Raging Love (28 page)

Krista’s dad had made sure I had pictures and Noah’s baby book, so I could at least read about them.  The first thing he said was ‘ba ba’, a word he used for his bottle.  He got his first tooth at five months and took his first steps at nine. The pictures of my little boy were cute, but they didn’t fill that absence of not being there. Noah would never judge me for that. I think the kid loved me before he had even met me. I still didn’t understand why Krista
did what she did, but she never kept it a secret that I was his father. I had to believe that she always did want to tell me.

I started thinking about Conner and how upset his father would have been if he saw how his son was behaving. The company he was keeping was what was bringing him down. The girls kept getting more rough looking and obviously had introduced him into a new kind of party life.

None of us kids were raised to take up with people that lived like that. We knew better. I had to assume that this was Conner’s way of dealing with his loneliness. He was drowning himself in booze and women to get through not having happiness for himself. It wasn’t like the rest of us were gloating in happiness, but it was hard to not see it when you lived on the same
property
and were related.

My cousin was engulfed in some sort of
infomercial
about rags you hook on your feet and polish your floor with. I shook my head before calling for his attention.
“Hey Ty, what if movin’ away will help Conner out? I know you are worried, but if he is at your place he doesn’t have access to the things he has here. Everyone knows Conner here and they put him on some kind of pedestal. If he moved out of the state, he wouldn’t know anyone. You would be his only means of communication. I just don’t see him changin’ if he still lives here.”

Ty shook his head and leaned his elbows on his knees. He clapped his hands together and kept shaking his head as he talked. “I don’t know man.
I’m
willing to do whatever we need to do to help him, but this shit is not something I know anything about. If he is using drugs, I can’t allow that shit in my house, or my parent
’
s
house
.
And frankly, I don’t want that kind of shit happening around my daughter.”

“I get that, but I don’t think it will happen. We need to get him as far away from here as we can for a while. Other than to force him
into the military, this is the b
est scenario.”

Ty didn’t say anything for a good two minutes. I noticed him glaring out the window at the ladies swinging on the porch. “Let me talk to Miranda. I don’t want to say yes or no without really talking to her about it first.”

A weather alert came on the bottom of the screen, catching our attention from the conversation we were having. It was a severe weather alert for our county. They were calling
for
strong thunderstorms with high winds that could potentially create funnel systems, turning to tornados. “Damn, we picked the wrong weekend to visit.” Ty joked.

“It says we are under the warnin’ until nine tonight. I guess we better get the girls and the kids inside and call to the
main house
in case they don’t know what’s goin’ on.”

Ty got up and walked outside, while I dialed my mother and let them know about the storm. Sam came running into the
house
and went right upstairs. She only did that when she was afraid. I had no sooner got off the phone, when I heard the women calling the kids names. I went out to the porch with the rest of the adults and waited to see the kids coming around from the side of the
house
.

After a good fiv
e
minutes
of calling, Ty and I looked at each other and started walking down the porch steps.

“Where could they have gone? The golf carts are here. His battery operated cars are here. Do you think they are hiding?” Ty suggested.

Thunder rumbled in the distance and I had noticed that the wind was picking up. “Noah doesn’t like thunder storms. If they are hiding then we will see him any second running for the house.”

I felt
confident
that any second my son, and my
niece
would come walking up to us. The girls were standing on the edge of the porch looking all around. “Colt, please go check the barn. They are probably with the horses.”
Savanna started to walk down the steps. The sound of th
e
wind chimes
on our back porch
echoed against the woods. I could tell the wind had really picked up by the loud clatter of them.

Ty and I headed toward the barn where we kept the horses. “I’m surprised that we can’t hear Thunder. He starts getting loud when storm
s come in.”

We both looked at
each
other
and started hauling ass toward that barn. My greatest fears were confirmed when we opened the door and only saw Daisy in her stall. Ty threw his arms up above his head. “Fuck! Goddamn it!”

“
Go get the Gator. We can cover more terrain with it. I have to go tell the girls what’s goin’ on.”

Ty went flying out of the barn, while I jogged over to the girls, who were standing on the porch. “I was sure they would be in there.” Savanna looked so disappointed.

“I got somethin’ I need to tell you both.”

The girls looked at each other and I watched their faces change from frustration to fear.

Chapter 22

Savanna

“What do you mean? Do you know where they are? What is going on?” I was frantic to find out where our kids were. The weather was picking up and they needed to get inside before it started raining.

Colt creased his brow and couldn’t look me directly in the eye. When he finally did, I could tell there was something wrong.
Instinctively
, I put my hand on my belly and
took
a few steps toward him. “Tell us Colt. What is going on? Where are they?”

“Darlin’, we can’t find them and the horses are missin’.”

No! No! No! This can’t be happening….

My stomach turned into knots and my heart started pounding. I heard Miranda gasping behind me, then felt her reaching her arm into mine. At the same
time, Ty came whipping
around the corner on the Gator, a cross between a golf cart and a
four wheeler
. I turned my direction back to Colt.

“
Ty and I are headin’
into the woods to look for the kids. You two stay
here and call us if they come home. Call my mother and tell her to be on the
lookout at the
main house
and try to hunt down Conner. If the kids are on the horses, we are going to need his help.”

Colt leaned over and kissed me on the forehead before he hopped on the vehicle with his cousin. Ty started pulling away
from us. “We will find them.” His voice carried as the
guys
disappeared from out
of our
view.

I started to cry immediately and Miranda pulled me against her chest. “They’ll find them Van.”

“I hope you’re right.”

The rain started coming down harder as Miranda and I headed into the house. We frantically both went after our cell phones and started calling everyone with a phone on the ranch. I didn’t expect Colt’s mother or Aunt to go searching through the woods, but they did go out and check all around their vicinity. John happened to be over
Aunt
Karen’s, so when we called, he and Conner set out to start looking themselves.

Once our phone calls were done, it was hard for both Miranda and myself to remain calm. The sun was starting to set and the rain was really coming down. In the horizon, large bolts of
lightning
lit up the sky. 

Our children were out there somewhere. If they were anywhere near Thunder during this storm they were in danger. I didn’t know if I could bear to lose another child. Noah meant everything to Colt and I.

Poor Miranda stood by the front door, hugging her arms around herself.
Tears strolled down her face. Noah had been riding for over a year, but I knew that Bella was not as experienced. Noah wasn’t even great at it himself. His little body was too small to
maneuver
a pony, and especially a horse.

God, please help us find our kids.

“Miranda,
I’m
so sorry this is happening. Noah knows better than to get on a horse by himself. Maybe Thunder just got out by himself and the kids were never with them. Maybe they are just hiding somewhere.”

She covered her face with one of her hands. “Bella doesn’t like thunder and
lightning
. Ty knows that too. She hides i
n
his arms every time there is a storm. There is no way she wouldn’t have come inside by now. Something bad has happened. I can just feel that something is wrong, Van.”

“Don’t talk like that! We don’t know that. We just saw them a little while ago riding around having fun. We were outside the whole time and never heard anything. If they got hurt they would have cried.”

I was trying to comfort M
iranda, but also myself. She
said nothing, but went flying outside. I followed behind her, wondering if she saw one of the kids. Instead, we saw Atticus coming down the driveway, running around neighing. As if seeing the pony running free wasn’t enough, I noticed the horse had a saddle hanging loosely to the side. The reigns were hanging down to the ground as the pony paced around the yard.

It was dark outside and the only thing that gave us light was the flashing of the lightening. Miranda headed toward the pony, but I grabbed her and pulled her back onto the porch. “No, wait! I will never forgive myself if you get hurt. Just let the guys catch the pony.”

Miranda turned around and sat down on the porch. She was sobbing. I sat down behind her and hugged her as close to my body as I could get her. My big belly wasn’t helping too much. “They were on the horses, Van. They were on the horses,” she kept repeating.

 
Teaching Noah to ride was something that had made me so proud, but now I worried if my teaching him had been the wrong thing to do. Our children were out there somewhere, they were alone, in the dark, and afraid. It was hard to not think that they weren’t hurt or worse.

I didn’t know how to comfort Miranda when I was petrified for the safety of the kids myself. If something happened to them I would never forgive myself.

Miranda pulled out her phone and started dialing what I assumed was Ty. I must have been right because I heard his voice pick up. “Have you found them?” She asked through sobs.

“What do you mean? Well, you have to keep looking. I know…yes, but I can’t sit around here and do nothing. Ty, please, I need to do something.”

She hung up the phone and buried her hands into her face.

I grabbed her hands. “Miranda, what is it?”

She shook her head and avoided looking directly at me. “They found Noah’s hat.”

“What do you mean? Where?”

“In the woods, somewhere in a thicket. Th
ey said they saw Atticus runnin’
and
found the hat a few minutes later. They ran into Conner and John and they are all lookin’ for them. So far they haven’t heard a single peep from either  of them. Where could they be Van? Where could they be where they
can’t hear us callin’ for them? I can’t just sit here waitin’ for word. I have to go look for my daughter.”
She got up and started walking toward the front door.

As I watched her bending down to put on her shoes, she turned back toward me. “Miranda, wait! I’m going with you.”

There was no hesitation in my voice. My son was out there somewhere and I felt re
sponsible. There was no way in H
ell that I was going to let her go out into the dark, while it was storming, alone. I ran back into the house and grabbed us a couple of flashlights and two jackets. They weren’t waterproof but they would at least keep us warm for the time being.

As we headed out into the woods, reality really hit both of us. It was pitch black outside. We were heading into the dark woods, while heavy gusts of wind were blowing and the rain was pouring. Loud cracks of thunder caused us both to jump as we joined hands and continued
trudging
through the forest.

Miranda and I both took turns calling the children’s names. We would walk a few feet and shine out
the
lights all around the area, before continuing forward. I’d taken many walks in these woods and Miranda had grown up on this property, but it didn’t really help at night time. Getting lost in the woods was easy to do, especially without the light of the moon to guide us.

In
the
distance we could hear one of the gator’s motors and voices calling the kids names. They were too far away from us to get their attention.

As the vehicle got further away from us, I got excited when I heard the sound of crackling leaves heading toward us. As it got closer, it sounded like more than one person coming our way. Miranda and I stopped, while shining the light in the direction of the sound.