Page 12 of The Cowboy Who Looked Again

Misty gripped her hand while Seth went to start banging on more doors. She couldn’t look away from the corner of the fourth floor, where smoke definitely lifted into the air silently. Ominously.

“Come on.” Ralf appeared in front of Misty, suddenly there in the night. She realized then that it wasn’t nearly as dark as it had been a few minutes ago. Police, fire engines, and ambulances had arrived, throwing red, blue, and white light around.

“We don’t need to be here,” he said.

“There was a fire in our apartment,” Misty said. “Maybe we started all of this.” Guilt and horror pulled through her, and she started to weep again. She let Ralf lead her away, and they huddled near her car until the cops came to talk to them.

“Name and apartment,” one of the officers in the pair said.

Before any of them could speak, the other policeman there said, “We have to relocate everyone in this complex. An electrical fire started in Building A here, and it quickly spread throughout the area.”

“We have two thousand people without power,” the first officer said. “We’re working to find temporary shelter for people tonight who don’t have friends or family they can call and huddle up with.” He looked at the three of them, and Misty hadn’t felt this alone in a long, long time.

“But we want to make sure everyone is accounted for,” the second officer said. “We’ll go apartment by apartment if we have to, but we want to keep our people safe too.”

“We’re in Building A,” Janie said, her voice so much stronger than Misty felt. Her brain had started buzzing about “a friend” she could call for somewhere to stay.

Link.

What would he do when she called him in the middle of the night, begging for a bed to sleep in until the sun came up?

And what about tomorrow night? she wondered.

Janie gave them the information they needed, then Ralf did, and Misty just stood there with them, shivering in the summer nighttime heat as she thought about the cowboy cabins Link had told her about.

We have several, he’d said once. They’re only full during the harvest. We might have a few extra cowboys on the ranch during branding or round-up.

Shiloh Ridge Ranch had beds going un-slept in. She, Janie, and Ralf could make the drive and go back to bed. There’d be food and plenty of people to welcome them. Link had told her his family was huge, and that he wanted to introduce her to all of them, that they’d love her, welcome her, and try to feed her so much food, she’d never be hungry again.

They’d laughed about it; he’d broken up with her a week later, when she’d reminded him that meeting his family was anything but casual.

I guess I don’t know how to do casual, he’d said. I want more than that, and you don’t, so it’s time for us to be done.

Done.

Done, done, done.

He’d left his beloved cookies on her dining room table when he’d walked out, and Misty hadn’t seen much of him since—until the wedding.

Finally, the officers left. The three of them stood there and looked at one another. They’d been dispatched here by the state of Texas to do a job. The state paid for their apartments, and surely Patty in the office down in Dallas could get them somewhere else to live fairly quickly.

But when?

“Well,” Ralf said with a big sigh. “I guess we’ll wait until they tell us where the shelters are tonight.”

Misty held up her phone, her thoughts finally ready to come out of her mouth. “I can call Link, and we can stay at Shiloh Ridge Ranch until we get new apartments.”

Janie blinked at her, her eyes wide as the summer moon. Ralf settled on his back leg and folded his arms, a silent challenge to see if Misty would really do such a thing.

She stood there and stared at her friends, the chaos around her so loud and so obnoxious. Misty thought of the peace and serenity waiting for her at Shiloh Ridge. Supposed, as she’d never been there, but Link had told her about the wide sky, the way he could talk to the wind and listen to it whisper back.

She didn’t want to go to a group shelter, and she couldn’t stay here. She had her phone and her car and Link’s number, and Misty pressed her eyes closed.

Really, Lord? she asked silently. Is this the answer to my prayer?

She wasn’t sure, but she couldn’t stand there and wait for someone to save her. She’d saved herself from terrible situations before, and while she’d failed with her brother, she wouldn’t fail her friends.

She tapped and it was surprisingly fast and easy to get to Link’s name and make the call. But the cellphone felt like a two-ton boulder as she lifted it to her ear, and she started praying in earnest again that her ex-boyfriend would answer her middle-of-the-night call.

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