5

THEY WERE RUNNING OUT of daylight. Right now, Chet could be injured. Dying. And Ty couldn’t do a thing about it.

Ty leaned up from the kitchen table where Jonas and his family, as well as Ben’s bandmates and the PEAK team, had reunited to enact a new game plan.

Gage had gone upstairs to grab a shower, probably to wake himself up. A stack of chocolate chip cookies piled next to where Jonas drew their search routes on the map.

The Marshall family kitchen stirred together the scents of fresh-baked cookies and the sloppy joe meat simmering in the slow cooker, ready to feed the army of searchers.

“I don’t know what else to do,” Jenny Marshall had said to Ty as she handed him a couple cookies wrapped in a napkin. “I keep thinking, if I feed you all, you’ll have the energy to keep looking and bring my boy home.”

They were all grasping at anything, any ideas, at a fragile hope. But the fruitless search had started to turn them all brittle. Worse, Ty’s gut had stopped talking to him. He hadn’t a clue where to look for Chet.

Ben’s words burned inside him. “Give it up, Ty. We all know you’re not flying this chopper anytime soon.”

The words had dug in, sharp-edged, bruising him all day.

Now, the barbs flared to life as Ben and Kacey walked into the farmhouse, as Kacey slid onto a stool at the long counter, burying her head in her folded arms.

At the end of the table, Brette worked on her computer. She wore a baseball cap with the Vortex.com logo on the crown, a T-shirt, and yoga pants, and bit the corner of her lip as she downloaded and blew up each aerial picture she’d shot.

A glass of milk and a cookie sat untouched beside her.

She’d said nothing to him, except for a “good job” as they climbed into the truck Ben and Gage had vacated and resumed the search. Funny that she chose him to search with, since there was plenty of room in Jonas’s car. But he chalked it up to the fact that they’d started the search together.

Ben came over to the map, appearing fierce and exhausted. He bent over the map. “Craig said that my dad intercepted him at the farmhouse.” He took a cookie and used it as a marker, drawing it south, along the path of the tornado. “Apparently, my dad ended up taking the van, with the kids, hoping to outrun the funnel.”

“But in what direction?” Ned asked. He’d grabbed a sloppy joe sandwich and spoke with a full mouth. Shae came up behind him, eating a handful of potato chips.

“At this point, driving north would have put him into the mouth of the twister, so, my guess is south,” Jonas said. He took a drink of his milk. “But we already drove that road, a couple times. No sign of the van.”

And there it was. They’d run out of places to look. Silence fell as they scoured the map.

Brette leaned back, took off her hat, and ran her hands through her short hair. About two inches long, it curled into unruly waves around her head. It had grown back in variegated shades of blonde, darker at the roots, lighter as it grew longer. The shorter look highlighted her cheekbones, made her eyes wider, more luminous.

He liked it.

Too much.

Ty blew out a breath, took his milk, and walked out onto the stone patio. It overlooked the vineyards, with a grape trellis thick with foliage that folded along the top of the beamed portico roof. Teak Adirondack chairs circled a fire pit, and he imagined the Marshall family during happier days, roasting marshmallows.

Ty sat in one of the chairs, set his milk on the edge of the stone pit, and leaned back, closing his eyes. Lord, we could use a little help here.

The protest of the screen door made him open his eyes. Brette came outside, carrying her laptop, and walked over to where he sat.

“Do you mind?”

He raised an eyebrow. “No.”

She sat down, balancing her laptop on one of the chair arms. Stared out at the vineyard. “I remember when Gage and Ella were looking for her brother. The waiting was the hardest part.”

“Yeah. Except we’re not waiting. We’re grasping at anything to give us a clue where they might be.” He leaned forward and reached for his milk. “I don’t know what’s harder—to be the rescuer or to be the desperate one waiting for rescue.”

He took a drink of his milk. Wiped his thumb across his upper lip. “After Chet and I crashed the chopper, he was in bad shape and we did nothing for about eight hours, waiting for rescue. It didn’t look good. We’d been blown off course, lost in the mountains in the middle of the night. The next morning, we woke to a sky that had turned to soup. A late-season blizzard. I had to make the hard choice whether to hike out or stay with Chet.”

He stared at his half-full glass of milk. “I decided that we couldn’t wait, and I started hiking out.”

“Didn’t you have a broken knee?”

He glanced at her. “Good memory. Yeah. It was . . . brutal. I fashioned crutches and a splint, but there were times I just wanted to collapse, just stay there and die.”

She looked out, beyond him. “Yeah, I get that. I wanted to curl into a ball and die for most of last year.”

He fought the urge to suggest that she hadn’t needed to do that alone.

“There was this little chapel off my ward that was always empty. It had a view of a lake, and sometimes I’d just go down there, camp out on the floor, and try not to wish I could die.”

He tightened his jaw.

“I’m sorry for what I said to you earlier, Ty.”

He glanced at her, frowning.

She had lifted her gaze, caught his. “The truth is, it hurts for you to give me so much when I can’t . . .”

“You think I want something from you, Brette?”

Her mouth tightened, and her eyes glistened. She looked away, out toward the late-afternoon sky, the line of innocuous clouds tufted against the deep blue. “I . . .” She sighed. “After my mother died, I was alone. Really alone. I started attending Middlebury, and I was a little overwhelmed. I had no money, I had a full course load, was working as a journalist for the local paper, and I met this fraternity guy.”

He should walk away, right now, before she told him more than he could bear.

“Eason had money and a car, and he offered to help. He’d drive me to work and school, and once he paid my rent without me asking . . .”

Ty winced.

“Then came the day when . . . well, it might have been partly my fault, but we were at his frat house and it was late and he’d had too much to drink and—”

“Oh, Brette, please tell me he didn’t . . .”

She drew in a breath, looked at her hands. “Maybe he thought he was entitled, I don’t know. But I didn’t go down without a fight, and afterward I ran out of the frat house without even one of the guys acknowledging that they’d heard anything.”

He leaned forward, his head in his hands, his stomach knotted.

“Ella took me to the hospital, and they did a rape kit, but . . . he had money, and I was in his room, had been drinking . . .”

Ty got up, walked away from her, took a deep breath. Grabbed on to a pole as he stared out into the vineyard.

She’d gone silent.

“So, he got away with it,” Ty said quietly.

More silence, and he turned, almost expecting her to be in tears.

She sat staring at him, her face stoic. “I dropped the charges. But I made a vow—”

“That you wouldn’t depend on anyone.”

She lifted a shoulder, gave him a wry smile. It vanished fast, however, leaving behind just the raw, stripped truth.

He was wealthy. And he’d paid for her hospital bill. And then he’d gotten angry with her for not being allowed into her life. Almost as if he might be forcing himself on her.

“Oh Brette, I’m so sorry. I never . . .” He came over to the fire pit and sat on the edge. “You have to know that I never would think, never—” He blew out a breath, shook his head, not able to put any of it in words.

“I know,” she said softly, the toughness dropping from her expression. “I do know that. Now. But I was scared and I thought it would be better if I was alone.” She swallowed. “I still do.”

He frowned, passion building in his retort, but the sudden wash of fear in her eyes stepped it back. His voice softened. “Listen, Brette. I’m not asking for anything but to be your friend, okay? I know we started something, and yeah, I haven’t stopped thinking about you for over a year. But more than anything, I hate the thought of you being alone.” No, he wouldn’t reach out, take her hand. He fisted his hand closed on his knee. “No one should go through what you have by yourself. You deserved to have someone with you who cares about you.”

Now she did blink hard, as if fighting tears.

“For the record, I regret not chasing after you, although I did try to find you.”

“I know. I got every one of your voicemails and text messages.”

He tried not to let that dig a hole through him.

“I meant what I said last year. You are a hero, Ty. I couldn’t believe it when you climbed into that car today. You could have been injured or killed—”

“It’s the least I could do.”

She stared at him. “Wait, does this have something to do with what Ben said? That you aren’t ever going to fly again?”

He stilled. Swallowed past the fist that suddenly grabbed his throat. Looked away. “I nearly killed Chet . . .”

“It was an accident.”

“An accident that could have been averted,” he said softly. “I did the preflight check and . . . well, we were low on oil pressure and I missed it.” He couldn’t bear to tell her the rest.

“Still, an accident.”

Then, before he could elaborate, she pressed her hand to his closed fist. “You didn’t make it through that storm on a broken knee only to never fly again. You need to forgive yourself and get back to flying.”

“Maybe I don’t deserve to fly again.”

“Like I don’t deserve to . . . to have someone care about me? Take care of me?” She managed a tiny smile.

But the smile reached in, and in a moment, the light and beauty and all the crazy, unrequited feelings he’d been trying to douse for more than a year exploded inside of him.

The woman he’d known was still in there. The one who believed in hope, who looked for the good in people and wanted to inspire with her stories.

He saw her in his mind’s eye, laughing, a smile lighting her face, those green-blue eyes shining as she looked at him. He could almost feel her arms around his neck, her body pressed to his. The hunger thickened inside him. How he longed to be everything she needed.

Maybe the desire shone on his face because she was just staring at him. “You okay?”

“You have so much to give, Brette, even if you don’t know it.”

Her smile dimmed. But he didn’t care. “And yeah, you do deserve to have someone care about you. Someone who wants nothing from you. Okay?”

She gave him a dubious look but lifted a shoulder anyway.

But it was enough. Because she chased it with another smile.

“Good. Now, let’s find Chet King, okay?”

Kacey could sleep for a week, even if it might be on a gravelly, bug-infested bed under a blazing sun.

For now, however, the granite counter would do. She nested her head into her arms, listening to the conversations around her, a quiet hum in the large room. She had taken two freshly baked cookies from Audrey, who wore an apron and helped Jenny feed the rescuers. But the sweets churned in her gut.

If she hoped to climb back into the cockpit, she needed protein, an energy drink, and . . . well, a quiet place to cry. “I can’t live this way anymore.”

How had she managed to hold herself together as Ben delivered those words, his sweet blue eyes filling with the same agony that burned through her veins, all the way to her heart. Yeah, she’d been thinking the same thing, but for him to admit it . . .

Oh, if she were honest with herself, she’d wanted to be wrong. She’d wanted to tell him that she couldn’t live without him. That she wanted him to come home, be a family and finish what they’d started seventeen years ago. At least that was what her heart screamed as he kissed her so sweetly.

But her brain, her common sense, the former soldier in her had done the speaking for her. “It’s okay, I get it. I’ve been . . . I agree. It’s . . . hard. Too hard.”

Her breath shuddered out, and she gulped it back before she dissolved into tears.

The last thing Audrey needed was her mother turning into a brokenhearted puddle with her grandfather still missing.

No, Kacey had to hold herself together, right now, and possibly for a good long while. “I’ll always be here for you, Ben.”

Yes, she meant it, but how much harder it would be now. Please let Chet be okay. Then she could get home and start building a world without the love of her life.

She heard Ben’s voice from across the room, discussing with Jonas the possible escape route Chet might have taken. Without effort, his latest single hummed inside her.

Turn down the lights

Turn up the songs

Come dance with me, baby

Right where you belong

She bit back a whimper, hating that Ben had the ability to tear her asunder with a song. She might as well give in and find a place to unravel, at least to get it out of her system.

The back door squealed, and she lifted her head to see Brette and Ty walk in. Brette carried her open computer and now set it on the table, right on the map. “I found something.”

Kacey slid off the stool and gathered with the rest around Brette’s computer.

She’d downloaded a picture of what looked like a construction site. “I took this as we headed northwest, toward the lake. It’s a cul-de-sac neighborhood in development, completely destroyed, but . . . look at this.” She blew up the picture to 300 percent and moved her cursor to the center of the screen over what looked like a tumble of plywood and two-by-fours. “Look right here.”

Even Kacey leaned forward. “Is that a white car?”

“A white van, maybe. It’s on its side, so my guess is that it was blown into the house, and with all the debris, we couldn’t see it from the air. And I don’t think anyone even went up this road. It’s not even finished.”

“You think they’re in the van?” Ben said.

“It’s a good place to start,” Ty said.

Ben nodded, and Jonas blew out a breath, backed away, folded his hands behind his neck.

“We’ve only got a couple hours of daylight left. Let’s get going,” Garrett said.

Kacey turned, but Ben grabbed her arm. “Babe.” The other searchers headed toward the door.

She frowned at him.

“You’re staying here.” His voice settled inside her. “You’re dead on your feet. Get some shut-eye, and if we find my dad and need your help, I’ll call you, I promise.”

She blinked at him, her mouth opening, but he touched her cheek, shook his head. “I need you fresh and on your game in case this is bad.” His mouth tightened into a grim line.

Right. To hold him together. He made a point of glancing at Audrey too.

“Please,” he added softly.

She nodded.

“That’s my girl,” he said and kissed her forehead before heading out.

Oh. Would she ever get over not hearing those words anymore?

“I put your bag upstairs in the bedroom at the end of the hall,” Jenny said, glancing up from where she was loading the dishwasher. Audrey removed her apron and came over to Kacey.

“I’ll show you, Mom.”

She led her mother up the stairs and down a hall balanced on either side with bedrooms. Most of the rooms were jammed with duffel bags and sleeping bags on the floor. Audrey led her to a room with two twin beds. A patchwork quilt lay on each bed, adorned with fluffy white pillows. Her duffel sat on a bench at the foot of one of the beds. A sleeping bag was spread out on the other side of the bed, Audrey’s backpack situated at the end.

Clearly, they’d be bunking with some other female guest.

“I like this house,” Audrey said. “I was thinking maybe my new bedroom in Dad’s house could have a fireplace.” She gestured to a vintage fireplace that held a scattering of white candles.

Kacey just reached for her. “I’m sure it can, honey.” She kissed the top of her head before she let her go and sank onto the twin bed. She curled her legs up, put her head on the pillow. Closed her gritty eyes.

“Do you think they’ll find Grandpa?”

“Yes, honey. I know we will.”

Audrey sank on the bed opposite her. “Good. ’Cause Dad looks so upset, and so do you.”

“Everything is going to be fine. I promise.”

“Really? Because Dad’s been working so hard and he’s been away so much . . . He was really looking forward to this weekend, you know?”

Kacey stilled. “What do you mean?”

“Just . . .” Audrey swallowed, fear rippling across her face that made Kacey sit up. “He was already worried how you’d react, and now with Grandpa missing—”

“He talked to you?” Kacey blamed her fatigue for her tone. Still, she fought the rise of something ugly. Was Ben talking to Audrey about their breakup without talking to her first?

“Yeah, of course. He’s been thinking about this for a while.”

The words, all of them, stung.

“How long of a while?”

Audrey lifted her shoulder. “I don’t know. A few months. Right after the Christmas wedding was canceled, I think.”

Oh. Kacey couldn’t figure out what question to tackle first. Why wasn’t Audrey more upset? When did Ben come to this conclusion? Clearly before she did, but how long before?

Maybe she didn’t want to know.

Now wasn’t the time to dive into either her anger or her broken heart. She took Audrey’s hand. “Listen. The most important thing is that we find your grandpa. We don’t have to talk about the future right now, okay?”

Audrey nodded, a smile tipping her lips. “It’ll be okay, right, Mom?”

Kacey managed a shaky breath, but nodded. “Yeah. I promise. We’ll be fine, honey. We always are.” And they had been long before Ben walked back into their lives.

Still, as Audrey gave her a hug, then left the room, closing the door behind her, the words turned to claws. Kacey curled onto the bed, drew her legs up, pulled the pillow over her head, and finally let her heart break.

See, this was what happened when Brette hung around Ty too long. He nudged her to dream again. “You do deserve to have someone care about you. Someone who wants nothing from you.”

She wanted to believe him, but really, life didn’t work that way. Eventually he’d ask more of her than she could give. Maybe not the way Eason had, but still, relationships always cost something.

The longer she hung around, the harder it would be to leave him. Again.

She just had to make sure that she didn’t give away her heart to him before they found Chet and she could escape the way-too-homey world of the Marshall family.

Garrett had taken his truck to the construction site, loaded with Ian, Ned, and Shae. She could have climbed in with them, but somehow she found herself in the Suburban, Jonas at the wheel, with Ty and Ben and Gage, his hair still wet from his shower. He radiated clean, and with his hair tied back, the grizzle of brown whiskers across his chin, those chocolate eyes, yeah, she could see why Ella had never forgotten him.

Some guys just found their way to a girl’s heart and never left.

“Ella says hi, by the way,” Gage said quietly as Jonas drove through the streets of Duck Lake, talking with Ty in the front seat. “She wishes she could be here.”

“Sorry I made you two keep my secret for so long.” She glanced at Ty in the front seat and cut her voice low. “I think I might have misjudged him.”

“He’s a good guy, Brette. But we understood. You barely knew him, and like you said, what you went through . . . well, not every guy can handle that.”

Oh.

“But Ty could have,” Gage added. “He’s loyal to the bone, the kind of friend who shows up without a word of complaint.”

“He would have put his life on hold to help me.”

“And been glad to do it.”

“Now I feel like a jerk.”

“Don’t. I just want you to know that you have options.”

No, she didn’t. “I’m only here until Jonas says we’re on the road again. I can’t . . . there’s nothing between Ty and me, Gage, and there won’t be.”

His mouth made a thin line of disapproval. But then he shrugged, and his mouth quirked up to one side. “That’s what I said about Ella.”

She gave him a look, then turned back to the road and raised her voice. “I think it’s just up ahead. I mapped it, and the new construction is on the end of Jade Road.”

Jonas met her gaze through the rearview mirror. “Good job, Brette.”

She noticed as Ty glanced at him, then back to the road.

“You two—” Gage started.

“No. I work for him.”

They passed a number of houses with their shingles pancaking the yard, a few stripped trees, and one playset turned over on its side. Then the road turned to mud and they slowed, driving around construction debris—pink insulation, ribbons of Tyvek, rebar, and so much splintered wood that Garrett had to stop his truck. Ian got out, and he and Ned cleared a path. The remains of a construction trailer were scattered through the nearby field, and the excavator she’d seen from the air sprawled on its side in a nearby ditch, wounded.

“It’s the last house,” Brette said, motioning to the wreck that she thought imprisoned the van.

They pulled up, and she got a good look at what she’d seen from the air. The tornado must have dragged its tail right through the cul-de-sac because every house lay in ruin, every stick torn from the walls, every shingle ripped from the roof, the windows shattered, the chimneys poking up like the rubble in London after the Blitz.

The wheels of a large vehicle stuck out from what remained of a three-car garage. Jonas parked in the center of the cul-de-sac, and Brette scrambled out behind Ty.

Ben had already reached the van, started working his way into the chaos. “Dad?”

Brette’s heart went out to him at the quaver in his voice.

“Dad, are you here?”

“Careful, Ben,” Ty said as they examined a way to pry the boards away. The mess seemed almost unmovable, a giant game of Jenga. She guessed the twister had picked up the van and tossed it into the garage, taking out the outer wall, which had collapsed inward. The roof then fell in on top of the wall.

“I can’t believe you saw this thing,” Ty said as he climbed up onto the roof. “Garrett, you still have that chainsaw in your truck?”

Garrett headed for the truck, but Ben had wiggled his way around the back and gotten ahold of the back door. “It’s stuck!”

Gage ducked in beside him and pulled out the wrench-slash-pry-bar they’d used to free Craig. He wedged the door open, and Ben pushed his body inside. “Dad?”

Brette held her breath, looking up to catch eyes with Ty. He seemed to have the power to calm her heart, hold her together as the seconds ticked by.

“It’s empty!” Gage yelled.

Gage emerged first, then Ben. She noticed blood along the bandage of Ben’s arm but didn’t say anything. Ty scrambled off the roof, and for a long moment they stood there, in silence, defeat thick in the air.

“But it’s their van, right?” Ty said.

Gage shrugged. “There’s a couple backpacks in there. One had running shoes in it.”

Ben cupped his hand over his eyes, turned away.

Jonas blew out a breath.

Garrett returned with the chainsaw, set it on the ground.

Shae slipped her hand into Ned’s.

“Okay, let’s think,” Ty said. He put his hands on his hips, turned to survey the mess. “Chet’s smart. And yeah, we don’t have many tornadoes in Montana, but he certainly knows how to find cover. He would have found something concrete, or . . . wait.” He ran over to the edge of the cul-de-sac. “There’s a drainage ditch, with a metal culvert over here.”

He slid into the ditch. Ben followed him down, Jonas behind him.

Brette ran over, stood at the top of the ditch. Debris from the field—dirt, crops, fencing—mounded against a corrugated metal tube, completely blocking the entrance. Ty scrambled up the ditch, over the road, and picked his way down the other side. He straddled the massive treads of the excavator.

She followed him and watched as he climbed between the treads and pushed his head into the dark space that blocked the tube. “Chet! Are you in there?”

Her body shuddered when a muffled yell came from the depths of the culvert, as if buried deep in the bowels of the earth.

Ty popped up, and despite being covered in grime and dirt, he smiled. “It’s them,” he said quietly, as if in disbelief. Then, louder, “It’s them! They’re in the culvert!”

He bent down again. “Do you have some teenagers with you?”

A smile. A nod, and she heard Garrett behind her thank God.

Jonas grabbed Ned around the neck.

Ben ran over and Ty climbed out, making room for Ben as he wiggled himself beside the excavator. “Dad, it’s me. Are you okay?”

She couldn’t make out his reply but saw it in the way Ben closed his eyes, bowed his head.

Ty walked over to her, and without stopping, pulled her against his grimy, tall, muscled self.

Oh. She sank into him, wrapping her arms around his waist, and held on. Because yeah, right now they were on the same team. Even friends.

Too soon Ty let her go, put his hands on her shoulders, and leaned down to meet her eyes. “Good job, Brette.” Then he winked.

Her entire body reacted as if he’d done something crazy like kiss her. Her pulse jumped to attention, her breath caught . . .

Probably, they’d found Chet none too soon.

The sooner she hit the road with Jonas, the better.

The team moved down to the debris-filled entrance to start excavation. She returned to the truck and grabbed her camera, not sure why, drawn by the monumental, combined effort of everyone working to free Chet and the track team.

Garrett produced a shovel and a tire iron, which Ben used to dig at the dirt while the others pulled away the tangled fencing, rebar, wood, bricks, a tire, and too many cement blocks. Garrett dug away the dirt until the top of the corrugated metal surfaced.

The debris had pushed nearly three feet into the ten-foot tube, but by the time they cleared it, sirens whined in the distance.

Shae ran over. “Jenny is on the way, with Kacey and Audrey.”

And that would be oh-so-devastating if Chet or any of the kids were seriously injured, but Brette kept her mouth shut.

They’d cleared out two feet of the tunnel by the time the fire engine arrived. Volunteers in turnout coats hustled over with more shovels, but Jonas and Gage simply threw down the two-by-fours they’d been using and grabbed the shovels out of their grips.

A hand appeared in the dirt from the other side, and Ty reached for it. “You’re okay. We’re going to get you out.”

He kept ahold of the hand as the others unearthed the rest of the dirt, enough for another hand, then shoulders, and finally the very grimy face of what looked like a thirteen-year-old girl. She let Ty pull her free of the enclave.

She clung to him, then, crying.

Brette watched Ty hold her, and the sight took ahold of her heart and squeezed. She snapped a picture.

Another hand appeared, this time a young man, maybe fourteen. After prying himself free, he stumbled down the debris pile, caught by Gage, who led him over to the grass. Gage knelt in front of him, checking his pulse, his breathing.

They widened the hole, and another student climbed out, a girl who broke into tears as she ran to one of the firefighters. A young man, he grabbed her up, weeping, and Brette guessed him to be a big brother.

Two more students, both grimy but uninjured, climbed out.

Jenny Marshall had driven up by the time the guys widened the hole enough for Chet to escape. He groaned as he came out, his body caked with mud, an ugly scrape across his forehead. Ben and Ty grabbed either arm and helped him stagger free. He collapsed on the pile.

“Get him some water,” Gage said, and one of the firefighters produced a water bottle. Chet guzzled the liquid down, letting it dribble onto his shirt.

Gage pressed his fingers to Chet’s carotid artery and glanced at his watch. “It’s a little fast, but that’s to be expected.”

Chet’s voice emerged rusty, and he wiped his mouth. “I don’t know what I was thinking, trying to outrun it, then climbing into that culvert. We were lucky that the excavator landed on the far end or it would have created a wind tunnel that cut us to ribbons.” He took another drink, his hand shaking. Ben sat down beside him, put his arm around him, and took the bottle from his hand.

“How’s their coach? We left him behind.”

“He’s alive. We found him in your car,” Ben said. “What happened?”

Chet leaned onto his knees. “The twister was on my tail, and suddenly I see this guy pull into this abandoned farm. He gets out and starts running around, and I spot all these kids in the van. The guy is losing it. So I follow him, hear him shouting something about a storm shelter. But there’s no storm shelter, and there’s no time, so I got into the van and told him to get in.”

“He refused,” Ben said quietly.

“I had to take off. I put the pedal down, and we got ahead of it. The funnel looked like it was going to head right into the town of Duck Lake, so I thought I’d drive us out of its path. I headed north—”

“But it changed directions,” Jonas said. “It mowed through a copse of trees, and the debris turned it eastward.”

“Yeah. And I ran out of road. I saw it coming and thought, what had I done? But by then, we’d run out of time, so . . . I just reacted. Pure impulse. Told the kids to run to the culvert.” His gaze scanned them. “Brave bunch, every one of them.”

“Let’s get the rest of them out,” Garrett said, reaching to help Chet up, but Chet just stared at him.

“What? That’s all of us.”

For a beat, no one moved. The cicadas buzzed in the fields, the wind whipped against some loose Tyvek.

“What do you mean?” Jenny said from behind Brette. “What about Creed and the high school team? These are the middle schoolers.”

“They weren’t with us,” said the girl who stood near her firefighter brother. “They didn’t practice with us today. They went somewhere else.”

“Somewhere between the school, the trail, and who-knows-where, we’ve lost five more kids,” Garrett said quietly.

Jenny crouched to the ground, and Garrett came over, landed next to her, pulled her into his arms.

Ty wore an expression of such defeat that Brette’s heart broke for him. But it wasn’t his brother lost, so she walked over to Jonas, reached out, and took his hand. “We’ll find him,” she said softly.

And sweet, broken Jonas put his arms around her. “Thanks, Brette. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”