Now and Forever by Mary Connealy Read Free Book Online

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    “Sunrise, it’s good to see you.”
    “Have you been here long, Caleb?”
    The pleasure faded at Sunrise’s urgent tone.
    “The boys and I rendezvoused here a week ago. We’restill waiting for a few more to show up before we head farther north. What’s wrong?”
    Sunrise jerked her head at the river. “Tucker went over the cliff far north. I’ve come for his body.”
    Caleb straightened, his face solemn. “Not Tucker. No.”
    Sunrise didn’t respond.
    A man wearing a parson’s collar stood near the fire and came up beside Caleb. “Tucker fell in the Slaughter?” The grim expression and weathered face said the man was a part of this mountain life, and he knew exactly what Sunrise’s words meant.
    “I followed his tracks. He went over, and a young woman I know fell at the same time. Her sister.” Sunrise glanced at Bailey, then back at the parson.
    Caleb looked hard at Bailey and Nev beside her. Though the look was only for a moment, Bailey got the feeling the old man had seen every detail about them, including no doubt that she was a woman. She doubted Caleb had survived in these mountains by being stupid. Then he turned and shouted that Tucker had fallen. There were five men in the camp. They all gathered and listened while Sunrise told them what had happened.
    These were wild men, mountain men. And though they lived mostly alone, they knew each other, and in their solitary way they cared.
    “No one saw a body come down that river, Sunrise.” Caleb looked at Bailey again.
    She couldn’t stand for them to only speak of Tucker, although she knew if someone other than Tucker had swept past they’d know of it. “Shannon Wilde, my—” Baileyhad to trip over it, but the time for lying was past—“my sister, did they see her?”
    Caleb’s eyes narrowed. A murmur went through the group of men, ages from young to old. A woman—that affected them. They cared for Tucker, their feelings were involved, but their instincts were to protect a woman. They were riled and upset and wanted to somehow help.
    Turning to Sunrise, Caleb said, “If nobody came through, there must be a way out.”
    “No way I have heard of.”
    “If it had only been one, I’d say a body snagged.”
    Bailey’s stomach twisted at the word snagged . Her sister reduced to a body, snagged on some piece of wood somewhere. She wasn’t one to cry, so she made a fist and wondered what she could punch.
    “But both of them?” Caleb shook his head. “And it’s been too long. If they haven’t come through by now, they’re not coming. In a fast-moving river like this one? No. One might get stopped but not two. They found a way out.”
    Caleb and Sunrise stared at each other. Bailey felt her own hope rising. She’d refused to give up even in the face of Sunrise’s acceptance of her son’s death. Now here was a man who looked like he wasn’t one to bother much with false hope. And he was sure as he could be that somehow, somewhere, Tucker and Shannon were alive.
    But where?
    Sunrise turned to the mouth of the river. From where they stood, Bailey saw the last falls and the ugly rocks it spilled down on, as good as spikes planted at the bottom of a trap to spear anything living that fell over the falls.
    She knew Sunrise to be telling the truth when she said no one could survive this river.
    But someone did. Her sister had proved it.
    “Where do we look?” Bailey thought of the wilderness they’d ridden through, mostly in the dark. All she’d done was follow Sunrise. She hadn’t even thought of checking over the edge of that jagged rim lining the river for the sight of her sister. Shannon might be clinging to some ledge, maybe using the last ounce of her strength even now, praying for her big sister to come.
    “Let’s go.” Bailey reined her horse. She wasn’t standing around for another minute. She kicked her mustang back the way they’d come. Since Sunrise didn’t know a person could get out, then she didn’t know one