Page 3 of Engaging the Deputy (Silver Stars of Montana #3)

He disappeared down the ladder. She moved to the edge of the hole that had been dug into the dirt beneath the house.

She shivered at the thought of going down there, even as she heard what sounded like houses being turned into kindling.

When she looked toward the glassless window, she saw large debris flying past.

“Cody?” she cried an instant before he reached up for her.

“Take my hand. Hurry.”

She grasped his hand, falling into his arms. She’d barely dropped down a couple of rungs next to him when he slammed the trapdoor and locked it. Overhead, there was a loud crash that sounded as if the house had caved in.

* * *

“Cody?” Her voice came out breathless, making him think of when he’d been able to make her sound like that simply by kissing her.

“You’re okay,” he said as he slipped down the ladder and reached up to help her.

They stood in utter darkness. He had the sense that he could no longer tell up from down.

Snapping on his penlight, he saw her expression.

She looked so vulnerable, so terrified. It reminded him of when they’d been kids and he’d been there for her; the few times he’d been braver than her.

He could see that she’d never been in a root cellar before and hadn’t been anxious to enter into this one. He hadn’t been either. Now he just hoped that he’d made the right decision. “I’ll clean you off a place to sit.”

He picked up a board that might have been part of the shelving system at one point and dusted off the dirt and cobwebs. “Here, sit on this.”

She descended the last few steps and stood for a moment, clearly not wanting to sit at all.

He knew the feeling. He watched her glance around, wide-eyed, in the faint glow of the penlight, making him think of that time at his grandmother’s.

There had been something terrifying about running out of the house in the middle of the night to crawl into a dirt hole in the ground.

He recalled the panic he’d felt when his grandfather had closed the door and locked it.

Over their heads, the thundering had increased in volume, sounding now like a locomotive barreling down on them.

“What’s happening?” she asked, her voice small in the contained space.

The root cellar was tiny compared to his grandmother’s.

There were only two sets of heavy-looking wooden shelves with a couple of jars of canned goods on each.

He pulled out more boards for them, knowing they would have to wait out the storm.

“We could be here for a while, though, so let’s sit, okay?”

She lowered herself to the boards and he joined her, more concerned about what was happening over their heads than he wanted her to know.

“It’s a tornado.” He could hear what sounded like the town ripping apart over their heads, but down here, it was relatively quiet. “I know it’s rare, but I’ve heard of tornadoes in Montana. Usually, they’re fairly small.” This one didn’t sound small at all.

She swallowed and looked as worried as he felt. “What if we’re buried alive down here?” she whispered as if he hadn’t thought of that.

“I think we’re safer here,” he said as he put a protective arm around her.

It had to be a tornado. He couldn’t imagine a thunderstorm doing the kind of damage they were hearing above them—not in Montana, where he’d lived his entire life.

Rare windstorms tore off roofs, rolled over semis on the highway, swept in blizzards that closed all the roads out of town, but what was happening outside sounded as if the entire community of Starling was in the extremes of being leveled.

Just when he thought it couldn’t get any louder or stronger, it did. The clatter was suddenly deafening. He tentatively tightened his arm around her and was glad when she curled against him, burying her face in his shoulder.

But when he looked up, he saw the boards being ripped off the kitchen floor.

He pulled her down to the dirt floor, covering her body with his own.

He could feel the wind pulling at his clothing, at his body, as if preparing to lift them both out of the earth and into the whirling maelstrom over their heads.

She cried out as he grabbed the heavy shelving unit and toppled it onto them to help hold them down, holding on to her as the house above them splintered apart.

“Don’t worry. I won’t let you go,” he cried over the noise, wishing he hadn’t six years ago. He wasn’t that man anymore, but he had no more chance of hanging on to her now than he did then as the floor over them disappeared.

* * *

The silence was suddenly deafening. “Olivia?” For a moment, Cody feared she wouldn’t answer because she wasn’t just buried under the debris and him—she was dead.

He felt her move under him. “Hold on,” he said as he pushed the shelf off them, along with his weight on her. “Are you okay?”

“I think so,” she said tentatively.

Cody sat up, shaking off the dirt and debris as he turned to look at her. Like him, she was filthy, but she looked unharmed.

“What was that?” she whispered.

“Definitely a tornado.” They were still down on the ground, but there was a gapingly huge hole above them instead of the house’s floor and once closed and locked trapdoor. He could see starlight overhead.

He could also see that part of the ladder to climb out was missing. He turned on the penlight and shone it around the space. Lowering the light, he looked at Olivia and found himself smiling.

“What?” she demanded, reaching up to pull a sliver of wood from her hair.

“You… Your face is a little dirty, that’s all,” he lied. “I must look filthy too.”

She pushed to her feet. Her blue eyes were wide with the fear that still had her in its grip.

“We’re alive,” he said and laughed. “That was something, wasn’t it?”

He saw her swallow and look skyward. “I need out of here.”

“That might require some help. I’m not sure about the ladder,” he was saying as she grabbed hold of it and the rung tore off.

“Easy,” he said as another part of the ladder fell away from the dirt wall, sending debris onto them. Fortunately, he caught the ladder before it hit him in the head.

“You have to be kidding,” she said, sounding close to tears.

“Don’t worry. I’ll figure something out,” he said as he noticed something he hadn’t before.

A portion of the root cellar behind Olivia had caved in.

With the storm past, he’d just been glad that neither of them had been injured.

But now he worried that the rest of the cellar might not be stable.

They still could be buried alive if they weren’t careful.

“Why don’t you move over here by me?” he said as his light caught on a pile of something white lying in the caved-in portion of the cellar. “Easy,” he warned again.

“If you’re trying to scare me—”

The moment she reached him, he got a clear view of the bones that had been exposed when a portion of the wall had caved in.

“What is that?” Olivia cried, moving even closer to him as she took in his grisly discovery. “Are they… human bones ?”