need you.”
Forrest’s face darkened as he took offense. “I was shot in the leg, Jonah, not the head. I’m perfectly capable of going out there with you to look for Bellamy’s sister. Don’t treat me like I’m an invalid,” he warned his brother.
Jonah backtracked. “I know you’re not an invalid,” he said gruffly. He wasn’t accustomed to trying to tread lightly around any of his brothers and doing so was tricky. “After you make sure Rae’s taken care of, go out with the others and search for survivors. And I’ll do the same,” he declared authoritatively.
With that, Jonah headed out the door. He zipped up his rain slicker. Not that the outer garment would give him much protection if the storm got worse again. He supposed he was doing this more out of habit than anything else. If he followed a ritual, covering all the steps, maybe that would help him find Maggie.
No stone unturned, he thought.
Jonah hurried across the street toward what was left of the town’s stable. He and his brothers had housed their horses here to keep them from being left out in the open once the storm hit.
Once inside, he made his way over to his horse, a sleek palomino. Aside from the horses, there was no one around.
“How are you doing, Cody?” Jonah asked, taking time to interact with his mount before going out. He and Cody had been “partnered” for three years now. “Okay, boy, ready to play hero and earn your feed? I know, I know,” he said as he put the saddle on his horse and tightened the cinches, “I don’t want to go out, either. But there’s a crazy woman out there who needs us because she doesn’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain—or take shelter when a hurricane is predicted to come rolling through,” he said, talking to the palomino as if he was a person. Taking the horse’s reins in his hand, he swung into the saddle.
“Let’s go do this. The sooner we find her, the sooner we can come back.”
Cody whinnied as if he understood. Jonah never doubted that he did.
“I don’t like this any better than you do,” Jonah told Cody as he urged his horse on through the increasingly inclement weather.
He had been talking in a calm, steady voice ever since he and his horse had left the stable in Whisperwood. He wasn’t sure if he was talking for Cody’s benefit or his own, but it helped in both cases.
The farther away from Whisperwood he went, the more Jonah found that he had to steadily raise his voice, because not only had the wind picked up, but so had the threat of rain.
Actually, it wasn’t a threat any longer. Rain had turned into a reality, falling with a vengeance. It would recede, only to return, coming down harder than it had before.
If this kept up, the chances of floods throughout the already-beaten-down area was a given. Jonah drew in his shoulders, trying vainly to stay dry. His rain slicker and Stetson were fighting a losing battle, but it wasn’t in him just to give up. There was a woman out there who needed to be rescued.
“C’mon, where are you?” Jonah called out impatiently in his frustration.
He did his best to scan as much of the surrounding area as possible. According to his calculations, he had ridden onto the Corgan ranch about fifteen, eighteen minutes ago. Because of the rain that was still coming down, his visibility was limited. He hadn’t been able to make out anything except for an occasional tree here and there. Certainly not a person.
In any event, Maggie wasn’t near any of the trees he had made out.
“Maybe she’s not here at all,” he said to Cody. “And we’re just wasting our time—not to mention that we’re seriously running the risk of drowning out here if it gets any worse.” Cody whinnied, as if agreeing with him. Despite the situation he found himself in, Jonah grinned. “I know, I know, we’re the ones who don’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain, not her. But legend has it Maggie’s as stubborn as hell and if she said she was coming out here to find answers, this is where she probably is—but where?” he asked, frustrated.
Lowering his head, Jonah shoved his hat farther down on it, hoping to keep the wind from blowing it off.
“You see her, Cody?” he asked the palomino. “Because I sure as hell don’t.”
With one hand holding on to his hat, the other one wrapped around Cody’s reins, Jonah raised up from his saddle, standing as best he could in his stirrups. He was blinking furiously to keep the rain out of his eyes as he scanned the area again, searching for a familiar shape, or some indication that Maggie was indeed out here, or at least had passed this way.
As he surveyed the area, Jonah realized that his horse had ridden in very close to this humongous oak tree. The tall, wide branches were offering him some degree of shelter from the rain—just in time, it seemed. The rain was coming down harder and harder now.
Some sort of natural reflex had Jonah glancing up over his head. It was not unheard-of for animals to go climbing up into the first available tree they could find. It was a self-preservation instinct to keep them from being swept away in a storm or a flood. The animals that he knew reacted this way were mountain lions—and bears.
The last thing he wanted was to be under a tree when a mountain lion or bear decided it wanted a snack more than it wanted to stay dry.
But when Jonah looked up, it wasn’t a mountain lion or a bear that he saw.
Maggie!
Thank God.
“A little old to be climbing trees, aren’t you?” Jonah asked her, amused despite the less than ideal conditions they found themselves in.
Startled, Maggie had been so intent on holding on, she hadn’t even realized that he was there.
“Oh lord,” she cried, “you are the answer to a prayer!”
It had taken her more than a couple of moments to convince herself that she wasn’t hallucinating. After all, she had lost track of how long she had spent up here in this tree. She could hardly believe that she was finally going to be rescued. And if that wasn’t enough, this knight in shining armor was nothing short of gorgeous.
Part of Maggie wasn’t fully convinced that she wasn’t imagining all this. That she really would be rescued. Her arms had all but gone numb from hanging on to the branch she had climbed up on eons ago. At this point, she couldn’t remember not being up here.
Jonah slowly angled Cody, as well as himself, right beneath the woman he had come to rescue. He wrapped the horse’s reins around his saddle horn, then tightened his thighs about Cody’s flanks so that he could hold his position as steadily as possible.
Having taken all the precautions he could, Jonah raised his arms. “Climb down,” he instructed the woman perched above him. “Don’t worry. If you slip, I’ll catch you.”
Maggie looked down uncertainly. She really had her doubts about his assurance. “That’s a pretty tall order,” she called back.
Jonah could appreciate why she was so uneasy. There were several feet of space separating her from his outstretched arms.
He reassessed the situation. “Are you going to make me climb up there and get you?”
It was more of a challenge than a question. Or maybe she was just interpreting it that way. Maggie didn’t know. But she had never been the type of woman who would willingly cleave to the “damsel in distress” image. She wasn’t the type to be rescued, either. She preferred doing the rescuing, the way she had tried to come through for her parents.
“Just hang on to your patience,” she told him, slowly shifting her weight so that she could start to make her way down.