Men of Courage II

by Lori Foster

  Happy reading,

  Donna Kauffman

  CHAPTER ONE

  MARTY MCKENNA was having a very bad day.

  “I should never have left the goddamn airport. For that matter, I should have stayed in freaking Kansas.” It wasn’t the first time she’d had that thought since leaving Detroit in the wee hours of the morning, after a storm there had grounded her connecting flight to Cincinnati. She just hoped it wasn’t the last thought she’d ever have.

  Teeth gritted, she wrapped both hands on the wheel of her rental car, and fought desperately to keep the little compact on the road. If you could call the dirt and gravel cow path she was on a road. But staying on that cow path was preferable to landing in the flood-filled ditch that separated the road from the field that ran parallel to it.

  The ditch she was rapidly swerving toward.

  Fighting the muddy, branch-strewn road and the blown-out tire turned out to be more than Marty or the little compact could handle. Every second felt like a slow-motion movie, and yet barely a blink later her compact had left the road, spewing gravel, before tipping over sideways as it careered off the embankment, down into the gully.

  Marty’s seat belt was the only thing that kept her from being flung downward against the passenger side door. She hadn’t struck anything, so her airbag remained intact, but escaping possible facial burns was of little comfort at the moment. The instant her heart slowed down enough so she could hear anything past the thumping beat of it, she heard the slurping, sucking sound of her car sinking into the muck. Muddy water was rushing around either side of her car. The narrow gully was probably nothing more than a dusty ravine most of the time, but the heavy storm had turned it into a raging miniriver that was pummeling her car and rapidly seeping inside of it.

  Of course, if it hadn’t been for the water filling the ditch, she’d have likely flipped over completely. Only now she had another set of problems to worry about. Namely getting out of the car while she still could.

  She reached downward, straining against the seat belt to get to her backpack, which was lying against the passenger window. She had no idea where her cell phone was. She’d pitched it in the general direction of her backpack when the tire had blown, needing both hands to grip the wheel. Hopefully Ryan had assumed they’d lost connection. She didn’t want him worrying about her.

  She was doing enough worrying for both of them at the moment.

  After all but dislocating her shoulder, she finally managed to snag the backpack’s strap, then awkwardly wrapped it around her fist. The seat belt was cutting into her body, choking off her breath. She needed to get out. As the rain had gotten heavier, the sky had grown swiftly darker, despite that it wasn’t even noon yet. And the wind was picking up speed, which, considering it had been buffeting her little car all over the road for over an hour now, was saying something.

  Hanging as she was, she couldn’t see over the edge of her side window to what was on the other side of her door, but it was her only avenue of escape. Rain was beating against the glass, and from the tiny tapping sounds she heard, she realized it was mixing with bits of hail. Not a good sign during tornado season. Like she needed more bad ones.

  This was supposed to be a beautiful June day. The kind where you watched an old friend get married, threw rice, then danced under the stars while drinking too much champagne. “So much for my compatriots at the local National Weather Service,” she muttered. At least she wouldn’t be getting the letters and phone calls complaining that the forecast was wrong. This wasn’t her district. Hell, it wasn’t even her state.

  Using the center armrest for leverage, she opened her door and levered it straight up, sticking her foot out to keep it propped open against the wind. “See,” she grunted, “this is why you should join a gym. If you’d done a few leg presses in your life, this wouldn’t be killing you.” As it was, by the time she got a good grip on the slick edge of the doorframe, her muscles were screaming against the constant force the wind was putting against the thinly made door. She levered herself as close to the open door as she could, hoping she could bail out when she released the seat belt. The car tipped more upright with every shift of her body weight, causing it to sink even more rapidly.

  She was already getting wet and now hail bits were pricking at her skin. Water and muck were oozing into the passenger side and filling up the foot well. “Time to get the hell out of here,” she muttered, then hauled herself up as best she could while simultaneously popping her seat belt off. The buckle caught her hard in the cheek as it whipped past, but she could do no more than swear, as she was now fighting gravity all by herself. It took everything she had to heave her body up and out onto the edge of the car doorframe. The car began to flip the rest of the way over as she quickly reached for the open door. Pushing it against the wind, she levered herself against it. Wobbling badly, she shoved herself upright.

  Without time to so much as glance downward to gauge the distance needed, she made her leap. The car went the rest of the way over as she shoved off, reducing her leverage just enough to send her sprawling a foot short of the other side of the water-filled gully.

  Water and muck smacked her in the face, filled her mouth, making her sputter and choke. She flung her backpack toward the road, then literally clawed her way out of the water. Gasping, she lay on the side of the road, heedless for the moment of the rain and hail pounding her now completely sodden frame. The adrenaline that had pumped so swiftly into her system, allowing her to focus energy on saving herself, was rapidly turning into a queasy ball of nausea in the pit of her stomach.

  She finally found the energy to push to a sitting position. All that showed of her car were the wheels and the bottom half of the driver side door. She began to shiver hard then, knowing she could only partly contribute the reaction to her soaking-wet condition.

  Now that she was safe, looking at the rapidly swelling gully and her water-filled car, she realized how close she’d come to being in a far worse situation. Well, at least now she wasn’t as mad at the airline people who’d refused to take her luggage off the plane in Detroit when she’d opted out of waiting for the runways to open back up. She might look like the creature from the black lagoon, but her clothes would make it the rest of the way to Ohio safe and dry.

  “Rah, rah,” she muttered, scraping mucked-up strands of hair from her face and shifting enough to look up and down the narrow country road. Wincing as the hail continued to sting her skin, she wasn’t surprised to find nary a sign of a car or truck headed in her direction. Given the kicking winds, hail and rain, not to mention the fact that probably few cars used the road on any kind of normal basis, she doubted that was going to change. “No, only an idiot weather researcher would be out in conditions like this.”

  She’d had Ryan’s local reports from late last night to go on, and she thought she’d read the signs pretty well. Obviously the storm had shifted position, though, which not only didn’t bode well for her, but didn’t bode well for her friend Ryan, or his wedding, either. Cell service sucked out here, so she’d been unable to get any kind of regular reports. In fact, she’d been amazed she’d gotten through to him at all.

  Wait—her phone! Galvanized, she scooted forward and grabbed her backpack, dragging it into her lap. She fished around inside of it, hoping against hope her phone had somehow landed inside when she’d tossed it earlier. But no such luck. Because why should my luck change now? she thought morosely, giving in to an uncustomary and hopefully brief bout of self-pity. She stared at her submerged rental, but quickly disabused herself of any notion of wading back in to look for it.

  Instead she struggled to a stand and took stock of the situation. She’d told Ryan where she was, at least she hoped he’d heard her before the tire had blown. Maybe he’d send someone out after her. “Like he doesn’t have anything more important to do,” she reminded herself. Besides, the way her luck was running, he’d probably send Cooper Harrison of all people.

  Oh, yeah, that w
ould just cap off her day completely.

  Of all the possible scenarios she’d come up with if she ever ran into Cooper Harrison again, both of the personal, and recently the more professional variety—okay, who was she kidding? Every time she thought of seeing Cooper again it turned personal in her mind pretty much instantly. Anyway, none of those dream sequences had centered around any kind of rescue fantasy. Well, fantasy, yes. But she didn’t want him to rescue her. Far from it.

  If and when she saw Cooper again, she would present herself as nothing less than his equal. Maybe not in professional achievement, but certainly in attitude and maturity. She was no longer a lovesick college coed, enthralled with the campus wunderkind.

  “No,” she muttered, scraping at the muck and gravel clinging to her muddy, wet pants, “you’re stranded in the middle of a supercell thunderstorm mooning about him instead.” She sighed and gave up any attempt at salvaging her clothes. Yeah, she’d certainly come up in the world.

  Disgusted with both her clothes and her attitude, she shoved thoughts of both from her mud-caked brain and started doing something helpful, like looking for shelter. She was perfectly capable of handling this. Hadn’t she just rescued herself from a sinking car? Proof right there she didn’t need saving by the Cooper Harrisons of the world.

  Forcing the accompanying rescue fantasies aside, she turned her focus back to where it should be. And that’s when she spotted the barn. It was on the far side of a wide cow field, tucked up against a narrow stand of soaring pine trees. The barn was huge, like the ones they used in the South to dry tobacco. It was also old, weathered, and from all appearances, abandoned. There weren’t any other outbuildings in the vicinity, much less any kind of working farm. But it was the only structure in sight. It would provide shelter and give her a chance to dry out, wait out the storm.

  The downside was that the only way to get to the barn was to hike across a few hundred yards of flooded, rutted, overgrown cow field. She tried not to be discouraged, to be thankful instead that she had any shelter. While doing one last scan of the sky, judging the cloud formation, gauging wind direction and speed as best as she could, she noted the first of a series of lightning strikes in the distance. “Perfect.”

  Rain, high wind, hail…and now lightning storms. Pretty much every ingredient necessary for tornado activity. And what was she going to do? Right. Run toward a rickety old barn. But she had no other options at the moment. Another closer strike ended her indecision and had her slinging her tote on her back and heading in a very undignified stumbling trot to the other side of the field.

  It felt like hours, but what was more likely about twenty minutes and a very disgusting trek later, she was in an open and, thankfully, cow poop-free area around the barn. Up close, the weather-beaten structure was in even worse condition than it had appeared from the road. Slats were missing or rotted, and it was a pretty good bet that the lion’s share of the inside was as wet and muddy as the outside. She couldn’t see if the entire roof was intact, and after a moment of indecision, decided against circling the barn to check it out first. The hail was getting larger and what little adrenaline she had left in her system was rapidly disappearing. She was exhausted enough by this point that she could hardly fight the wind gusts to remain standing.

  She forged her way to the huge double barn doors, only to discover that against all logic, they’d been chained and padlocked shut. Given the rusted condition of both chain and lock, it had to have been years since anyone had bothered to check on security. Flinching as the hail started coming down harder—and with the wind behind the icy pellets hitting her hard enough now to leave marks—she struggled to squeeze herself through one of the missing slats. Her shirt and the strap of her bag caught on the rough planks on either side, snagging and ripping at her, but with a final shove she stumbled inside. Which, given that half the roof was missing, she soon discovered wasn’t much different from the outside. But as she was presently under the remaining half, most of the hail and rain were finally, blessedly, being deflected.

  She slumped back against the rough planks, eyes shut, chest heaving now more from relief than exertion, and tried to marshal her strength and what was left of her determination. She wasn’t out of the woods yet. This storm was just gearing up. And she was hiding in a wide open field, in a crumbling building that might not withstand the heavy winds, much less anything more dramatic.

  Forcing her eyes open, she scanned the gloomy interior of the barn. It was a huge structure, with a loft running across one half of the upper area. The rest was wide open from dirt floor to the apex of the roof, which was a good two-plus stories up. There were no stalls, just a few pieces of rusted plow attachments and soggy, decaying bales of hay.

  The missing section of roof was exactly that—missing. As in gone completely. She’d half expected to find it collapsed or caved in, but it was simply gone. Probably ripped off during a previous storm.

  “There’s a comforting thought,” she said, rubbing her arms and shivering at the sound of the wind howling through the exposed beams and gaps in the walls. The force of the wind was so strong, some of the boards were literally groaning under the pressure. It felt like the whole thing could collapse at any moment. And part of her was definitely tempted to flee. But the part that was wet, tired and sore wanted to stay put, minimal shelter being preferable to playing hail target.

  The only completely dry area of the barn was the corner underneath the loft, which had no missing planks nearby, and both the loft and the roof to keep out the elements. It was also the least safe as it would put her squarely in the one part of the barn with the heaviest load of lumber over her head. All of which could come tumbling down, or be snatched away—her along with it—if indeed this supercell spawned the tornadoes it had every appearance of being capable of.

  But that was where she headed anyway. She was shivering hard now, her teeth chattering. She just needed to sit out of the rain for a few minutes and gather her strength. Formulate a plan. Besides, she told herself, there must be something stable about that section of the barn. It had held up this long, hadn’t it?

  It wasn’t much of a reassurance, but it was the best she could do for herself at the moment. Falling apart wasn’t an option. She was scared, she admitted it, but more than likely this would end up just being another interesting storm story to add to her repertoire. Only one she’d just as soon not relive or recount as she did the others.

  One in particular came to mind. But she quickly squashed any temptation to allow her mind to stray in that particular direction. Thinking about Cooper Harrison wasn’t conducive to the clear-headed, rational mindset she needed at the moment. How in the hell she thought she was going to work anywhere in the vicinity of the man, she hadn’t a clue. But now was not the time to dwell on that problem, either.

  She scraped her wet hair off her neck and wrung out as much of the water as she could. The melting hail pellets had created icy rivulets of water that were streaming down her back. She slipped off her backpack and plucked her sodden shirt away from her skin. She was tempted to pull it off and wring it out, but dragging it back on again would probably just feel worse. And leaving it off wasn’t an option. It was wet, but it did provide some protection. Even if it was only in her mind.

  There wasn’t much she could do about her mud-and-muck-splattered pants and she didn’t even want to consider what was caked into her shoes. She thought about taking them off and leaving them in the opposite corner. Or outside. But she had no idea what the next few hours would bring. And if she had to move quickly, she couldn’t afford to be shoeless. She walked back and scraped as much of the muck off as she could on the nearest rusted piece of metal equipment, then removed the rest by rubbing the soles and sides on the wet hay bale. At least she didn’t smell now, she thought, as she headed for the dry corner. If only drying her clothes were that simple.

  Rubbing her arms, she crossed in front of one of the many missing planks…and stopped dead in her tracks. So did
her heart.

  In the far distance, probably a good mile or so away, the eerily dark sky was topped by a ceiling of dark clouds. But it was the four tiny funnels pulling down from that black cauldron that riveted her to the spot.

  As she watched in dread, two funnels joined together, pulling farther down from the cloud ceiling toward the ground. Then the remaining three funnels became two. And as her heart kicked back in, thumping in double time, those two funnels become one.

  CHAPTER TWO

  IT WAS CRAZY, REALLY, to still be thinking about her like this. It had been six years and a lifetime ago since he’d seen Marty McKenna. Of course, she’d been naked at the time, and they’d just had sex in the back of his chase truck after witnessing the mother of all tornadoes. Something like that tended to burn certain indelible images into a man’s brain.

  But now they were simply two professionals in the same field of study, colleagues whose paths had never managed to cross since that fateful day. He’d gone his way, she’d gone hers. It was a stupid waste of time wondering about the what-ifs and might-have-beens. He’d tried telling himself that his recent preoccupation was completely normal, considering he was up for a promotion, and her name had surfaced as the leading candidate to fill the position he’d be vacating.

  Except this wasn’t the first time he’d thought about what it had been like between them, both of them all charged up, sweaty and wild for each other. Her sweet naked body, writhing beneath him, shuddering around him.

  Cooper Harrison jerked his thoughts back to the road. Christ, he really had to get a better grip. He’d be seeing her again in a mere couple of hours. And starting off their reunion with an obvious, throbbing hard-on wasn’t exactly going to set the professional tone he hoped for.