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With a quick glance at the sun’s position in the sky, Summer answered. “Three hours.”
Bass glanced at Josiah. “If we hurry, we might catch up to them.” Bass made a circling motion with his finger pointing up above his head. “Saddle up!”
Both Summer and Josiah mounted their horses and raced after the posse. It seemed as if time dragged and nothing he could do made the horse run faster. Long before the buckskin’s hooves hit the road to his house, he knew something horrible had happened. Grey smoke billowed high above the tree line, and his heart beat hard in his chest until he felt lightheaded and sick to his stomach.
He raced ahead of Bass, who sat tall on his white horse. Hearing Summer’s gasp and harsh scream of her cousin’s name, he galloped past her into the yard. Before the buckskin stopped, Josiah dropped to the ground on numb legs and took a few steps toward the smoldering ruins of the house. From where he stood, there was nothing left but the charred remnants of the ceiling beams and piles of black ashes.
“Billy!” Summer’s long legs almost had her past him before Josiah could grab her by her shoulders, dragging her back against him. She struggled, her arms and legs hitting and kicking as she tried to break free, but Josiah’s grip only tightened.
“It’s too late, Summer,” Josiah’s voice broke, not wanting to admit to himself that his new family might be gone. He jerked to a stop, as if his boots were mired in deep mud. He couldn’t go any closer. Finding them lifeless amidst the ashes would be too much to bear, too final. He could barely breathe now as it was and he needed to stay strong if he was to help find the monsters who’d done this.
“They aren’t there!” Summer screamed. “The men said they were taking them somewhere else!” She sobbed. “They were supposed to take them somewhere else…” She turned around and buried her face in his stomach. “This is all my fault. I should have tried to stop them.”
Josiah couldn’t form a coherent thought beyond his anger and desire for revenge, much less begin to accept what his life would be now, without them. Still, he forced the words out of his mouth to try to comfort the young girl. “If you had, Summer, you would have…been with them.”
What little hope her previous words had wrought died a cruel death inside him. Why would these outlaws take Mia and the boys somewhere else? They hadn’t taken anyone else hostage. They had simply killed them outright and left their bodies for the posse to find. He knew without looking that’s what he would find buried deep in the smoldering ruins of his home. But he couldn’t force his feet closer to look. All the pain he’d suffered when he lost his parents came rushing back until his body no longer felt like his own.
Something cold moved through him, taking all feeling away until there was nothing left but emptiness and rage. The anger he’d buried so long ago after the murder of his parents resurfaced, mingling with this new agony, and all he saw was red.
He felt Bass’s presence next to him, but the lawman didn’t say a word. “With or without you, Bass, I’m hunting them down for what they did to my family. Eye for an eye. Scream for scream. I will kill them all.”
Bass nodded. “I always get my man…or men, dead or alive. Now, that bein’ said, whether you kill ’em or I do, I don’t care. As long as they’re dead.” They turned as two men rode into the yard. Josiah noticed the glint of light on the men’s badges. “Zeke, Jonathan! Glad you could make it. I need you both to stay here and guard this place in case any of the outlaws return.” Bass gave Josiah a quick glance, before turning his gaze back to Zeke’s expressionless face.
Josiah noticed the man’s dark skin was badly scarred on one side of his face, the puckered skin bringing to mind the links of a chain. The severe scars pulled the outside corner of his eye down in a permanent droop.
“This is Josiah’s home,” Bass said. “We believe Red burned the house down with his family inside. Go through what’s left of the house and look for them.” The only hint of emotion Zeke showed was the clenching of his jaws before giving Bass a quick nod. Bass glanced down at Summer’s wan face, her eyes bloodshot and swollen. “You think you can keep up with us?”
She nodded. “Yes, sir. I can. I’ll help track, too. I noticed one of the horses had a nick in his front shoe and another favored his back left leg.”
Bass gave her an appraising nod. “Did you hear anything else about where they may be headed? Anything at all?”
Summer’s face scrunched in thought as she chewed on her bottom lip but finally shook her head. “No, sir. The leader never mentioned anything about where they were going, just that he knew you would follow him.”
“Damn right, I’m gonna follow.” He turned, grabbing his horse’s reins from Teague and climbed back into the saddle.
Without a word, Josiah followed suit, but as his horse started to walk around to the back of the house, Summer let out a small cry, ran toward the tree line and picked up something. Turning, she held out a large book to Josiah.
“It’s a sign, Josiah. It’s a sign!”
Josiah frowned and moved closer, finally seeing what she held. Elias’s family Bible. His scowl deepened. “Why wouldn’t his Bible have been in his room? I saw him reading it yesterday with Mia—inside.”
Summer’s head bobbed up and down. “That’s my point! He wouldn’t have laid it on the ground unprotected unless he wanted us to find it. I’m telling you, Josiah, it’s a sign.”
Josiah knew from his own past how fickle life could be. He also knew the unbearable pain Summer would feel when she realized her cousin wouldn’t be coming home. He didn’t know what to do. Should he let her continue believing everything was going to be fine when it probably wouldn’t? Or should he do what Clay had done to him and tore out his heart like ripping the scab off a wound when he’d told him his parents were dead?
No one could have survived that fire, and there was no reasonable explanation for the outlaws to have taken his family with them. The Bible was nothing more than a ruse, but he didn’t want to tell Summer that.
He pulled the reins to the right, and the horse moved toward the tree line and the narrow path leading toward the river. He would begin the search there.
Bass and Summer trailed behind him, and they were followed by the rest of the posse. No one talked. They searched, finding the outlaws’ tracks where the horses milled. The ground was soft and tilled up next to the water, but they were able to follow them to an abandoned shack where the tracks showed that another rider had joined them. They were now chasing five outlaws.
They crisscrossed the river, and Bass had them split up, each group searching both the banks for any hint they’d passed that way. Josiah was fed up and ready to ride. He was tired of doing nothing while those men got away with killing his family. Just that thought alone ignited his fury all over again. The rage had never really gone away but had simmered deep inside him. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d been so out-of-control angry.
After losing his parents, he’d been consumed by grief, not anger, but then he’d only been a ten-year-old boy. Now, he was a grown man and had lost the one thing most precious to him. Too late, he’d realized just how much he’d come to care for Mia. Too late, he’d realized he loved her but had never told her.
Losing the house didn't matter, as it was just wood and paint. Only Mia and the boys mattered. They had filled Josiah's heart and soul in ways he didn't even know was possible and now they were gone. Glancing up at the darkening sky, he gave the roiling clouds a grim smile of satisfaction as if they reflected his own pain. Soon, everyone around him would know what he felt as the storm unleashed its power.
Another frustrating hour passed before Josiah found what he’d been looking for as he searched along the water’s edge. Beyond the sandbank, a rotting tree’s long branches reached out into the deeper water where silvery catfish darted among the lower limbs. There, on a wide rock sticking above the waterline, he spotted a long, white scratch. A little further down, he glimpsed another where the horses had used the rocks to cross the river.
