Song of the Surf (Pacific Shores Book 3) (2 page)

It wasn’t till she got to the fuse that turned off the hallway lights that she realized she had no flashlight. She flipped it on once more and dashed back down the hallway to her office. When she jogged inside, her feet splashed against soggy carpet.

Hurry!

She yanked open the drawer next to the coffee maker and snatched out the flashlight, then ran back to the fuse box. She finished throwing all the switches and then darted down the hall, following the beam of her flashlight toward the garage and the tarp and ladder that were kept there.

She would have to open the garage door manually. Maybe she should run out to assess the damage first so she would know what tools and items to bring with her to fix the hole. She yanked on the cord to disengage the carriage from the garage door motor and then heaved up on the heavy wooden monstrosity. It groaned and rattled as it trundled upward, and before it was even halfway open, rain slanted into the garage.

She hesitated. Might as well keep as much of the water outside as possible. Leaving the door where it was, she ducked under it.

A man loomed in front of her – a dark bulky shape against the gray of the sky.

Her heart lurched into her throat, pinching off her screech as she swung hard with the flashlight.

But the man was quick and dodged inside her intended blow. He gripped her shoulders and gave her a slight shake. “Dakota, it’s okay. It’s just me. Justus Teague. Reece’s friend. We met several months ago. Do you remember?” He pulled her back under the overhang of the eaves.

Dakota swallowed and wished she wasn’t trembling so visibly. Did she remember? How could she forget meeting a man she’d called “calendar worthy” when she thought he wasn’t around, only to have him overhear it and tease her about it?

Despite the chill of the wind and the pelts of rain that managed to find them in their meager shelter, she felt warmed by his presence. “Ju-Justus.” It didn’t matter that she’d been plotting all week how she would avoid him once he arrived in town for the wedding. She was just glad to see
someone
. “Can you help me? I need to—I’m not even sure what’s happened—I was just running out to look. There was a crash, and rain, and sparks, and—” Words failed her, but her mind seemed to be working overtime. What was he doing here? Even if Reece and Marie had sent him, they hadn’t planned to stop by for another hour.

Lightning flashed and Justus took her chin firmly in one hand and canted her head to an angle.

Dakota held her breath, chastising herself for noticing the wonderful spice-and-leather scent of his aftershave at this most inappropriate of moments.

With a concerned gaze fixed on her forehead, he slid his hand down her arm and pried the flashlight from her fingers. He lifted it and shone it just above her left eye. One of his brows quirked.

She angled her gaze upward to see what had drawn his attention. The beam of the flashlight illuminated a stream of red dripping from one of her eyebrows. She must have a little cut from where she’d hit her head on the fridge.

But she could deal with that later. They were wasting time here. She pushed his hands away from her face. “There’s a hole in the ceiling. We need to get a tarp over it. But I need to go see the damage first.” She made to dash past him even as sirens sounded just around the corner on Sand Dollar Lane.

He clasped her arm firmly and held her in place. “You aren’t going anywhere. Let the fire crew take care of that for you. They’ll have all the equipment to do what needs to be done. And they’re nearly here. You need to be looked at by the medic.”

Dakota shuddered. She hadn’t even thought to call a fire department. On the mission field, where she’d grown up, you took care of your own emergencies when they happened. Her forehead throbbed and she touched it. “I didn’t even think—how did they know?” Every thought she searched for seemed buried in mud.

Justus swept his hands in a slow stroke against her damp shoulders. “It’s okay. I called them. Is there anyone else in the house?”

She shook her head. “No. I’m the only one here right now.” She glanced toward the corner of the house where her office was. She couldn’t quite see the extent of the damage to the front of the house in the darkness, but what she could see didn’t look good. And she didn’t know how she would finagle a tarp around those upthrust branches. She hadn’t thought about maybe needing a saw as well.

Hopelessness begged for entrance. Her shoulders slumped. Fine, if the firemen would do that for her, that would be great. It wasn’t like she was dressed for roof rescue at the moment, anyhow. Her black, ankle-length crinkled silk skirt probably wasn’t the best thing to be climbing ladders in. She turned back for the garage. “Let me just grab them the tarp.”

He followed her inside, but she realized he still had the flashlight when he took her arm and shone the light on a big metal toolbox. “You sit there.”

“I have to—”

“Dakota, it’s too late for the house. It’s not too late for you. Sit.”

There was an edge of something in his voice that made her follow his instructions.

“Thank you. Be right back. Don’t move.” He disappeared into the house.

The exasperating man had taken her light. And she hadn’t even gotten the coffee she’d been looking forward to! She dropped her head onto one hand.

It only took that moment of sitting to recognize she was trembling from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. She pressed her quaking hands between her knees and winced as pain took a leisurely stroll through her wrist. She tucked her lower lip into her mouth and chose instead to cradle her arm against her chest.

She closed her eyes and saw again the tree toppled over her smashed desk. The orange sparks arcing into the darkness. The missing corner of the house.

She almost laughed as she realized that only a few minutes ago she’d been worried about a leak in the roof.

Would insurance cover something like this? Would the church hold her responsible? Was there something she could have done? Should she have insisted the trees be inspected when she took over the ministry for Marinville Assembly? She’d only been working this job on her own for two weeks. Before that she’d let LoriMay handle all that sort of thing.

Still cradling her wrist, she leaned forward and pressed her forehead into her knees.

She shuddered as she remembered Justus’s question about other people. Thankfully Riley Ross was the only resident living here right now, and she’d gone with Marie to run wedding errands.

Riley
. Tears threatened. Women like her were the reason it was so important to keep this place running. And as if she wasn’t carrying a big enough burden trying to figure out how to keep House of Hope afloat, she had no idea how she was going to be able to help Riley. Dakota had only been working here a few weeks, and Riley was the first woman she’d ministered to who had lost so much. And LoriMay had up and quit unexpectedly only a week after Riley moved in. That had been two weeks ago.

Dakota had no experience helping a woman who’d been beaten by her boyfriend so badly that she’d lost her pregnancy of six months. She had no experience at keeping a passive expression when looking into an eye where the sclera was totally red due to the fist that had burst the vessels there. Riley’s broken arm and ribs Dakota could deal with. There were doctors and prescriptions, and heaven knew she had certainly had her fair share of nursing experience. It was the wounds left on Riley’s heart she was having a hard time figuring out how to heal.

A hand touched her shoulder and jolted her back to the present. Justus squatted in front of her.

As she sat up something stung her eye and she swiped at it.

Justus moved her fingers away from the area and pressed a soft cloth to her forehead. “Hold this.” He guided her hand back to press the cloth in place, then squeezed her shoulder. He set the flashlight on the floor beside her, the light spilling across the concrete floor. “Stay put for a couple more minutes while I get a paramedic to look at you, alright?” He jogged toward the half-open garage door before she could even give a response.

She nodded, but when she heard the squawk of a couple radios she realized she should probably go talk to the firemen. So, as soon as he was out of sight, she stood.

Dizziness drained through her and she bumbled a couple of steps and threw her arms wide to catch her balance. But the floor seemed to tip up to meet her. Everything turned fuzzy and her fingers lost their grip on the cloth Justus had just given her. Her legs betrayed her and became useless limp ropes. She gave her head a little shake to fight the tug of gravity and blackness, but lost the battle and slumped to the floor.

Cold. The cement floor in the garage was very cold.

Chapter 2

Justus ducked out into the rain and jogged toward the paramedics who were just exiting their vehicle. “I’ve got one person injured,” he yelled through the rain and wind. When the paramedic looked up, he could tell the man hadn’t heard his exact words. Justus pointed to the garage and motioned for the man to follow, then turned and ran back toward Dakota.

As he loped up the drive, he tossed a glance at the huge tree thrusting across the roof from the backyard. A shudder quaked through him. He’d been driving down the street when he’d seen the tree give way before the wind. He was in town for Reece and Marie’s wedding on Saturday, and they’d forgotten they had an appointment with the minister this evening, so had asked if he minded picking up Dakota.

He hadn’t minded in the least, and in fact had headed this way a little early. He’d been looking forward to seeing her again. Probably more than he’d been willing to admit to himself until he’d seen that nasty cut on her forehead, and witnessed her determination to do all in her power to lessen the damage to the house. He was so glad someone had been here to stop her from climbing up onto that roof in her condition. The gash on her head was definitely going to need stitches and she might even have a bit of a concussion.

He ducked back under the garage door. Dakota lay sprawled on the floor, her face, illuminated by the weak beam of the flashlight, ghostly white. “Dakota!” Terror clawed through him, and he dashed to her side. Why had he left her alone? His hand trembled as he fumbled to find her pulse. And then she moaned and pushed herself partway up.

“Easy, Dakota. I think you passed out.”

Even as he spoke she unsteadily tried to stand again.

“Whoa!” He lurched forward, gripped her shoulders, and guided her back onto the tool chest. Those crazy high heels she was in weren’t doing her any favors. Squatting before her, he heard the paramedics enter behind them. “You’re hurt worse than you realize. But the paramedics are here. Just let them have a look at you.”

A guy with “Marinville Fire and Rescue” emblazoned on the front of his jumper, squatted before her with a med. kit. He pulled a small penlight from his pocket and peered into Dakota’s face. “Hi there. My name is Luke. And this is my partner, Joel. We’re just going to do a quick assessment to make sure you are safe, okay? What’s your name?” The guy’s light paused on the once-again bleeding wound on her forehead, and Justus tightened his fists and refused entrance to the images of another blood spattered woman that threatened to usurp his attention.

“D-Dakota.”

Justus eased out a breath. At least she still remembered her own name. He started to back out of their way, but Dakota shot out one hand and clutched his arm. Her fingers slid over his forearm till they found his own. Her small hand trembled in his grasp. He swallowed and in that moment he wouldn’t have moved for a million dollars. “I’m not going anywhere, just let them look at you.”

The first paramedic continued to ask questions while the other shone his own light into her pupils, over her forehead, and then down to the wrist she held gingerly in her lap.

Justus heard air hiss between his teeth. Her arm was blue and swollen.

The paramedic named Luke kept speaking to Dakota in a calming tone, even while he pulled bandages and gauze from his kit and spouted some medical jargon to his partner. It was the words “overnight observation” that set Justus’s heart to thumping so hard he was afraid the medics would hear it and turn to examining him next. His hand tightened of its own volition around Dakota’s.

Lord, haven’t I had enough of ambulances and hospitals for a lifetime?

Once again he forced the memories that tugged for his attention to the back of his mind and concentrated on the here and now.

Blood streaked one side of Dakota’s hair, turning the long blonde tresses into a dark, matted clump. Even though a white bandage now compressed the wound, he could see blood already seeping through it. As the medic lifted her arm to examine it more carefully, she tucked her lower lip into her mouth and scrunched her eyes closed.

His stomach bucked. He hated that he couldn’t save her from the pain.

The sound of firefighters clomping through the yard and yelling to one another rose and fell with the force of the wind.

Justus dropped his head down, staring at the blackness between his knees. The flash of another night so similar to this would no longer be abated. A night with so much more blood. So much more tragedy. So much more evil. A night filled with police and a manhunt for Treyvon McAllister, a boy-not-quite-turned-man who had so much of his life left ahead of him, but so much rage filling his heart.

He clenched his jaw and wrenched himself back to the present in time to hear…

“Would you like your boyfriend to accompany you on the ride to the hospital?”

Dakota’s gaze flashed to his, her eyes widening. “No, I’m fine. I can get myself there.”

The medic shifted in an uneasy way that raised Justus’s concern several notches. “I’d really like to encourage you to ride in the ambulance. We’d like to stabilize your arm a little better, and keep a careful watch on your head wound there.” The man tilted her a smile that tightened something inside of Justus. “Riding with us won’t be so bad. Joel might even tell you a few jokes along the way.” The man chuckled, and despite Justus’s annoyance over the slight flirtation, he appreciated the guy’s attempt to lighten the situation.