Come the Spring (16 page)

He'd been stunned by the impact she'd made on him, and honest to God, he didn't know how to handle it. Until tonight, he hadn't so much as glanced at another woman, and he sure as certain hadn't physically wanted any of them. Grace had gotten to him, though, and it seemed so damned disloyal of him to have such unbridled thoughts about her.

He couldn't figure out why he was attracted to her. Granted, she was pretty and her face was about the loveliest he'd seen in a long, long time. She had a nice shape too. No doubt about it, she was well put together, but she still wasn't anything like his sweet Kathleen. No other woman could ever measure up to her. The unspoiled daughter of a farmer, his wife had simple tastes and a passionate zest for life. He'd been drawn to her robust laugh and her generous nature, and he had immediately and completely fallen head over heels in love with her. How he had marveled at the great gift God had given him, and he often would quietly observe her as she went about her daily chores. Her strong, sturdy hands worked tirelessly through the day, but at night they were gentle and soft as they stroked his brow.

Grace was a dainty, petite woman. The top of her head barely reached his shoulders. She came from
wealth and status and had obviously moved about in a world that was totally foreign to him. Yet there was a naiveté and gentleness in her that made him want to move close.

But she wasn't Kathleen. Oh, God, how he missed his wife. He ached to take her into his arms and make love to her once again. He longed to listen to her sing a lullaby to their little girl, to hear their laughter, to touch…

He forced himself to stop thinking about the past. His life had ended when his wife and baby were taken from him, gunned down like animals, but he had to keep going … had to keep pushing and searching until he had gotten every one of the demons responsible. Only then could he stop.

With a weary sigh, he got ready for bed and methodically went through his notes again. He wanted to find something he'd missed before, but that didn't happen. In frustration, he hurled the notepad across the room and fell back against the pillows.

Oh, Kathleen, if one of us had to die, why couldn't it have been me?

He fell asleep thinking about his wife, but he dreamed about Grace.

Seventeen
 

One didn't know what had awakened him. One second he was sound asleep, roping cattle, and the next he was wide awake and as tense as a bow. He was a light sleeper even when he was home at Rosehill in his own bed, and he always heard every little sound. He didn't hear anything unusual, but he still reached for his gun and went to the door.

As he expected, there wasn't anyone lurking in the hallway. He shut the door and crossed to the window to look down at the street, thinking that someone who had had too much to drink had made a racket. The street was deserted.

A faint breeze brushed his face. He let out a loud yawn and thought about going back to sleep, but then he saw the faint orange glow in the distance and realized it was already dawn. The sun was slowly making its way up into the black sky. Damn, but morning had come quick. He was still sleepy, and it seemed to him that he had only just closed his eyes.

He was getting old, he supposed. He stretched his
arms and went to get a drink of water before he got dressed. Because it was still dark in the room, he lit the kerosene lamp. His pocket watch was on the dresser next to his compass, and it wasn't until he happened to glance at the time that he realized it was still the middle of the night.

“What the hell?” he muttered.

He turned toward the streaks of amber light once again … and then he started running.

He was pulling his shirt on and trying to button his pants as he ran into the hallway.

“Wake up, Daniel. We've got trouble.”

The door opened a second later. Daniel rushed into the hallway brandishing his gun. He was half dressed and half asleep. “What is it?”

“Fire.”

“Where?” Daniel demanded as he turned and ran back into his room to get dressed.

“Could be as far away as the mountains, but I don't think so … the light's too close. Could be down the street… Ah, God, the boardinghouse … You don't think…” Cole shouted as he raced down the stairs.

Daniel was right behind him. The night manager was sound asleep in his chair behind the front desk, with his head and arms resting on the countertop, when Daniel leapt over the railing and shouted to him to ring the fire bell. Startled by the abrupt noise, the manager struck his head on a lamp and overturned his chair when he jumped to his feet.

“What … What did you say?” he cried out.

“The fire bell,” Daniel roared as he crossed the lobby and burst through the door in Cole's wake. “Ring the fire bell.”

He caught up with Cole at the corner. Side-by-side the two men ran, the only sounds the pounding of their boots against the ground and their harsh breathing as each pushed himself to his limit. They were halfway down the block when they smelled smoke.
Running as though the fire were licking at their heels, they sprinted around the curve in the road and saw the flames. The first floor of the house was a blazing inferno. Glowing red embers, like demon eyes, spewed out the open windows and floated up into the night sky. Tattered remnants of lace curtains, blackened with soot, billowed outward with each burst of dense smoke, and the freshly painted white wood blistered and boiled from the intensity of the heat.

No one was outside.

Cole and Daniel leapt over the fence at the same time and raced across the lawn. Daniel headed for the back of the house, hoping he could find a way inside through the flames, while Cole circled around the opposite side.

The front door crashed open, and they saw Jessica slowly backing out. She was bent at the waist, dragging Grace to safety.

Her friend wasn't moving. Daniel reached the porch before Cole did and lifted the unconscious woman into his arms. In the firelight, he could see the blood trickling down her left temple. Something had struck her hard, and considering the amount of swelling, he thought she was damned lucky to be alive. He held her close against his chest and ran down the steps and out into the yard, where he gently laid her in the grass.

Jessica followed him down the steps, then stopped. Screaming Caleb's name, she was turning in a circle, frantically searching for the baby and for Tilly, when Cole dove from the porch railing and tackled her to the ground.

He landed hard and knocked the breath out of her. She was thrown backward in the grass. She couldn't catch her breath and didn't understand what was happening, or why. All she could think about was Caleb and getting to him in time. Where was he?

Jessica tried to roll to her side so she could get up
and search for her baby, but Cole was suddenly pinning her down. Then he started pounding at her legs with the palms of his hands, shouting to Daniel to help him. She cried out and renewed her struggles to push him off her.

Flames were greedily eating the hem of her robe. Cole was trying to put the fire out and get the robe off her before she was burned. By the time he had rolled her onto her stomach, Daniel was at his side, helping.

The two men were tearing at her clothes. Screaming Caleb's name over and over again she struggled to get up, but they wouldn't let her move until Cole had ripped her robe off her shoulders and Daniel had pulled it free.

Cole lifted her up. She grabbed hold of his shirt and screamed, “I can't find Caleb. You have to help me find him. He's with Tilly … She was taking him outside while I searched for Grace. They were beside me upstairs. Where are they? I have to find them.”

She jerked away from him and tried to run back to the house, but Cole grabbed her from behind. She fought like a wildcat to get free, clawing at his arms and kicking at his legs.

“I'll find him,” he promised. “Do you hear me, Jessie? I'll find him. You stay with Grace. Can you do that?”

His calm voice cut through her hysteria. “Yes, yes, I'll stay with Grace. Please hurry.”

“The old lady and the baby are still inside,” Cole shouted to Daniel. He jerked Jessica around to face him. “Where are their rooms?”

She pointed to the center window above the porch. “Tilly's room is in the middle. Caleb and I are next to her … on the left side … by the tree.”

Daniel was already on the roof. He'd swung himself up from the overhang above the porch. He used the heel of his boot to break the glass in the center window and jumped back to avoid the flames and
smoke that billowed out. Then he dove, headfirst, inside.

The roof above the porch collapsed a second later. Cole had run to the other side of the house to try to get in through one of the windows on the first floor, but he couldn't get close enough, for the heat pouring out was too intense. His eyes burned and watered as he backtracked to the gnarled tree closest to the house. Thick branches hung down over the eaves, and he hoped he could get close enough to jump onto the roof.

He began to climb. Seconds later he swung out, hand over hand, and then dropped down to the roof. Daniel appeared at the window with Tilly wrapped in a blanket and draped over his shoulder. Before Cole could help him, Daniel jumped through the opening and sprinted toward the opposite side of the roof. The branches on that side of the house were lower and easy to grasp hold of.

“Caleb wasn't with Tilly. Get out of here,” Daniel shouted. “The roof's going to go.”

Ignoring the warning, Cole headed for the window Jessica had pointed out. Tongues of fire were hissing and spitting at him from the opening, but fear lent him strength. He was so damned scared he wouldn't find the baby alive, he recklessly followed Daniel's example and plunged headfirst inside.

He was surprised to find the floor was still there. He landed with a thud on his left shoulder, rolled, and stood up. A thick wall of black smoke knocked him backward to his knees. Ashes poured over his face and matted his eyelashes. His eyes burned so badly he couldn't see where he was, he couldn't breathe, and the heat inside the bedroom made his skin feel as though it were melting. He dropped down to the floor and took a deep breath of cool air. Then he began to crawl forward on his belly. There was almost a foot of clean air trapped between the floorboards and the
dense, deadly smoke. Taking another deep breath, he shouted Caleb's name.

The sound of his voice was lost in the crackling inferno. He slowly inched forward. He couldn't see anything, but he hoped he would bump into a clothes closet. Every bedroom had one, and he knew that whenever his little sister had become afraid, she'd hidden there. He hoped to God, Caleb had done the same thing.

The bed was his second choice, but he found it first. He hit the side of the headboard, squeezed himself along the length, and reached underneath, sweeping his arm back and forth in a wide arc.

There wasn't anything there.

Every second that passed was another second closer to the baby's death. Cole was silently praying and begging for God's help as he made one final sweep under the bed. He was just pulling back when Caleb grabbed hold of his hand.

The baby let go just as quickly. Cole rolled his shoulder under the frame, lifted up, and reached for him. Caleb had squeezed himself up against the headboard. Cole found a leg and gently pulled.

He could hear him whimpering and making loud, sucking sounds with his thumb in his mouth, and Cole thought those were the most beautiful noises he'd ever heard, for it meant that Caleb was unharmed.

He lifted the baby into his arms and rolled to his knees. Caleb threw himself backward and grabbed his baby doll off the floor. A forked flame of fire leapt up from between the floorboards as Cole pulled Caleb back.

“Let's get out of here,” he whispered to the baby, his voice hoarse and raw from smoke.

He wanted to wrap Caleb in a blanket from the bed, but when he reached for it, he saw the embers raining down from the ceiling on top of it. The blanket
ignited and rapidly burned. In desperation, Cole tucked Caleb's head under his chin, wrapped his arms around him, and doubled over, his hope that his own body would shield the baby's.

He figured he had only a couple of seconds left to get out. The bedroom was closing in on him. Flames where shooting up from the cracks in the floor and dropping down from the ceiling above.

And then the walls began to move as though they had suddenly come alive. They bulged forward, hovered; then, with an eerie swooshing sound, they slowly receded before throbbing forward once again. It was the spookiest damned thing he had ever seen. He could hear the heart of the fire beating behind those walls. It pulsated and throbbed as it sucked every breath of air it could find.

Cole knelt near the floor, took a deep breath, rose to his feet, and raced for the window. The monster chased him. He heard a snapping sound behind him, felt the floor shift under his feet, and leapt through the opening as the floor collapsed. The room's walls exploded a heartbeat later. Shards of glass and fragments of burning embers blew out the window. The force of the explosion slammed Cole forward, but he turned in midair so he would land on his back and not crush the baby in his arms. The heat pouring out from the hot roof burned his skin, and he knew he had only seconds left before the whole house collapsed. Staggering to his feet, he turned in one direction and then the other, looking for a way down. Flames, like serpent heads, were creeping toward him from below and closing in on him from the eaves above. Fire cut off the route Daniel had taken with Tilly, and Cole knew he wouldn't be able to go down the way he had come up on the opposite side, for the tree branches were too high for him to reach with a baby in his arms.