Christmas Cowboy Duet. Marie Ferrarella

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СКАЧАТЬ cell phone being picked up.

      There was an almost deafening crackle and then he heard, “Murphy’s.”

      The deep, baritone voice could only belong to Brett, the oldest Murphy brother, the one who had been responsible for keeping him and Finn from becoming wards of the state when their uncle died a mere eighteen months after both their parents had passed on. Brett had done it at great personal cost, but that was something he and Finn had only found out about years after the fact.

      “Brett? It’s Liam. Looks like I’m going to be late for my shift,” he told his brother. The rain was beating against the rolled-up windows of his truck with a vengeance as if determined to gain access. All that was missing was a big, bad wolf ranting about huffing and puffing.

      “Don’t tell me, you got caught in this storm.”

      Liam could hear the concern in his brother’s voice—not that Brett would say as much. But it was understood. “Okay, I won’t tell you.”

      He heard Brett sigh. “I always knew you didn’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain. Were you at least smart enough to get to high ground?”

      “Yes, big brother, the truck and I are on high ground.” Even as he said the words, his windows stopped rattling and the rain stopped coming down in buckets. He looked up through the front windshield. It seemed to have stopped coming down at all. “Matter of fact,” he said, pausing for a moment as he rolled down the driver’s-side window and stuck his hand out, palm up, “I think it just stopped raining.”

      It never ceased to amaze him just how fast rain seemed to turn itself on and then off again in this part of the country.

      “I’d still give it a little time,” Brett warned. “In case it starts up again. I’d rather have you late than dead.”

      Liam laughed shortly. “And on that heartwarming note, I think I’m going to end this call. See you later,” he said to his brother. The next moment, Liam hit the glowing red light on his screen, terminating the connection.

      Tucking the phone into his back pocket, he continued driving very slowly. As he began guiding his truck back down the incline, he could have sworn he heard a woman’s scream.

      Liam froze for a second, listening intently.

      Nothing.

      Had to be one of the ravens, he decided. Most likely a disgruntled bird that hadn’t managed to find shelter before the rains hit, although he hadn’t seen one just now.

      Still, even though he was now driving down the incline to the trail he’d abandoned earlier, Liam kept listening, just to make sure that it was only his imagination—or some wayward animal—that was responsible for the scream he’d thought he’d heard.

      If it was his imagination, it was given to re-creating an extremely high-pitched scream, Liam decided, because he’d heard the cry for help again, fainter this time but still urgent, still high—and resoundingly full of absolute terror.

      Someone was in trouble, Liam thought, searching for the source of the scream.

      Throwing caution to the wind, he pushed down on the accelerator. The truck all but danced down the remainder of the incline in what amounted to a jerky motion. He had a death grip on the steering wheel as he proceeded to scan as much of the area around him as humanly possible.

      Liam saw that the basin had completely filled up with rainwater. Something like that was enough to compromise any one of a number of people, even those who were familiar with this sort of occurrence and had lived in and around Forever most of their lives.

      The water could rush at an unsuspecting driver with the speed of an oncoming train. Sadly, drownings in a flash flood were not unheard of.

      With his eyes intently focused, Liam scanned the area again.

      And again, he saw nothing except brackish-looking water.

      “Maybe it was just the wind,” Liam murmured under his breath.

      He knew that there were times when the wind could sound exactly like a mournful woman pining after a missing lover.

      If Brett were here with him, his older brother would have told him to get his tail on home.

      Stop letting your imagination run away with you, Brett would have chided.

      Liam was just about to get back on the road home when something—a gut feeling, or maybe just some stray, nagging instinct—made him look down into the rushing waters flooding the basin one last time.

      That was when he saw her.

      Saw the woman.

      One minute she wasn’t there at all, the next, a half-drowned-looking woman, her shoulder-length brown hair plastered to her face, came shooting up, breaking the water’s surface like a man-made geyser, her arms flailing about madly as they came into contact with nothing but the air. It was obvious that she was desperately searching for something solid to grab on to.

      The woman was drowning.

      He’d only witnessed such abject panic once before in his life. Then it had been on the face of a friend who had accidentally discharged a pistol and missed his head by an inch, or less. The horror of what could have happened had been visible in his friend’s shaken expression.

      This time the horror of what could be was on the face of an angel. A very desperate, panicky, wet angel.

      Before he had time to assess if this waterlogged angel was real or a mere figment of his overactive, overwrought imagination, Liam leaped out of his truck and came flying down the rest of the incline. There was no time to think, to evaluate and make calculated decisions. There was only time to act and act quickly.

      Which he did.

      Without pausing, he flung off his jacket because it would keep his arms too confined and from the little he had time to assess, he was going to need all the upper-arm power he could manage to summon. Leaving on his boots and hat, Liam dived into the water.

      * * *

      SHE WAS GOING DOWN for the last time.

      Four, she’d counted four. Four times she’d gone down and managed to somehow get back up again, desperately gasping for air.

      Her thoughts were colliding wildly with one another. And she was hallucinating, Whitney was sure of it, because she’d just seen someone plunging into the water to rescue her.

      Except that he wasn’t real. This area was deserted. There was no one around, no one to rescue her.

      She was going to die.

      Suddenly, Whitney thought she felt something. Or was that someone? Whatever it was, it was grabbing her by the arm, no, wait, by the waist. Was she being pulled up, out of the homicidal waters?

      No, it wasn’t possible.

      Wasn’t possible.

      It was just her mind giving her something to hang on to before life finally, irrevocably drained out of her forever.

      Just СКАЧАТЬ