It had been years since she had driven a car, and it had been even longer since she’d driven a vehicle during a rainstorm, but that lightning bolt had been close. One loud, hard thump in her chest told her she was going to have to start some deep breathing exercises to make it through.
Another bolt of lightning jolted down to the ground, this time a whole lot closer than before. Sarah strained her eyes to see the road in front of her, but it was pitch black outside, so dark she wasn’t sure she’d ever been someplace quite so blanketed in black. With her heart in her throat, tightening her airway, she tensed her fingers on the steering wheel, stiffened her back and shoulders, and focused on what she could see of the thin yellow line in the center of the road because there was no white line on the outside.
“I’ve got this. I’ve got this,” she muttered to herself repeatedly as a chant, forgetting the words as soon as they slipped from her lips.
The car jolted as she hit something. She couldn’t be sure if it was another pothole or a small animal. Her mind was elsewhere and couldn’t decipher whether the car had gone up or down when it hit the bump. Her stomach twisted hard, causing a sharp pain in her side, a pain Sarah was eerily familiar with.
Glancing at her phone, she checked to see how much longer she had to go, and she noticed her battery was nearly dead. Her charger was buried in the suitcase in the trunk of her car, and she was not pulling over on the side of the road in an unknown area of the country with a storm literally on top of her.
“Deep breaths.”
Drawing in on a ten count and blowing out on a ten count, Sarah readjusted her hands on the steering wheel and tried again to calm her racing heart. It was worse than if she’d had a whole case of energy drinks in one day.
Her phone slowed its tracking of her vehicle, and she cursed under her breath. The feeling in the pit of her stomach that had grown throughout the day of traveling took over, and she knew something bad was going to happen. She had no doubt of it. Her phone blinked twice before it cut out. Grabbing it sharply, Sarah tried to turn it back on, but it was dead as a doorknob.
“Fuck me.”
Then she laughed. If Kara had been there, which she should have been, she would have said “gladly,” and then they would have avoided the awkward friends-don’t-have-sex tension before Sarah skipped out of the conversation as fast as she could.
Sarah tried to remember the directions she had attempted to memorize before leaving the airport. She slowed down as she waited for the next county road to pass her by so she could read the sign, but it seemed like it was never going to show up.
She bounced her left foot up and down on the floor of the car as her nerves kicked into overdrive. She was lost. She knew she was. It wasn’t going to matter if she spent the next hour driving or the next twenty-four, she was never going to findIndigo,and the entire trip was a disaster and a mistake.
She drove another thirty minutes before she turned down a road she hoped was the right one, but she couldn’t be sure. She didn’t see a town or anything, and the directions onIndigo’swebsite had said she’d have to drive through a town before getting to the right street, but she’d been driving forever already and must have passed it without knowing. There was nothing out in this part of the country anyway.
Rain came down in buckets, the windshield wipers furiously flinging back and forth just trying to keep up as the water poured. The lightning was so close that every time it smacked against the ground, Sarah jolted with a scare. Her nerves were done.
She moved slowly because the wet dirt road was a struggle to drive through. The back of her car fishtailed so many times she lost count. Breathing became harder as she inched forward through the mud. The ground was soaked, no doubt. Flashes of lightning were the only thing giving her vision into what lay ahead, and she finally saw lights on a house. She was so close. Relief flooded through her. There wasIndigo. She could do this, only a little bit farther.
Chapter 3
It wasn’tuntil an hour after the expected arrival time of her guest that Eli started to get a little worried. The storm had come in, fully unexpected and out of nowhere, and it was a doozy. She really wasn’t looking forward to doing her nighttime calving checks in the middle of that.
Eli stared out the front bay window of her house turned B&B and let out a long sigh. She hoped her guest wasn’t a no-show—that would not make her day any better. It’d already been a rough start losing one of her calves and finishing with the toilet project that seemed to come from the depths of hell just to annoy her.
She’d finally managed to finish it up, with Bill’s expert-level help. She knew he’d be calling her dad to tell him all about it in their regular Friday chat. Eli groaned. There was no doing anything in her hometown without her parents finding out about it. She’d learned that the hard way when she was a teenager and had gone drinking—multiple times, because she never was a quick learner.
Lightning struck again, close enough to shake the house. Her guest was now two hours later than expected. She was either seriously lost, which was the most likely scenario, or she was abandoning ship and not coming.
Taking a chance, Eli stole into her office hidden in the back corner of the house. It was her hideaway from everything. Anytime her guests got to be too much, or she needed a moment of calm, she went there, locked the door, and closed her eyes to the outside world. Tonight, however, was different, and she was on a mission.
She turned on her computer, hoping the lightning didn’t hit close enough to kill it, and searched through her files until she found her guest’s name and contact number. Lifting the landline phone she kept in her office for times like these, she dialed. She hoped the number she was calling was a cellphone, but she also hoped Sarah was in a part of her drive that had actual cellphone coverage, because that was about as rare as could be up in their neck of the woods.
When it went straight to voicemail, Eli grimaced and cursed inwardly. She wrote down the number on a scrap piece of paper so she could try again in twenty minutes, hoping Sarah had moved into a service area. Turning off her computer, Eli went to the living area to stare out the large window.
She’d brought what animals she needed to into the barn, but any babies born that night would have to stick it out unless they needed serious medical attention or were abandoned. It happened. Sometimes her cows didn’t want to be mama cows and had nothing to do with their young after they were born.
Eli rubbed the edge of her thumb over her lower lip and let out a hiss of breath. No matter what happened, it was going to be a long night. Hell, it was a long few months of calving, where she thrived on coffee, coffee, and more coffee.
She called the number one more time, and again it went straight to voicemail. Eli didn’t wait much longer. She left a message with her cell phone number and jumped in her truck. She would do her midnight rounds before she headed out to look for her guest. They usually took three turns too soon because it looked so similar to her own turnoff, so she’d check there. But first, her cows.
The old farm truck rattled over the uneven the ground, but she drove slowly and shone her lights through her fields. It took about an hour to drive through them and get back to the house.
There was still no sign of Sarah. Eli had left a note on the door just in case, like she always did when she was out and guests were supposed to arrive. Max, the old springer who hung out on her porch day in and day out, still laid calmly on the wooden planks, barely moving as the thunder raged.
That told Eli the storm wasn’t as bad as it looked. Max was always good for a weather forecast. Eli spun through her living area and into the kitchen. She grabbed a cold bottle of water and switched out her keys.
Slipping into the newer truck she reserved for going to town, she shoved it into gear and headed for the main road. It wasn’t the highway—that was another three miles down—but the main road was where most of her guests got lost on their attempt to get toIndigo.