her speechless for several long moments. That was the last thing she’d expected him to say—and the last thing she wanted.
“You are so wrong,” she managed to say, mildly sick to her stomach.
“Am I?” James almost purred the words.
“Yes!”
He went quiet again, thinking. Then he said, “We did have some good times. Maybe we could work things out.”
Was he being sarcastic? Surely James knew as well as she did that they were completely over.
“Tara?” he prompted, with a note of smugness, when she didn’t reply right away.
Sometimes, a person had no choice but to fall back on a cliché. “Not if you were literally the last man on earth,” she said. “Goodbye.”
She hung up, paced the kitchen for a minute or so, trying to rein in her temper. What had she ever seen in her ex-husband, with his God-complex and his lack of concern for anyone but himself?
What kind of person didn’t want to raise their own children?
Suddenly, she stopped in her tracks, and a chill went through her. A person like Boone Taylor, that’s who.
Sure, Boone’s boys were living with him now, but he’d been willing enough to farm them out with his sister after Corrie died—when they’d needed him most.
She stood at the sink, gazing at her own reflection, a gaunt ghost-version of herself, in the night-blackened glass. She’d fallen for the wrong man once, and now she’d done it again.
“Fool,” she accused, turning away.
* * *
BOONE HADN’T SLEPT the whole night, and now that sunup had rolled around, he knew he was going to pay the price. By the end of the day, he’d have to prop his eyelids open with matchsticks.
He made coffee and looked in on the boys, saw that they were sleeping soundly.
Scamp, curled up between them, lifted his head to look at Boone, then quietly got up and jumped to the floor, tail wagging.
Boone grinned wanly, went back to the kitchen and poured coffee into a mug, even though the gizmo hadn’t finished its chortling, steaming cycle. The stuff was half-again too strong, but he needed the caffeine, so he’d drink it, anyway.
He had some time before he had to get Griffin and Fletcher up, washed, fed and pointed in the right direction, and the restlessness that had kept him awake was still with him.
He went outside, stood on the sagging porch, gazed at the place where the new house would stand, ready to live in before the first snow, if luck was with him. He’d gotten the loan in place and hired a contractor, but after what had happened with Tara the day before, well, maybe he ought to put on the brakes.
He turned, walked toward the offshoot of the river, because he always did his best thinking anywhere near the water.
Scamp kept pace, prancing along beside Boone, pausing every now and then to sniff the ground.
Tara’s house seemed to have an aura, with the sun rising behind it, spilling red-orange light over the land.
Boone’s throat tightened, and he shoved a hand through his hair, confused about some things, and bone-sure of others. He bent to pick up a stick and toss it into the water and, to his delight, Scamp went right in after the twig and proudly brought it back, shaking himself off as he looked up at Boone. Boone laughed and bent to pat the dog’s head, take the stick and throw it again.
Scamp rushed after it, splashing as he went.
Watching the dog, Boone didn’t glance toward Tara’s place again, but he could hear the chickens clucking, Lucy barking, Tara calling something to her.
It took a moment to register the note of alarm in Tara’s voice and, when he did, Boone looked up quickly, saw her coming toward him. She crossed the board bridge nearly at a run, and that was when he caught the expression on her face. Terror.
“The twins are gone!” she blurted out.
Boone frowned. “What?”
“They’re not in their room,” Tara gasped out, stumbling as she neared him, nearly falling before he caught hold of her arms and steadied her. “Boone, they’ve run away—they said they would—”
“Take a breath,” Boone ordered, sounding calmer than he felt. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Scamp drop the newly retrieved stick and wander off along the bank, nose to the ground.
Tara was trembling, and her face was pale. “They’re gone,” she said, almost whimpering the words. “I looked in the garden, behind the barn—everywhere I could think of—”
“When did you see them last?” Boone asked, still grasping her arms. She looked frail enough to blow away with the first strong breeze.
“Last night,” Tara answered, “after they’d gone to bed. I went upstairs to talk to them—they’d gotten some upsetting news—and everything seemed to be okay, after a while, anyway.” Boone had called Tara right after and they’d talked on the phone, briefly and shyly, with too much still needing to be said. “But this morning—”
“Any idea where they might be headed?” Boone persisted. Kids didn’t go missing in Parable County, it just didn’t happen. But there was always a first time.
Tara shook her head, fighting tears, struggling so hard to keep her composure that Boone’s heart broke for her.
“We’ll find them,” he told her. “Tara, I promise we’ll find them.”
She lifted her head to meet his gaze and in that moment he saw the contents of her heart right there in her beautiful eyes. She loved those children.
And she loved him. If it hadn’t been for the circumstances, he’d have shouted hallelujah.
Scamp gave a single, sharp bark just then.
Frowning, Boone turned his head, squinting against the dazzle of a copper-penny sun, about to call the dog back to his side. He’d take Tara to the double-wide, make some calls, round up his deputies and Slade and Hutch to start searching for the twins.
A moment passed before Boone realized that that derelict old rowboat he’d always meant to haul off was gone. Scamp was standing in the muddy gouge on the bank. He barked again.
Boone clasped Tara’s hand and bolted toward the spot, barely able to believe his eyes, even now. That boat had been a ruin when he was a kid, and there was no way it would stay afloat.
Lucy joined them, drawn by Scamp’s barks, and sent up a worried whine.
Tara’s grasp tightened around his hand. “Wasn’t there a boat...?”
Dread filled Boone as he shaded his eyes from the sun and looked hard toward the natural spillway where the branch and the main river connected. There was no sign of the twins or the boat, but his gut told him the impossible had happened—somehow, Elle and Erin pushed that warped and rotted wreck into the water and rowed it far enough to disappear.
He was betting they’d gone upstream, toward the river, since the split drained off into a pond about a quarter of a mile in the other direction. He let go of Tara’s hand and bolted for the spillway.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
TARA RAN BEHIND BOONE, not quite catching up even though she was moving faster than she ever had before, even as a child. Her heart pounded and adrenaline raced through her system like a fast-acting drug, causing her head to reel, and the most elemental of fears thrummed inside her.
Boone rounded a bend up ahead, both dogs flashing at his heels like streaks of furry light, and, impossibly, Tara quickened her pace.
A boat, rickety and definitely not seaworthy. And in it her stepdaughters, the treasures of her soul, in obvious danger.
She heard a thin cry then, riding the wind, and stumbled, nearly fell, covering the rough ground, which had begun to tip and sway under her feet.
She kept running, blindly now, praying a one-word prayer under her breath, syncing it with her heartbeat. Please—please—please.
..
Boone shouted something just as Tara reached the scene, already kicking off his boots.
It was all surreal to her, like some horrible vision, a nightmare playing out in the bright, clean light of a Montana morning.
The concrete spillway resembled a small dam to Tara, though it must have been twelve feet high, and water thundered over its top, foamy white. Below it, in the midst of a whirlpool, a vortex, a black hole, Erin clung to what remained of the ancient rowboat, and to her sister, who looked as boneless as a rag doll.
Tara screamed.
Boone was already in the water, fighting his way through the noise and the foam and the parts of dead trees, swirling, caught at the edge of the whirlpool’s orbit. For all his strength, he had to fight his way through.
Finally reaching the overturned boat, Boone curved an arm around Elle, held her firmly, tossed his dark head once to shake away the water and clear his vision. With his free hand, he gripped Erin’s shoulder.
Tara, caught in some strange time freeze, broke free, ran down the bank.
“Stay where you are, Tara!” Boone yelled over the roar of the spillway. “My phone’s on the ground somewhere—call 9-1-1. Now!”
Something in his tone reached past Tara’s hysteria into the calm part of her mind, submerged until then. She searched the muddy grass, found his phone, flipped it open and made the call.
A woman named Becky told her to hang on; an ambulance was on its way.
Tara closed the phone, sank to her knees, watching as Boone spoke to Erin, his words lost in the din of the Big Sky River, spilling into the churning pool. She nodded, her blond hair slicked back from her face, and when Boone turned, supporting a now-stirring Elle, keeping her head above the water, Erin let go of the remains of the rowboat. After an instant’s hesitation, she flung her arms around Boone’s neck and clung to him.
Slowly, Boone made his way back toward the bank, toward life and breath and safety. Once or twice, waking, terrified and confused, Elle struggled in his grasp, but he held her and, with just his legs and his left arm, battled the wild water that might so easily have taken them all under.
Tara was on her feet again when Boone reached out and grabbed hold of a clump of tree roots, looked up at her as she reached for Elle.
“Be careful,” he said hoarsely. “I think she might have some broken bones.”
Tara moved past her panic, shoving it into the background to be dealt with later, and pulled her half-conscious stepdaughter onto dry ground. The dogs, fitful, hovered nearby, giving the occasional yelp.
Boone hauled himself and Erin out of the water. A siren sounded in the near distance.
Tara knelt, sopping wet even though she hadn’t gone in, held a shivering Erin in one arm and a moaning Elle in the other.
Boone’s young sons appeared, still in their pajamas and barefoot, drawn by the shriek of the approaching ambulance. It came to a screeching halt up the hill, and two EMTs, a man and a woman, neither of whom Tara had ever seen before, hurried down the slope, gear in hand, sidestepping.
Boone was on his feet by then, breathing hard and fast and deep.
Explanations were made while the EMTs checked both Elle and Erin for injuries.
“Dad?” Tara heard one of Boone’s boys say in a shaky voice.
Boone went to his sons, but his gaze was locked with Tara’s.
Thank you wasn’t enough, she thought, shaken, but that would have to be figured out later. Elle needed X-rays and both girls were in shock. Tara scrambled up the hill, her arm supporting a still-mobile Erin, though Elle was strapped to a stretcher by then.
She and Erin climbed into the back of the ambulance once Elle had been loaded inside and secured, and as the doors closed, Tara caught a glimpse of Boone Taylor, dripping wet, holding Fletcher in one arm while Griffin clung to his wet pant leg, wide-eyed with fear.
“It hurts,” Elle whispered, “it hurts, it hurts...”
“I know,” Tara whispered back, holding the child’s hand, smoothing tendrils of soaked hair away from her forehead. “Hold on, sweetheart. Try to be strong. We’ll be at the clinic in a few minutes.”
Elle nodded, her face still ghastly pale. “Sorry...” she murmured, either fainting or falling asleep.
Tara wanted to scream again—wake up, wake up—but of course she didn’t. There was plenty of fear to go around—it was courage that was most needed. She looked at sweet Erin, kneeling on the other side of the stretcher, meeting Tara’s eyes.
“Are we going to be arrested?” she asked.
Tara made a sound, part laugh, part sob, so raw that it clawed painfully at her throat. “No, honey,” she hastened to say. “Of course not.”
Erin’s expression was soft and unfocused—only then did Tara realize the girl had lost her glasses. “We looked at a map on the internet,” she said, rotelike, staring off into an unseeable distance now. “We thought the river would take us far enough away that Dad couldn’t find us and make us go to that school....”
Tara’s heart clenched as painfully as if a strong hand had reached into her chest and locked around it mercilessly. The plan had been foolish, of course, wildly improbable and, needless to say, dangerous. But the twins were only twelve years old, after all, and they must have been desperate.
The next hour or so passed in a colorful blur—Erin’s wet clothes were stripped off and she was wrapped in warm blankets, while the initial medical exam and subsequent X-rays revealed a fracture in Elle’s left forearm that would require minor surgery, as well as a cast. Because she, too, was suffering from shock, Elle had to be stabilized before the operation could take place, so she was blanketed, like her sister, and a mild painkiller was administered.
Boone arrived, his hair still wet but wearing dry clothes, and it was all Tara could do not to run to him.
“The boys?” she asked softly, when he stepped into the small room where Tara kept vigil with both her stepdaughters.
“They’re at the office, with Becky and Scamp,” Boone replied. “Lucy, too.”
Tara felt a soft spilling sensation, balm to her fear-battered heart. He’d saved Elle’s and Erin’s lives, this man, risking his own in the process, and he’d even thought, in the aftermath, of Lucy’s well-being.
Whatever his reasons for handing over his very young sons to his sister to look after following Corrie’s death, Boone wasn’t anything like James Lennox.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
He cocked a weary grin at her, executed a half salute. “All in a day’s work,” he replied.
“Hardly,” she said.
Now that Elle and Erin were both resting comfortably, with a cheery young nurse to attend to them, Tara felt she could leave the room.
It was time to call James, not only because he had a right to know about the boating “accident,” but because his permission would be needed before Elle’s surgery could take place. Tara had no authority.
She and Boone stepped out into the corridor. Though referred to loosely as a hospital, the establishment was actually a clinic, exceptionally well equipped. Babies were delivered here, tonsils were removed, the odd appendectomy went down, but the seriously ill or injured, like Dawson McCullough, were always airlifted to a larger city with adequate facilities—Missoula, Boise, even Seattle.
It was one more thing to be grateful for, Tara thought distractedly. None of the E.R. staff had said anything about sending Elle away for treatment.
Boone grasped her shoulders there in the empty hallway and tilted his head to one side to look directly into Tara’s face. “What about you?” he asked. “Are you okay, Tara?”
“I’m just fine,” she told him, feeling a strange urge to kiss the cleft in Boone’s chin, snuggle into his arms, cling a little. “Color me very, very grateful, though, Sheriff Taylor.”
He chuckled, a reassuring sound, masculine and somehow soothing. “Is this the part where I say, ‘Aw, shucks, ma’am, it weren’t nothing’?”
“It was somet
hing, Boone. Without you, I wouldn’t even have found the girls in time, let alone managed to swim through all those currents and get them both back to shore.”
Clearly, Sheriff Boone Taylor was not very comfortable in the role of hero. The way he saw it, most likely, he’d done what anyone would do in the same situation. A crisis had arisen, and he’d handled it.
Tara sighed. “I’d better call their father,” she said. “He’s not going to be happy about this. Especially when he finds out they posted their big plan online beforehand—a lot of schools monitor things like that, especially with new applicants—and running away, successfully or not, ratchets up the legal-liability factor sky-high.”
“I could call him for you,” Boone offered solemnly. “Make it an official call.”
Tara actually considered taking that out—she was still pretty shaken up herself, after all—but after a few moments of thought, she shook her head no. This was her responsibility, not Boone’s.
Except she’d left her phone at home, too panicked after finding Erin and Elle missing from their room to remember the handy device. Luckily, she’d dressed as soon as she got out of bed, or she’d probably be standing here in her nightgown.
“Borrow your phone?” she asked.
Boone nodded, handed it to her.
She went outside, sat wearily on the rock surround of one of the clinic’s flower beds and searched her memory for James’s numbers—work, home, cell, etc. Nothing. She’d so rarely had reason to call her ex-husband.
In the end, she had to call Information, and the operator put her through to James’s office, where an assistant picked up. Tara identified herself, gave a short, faltering version of what had happened and asked to be put through to James.
Dr. Lennox, the assistant explained coolly, was already in transit, on his way to Montana to “collect” his children. Did he have the proper contact numbers?
Tara dredged them up, her mind sluggish now.
James was on his way. Damn.
And when he got to Parable, there would be hell to pay. Once he learned the whole story, he’d be furious at Tara, accuse her of being irresponsible, probably remove his daughters from her company—permanently—as soon as they could travel. And since he was a doctor, that would probably be allowed to happen sooner rather than later.
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