White Dove's Promise

by Stella Bagwell

  The sound of Jared’s voice distracted the pup from his chewing. The dog looked up at him, then backed away and let out a croaky bark. Jared squatted on his heels and with an outstretched hand invited the pup to come closer. “Come here, fella. Let’s see if you have a name tag on your collar.”

  Wary, but overcome with curiosity, the pup sidled closer, then wiggled with delight the moment Jared ran a friendly hand over his sleek head. Fastened to a black leather collar, a metal disc dangled at the front of the dog’s throat. Jared angled the silver gray disc so that he could read the letters. Fred was written on one side. A local phone number was on the other.

  Rising to his full height, which was just shy of six feet, Jared’s gray eyes scanned the open fields around him. The nearest house was at least a quarter mile away. A long distance for a little guy like Fred to travel, he pondered. No doubt someone would be missing the dog soon and be out searching for him.

  Jared’s cell phone was lying on the truck seat. The least he could do was call the number on the pup’s collar and inform the owner that the dog was safe.

  He opened the truck door to retrieve the telephone, then realized he’d have to look at Fred’s collar again to get the number. Slipping the fliptop phone in his shirt pocket, he turned back to grab the dog, only to find the animal scampering off toward the maze of open trenches.

  “Fred! Come back here,” he called.

  The dog ignored him, so Jared tried whistling. The sound produced a bark, but the dog still refused to return.

  Muttering a curse under his breath and wondering why he was taking the time to bother with the animal, Jared started after him. As soon as Fred spotted his approach, he began to bark with loud enthusiasm into the open trench as though he’d just treed a coon in a hollow log. Only this time the log was a smashed drainpipe.

  “Okay, fella, I know you think you’re out on a hunt, but you’ve got to go home, wherever that is,” he said to the dog.

  Ignoring him, Fred continued to bark and whine, forcing Jared to jump into the ditch to go after him. It was then he saw the little footprints in the damp earth. Tiny human imprints leading up to the drainage pipe.

  If there had been a set of adult tracks alongside, Jared wouldn’t have thought too much about the fact that someone had been out here looking over the excavation site. Working this close to town, he was surprised there hadn’t been more people snooping around the diggings than the two teenage boys he’d chased away last week.

  Uneasy at this sudden discovery of another type of visitor, he bent down and peered into the pipe. Nothing but a little mud and water settled at the bottom. He glanced behind him, hoping that the tracks would tell him that the little feet had turned back around and headed away from the work site. They didn’t.

  Grim-faced, he jumped out of the ditch and followed the pipe until it ended and the ditch opened up again. The footprints reappeared in the mud, along with the pup’s.

  Quickly, Jared followed the tracks until they disappeared into a slim cavity created between a slab of earth and another damaged drainpipe.

  Oh no, he thought sickly. Surely the child hadn’t squeezed into such a dark, narrow opening. But from the looks of the tracks in the bottom of the ditch that was exactly what he’d done.

  Sensing that Jared was finally on the right track and getting the message, Fred barked excitedly into the small opening while clawing at the damp earth. The dog’s actions said as much or more to Jared than the footprints. His little buddy had disappeared and he’d been waiting around for someone to help him find him.

  Not bothering with the telephone number on Fred’s collar, Jared pulled out the cell phone and dialed the sheriff’s office.

  “I need to speak to the sheriff,” he quickly told the female dispatcher, adding, “This is his brother, Jared Colton.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Colton, but the sheriff is out on an emergency right now. Would you like to leave a message?”

  Jared silently cursed at the rotten timing. “No. I want you to radio him right this minute and tell him I think I have an emergency on my hands. A child has gone into a drainage system west of town.”

  “A child? Oh. Okay, give me your location and I’ll radio him at once.”

  Jared told her the location of the work site and also supplied her with the number to his cell phone. In just a matter of moments the telephone rang and his brother was on the end of the line.

  “Jared, I just got your message. I have half my force out looking for a three-year-old girl right now. She’s been missing for nearly two hours. You think you’ve found her?”

  A three-year-old girl! Somehow Jared had expected Fred’s young buddy to be a boy. The idea of a soft, sweet little girl exploring a muddy ditch with an adventurous bird dog had never entered his mind.

  “I’m out here at the work site now, Bram, and I’ve found her dog and where she’s been, but not the child. I think you’d better get over here pronto.”

  “I’ll be there in five minutes,” he assured him.

  “Uh, Bram,” he said, before his brother had a chance to hang up, “does the little girl belong to someone we know?”

  “Yeah. You probably remember the WindWalkers. It’s Kerry’s daughter.”

  Surprise jolted him. The last thing Jared had heard about Kerry WindWalker was that she’d gone to Charlottesville to attend the University of Virginia. No one had told him she’d married or that she’d returned to Black Arrow. But then he’d not asked anyone about the young Comanche girl who’d once snubbed her nose at him. Proud, prim and very beautiful. That’s the way he remembered Kerry WindWalker. He wondered if marriage and motherhood had changed her.

  The persistent buzz in his ear finally made Jared realize his brother had hung up the phone. Disgusted with himself for letting his thoughts stray, he snapped the instrument shut and slipped it back into his pocket. Now wasn’t the time to be thinking about the one woman in Black Arrow who’d resisted his charms. At the moment, he had a smaller female to worry about.

  Three minutes later, Bram’s pickup truck arrived, followed by several deputies in squad cars. Immediately behind the lawmen, local residents began to pour onto the scene in cars and on foot.

  Jared climbed out of the ditch and hurried to meet his brother, but halfway there a petite woman dressed in a slim beige skirt, black blouse and black high heels raced up to him and frantically grabbed his arm.

  “Where is she? Where is my baby?”

  Jared stared down at Kerry WindWalker’s desperate face and wondered how the added years had somehow made her even more beautiful than he remembered. Shiny crow-black hair, high molded cheekbones, honey-brown skin, and eyes the color of sweet chocolate suggested she was half Comanche like himself. While her dusky pink lips reminded him she’d been the one girl he’d always wanted to kiss, but had never been given the chance.

  “Kerry—” For a moment her name was all he could manage to say until the fear widening her brown eyes forced him to continue. “I’m not sure where your daughter is. I’ve followed her tracks and from the looks of things she’s entered one of the drainage ditches and hasn’t come out.”

  Jared watched her mouth fall open. At the same time he could feel her small fingers tightening in a death grip around his forearm. She was terrified and rightly so. Yet she was holding herself together with the courage of a Comanche warrior. Admiration flowed through him, along with the desperate urge to help her.

  “What do you mean? Hasn’t come out of what?” she flung the questions at him.

  Before Jared could explain, Bram, dressed in a tan uniform and sheriff’s badge, joined them. The oldest of the five Colton siblings, Bram was only an inch taller than Jared and shared the same athletic build and black hair. Yet the similarities stopped there. Where Jared’s eyes were gray and usually full of playful mischief, Bram’s were black and serious. At the moment, the two brothers were both tight-lipped with anxiety.

  “You’d better show me where she went in, Jared,” Bra
m said, then to Kerry he added, “You can come with us. But tell your mother and the rest that they must stay back and out of the way.”

  Nodding, Kerry left them momentarily and hurried over to briefly explain the situation to her mother. As the two men waited for her, Jared said, “I don’t like the looks of this, Bram. The girl has ventured into a spot where we haven’t started working yet. It’s a safe bet to say that the drainpipes have probably broken and shifted into all sorts of directions and turned the whole thing into a treacherous maze. She’s probably crawled inside one of them and can’t find her way out.”

  “Damn it, why wasn’t someone out here? Where’s your work crew anyway?”

  Jared didn’t allow Bram’s sharp questions to get under his skin. His older brother took the responsibility of his sheriff’s position very seriously and he was committed to keeping everyone in Comanche County safe.

  “It rained yesterday, remember? I let the crew off,” Jared explained. “As for someone guarding the place, that responsibility lies with the gas company and they apparently didn’t want to be out the extra expense. The yellow tape is supposed to keep people away from the danger.”

  Bram’s lips twisted with disapproval as he eyed the yellow caution tape that roped the perimeter of the well site. “Yeah,” he said with sarcasm. “That’s sure going to keep the kids out of this accident waiting to happen.”

  “Believe me, Bram, I tried to warn the gas company. Right after we started digging up the place I asked them to supply a night watchman at the very least, but they refused. His salary would have been a hell of a lot cheaper than the lawsuit that might come out of this.”

  Kerry rejoined them just as Jared finished speaking. Her expression was grave, but hopeful as her gaze encompassed both men.

  “Mother will keep the friends and relatives back,” she assured Bram.

  The sheriff nodded at her, then motioned for Jared to lead them to the spot where the child had entered the drainage pipe.

  Instinctively, Jared took Kerry by the arm. “The ground is rough and slippery,” he gently warned her. “So watch your step.”

  Kerry realized she must appear ridiculous in her skirt and high heels, but she couldn’t help it. Ever since she’d raced home from the bank, she’d not had time to draw a deep breath, much less change her clothes. Already her panty hose were lined with runners from searching through a clump of blackberry vines. Coppery-colored stains smeared the front of her shirt and skirt from leaning over the rusty pieces of an old car that had been junked not far from here. But what she looked like to this man or anyone else didn’t matter one iota. Getting her daughter back safely in her arms was all she cared about. And she had to believe that was going to happen. She had to. Otherwise, she would simply break apart.

  “How long has it been since you found the dog and the tracks, Jared?” Bram asked.

  “Not long. Ten minutes, maybe. Couldn’t be much more than that.”

  The three of them had reached the point where the footsteps had finally disappeared. Fred was still there in the bottom of the ditch. Apparently the pup had worn himself out and was now stretched out on his belly, his muzzle resting on his paws as he diligently watched the small crevice for a sign of Peggy.

  The moment Kerry spotted the dog, her composure cracked. Her hand flew to her mouth to stifle the sob that was burning her throat.

  “Oh God—is she—is she down there? In that?”

  The agony in her voice tore a hole right through Jared. The need to comfort her crowded everything else from his mind, making him instinctively reach for her shoulders and pull her lightly against his chest. “She’ll be all right, Kerry. We’ll get her out. I’ll get her out. I promise.”

  Above her head, Jared met Bram’s bleak gaze and he knew they were both thinking he’d just made a promise he might not be able to keep.

  More than an hour later, the excavation site was littered with fire trucks, emergency vehicles, rescue crews and paramedics. Generators and bright outdoor lights had been set up in preparation for the night to come. The fact that the emergency people anticipated it might take that long to recover Peggy from the pipe tunnel only added to Kerry’s worry.

  For the umpteenth time, Enola turned a helpless look of frustration on her daughter. “They’re wasting time! There’s a backhoe sitting right over there. Why don’t they start digging her out?”

  The two women were standing about thirty feet away from the ditch where Peggy had disappeared. Around them, firemen and other rescue people were discussing ways to bring her daughter out to safety. But Kerry’s attention was focused on one lone man rather than the group of professionals. And that one man was Jared Colton.

  If anyone could find her daughter and bring her safely out of that mess, it was Jared. She wasn’t sure why she’d placed her confidence in him, of all people. She’d never really liked the man. He’d always been a playboy and considered himself God’s gift to women. Especially all the sexy sirens around Black Arrow.

  It had surprised her enormously to learn he was the man who’d discovered Peggy’s whereabouts. She hadn’t even known he was still living in Black Arrow. She’d thought he’d moved out years ago and was now making a fortune for some large petroleum company down in Houston.

  With unshed tears stinging the back of her eyes, she said quietly, “They have to locate exactly where she is first, Mom. Then maybe they can do something about getting her out.”

  “Well, I don’t know why that Colton boy had to be the one who crawled into the pipe to go searching for her,” Enola commented. “He’s not a rescue person. He should have let one of the firemen go. Like Tommy Grimes. You remember, he’s the one that saved the Wilsons from being blown to smithereens.”

  Kerry groaned inwardly. Ever since she’d returned to Black Arrow, Tommy had pestered her for a date and she knew her mother had encouraged him simply because he was divorced with a small daughter around Peggy’s age.

  “If I remember right, the Wilsons’ neighbor is the one who discovered propane was leaking inside their house. All Tommy did was turn off the valve at the tank. And as for Jared Colton, he’s an engineer, Mom. He’s been working on these pipes and he knows all about which way they run and how deep they’re buried. I trust him. More than anyone down there.”

  Surprised by Kerry’s remark, Enola studied her daughter. “I don’t have to tell you he’s a rounder, Kerry. The man is in his thirties and he’s never been married or had a child of his own. He couldn’t know what Peggy means to you or what you’re going through right now.”

  Normally Enola was an open-minded woman. Kerry couldn’t see any reason for her mother to be saying such nasty things about a man who was risking his own life to save her granddaughter’s. Unless Enola was simply too upset to know what she was actually saying.

  “You’re wrong. He does understand. A person doesn’t have to be a parent to value a child’s life.” Besides, Kerry thought, she’d heard the caring in his voice when he’d promised her to get Peggy out, felt it for those brief moments when he’d held her against his hard chest. It didn’t matter if he was a still a playboy or married with three kids. He was the man she was counting on to save her daughter.

  Enola was about to make a reply when a flurry of activity caught Kerry’s eye. A mixture of hope and relief flooded through her as she spotted Jared standing at the mouth of the pipe. Although the late afternoon sun was casting long shadows over the group, she could easily see that he was covered with mud. Streaks of it slashed at an angle across his cheek while parts of his short black hair were splotched with brown. In spite of his bedraggled condition, he was wasting no time in relaying information to Bram, and from the quick hand gestures he made back toward the drainpipe, he was a man just starting a mission rather than ending it.

  “There’s Jared,” Kerry said to her mother with a breathless rush. “Maybe he’s found Peggy!”

  Not waiting to see if her mom was following, Kerry pushed her way through the crowd until she
was standing next to Jared and Bram, who’d now been joined by their younger sister, Willow, who ran the Black Arrow Feed and Grain store. There was also Gray, a tall, dark-haired Colton cousin, who was a local judge. Apparently the Colton family believed in banding together in times of crisis, she thought, and in this case she was deeply grateful that their help was being extended to her and Peggy.

  Focusing her attention on Jared, she begged, “Tell me. What did you find?”

  Jared’s gray eyes locked with Kerry’s pleading brown gaze. All the while he’d been crawling his way through the maze of drainpipes, his mind had been consumed with thoughts of the agony he knew this woman was going through and of the little girl who must surely be feeling trapped and terrified by now.

  Stepping forward, he took her hand and gently folded it between his. “I’ve located her, Kerry. As I worked my way deeper into the pipe, I kept calling her name. She didn’t answer me directly, but I picked up on the sound of her crying.”

  The relief of hearing that her daughter was alive flooded through Kerry and in the process nearly buckled her knees. If Jared hadn’t been holding onto her hand, she would have crumpled right there in the mud.

  “Then she must be okay! But—” she stopped abruptly as another thought struck her. “If you could hear her, why didn’t you go after her and bring her out?”

  He shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s not going to be that simple, Kerry. Your daughter, Peggy—or Bram told me you sometimes call her Chenoa. Which name does she usually go by?”

  “Chenoa is her Comanche name which means—”

  “Little dove,” Jared finished for her. One corner of his mouth lifted wryly. “You must have forgotten that us Coltons are Comanche, too.”

  She hadn’t forgotten the Coltons, Kerry thought, especially this one. By the time she’d been a senior in high school, he’d had women running out his ears, but for some reason he’d wanted to date her. Back then the idea of going out with a rogue like him was indecent, not to mention unsettling. Even though he’d been incredibly handsome and too sexy for his own good. A fact that hadn’t changed as far as she could see.