Safe in His Arms (24 page)

The phone buzzed in his ear as it rang Ash’s end. Once. Twice. Three times. Then finally, “You had better fuckin’ be dead or dying.” Ash’s voice sounded about as sick as Casey had been feeling—five minutes before the news about Lon.

He didn’t worry about greetings or preliminaries. “There’s a cyclone headed straight for Lon. I can’t get him on his phone. What the fuck do I do?”

Friends don’t let friends drive drunk. Great friends don’t yell, and they immediately respond to distress calls. Fantastic friends have listened to you moon about your boyfriend enough that they don’t even have to ask questions like who, what, where, and when. Ash was obviously in the fantastic-friend category. He just said, “Hang up from me and send him a message. If the phones are down, he’ll be able to get the message the minute the towers are back up. Do it, and call me back while I check my computer.”

The line went dead. With shaking fingers Casey did what Ash told him. A quick message. He didn’t know if the size of the message would determine if and when it got through, but there was no need to take chances.

Where r u? Msg me. Luv u.

Then he dialed Ash back. Devon answered instead. “We’re checking,” he said without saying hello. “Ash has the computer on, and you’re right, the weather channel has severe warnings all over it. The cyclone’s heading toward Lon, but at this stage, because it’s moving so fast, they can’t narrow it down, and the predicted path is huge. The weather guys are being extremely cautious. The good news is that it’s weakening rapidly as it goes overland. Newman should get severe winds, but not cyclone force.”

“Fuck.” Casey felt as if someone had just dropped a bag of wet cement in his stomach. He collapsed on the recliner where he and Lon had spent so many nights snuggling. “What do I do?”

But Devon was there for him. “Ash is checking the company’s website. When was the last time you heard from Lon?”

“He rang me in the club about one o’clock last night, but the music was too loud to hear what he was saying. He’d tried me once before that, then again at one fifteen. Then I have a missed call just before three.”

“Okay. That at least gives us a timeline. The cyclone crossed the coast between Pardoo and Wallal at 1:00 a.m., and we’ll assume that the towers went down in Port Hedland then. They only received the tail of the system, but the town still received a beating. If he got through at 3:00 a.m., then he wasn’t in Port Hedland.”

“Why would he be in Port Hedland?” Port Hedland was the closest coastal town to Newman, which was over four hundred kilometers inland.

“Evacuation. They would be getting the guys to the nearest airport however they could.”

An airport? Oh, God. Don’t tell me he’s up in a plane while this is going on
. Casey’s thoughts were a mass of jumbled hope and despair.

That wet cement was setting rapidly. He could hear Ash say something in the background but couldn’t quite catch it. Devon’s voice came through the line. “Good idea,” he said to Ash before he spoke to Casey again. “Listen. I’m going to hang up and call the Perth Airport to find out if there are any incoming flights out of the region. Ash is online checking some stuff, but he’s going to call the mining company. If there’s a cyclone headed that way, the company must have some sort of twenty-four-hour hotline for families to call. You ring Lon’s friend, Paul. Lon may’ve rung him.”

Paul. Casey went limp with relief. “Of course. I’ll ring you back.”

“Ring my mobile. I’ll get on to the airport using my landline. Ring as soon as you have some news.”

They immediately rang off, and Casey found Paul’s contact details and dialed. “Whassup, little man,” Paul greeted. He sounded happy and upbeat. Either he knew that Lon was safe or he didn’t know about the cyclone.

“Have you heard from Lon?”

“Sure. Didn’t he ring you last night? I thought he’d be home by now.”

“I couldn’t hear him on the phone. And no, he’s not home.”

“Really?” Paul’s voice had gone from happy-go-lucky to concerned in a heartbeat.

“What did he say to you on the phone last night?” Casey asked.

“Shit. He rang me at some crazy hour of one in the morning and told me that they had evacuated the mine. The plane in Newman was full, so he was in a car dashing for Paraburdoo airport with twenty guys, all driving in convoy. There was a plane that was going to wait for them in Paraburdoo. It was taking off at about two o’clock, which means he should’ve landed back in Perth by about five this morning.”

Another concrete truck dumped some more cement in Casey. His face paled. “He tried to ring me at 3:00 a.m. If he’d made that flight, he couldn’t be ringing me at that time.”

Paraburdoo was at least a two-hour drive from Newman. In that region of Australia, there are only two commercial airports—Newman and Paraburdoo. Up there Western Australia was pretty much a desert of nothing. A handful of towns, two airports supporting the mines, and one big road. Out of Newman, you either headed north to Port Hedland or south toward Perth. The northern road branched off to the west and led you to Tom Price and Paraburdoo, so the men would be heading toward the cyclone before turning on the road to Paraburdoo.

There was silence on the other end of the phone. Dread and anxiety filled the space. Then Paul came back. “Give me two minutes to make a couple of phone calls.”

He was gone, so Casey dialed Devon’s phone. “Do you have news? I’m on hold at the airport,” Devon asked.

It took Casey a moment to gather his tongue and find enough spit in his mouth to answer. “The last time Paul heard from him was 1:00 a.m. He was heading with twenty guys to Paraburdoo airport because the flight at Newman was full. There was a flight leaving Paraburdoo at two, but he rang me at three, so he wasn’t on that flight.”

Devon relayed the information to Ash, who was on hold to Lon’s employer. Then they got off the line in case Paul was trying to call. They promised to ring with news when they had it.

The next hour was one of fraught nerves and nausea. Casey ended up at his grandmother’s place—simply because she was someone to talk to. Privacy laws frustrated them at every turn. Devon could confirm that a flight from Newman arrived in Perth at 1:20 a.m.—a special emergency flight out of the region. A second emergency flight out of Paraburdoo arrived in Perth at 4:45 a.m. But Devon couldn’t find out if Lon was on that flight, or not.

They all assumed not, since Lon had tried to call Casey at 3:00 a.m.

Paul had contacts at the WA Police, but they had scant information coming out of the region.

Ash had lied to Lon’s employer, saying he was Lon’s brother. They told him that Lon was “unaccounted for.” The company took Ash’s number and promised to ring back when they had news. Casey nearly went wild at that information and threw his coffee mug out the door—nearly hitting Mrs. Braithwaite’s niece.

Unfortunately for Casey it was a thermal mug, so it only bounced on the paving and made a brown mess from the coffee instead of shattering into a thousand pieces like Casey felt like doing.

Devon rang the hotels and emergency centers in Paraburdoo, but they couldn’t locate Lon. Ash tried everywhere he could find a number for in Newman, without luck. They both tried all the numbers they could look up in Tom Price, since the convoy would have to drive through there to get to Paraburdoo. Finally they found someone who saw the convoy of five cars in Tom Price, so they knew they’d made it that far, at least.

And the cyclone drew nearer.

Paul arrived to be with Casey and made call after call. Soon Devon and Ash turned up as well, all crowding into the little cabin while Casey’s grandmother made pancakes and coffee. A couple of bikini-clad backpackers obviously scented the masculinity and “happened” to wander over to their end of the caravan park. They struck up a conversation with Paul, madly preening for the four men, despite the obvious crisis that was unfolding. Paul shot them a dirty look and pointed to each man in turn.

“Gay, gay, gay, gay. But hey, I think Grandma may give you a tumble if you ask her nicely.” The backpackers said something Casey couldn’t understand and stalked off, their tails positively twitching. Paul turned to Devon with a wink. “Hey. I think I just learned a new swear word in French.”

A phone rang and they all dashed for the four mobiles they had set out on the table. Four sets of eyes zeroed in on Casey’s phone, which displayed, “Lon calling.”

Casey snatched the device and stabbed at the screen. “Lon? Lon?”

The voice that came back was deep and masculine, and Casey’s heart began to fly. The line dropped out several times, but Casey could understand most of what he was saying. He turned to his waiting friends with a huge smile. “He’s about thirty ks out of Carnarvon.”

Casey’s brain was doing backflips.
Carnarvon? Carnarvon? Fuckin’ hell.
That was the last place they would’ve thought to look for Lon. Carnarvon was southwest of Paraburdoo.
What the hell was he doing heading for Carnarvon?

Lon was still talking, so Casey snatched the pen out of Ash’s fingers and began writing names on a notebook. “Yes. Yes. Okay. Got it. Love you too.”

His eyes were pricking with tears as he hung up. “There are twenty-two guys in five cars. They missed the flight because the road between Tom Price and Paraburdoo was starting to wash out and one car got bogged. They didn’t want to chance the storm in Paraburdoo, so they decided to make a run for it. The roads have been bad—a lot of flooding already—but they’ve driven west to avoid the storm and have just come into mobile reception outside of Carnarvon. They have plenty of water but no food. They’ve had four flat tires, bogged six times, and they’re running most of the cars on near empty. Here are the names of the guys with him. They’ve had no phone reception, and only two of their mobiles are still working due to flat batteries. Lon wants you to ring someone and tell them that these are the guys with him and they’re all fine. They’ll be in Carnarvon soon, and be able to charge up their phones to ring their families.”

Devon raced to Casey with open arms and Casey grabbed hold, glad that someone was offering comfort. He would’ve preferred Lon’s arms, but it seemed that it would be at least another half day before Lon could hold him again. Ash took the list of names and started dialing the mining company. Paul muttered something about the police and strode off with his phone.

Casey zoned out a bit after that. People spoke to him, but he just cradled his phone, waiting for Lon to ring him back. Oh, yes—and he googled the distance from Carnarvon to Perth. The Internet told him it would take nine hours and twenty-five minutes to drive the nine hundred eleven kilometers. Casey checked his watch and decided he would give Lon until ten o’clock that night to make it back. And that was him being generous by sixteen minutes. Once Lon was back, he would kiss him and check if he was physically okay. And
then
he was going to yell and scream and make a huge ruckus. How dare the man put himself in danger like that? Didn’t he know that there were people who loved him?

Casey later wondered what his face looked like, because people began treating him like he was made of fragile crystal. They fed him, and then Paul escorted him home to Lon’s bed and tucked him in for a nap. When he protested Paul pointed out that he probably didn’t want to be sleepy for Lon’s homecoming. Casey saw the advantages of being
wide
awake for Lon’s arrival, so he went off to bed while Paul watched over him and stayed in the annex.

He woke at six o’clock that evening and immediately looked for his phone on the bedside cabinet. It was missing. “Paul!” he shouted, and Paul stuck his head inside the van.

“What’s wrong?”

“Where’s my phone?”

“Jeez. Is that all? It’s out here on the table. I didn’t want it to ring and wake you up. Relax. No missed calls from Lon, I promise you.” Casey sagged back on the bed. Paul laughed. “Now get your arse up and showered, lazybones. Your grandmother dropped off some sort of casserole to eat, and it’s driving me nuts out here, smelling it but waiting for you. The cyclone has been downgraded, but has caused a lot of damage. Get showered and I’ll tell you about it.”

They chatted easily over dinner. Paul updated him on all the news about the cyclone, which had been downgraded to a severe tropical storm, and then they moved on to Paul’s relationship with Andrew. Paul blushed, sighed, and rolled his eyes.

“I can’t get enough of him, Casey. He’s like the other half of me. But I can’t say that to him, because he’s fucking married with two kids. He loves those kids. He talks about them sometimes, and I’m totally jealous of the way he loves them. If he told his wife about me, then that would be the end of his relationship with his kids. She’s vindictive and would completely block his every move to get access to them.”

“So what are you going to do?”

Paul sighed. “Nothing. I guess I’ll be his deep secret in the closet for as long as he wants me. Then when he dumps me, I’ll gather up the pieces of my broken heart and hide for a while.”

Casey knew all about being shattered. But he also had experience in being put back together. He smiled sympathetically at Paul. “A heart is an amazing item. My heart’s been bruised, battered, smashed, and stabbed. Yet it still beats in my chest. And do you know the most amazing thing? It can still love. It still hopes and dreams. It still beats rapidly when that certain person is in the room. It still dares to put its trust in another. If your heart’s broken, Paul, then don’t give up. Never give up, because your heart won’t.”

“How is it that you love Lon, even after everything that has been done to you?”

That brought Casey up short. Love? He remembered telling Lon that he didn’t know what love was. After all, his father had supposedly loved him. His mother had loved him. If that was his example of what love was, then this emotion that he felt for Lon was not love. What he felt for Lon was something much more—a need inside him that only Lon could fill. A tenderness that he felt when he thought of Lon. A happiness that came over him when Lon was around. A joy at being with Lon and laughing with him. A sexual pull that smoldered endlessly throughout the day and blazed into a fire when they were together at night. An urge to simply be at Lon’s side—or at least in his living space when he wasn’t able to be there. A contentment at the thought of his man being home soon. A need to be the best he could—all for this man.