Now and Forever by Mary Connealy Read Free Book Online Page B

are we ever going to see in this cave?”
    Shannon said, “Maybe we could build a bigger fire?”
    Tucker sat up straighter. “You know, I don’t think there’s as much black anymore. I think we’ve walked out of that vein of coal.”
    He was more tired than he’d thought. He’d meant to really load himself down with coal if he saw that it was running out.
    “There’s still some around, though.” Shannon pointed to a crumbled black heap where they’d just emerged from the tunnel. “Let’s start a fire here.”
    “Can you do it, Shannon? I’ll help, but I need a few minutes—”
    “No, you sit. I’ll use that rat’s nest as tinder, and a bit of fire from your cup, to get a start, then add a stack of coal. We’ll see how big we can build it and maybe light up this whole room. I could stand to take some of the chill off this cave.”
    Tucker smiled at his spunky little friend. “I thought you said you hated rats.”
    She flashed her dimples. “Well, you said they’re gone, and believe me I’ve had my eye on the nest. It will give me great pleasure to burn it up.” She made it sound purely wicked.
    Tucker laughed. She went about doing an excellent job of starting a roaring fire.
    The coal kicked off an oily black smoke, yet it rosestraight up and the cavern didn’t fill with smoke. Tucker pondered for a moment why that should mean something, but he was so battered that he just couldn’t think right now.
    The light and heat drew him and seemed to take the worst ache out of his throbbing leg—so long as he didn’t move. It was all he could do not to hunker down by it and take himself a nap. He wondered if he was getting old. Maybe any day now, his hair would grow in white and he’d start to look like his friend Caleb, one of the mountain men who’d already seemed ancient when Tucker was a boy.

    Bailey found a grassy spot and staked her horse out to graze. “I’m going up to the edge on foot.”
    Sunrise nodded. “I’ll go forward a mile and do the same. I’ll mark where I start. We’ll look for sign they came out or are stranded below.”
    “I’ll go on ahead of Sunrise and do the same.” Nev walked off without another word. Bailey wanted to tell him no. She didn’t want to trust her sister’s life to a man who, less than a month ago, nearly killed Kylie.
    Nev had come back to himself a bit since he’d come west hunting Aaron, wanting revenge.
    Aaron said he could track, but would he? What if the man’s grudge against Aaron, his old childhood friend, was still alive and well?
    Aaron and Nev had grown up together, neighbors who lived right along the line where the North and South divided. Aaron fought for the Union, Nev for the Confederacy. When they’d come home to the ShenandoahValley, their homes had been razed, their families and their livestock were dead, their land barren. Everything gone at the hands of both armies, who waged so much of their war right on top of that land.
    The war was over, but the hatred remained, and in his crazed grief Nev had tried to kill Aaron. To keep from having to shoot his friend, Aaron had left Shenandoah to start a new life. Nev, starved to a skeleton, half mad with hatred and grief, twisted from time spent in a brutal Union prison camp, had followed Aaron west bent on killing the man who was still his enemy.
    Nev had found Aaron and Kylie and nearly killed them both before he’d been stopped, and in the struggle Shannon had been shot.
    Now, with Aaron’s help and Kylie supporting her husband, Nev seemed to be healing in both mind and body.
    But Bailey couldn’t forget the sight of Nev holding a gun to Kylie’s head, or the sight of Shannon, bleeding from a head wound. Bailey still watched Nev close whenever she was near him.
    And now she was supposed to trust Shannon’s life to him? Bailey didn’t like it. She’d check up on him after she finished her own search.
    Satisfied with that, she strode to the brink of the canyon, towering high above