Anyway, if they asked him about the quality of the food, he would have to admit he had no idea. He had moved out of his room at the inn and into his new house the day before Laura started the breakfast service.
But then, he wasn’t going to think about Laura right now. He had already met his self-imposed daily limit about ten minutes after midnight while he had been answering a call for a minor fender bender, a couple of kids who wouldn’t be borrowing their dad’s new sedan again anytime soon.
And then exceeded his thinking-about-Laura quota about 1:00 a.m. and 2:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m. And so on and so on.
He was a cute kid, Taft thought now as he watched the kid take a sip of his soda. Not as adorable as Alex, of course, but then, he was a little biased.
“The house?” Trace asked again and Taft had to jerk his attention back to his brother.
“It’s been okay,” he answered.
“Just okay? Can’t you drum up a little more excitement than that? You’ve been working on this all winter long.”
“I’m happy to be done,” he answered, not in the mood for an interrogation.
If his brother kept this up, he was going to think twice next time about inviting Trace for a late lunch after a long shift. It had been a crazy idea anyway. He and his twin used to get together often for meals at The Gulch, but since Trace’s engagement, his brother’s free time away from Becca and Gabi had become sparse, as it should be.
He hadn’t been quite ready to go home for a solitary TV dinner after work, so had persuaded Trace to take a break and meet him. They could usually manage to talk enough about the general public safety of Pine Gulch for it to technically be considered a working lunch.
Except now, when the police chief appeared to have other things on his mind.
“I can tell when somebody’s lying to me,” Trace said with a solemn look. “I’m a trained officer of the law, remember? Besides that, I’m your brother. I know you pretty well after sharing this world for thirty-four years. You’re not happy and you haven’t been for a couple of weeks now. Even Becca commented on it. What’s going on?”
He couldn’t very well tell his brother he felt as if Laura had made beef jerky out of his heart. He ached with loneliness for her and for Maya and Alex. Right now, he would give anything to be sitting across the table from them while Maya grinned at him and Alex jabbered his ear off. Even if he could find the words to explain away his lousy mood, he wasn’t sure he was ready to share all of that with Trace.
“Maybe I’m tired of the same-old, same-old,” he finally said, when Trace continued to give him the Bowman interrogation look: Talk or you will be sorry.
“I’ve been doing the same job for nearly six years, with years fighting wildland fires and doing EMT work before I made chief. Maybe it’s time for me to think about taking a job somewhere else.”
“Where?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know. I’ve had offers here and there. Nevada. Oregon. Alaska, even. A change could be good. Get out of Pine Gulch, you know?”
Trace lifted an eyebrow and looked at him skeptically. “You just finished your new house a week ago. And now you’re thinking about leaving it? After all that work you put into it?”
He had come to the grim realization some nights ago during another sleepless episode that it would be torture continuing to live here in Pine Gulch, knowing she was so close but forever out of reach. He missed her. A hundred times a day he wanted to run over to the hotel claiming fire-code enforcement checks or something ridiculous like that just for the chance to see her and the children again.
Being without her had been far easier when she was half a world away in Spain. He was afraid the idea of weeks and months—and possibly years—of having her this close but always just out of his reach was more than he could endure.
Maybe it was his turn to leave this time.
“It’s just an idea. Something I’m kicking around. I haven’t actually done anything about it.”
Before Trace could answer, Donna Archuleta, who owned The Gulch with her husband, brought over their order.
“Here you go, Chief Bowman.” She set down Trace’s plate, his favorite roast-beef sandwich with green peppers and onions. “And for the other Chief Bowman,” she said in her gravelly ex-smoker voice, delivering Taft’s lunch of meat loaf and mashed potatoes, a particular specialty of Lou’s.
“Thanks, Donna.”
“You’re welcome. How are the wedding plans coming along?” she asked Trace.
His brother scratched his cheek. “Well, I’ll admit I’m mostly staying out of it. You’ll have to ask Becca that one.”
“I would if she would ever come around. I guess now she’s opened that fancy attorney-at-law office and doesn’t have to wait tables anymore, she must be too busy for us these days.”
Trace shook his head with a smile at the cantankerous old woman. “I’ll bring her and Gabi in for breakfast over the weekend. How would that be?”
“I guess that’ll do. You two enjoy your lunch.”
She headed away amid the familiar diner sounds of rattling plates and conversation.
He had hoped the distraction would derail Trace’s train of thought but apparently not. “If you think taking a job somewhere and moving away from Pine Gulch is what you want and need right now, I say go for it,” his brother said, picking up right where he had left off. “You know the family will support you in whatever you decide. We’ll miss you but we will all understand.”
“Thank you, I appreciate that.”
He considered it one of his life’s greatest blessings that he had three siblings who loved him and would back him up whenever he needed it.
“We’ll understand,” Trace repeated. “As long as you leave for the right reasons. Be damn careful you’re running to something and not just running away.”
Lou must be having an off day. The meat loaf suddenly tasted like fire-extinguisher chemicals. “Running away from what?”
Trace took a bite of his sandwich and chewed and swallowed before he answered, leaving Taft plenty of time to squirm under the sympathy in his gaze. “Maybe a certain innkeeper and her kids, who shall remain nameless.”
How did his brother do that? He hadn’t said a single word to him about Laura, but Trace had guessed the depth of his feelings anyway, maybe before he did. It was one of those weird twin things, he supposed. He had known the first time he met Becca, here in this diner, that Trace was already crazy about her.
The only thing he could do was fake his way out of it. “What? Laura? We were done with each other ten years ago.”
“You sure about that?”
He forced a laugh. “Yeah, pretty darn sure. You might have noticed we didn’t actually get married a decade ago.”
“Yeah, I did pick up on that. I’m a fairly observant guy.” Trace gave him a probing look. “And speaking of observant, I’ve also got an active network of confidential informants. Word is you haven’t been to the Bandito for the greater part of a month, which coincidentally happens to be right around the time Laura Santiago showed up back in town with her kids.”
“Checking up on me?”
“Nope. More like vetting questions from certain segments of the female society in Pine Gulch about where the hell you’ve been lately. Inquiring minds and all that.”
He took a forkful of mashed potatoes, but found them every bit as unappealing as the meat loaf. “I’ve been busy.”
“So I hear. Working on renovations at the inn, from what I understand.”
“Not anymore. That’s done now.”
He had no more excuses to hang around Cold Creek Inn. No more reason to help Alex learn how to use power tools, to listen to Maya jabber at him, half in a language he didn’t understand, or to watch Laura make the inn blossom as she had dreamed about doing most of her life.
Yeah, he wasn’t sure he could stick around town and watch as Laura settled happily into Pine Gulch, working on the inn, making friends, moving on.
All without him.
“When I heard from Caidy that you’d moved into the inn and were helping Laura and her mother with some carpentry work, I thought for sure you and she were starting something up again. Guess I was wrong, huh?”
Another reason he should leave town. His family and half the town were probably watching and waiting for just that, to see if the two of them would pick up where they left off a decade and an almost-wedding later.
“Laura isn’t interested in rekindling anything. Give her a break, Trace. I mean, it hasn’t even been a year since she lost her husband. She and the kids are trying to settle into Pine Gulch again. She’s got big plans for the inn, and right now that and her children are where her focus needs to be.”
Some of his despair, the things he thought he had been so careful not to say, must have filtered through his voice anyway. His brother studied him for a long moment, compassion in his green eyes Taft didn’t want to see.
He opened his mouth to deflect that terrible sympathy with some kind of stupid joke, but before he could come up with one, his radio and Trace’s both squawked at the same moment.
“All officers in the vicinity. I’ve got a report of a Ten Fifty-Seven. Two missing juveniles in the area of Cold Creek Inn. Possible drowning.”
Everything inside him froze to ice, crackly and fragile.
Missing juveniles. Cold Creek Inn. Possible drowning.
Alex and Maya.
He didn’t know how he knew so completely, but his heart cramped with agony and bile rose in his throat for a split second before he shoved everything aside. Not now. There would be time later, but right now he needed to focus on what was important.
He and Trace didn’t even look at each other. They both raced out of the restaurant to their vehicles parked beside each other and squealed out of the parking lot.
He picked up his radio. “Maria, this is Fire Chief Bowman. I want every single damn man on the fire department to start combing the river.”
“Yes, sir,” she answered.
His heart pounding in his chest, he sped through the short three blocks to Cold Creek Inn, every light flashing and every siren blaring away as he drove with a cold ball of dread in his gut. He couldn’t go through this. Not with her. Everything inside him wanted to run away from what he knew would be deep, wrenching pain, but he forced himself to push it all out of his head.
He beat Trace to the scene by a heartbeat and didn’t even bother to turn off his truck, just raced to where he saw a group of people standing beside the fast-moving creek.
Laura was being restrained by two people, her mother and a stranger, he realized. She was crying and fighting them in a wild effort to jump into the water herself.
“Laura, what’s happened?”
She gazed blankly at him for a moment, her eyes wide and shocky, then her features collapsed with raw relief.
“Taft, my children,” she sobbed and it was the most heartrending sound he had ever heard. “I have to go after them. Why won’t anyone let me go after them?”
Jan, still holding her, was also in tears and appeared even more hysterical, her face blotchy and red. He wouldn’t be able to get much information out of either of them.
Beyond them, he could see the water running fast and high and Lucky Lou running back and forth along the bank, barking frantically.
“Laura, honey, I need you to calm down for just a moment.” While everything inside him was screaming urgency, he forced himself to use a soothing, measured tone, aware it might be his only chance to get through to her.
“Please, sweetheart, this is important. Why do you think they’re in the river? What happened?”
She inhaled a ragged breath, visibly struggling to calm herself down to answer his question—and he had never loved her more than in that single moment of stark courage.
“They were just here. Right here. Playing with Lucky. They know they’re not to go near the creek. I’ve told them a hundred times. I was out here with them, planting flowers, and kept my eye on them the whole time. I walked around the corner of the inn for another flat and was gone maybe thirty seconds. That’s all. When I came back Lucky was running along the bank and they were g-gone.” She said the last word on a wailing sob that made everything inside him ache.
“How long ago?”
The stranger, who must have restrained her from jumping in after them, spoke. “Three minutes. Maybe four. Not long. I pulled into the parking lot just in time to see her running down the bank screaming something about her kids. I stopped her from jumping in after them and called 9-1-1. I don’t know if that was right.”
He would shake the guy’s hand later and pay for his whole damn stay, but right now he didn’t have even a second to spare.
“You did exactly right. Laura, stay here. Promise me,” he ordered. “You won’t find them by jumping in and you’ll just complicate everything. The water is moving too fast for you to catch up. Stay here and I will bring them back to you. Promise me.”
Her eyes were filled with a terrified anguish. He wanted to comfort her, but damn it, he didn’t have time.
“Promise me,” he ordered again.
She sagged against the stranger and Jan and nodded, then collapsed to her knees in the dirt, holding on to her mother.
He raced back to his truck, shouting orders into his radio the whole time as he set up a search perimeter and called in the technical rescue team. Even as one part of his mind was busy dealing with the logistics of the search and setting up his second in command to run the grid, the other part was gauging the depth of the water, velocity of the current, the creek’s route.
Given that the incident happened five minutes ago now, he tried to calculate how far the children might have floated. It was all guesswork without a meter to give him exact stream flow, but he had lived along Cold Creek all his life and knew its moods and its whims. He and Trace and their friends used to spend summers fishing for native rainbows, and as he grew older, he had kayaked the waters innumerable times, even during high runoff.
Something urged him to head toward Saddleback Road. Inspiration? Some kind of guardian angel? Just a semi-educated guess? He didn’t know, but a picture formed itself clearly in his head, of a certain spot where the creek slowed slightly at another natural bow and split into two channels before rejoining. Somehow he knew that was the spot where he needed to be
right now.
He could be totally off the mark but he could only hope and pray he wasn’t.
“Battalion Twenty, what’s your status?” he heard over the radio. Trace.
“Almost to Saddleback,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I’m starting here. Send a team to the road a quarter mile past that. What is that? Barrelwood?”
“Copy. Don’t be stupid, Chief.”
One of the hazards of working with his brother—but he didn’t care about that now, when he had reached the spot that seemed imprinted in his mind, for all those reasons he couldn’t have logically explained.
He jerked the wheel to the side of the road and jumped out, stopping only long enough to grab the water-rescue line in its throw bag in one of the compartments in the back of his truck. He raced to the water’s edge, scanning up and down for any sign of movement. This time of year, mid-May, the runoff was fast and cold coming out of the mountains, but he thanked God the peak flow, when it was a churning, furious mess, was still another few weeks away as the weather warmed further.
Had he overshot them or had they already moved past him? Damn it, he had no way of knowing. Go down or up? He screwed his eyes shut and again that picture formed in his head of the side channel that was upstream about twenty yards. He was crazy to follow such a vague impression but it was all he had
right now.
He raced up the bank, listening to the reports of the search on his radio as he ran.
Finally he saw the marshy island in the middle of the two channels. A couple of sturdy pine trees grew there, blocking a good part of his view, but he strained
his eyes.
There!
Was that a flash of pink?
He moved a little farther upstream for a different vantage point. The instant he could see around the pines, everything inside him turned to that crackly ice again.
Two small dark heads bobbed and jerked, snagged in the deadfall of a tree that was half-submerged in the water. The tree was caught between two boulders in the side channel. From here, he couldn’t tell if the kids were actually actively holding on or had just been caught there by the current.
He grabbed his radio, talking as he moved as close as he could. “Battalion Twenty. I’ve got a sighting twenty yards east of where my truck is parked on Saddleback Road. I need the tech team and Ambulance Thirty-Six here now.”
He knew, even as he issued the order, that no way in hell was he going to stand here and do nothing during the ten minutes or so it might take to assemble the team and get them here. Ten minutes was the difference between life and death. Anything could happen in those ten minutes. He didn’t know if the children were breathing—and didn’t even want to think about any other alternative—but if they weren’t, ten minutes could be critical to starting CPR.
Besides that, the water could be a capricious, vengeful thing. The relentless current could tug them farther downstream and away from him. He wasn’t about to take that chance.
This was totally against protocol, everything he had trained his own people not to do. Single-man water rescues were potentially fatal and significantly increased the dangers for everybody concerned.
Screw protocol.
He needed to reach Laura’s children. Now.
This would be much more comfortable in a wet suit but he wasn’t about to take the time to pull his on. He raced upstream another ten yards to a small bridge formed by another fallen tree. On the other side of the creek, the children were only a dozen feet away. He called out and thought he saw one of the dark heads move.
“Alex! Maya! Can you hear me?”
He thought he saw the head move again but he couldn’t be sure. No way could they catch the throw bag. He was going to have to go after them, which he had known from the moment he spotted that flash of pink.
A Cold Creek Reunion Page 14