Page 2 of Bailey

“And it never seems to stop blowing in these valleys.” A disturbance moved through the sky, and Reeves peered up into the sky. “It looks like I got this set up just in time,” he said. “There’s a little bit of thunder coming in. We were supposed to get some moisture today, and it seems like it’s here.”

He glanced around as if he didn’t quite know what to do next. In truth, Reeves had lived his whole life like that—trying to figure out what to do next.

“I think I’m going to grab some firewood, and I can build the fire in here. Since the shelter doesn’t have sides or a front, the smoke will just go out, and that tarp up there is high enough that it won’t catch on fire.”

He darted back out into the rain, taking his GoPro with him this time as he collected wood. This footage, shaky as it was, would all get cut together as little snippets, and in just a few minutes, Reeves hurried back under the tarp with a full load of wood.

He set about filming building a fire and making lunch, and he got some shots of the sky, and the clouds moving, and the thunder rolling over the Tetons in the distance. After all, people came to his channel for practical tips on outdoor living, ranch life, and the Teton Mountains. His channel was literally named for it.

Reeves finished up lunch and had just started filming his fence fixing when the sky opened. This was not rain, but hail, and Reeves had an uneasy feeling in his stomach that he needed to get out of there.

He worked on the eastern edge of his property, and right across the fence was Bailey McAllister’s house. She only had five acres, but her property was skinny and tall and bordered his all the way back to the river. He looked toward her house, and sure enough, he could see the stone chimney through the trees in the distance.

You should go. The thought sounded loudly in his head, and because Reeves had spent plenty of time in his life not listening to that voice, he knew when it spoke, he needed to act.

He turned toward his camera, which he had set up under a photography umbrella. It was currently being shredded in the hail, and Reeves ran toward it. “Hoo-boy, we got some weather coming in.”

He grabbed the camera and left the umbrella as he ducked back under the tarp. It sounded like gunfire under there, and Reeves swallowed, not quite sure what to do.

Pack up and get out of here.

That honestly seemed like a very good idea, and Reeves hurriedly shoved his camera equipment back into the backpacks and bags. He darted out into the hail, which had grown to the size of a nickel, and grabbed the bin. He dumped out the chunks of ice and stashed all of his equipment back in the bin. It had a plastic lid, and he slid that on and pounded it with his fist.

He looked in the general direction of his house, but he was a couple of miles out from it, as all of his pastures sat on the east side of his property, giving him a really good buffer between his place and Bailey’s.

His eyes migrated back to her house, and he could easily conjure up a picture of her with her soft blonde hair and those big blue eyes as she held out a bag of peppermint bark.

Reeves had enjoyed every morsel of that, letting it slowly melt over his tongue as he thought about his next-door neighbor. But all Reeves had done was think. She’d texted him a few times in the past four months that she’d lived there, always something about one of two things: the weather or something in her house.

He had been unable to find an excuse to go next door. But today, it sure seemed like he had no choice. The hail softened into big, fat raindrops, and Reeves thought he could probably get back to his house in the rain.

He stepped out from underneath the tarp and swung his leg over the ATV. It started, and he swung around to head back toward his barns and stables and the safety of his house. He whistled for Sir and Pansy to come with him, and they both ventured out from underneath the tarp, albeit a bit reluctantly.

“Come on, guys,” he called, and then a noise unlike Reeves had heard in a long while filled the air. It almost sounded like an airplane taking off, and Reeves got thrown back into a memory where his daddy used to park next to the runway and they’d watch the airplanes come and go.

But there was no airport here, and Reeves had spent a great deal of time outside…he knew this sound.

“It’s water,” he whispered, and everything in him urged him to get off his property and get off of it. Now.

Rushing water. Whitewater rapids.

His stream along the southern border of his property had flooded.

“Come on.” He whistled to the dogs again. “Up here, up here.” Pansy and Sir both jumped on the back of the ATV behind him, and Reeves pointed it toward the section of fence he’d just cut out in his video.

“We’re going to fit,” he said to the dogs, but he could hardly see anything around him the rain fell so thick. The ATV’s engine growled loudly into the air, but Reeves felt the vibrations of the wood fencing scraping along the side of the vehicle. He popped through, set his sights on Bailey’s house, and gunned the engine.

CHAPTER

TWO

Bailey McAllister held the phone to her mouth as she stood on the edge of her patio. Six inches in front of her, rain fell in a sheet she couldn’t see through. “It’s going to flood,” she said to her momma. “I was just down there yesterday morning, and the river was already at the banks. And it’s raining really hard.”

Bailey had never seen rain this thick, in fact.

“It’s been really warm lately,” Momma said, and she didn’t seem nearly as concerned as Bailey would like her to be. She couldn’t hear much except the pounding of the rain on the roof, and she turned to go back into the house.

She took Tuesdays as her home office day, and they only scheduled vet tech appointments, like immunizations and medicine deliveries. Her doggy daycare program had really picked up steam in the last couple of months, and Bailey had hired four people to work in that building.