Kayla was still fighting back her sobs. “You really think so?”
Maggie never hesitated. “I really think so,” she said, squeezing the shaking hands that had been clutching hers.
“All right, I’ll try,” the other woman said. There was still a hitch in her voice.
“That’s all anyone can ever ask,” Maggie said, giving Kayla a long, warm embrace. The other woman seemed to take heart from that.
* * *
“That was pretty good,” Jonah said to Maggie several minutes later when they finally walked away, leaving Kayla with one of the other survivors. “How did you come up with that on the spur of the moment?” he couldn’t help asking.
“Easy,” she answered. “I just put myself in her place and told her what I would have wanted someone to tell me.” And then she elaborated. “That I was important in the scheme of things. That I didn’t survive by accident but for a reason—so I could help others come to grips with their own losses. What?” Maggie asked when she saw the way that Jonah was looking at her.
“Nothing. I was just thinking how amazing you are—and how glad I am that I was able to find you before you wound up falling out of that tree and hurting yourself,” he added.
She had no idea what possessed her to ask Jonah the next question, but before she could censor herself, the question just came tumbling out. “Is that the only reason you’re glad you found me?”
Jonah turned his head toward her, and the way he looked at her sent a shiver running up and down her spine.
“I think you already know the answer to that,” Jonah told her, his voice low, caressing.
The desire to kiss her was almost overpowering. But they were out where everyone could see them, and he didn’t want anyone gossiping about Maggie. Besides, once things were back to normal and his brother was married, he would be on his way back to Austin. He didn’t want to leave Maggie to deal with unwanted speculation on her own. It wouldn’t be right.
“Why don’t I drop you off at the cabin—” he began, only to have her cut in.
“Drop me off?” she repeated, confused. “Why? Where will you be?” she asked. Earlier he’d made it sound as if they would be working together for the rest of the day.
He hadn’t even wanted to say this to Maggie. Jonah knew that the mere mention of her apartment would sadden her. But he wasn’t about to lie to her, either.
“I’m just going to see how cleanup is going around the Towers. You’ve done enough for one day—more than enough,” he emphasized, thinking of the body that had been uncovered. “Why don’t you take it easy and I’ll come to the cabin in a little while?”
She didn’t like the idea of resting—or being alone with her thoughts. “I can help,” Maggie insisted as she followed him to his truck.
“I know you can,” he told her. “But you don’t have to feel like you need to keep proving yourself to anyone over and over again. Trust me, I get it,” he assured Maggie. “Now get some rest before you wear yourself completely out.” He thought it might help if he filled her in about what was going on. “We’ve got a bulldozer coming in to clear away the larger debris so we can get started rebuilding that area. It looks like the Towers sustained the most amount of damage.”
An ironic smile played on Maggie’s lips. “It figures.”
He could almost see what thoughts were going on in her head. “Take your own advice, Maggie, and stop overthinking things.”
“You sure you don’t want me there?” she asked as he drove them to his cabin.
“I’m sure,” Jonah said firmly.
Maggie shrugged, sinking back in the passenger seat and surrendering. “I guess you’re right. Besides, the chances of my finding anything in that pile of rubble are pretty nonexistent anyway.”
The wistful note in her voice caught his attention and Jonah looked at her. “Completely,” he agreed, even though it pained him to do so. “Why, what is it that you’d try to look for?”
She felt almost silly talking about this, but she had been the one who had started this, so she answered his question. “I had this snow globe as a kid. My dad gave it to me for my birthday. I don’t remember which one,” she said honestly. “I was five, or maybe six. Anyway, the globe had a puppy in the center of a snowstorm—at least it was a snowstorm when I shook the globe,” she amended. “I must have spent hours when I was a kid, just watching the snow coming down and engulfing that dog.”
Realizing what she had to sound like, Maggie laughed at herself. “I guess I was easily entertained, but it’s the one thing I remember my dad giving me. He wasn’t very big on gifts,” she confided.
“I can look for it,” Jonah told her. “But to be honest—”
She nodded. “I know there’s no way it could have survived that hurricane. At the very least, the globe probably shattered when the apartment came down,” she said, ending his sentence for him.
He was pulling up in front of his cabin.
“Are you going to be okay here?” Jonah asked as she began to get out. He suddenly felt as if he was abandoning a waif, leaving her alone in the cabin.
She smiled at his concern. Jonah was a good man, she thought. He’d proven it over and over again.
Maggie tried to set his mind at ease. “As long as there’s not another hurricane on its way, I’ll be fine.”
Still, he didn’t like leaving her alone. But he liked dragging her over to the ruins of the Towers even less. He chose the lesser of the two evils.
“I’ll be back as soon as I check in to see how everything’s going,” Jonah promised.
“Take your time,” Maggie told him, one hand on the doorknob as she opened the cabin door. “You don’t have to rush on my account.”
But he did, Jonah thought as he pulled away from the cabin, watching Maggie grow smaller in his rearview mirror. He did have to rush on her account because he wanted to get back to her as soon as he possibly could. Despite her swaggering displays of independence, there was something about Maggie Reeves that brought out his protective nature.
She might come on like gangbusters, the way she had around the chief this morning, but she didn’t fool him. He saw the vulnerable woman under all that and he had this overwhelming desire to keep her safe even though the immediate danger, according to the weather reports, had passed.
But he had been at this job long enough to know that there were all sorts of dangers to be afraid of, not just the ones that could be heard about on weather forecasts.
Maybe he was the one who was letting his imagination get carried away, Jonah told himself.
He pressed down harder on the gas pedal.
* * *
The second she closed the door behind her, she felt it. The cabin seemed eerily silent to her without Jonah there. She wasn’t the sort of person who was afraid of the dark or who held her breath, waiting to hear something go “bump” in the night. Still, Maggie decided that having a light on while she made dinner out of whatever she could find in the refrigerator wasn’t all that bad an idea, even though it wasn’t dark outside yet.
If one light was good, several lights were even better, she decided, switching on the lamps and overhead lights in the kitchenette. For good measure, she put on the lights in the living room, as well.
Opening the refrigerator, she searched the crisper drawer and found that she had missed a quartered chicken the last time. She decided that she would use it to make fried chicken. It was simple, difficult to mess up and most importantly, she’d never met anyone who didn’t like fried chicken.
Once she saw that Jonah had a little bit of flour and some oil in his pantry, she felt as if she had gotten a go-ahead sign and got started.
Maggie really had no idea if Jonah was going to be back soon the way he had promised, or if he would get caught up in something and be home a great deal later. Either way, she knew that fried chicken tasted
good served hot or cold.
Maggie got started, taking her time with each step while humming fragments of a song under her breath. It was a familiar tune and the sound of it comforted her, although for the life of her, she couldn’t remember more than five words from the lyrics.
Doing something as normal as making fried chicken helped to soothe her, as well.
She had just immersed the last piece of chicken in the flour mixture she’d created when she heard her cell phone begin to make a pulsing sound, demanding her attention. She paused to wipe her fingertips on a kitchen towel that had seen better days, then she pulled the phone out of her hip pocket. Maggie swiped across the screen even as her brain registered the fact that she didn’t recognize the caller ID.
But then, maybe Jonah’s phone had died and he had had to borrow someone else’s phone to call her. Most likely he was calling to tell her that he was going to be late getting back. It was to be expected. Jonah felt he was indispensable and for the most part she had to admit that the man was right. Everyone turned to him for guidance.
Maggie caught herself smiling. If he was calling about that, then Jonah was also incredibly thoughtful.
But when she unlocked her phone, she saw that she wasn’t getting an incoming call. Instead, it was a text message.
And the message wasn’t from Jonah. It was coming from a blocked number.
Stop sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong or you might not live to see another dawn.
Maggie stared at the screen, rereading the message. There was no mistaking the meaning of the text. It was definitely intended as a threat. But who would want to threaten her? And exactly what was this person referring to? What did he mean by “sticking her nose into” something? Was he talking about her finding that body on the Corgan ranch?
And how would this anonymous person even know anything about that? She and Jonah had only notified the chief this afternoon. Thompson had brought his forensic team with him when he arrived on the scene, but they were all part of the police department.
Was whoever had texted her this threat part of the police department, as well? Or had he hacked into the police department so he could keep tabs on what was going on?
Why would he want to?
Unless...
“Unless he’s the killer,” Maggie cried out loud.
“Unless who’s the killer?” Jonah asked, picking that exact moment to walk into his cabin.
Maggie yelped and jumped. She’d been so caught up in trying to figure out who had sent her the threatening text, she hadn’t heard Jonah pulling up in his truck.
Great work, Maggie, she berated herself. Whoever wrote this text could have pulled up in a train and you wouldn’t have heard him until he killed you.
“And why do you have all the lights on?” Jonah asked just before he saw that the chicken pieces in the large frying pan were about to begin burning and smoking. Moving swiftly, he turned down the flame and pushed the pan onto another burner until it could cool off.
“Hey, is everything all right?” he questioned, crossing over to Maggie.
For the first time since he’d walked in, Jonah saw the frightened, distressed look on Maggie’s face and the way she was clutching her phone.
“What happened here?” Jonah asked.
“Everything is fine,” Maggie answered, her voice hardly louder than a squeak. There wasn’t a shred of conviction in it.
“No, it’s not,” Jonah contradicted forcefully. He took hold of her shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Now tell me what’s wrong.”
Rather than say anything, she touched her screen to refresh the message, then handed her phone over to Jonah.
His expression hardened as he quickly scanned the message.
“Who sent you this?” he asked.
“I have no idea,” she answered. “It came in as anonymous.”
Maggie double-checked to make sure she hadn’t missed anything that might indicate who the sender was. She hadn’t.
Jonah didn’t like this, but he didn’t want to say anything that might fuel her fears further. “It’s probably just a crank call from some pathetic idiot who gets off thinking he’s frightening people with vague threats.” His eyes narrowed as he looked at Maggie more closely. “Is it working?” he asked.
“Well, I do feel better now that you’re here,” she told Jonah, taking back her phone and returning it into her pocket.
Jonah put his arm around her shoulders, giving her a quick hug. “Good, that means I’ve done my job. I’ll see if I can find someone at the police department who can track down this coward for me and I’ll tell him to back off if he knows what’s good for him,” Jonah said, paraphrasing the mysterious caller’s initial threat.
“In the meantime,” Maggie said, looking over at the frying pan and its semicharred contents, “I burned some chicken for you.”
“Mmm, burned chicken. My favorite. How did you know?” he teased.
“Wild guess,” she quipped. “No, really,” she said, changing her tone. “You don’t have to eat it. I’ll make you something else.”
“Hey, seriously, I really like burned fried food,” he assured her. To prove it, he picked up a chicken thigh out of the pan and bit into it. “Hot!” he declared. “But delicious.”
Chapter 12
Maggie looked at the burned fried chicken on the plate that Jonah had taken. She frowned. “You’re just saying that,” she told him.
“And meaning it,” Jonah insisted. “Besides, this chicken is only moderately burned. The skin’s just crispy, that’s all.” He took another healthy bite. The skin crackled as he sank his teeth into the piece. “Turns out that the meat inside is just fine.”
“But—” Certain Jonah was just pretending to enjoy the chicken, Maggie began to take the chicken away.
Jonah was not about to relinquish his plate. “Stop arguing with me and let me enjoy my chicken in peace,” he told her.
Maggie gave up trying to change his mind. Truthfully, she felt rather relieved that he could actually eat what she’d prepared. The anonymous text she’d gotten had put her in a very strange mood, making her doubt herself and everything else. Having the chicken pieces start smoking and burning only seemed to amplify that feeling.
She had taken a few pieces for herself, but right now, all she was doing was pushing the pieces around on the plate.
About to do justice to his second piece, Jonah saw that Maggie wasn’t eating. “Why aren’t you having any?” he urged. “I’m betting that you probably haven’t had anything to eat since this morning.”
She didn’t feel up to having Jonah analyze her, so she lied. “I did,” Maggie said defensively.
He’d been with her for most of the day. He had a feeling that she hadn’t had anything in the short time they had been apart while she’d been making dinner. Still, he was willing to play along and asked, “Okay, what did you have?”
“Food,” Maggie answered grudgingly.
Now he knew she was lying, but he wasn’t about to come right out and say that. Instead, he asked good-naturedly, “Anything more specific than that?”
“Good food,” she answered.
Maggie was prepared to go down fighting, he thought, and it amused him. Jonah started to laugh and wound up laughing so hard that he came close to choking.
Maggie realized that he wasn’t kidding. She jumped to her feet and began pounding Jonah on his back. He sucked in his breath. Whatever had gotten caught in his throat had been dislodged.
Holding his hand up, his eyes almost watery, Jonah gasped, “Uncle. I give up.” He sucked in more air. “You know, you’re a great deal stronger than you look,” he told her.
Maggie was still looking at him closely. “Are you all right?” she asked. “You had me worried there for a minute.”
He waved away her concern. “Just a litt
le food that went down the wrong way.”
She knew that her flippant comment was what had set him off. “I’m sorry,” she apologized.
She was kidding, right? “You have nothing to be sorry for. After the kind of day I put in, between finding that body and then digging through more rubble, it felt good to be able to laugh at something.” Jonah looked at her for a long moment, his expression growing somber. “There hasn’t been all that much to laugh about lately.”
Maggie immediately thought of the strange text she had received warning her to back off.
“No, there hasn’t been,” she agreed. “But we need to hold on to a good thought so that we can move forward. Even when I was up that tree when the floods hit, clinging to that branch for all I was worth, I never thought that was going to be the end for me.”
He hadn’t even considered that part. He had just assumed that she had been afraid. “Just what did you think?” he asked Maggie.
She smiled at him now. “That’s easy. I thought that someone would come along to save me, and look—” she gestured toward him “—you did.”
That surprised him. “You thought I’d come and save you?” he questioned.
“Well, not you specifically,” she admitted. “But someone.”
His eyes washed over Maggie and he felt those same stirrings again. There was no doubt about it. He was attracted to Maggie.
Jonah smiled at her. “I guess I’m glad it was me.”
“Yeah, me, too,” Maggie replied. She saw that Jonah had finished the chicken he had put on his plate. “Can I get you something else?” she asked, about to take the plate from him to throw out the pile of bones.
Something about the way Maggie had asked the question increased those stirrings he was feeling. Attempting to get them under control wasn’t working.
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