Force of Nature

by Kim Baldwin

  Synopsis

  Disaster brought them together and, despite desire, may ultimately keep them apart. Wind. Fire. Ice. Love. Nothing for Gable McCoy and Erin Richards seems to go smoothly. From the tornado that sets its sights on them, to the perils they face as volunteer firefighters, the forces of nature conspire to bring them close to danger, and closer to each other. From the author of the acclaimed intrigue/romance, Hunter’s Pursuit

  Force of Nature

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  eBooks from Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

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  Force of Nature

  © 2005 By Kim Baldwin. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-297-9

  This Electronic Book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.,

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, New York 12185

  First Printing: September 2005

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editors: Jennifer Knight and Stacia Seaman

  Production Design: Stacia Seaman

  Cover Design By Sheri (GraphicArtist2020@hotmail.com)

  By the Author

  Hunter’s Pursuit

  Force of Nature

  Whitewater Rendezvous

  Flight Risk

  Focus of Desire

  Breaking the Ice

  With Xenia Alexiou

  Lethal Affairs

  Thief of Always

  Missing Lynx

  Acknowledgments

  First and foremost, I must thank the cherished circle of friends who provide me with unfiagging encouragement and support for everything I write. Linda and Vicki, Kat and Ed, Marsha and Ellen, Cousin Tim, and Felicity, the Queen of All Things.

  Thanks also to my wonderfully insightful and meticulous beta readers, Sharon Lloyd, co-owner of Epilogue Books, and Connie Ward. I look forward to your help on many future projects.

  I am deeply indebted to Lieutenant Sue Erickson, a professional firefighter and emergency medical technician for over twenty years, and to Scott Lakin, RN and former volunteer firefighter, for their invaluable help in lending authenticity to the fire and medical scenes.

  Many thanks to Sheri, whose artistic wizardry once again produced a cover that truly refiects the spirit of the story inside.

  My heartfelt appreciation to my editors, Jennifer Knight and Stacia Seaman, for such a rich and rewarding learning experience and for the expert technical advice. Your contribution to this book cannot be measured.

  And most especially, my profound gratitude goes to Radclyffe and Lee, the forces behind Bold Strokes Books. I cannot imagine a more nurturing environment for an author to be blessed with.

  Force of Nature was written with deep respect and appreciation for the women and men who daily put their lives on the line to protect and serve their communities as firefighters.

  It is dedicated with all my love to my partner, M., my inspiration for Gable and the kindest, most giving individual I‘ve ever had the privilege to know. You have taught me the importance of living a life of character and purpose. And by your example, you encourage all those around you to be the very best individuals they can possibly be. Every word I write, I write for you. Now and always.

  Dedication

  For M.

  Grádh geal mo chridh’

  Chapter One

  Gable McCoy slowed the Jeep and craned forward to look out the windshield. Branches large and small littered the roadway. No other cars were about. Above her, the sky was a color she’d never seen before, a sickly greenish yellow. Directly ahead, a low wall of clouds churned and boiled with furious intent. She tried to shake off a feeling of unease that threatened to overwhelm her.

  The emergency radio at her side was crowded with voices, overlapping each other and fighting to be heard above the relentless static. Many were harried and anxious, reflecting the unusual strain on the emergency dispatchers, firefighters, and police. None of them had ever experienced a storm like this.

  It was a freak weather phenomenon, a convergence of hot and cold fronts coinciding with a change in the jet stream. An unusually muggy April morning had spawned a violent afternoon. Tornadoes were touching down all over Michigan. Two had already been spotted in her county and three more in the surrounding areas.

  Gable had come through torrential rain and a brief burst of walnut-sized hail that left two small cracks in her windshield. But it had stopped all at once, and that was somehow more unsettling, as if the storm was gathering its strength to launch an all-out assault. She took another look at the dark, foreboding sky and increased her speed slightly—there were several more houses she wanted to check before nightfall.

  She was still in her one-year probation period as a volunteer with the Plainfield Township Fire Department, one of only three women on the squad. The demanding physical training had not been a problem for her, though at forty-six she was older than many of the other volunteers. She had been athletic all her life, and the taut musculature on her tall, lean frame reflected many hours spent kayaking and mountain biking.

  So far, all the callouts she'd attended had been for relatively minor things—fender-bender auto accidents and small brush fires started by discarded cigarettes or careless campers. Today was different. This time she was responding to a full-out mobilization of SAR—the county’s search and rescue squad, which involved fire departments, law enforcement, 911, and other local emergency personnel.

  Right after she’d finished her initial training, SAR had paired her up with a veteran firefighter, Tim Scott, and assigned them a five-square-mile area west of the village of Pine River, three miles south of where Gable lived. The entire region was mostly state forest, but there were a number of cottages and year-round homes scattered here and there, tucked back off the road and hidden by trees.

  Tim had taken her up and down the mostly dirt roads in his pickup until she was familiar with the area. She was now especially grateful he’d been so thorough. When she’d gotten the callout two hours earlier, the dispatcher told her Tim was out of town. No replacement was available, so she was on her own.

  She felt the full weight of that responsibility as a ferocious wind gust tried to wrestle the steering wheel from her hands. Butterflies crowded her stomach as she struggled to keep the Jeep on the road. Lives might depend on you today. She had to bury her fear and try to remain focused.

  Most of the places she’d checked so far were summer cottages, still locked up and vacant. Power was out in a few of the year-round homes, and wind had caused minor damage to roofs, but no one had been injured.

  Gable slowed to turn onto Cedar Trail and rolled down the window. Something was very wrong. Suddenly there was no wind at all, where a moment ago it was buffeting the Jeep. She braked to a stop and got out. Stared up at the sky. Sniffed the air. It was eerily quiet, a kind of quiet she didn’t think she’d ever heard in the forest. Where were the birds?

  The hair on the back of her neck stood up and her pulse began beating double time. The air seemed charged by electricity. The ozone crackled around her. It just felt…wrong. Like there was too much air pressure.

  That was when she heard it. Just like it was always described. A distant, muffled roaring, like an oncoming train. Dense forest surrounded her. The trees b
locked her view except where the road cut through. She couldn’t see the twister.

  The unearthly roar got steadily louder. A series of sharp reports, like rifle shots, sounded in the near distance. Those are trees! Shit!

  To her left was a lone, boarded-up convenience store on the corner where she’d stopped. A simple wood-framed building, locked up tight. It didn't look like potential shelter.

  able ran to the opposite corner of the intersection, where the edge of the road sloped away into a drainage ditch. Beneath the roadway was a concrete drainpipe that looked about three feet across. A tight squeeze, but her only chance.

  In a whirling hail of sticks and stones and leaves, she scrambled down the bank, her hands shielding her face. The wind tried to blow her off her feet, and the noise of the tornado was deafening, like a jet aircraft parked directly overhead. Squinting between her fingers, she saw the twister cut out of the woods and onto the highway a quarter of a mile away. It looked like a mammoth V-shaped plume of black smoke.

  Frozen with horror, she stared at the debris rotating within. Huge limbs whirled around the funnel with astounding velocity, crashing into each other in the air. The tornado was fifty yards wide, and headed straight for her.

  Adrenaline jolted her from her inertia and she dove into the pipe, ignoring the stench of rotted matter and the cold slimy water that soaked her to the skin. It was upon her in an instant, trying to suck her from the pipe, tugging at her with fierce determination. She fought back, bracing herself against the sides, but they were slippery with algae. PleaseGodpleaseGodpleaseGod.

  It was hard to breathe, caught in this incredible vacuum. The whole drainpipe seemed to be vibrating. She began to lose ground, slipping by inches, her fingers clawing at the slick surface. Her feet protruded from the pipe, then her calves. Sticks, dirt, and stones pelted her. Can’t hang on much longer! Her arms began to tremble, braced against the pipe. Please God, don’t let me die like this!

  It lasted no more than thirty or forty seconds, but it seemed an eternity. While her life didn’t exactly pass before her eyes, she had time enough to think about family and friends, and to feel a pang of regret than she hadn’t seized upon every experience she’d wanted to try. Then, all at once, the world was calm again.

  Gable wriggled out of the drainpipe, gasping for air. Her heart pounded in her chest like a runaway jackhammer, and her body shook all over. The adrenaline rush was so intense she thought she might faint.

  It registered that one of her tennis shoes was gone, ripped from her foot and nowhere in sight. All the stuff that had been flying around had pelted her legs pretty good, and she’d have some impressive bruises to show for it. But she was otherwise uninjured. She could hardly believe she was alive. Thank you, Lord.

  The convenience store on the opposite corner was now only concrete foundation and scattered wood, plaster, bricks, and assorted wreckage. The store’s large metal Dumpster was lodged in a tree, twenty feet off the ground. Pieces of lumber and store shelving and dozens of cans of food littered the road. Any one of those could have killed me. Right where she'd stood only minutes ago, the tornado had driven a huge two-by-four several feet into the ground. A few feet away, an enormous white pine had been pulled up by its roots, leaving a gaping hole seven feet wide.

  Stunned, she climbed up onto the roadway and surveyed the area around her. Her Jeep was still right side up, but the front windshield was shattered and the vehicle was sitting half on and half off the road, a dozen yards from where she’d parked it.

  The rain started anew as she reached for her radio and headed to the Jeep. “Dispatch from McCoy. Reporting tornado touchdown, Cedar Trail at Wolf Run Road. Debris in the area. No injuries. Over.”

  Though she tried to keep her voice even, she could not completely disguise how much the twister had scared her. She had grown up in Tennessee, and though she retained the soft-spoken slower cadence of a Southerner, she had mostly lost her accent. It surfaced in the occasional word, and was more apparent when she was stressed. Tornado came out tornayduh.

  Gable had thrown a pair of knee-high Wellies in the back of the Jeep in case she hit some flooding. After the dispatcher responded, she pulled the black rubber boots on and got behind the wheel. As she reached up to adjust the rearview mirror, she caught a glimpse of herself. Holy shit. Her short brunette hair was standing up at odd angles, as if she’d stuck her finger in an electrical socket. A pungent slime from the drainpipe covered her face and neck, turning her normally bronzed complexion an eerie greenish gray, and her eyes were so dilated that the black pupils had nearly overtaken the hazel irises.

  Her soaked clothing was filthy too—her T-shirt and jeans were the color of mud and they clung to her uncomfortably. She looked like an extra in a grade B horror flick, a member of the undead, rising from the grave. Somewhat apropos, she thought.

  The pavement had disappeared where the tornado traversed it, and branches and downed trees lay scattered all about the roadway. She put the Jeep into four-wheel-drive and maneuvered over and around what she could, but she had to get out several times to haul some obstruction out of her way so she could proceed.

  The road curved up and over a hill. At the top, Gable braked to a stop and sat gawking at the devastation below her. Dear God!

  The twister had carved out a path of destruction a quarter mile wide through the forest. Trees were snapped like matchsticks, jagged edges uniformly cut five feet off the ground. There were two homes within the area, and from a distance, both look like they’d been hit by bomb blasts.

  She headed toward the nearest one and keyed her radio. “Dispatch from McCoy. Two homes leveled on Cedar Trail. Stand by.”

  The two-track driveway to the first of the flattened homes was overgrown with high weeds and blocked by a padlocked gate. The place was obviously another seasonal cottage still closed from winter. Thank God. She reported it to dispatch as she sped toward the other house.

  This driveway was open. And despite the rain, Gable could tell from the tire impressions in the dirt two-track that it had been recently used. Shit. She gripped the steering wheel harder and headed up the drive toward the house, which was set well off the road in a small clearing cut into the forest.

  The first thing she came to was a red pickup truck lying on its side, partially blocking the driveway. She was able to squeeze the Jeep around it, but a few yards farther on, the home’s five-hundred-gallon propane tank prevented further progress.

  The smell hit her at once. Gas! Holy shit!

  Her heart pounding, she cut the engine and eased out of the Jeep. The tank was intact but on its side, gas hissing from a broken pipe that stuck out of the top. When she turned the valve beneath it, the hissing stopped. She grabbed her helmet and a thick pair of leather work gloves from the Jeep and went the rest of the way to the house on foot.

  A portion of one wall still stood—the area around the fieldstone fireplace. A massive section of the roof was propped against it, forming a nine-foot-high lean-to. An intact bookcase rested beneath it, empty of all its books. Everything else around her was debris—insulation, lumber, electrical wiring, shingles, bits of furniture—all precariously jumbled together in towering heaps. It was impossible to negotiate through it. Jagged pieces of glass and metal were everywhere, the footing uncertain. Here and there lay various clues about the homeowner. Sheet music. A computer keyboard.

  “Hello? Anybody here?” Gable listened for a response, but could hear nothing but the howl of the wind and the drumming of the rain. Picking her way around the perimeter, she tried again on the other side of the house. “Hello?”

  She thought she might have heard something human. Or maybe it was the wind playing with her imagination.

  “Hello!” she yelled as loud as she could.

  This time it was unmistakable. Through the pounding rain, she heard a muffled female voice. “Down here! In the basement!”

  “I hear you!” Gable shouted. “I’m with search and rescue. Keep talking. How many o
f you are there? Are you hurt?”

  “No, I’m not hurt. And it’s just me, but I’m trapped. Get me out of here!” The voice had a panicky sound.

  “Hang on. I’m coming. How do I get to you?”

  “There’s a storm door right outside the house in back.”

  Gable stared around. She was already behind the house. Finding the door beneath the mountain of rubble in front of her would be a daunting task. “I’m calling for more help. Sit tight and try to relax.”

  “Hurry! Please hurry!”

  Gable reached for her radio and turned it up. The bedlam of voices was even worse than before. While waiting for a break in the radio traffic, she pulled her work gloves from her back pocket and started picking through the debris, searching for the door. “How are you doing?” she shouted. “Can you move around?”

  “I’m in the basement shower! Part of the ceiling came down. I can move around but I can’t get out of here.”

  As soon as there was a lull in the cacophony on the radio, Gable reported in and requested assistance, but was told that all available resources were tied up on other calls at the moment.

  Knowing she was on her own, she resumed her search with a heightened sense of urgency. The debris of the house didn’t appear to be shifting, so the trapped woman was probably not in any immediate danger. But it was going to be dark very soon.

  “I’m Gable McCoy, a volunteer firefighter,” she hollered. “What’s your name?”

  “Erin. Erin Richards,” came the muted reply. “Have you seen my cat? He’s charcoal with a white mustache.”

  The devastation was so complete, Gable had trouble imagining anything as small and defenseless as a cat living through it. “No, I’m sorry, Erin,” she shouted. “I don’t see a cat.”