The Parent Plan

As a devastating summer storm hits Grand Springs, Colorado, the next thirty-six hours will change the town and its residents forever…

Dr. Karen Sloane is used to being in charge and saving lives at the hospital. But she feels shattered and helpless when her daughter Vicki goes missing in the storm. Her only comfort is in her husband, Cassidy’s, strong arms. When Cassidy accuses Karen of neglecting Vicki, his anger toward her is as chilling as the cold rain.

For rancher Cassidy Sloane, family is the most important thing in life. All he ever wanted was to take care of his wife and daughter. But now Karen seems to care about her patients more than her family, and Vicki’s been put in danger.

Will Vicki’s accident bring this loving but strong-willed couple together or drive them further apart?

Book 11 of the 36 Hours series. Don’t miss the final book in the series: Solving the mayor’s murder could be Martin Smith’s only chance at regaining his memory—but he’ll need computer guru Juliet Crandall’s help to do it in You Must Remember This by Marilyn Pappano.

The Parent Plan

Paula Detmer Riggs

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

About the Author

Prologue

Saturday, June 7

Lazy S Ranch.

Dr. Karen Sloane was used to working under pressure. In med school, she’d found out she was a wimp when it came to dealing with the suffering of others and she’d trained herself to remain absolutely steady, her mind clear, her reflexes lightning quick. But now, standing alone near the makeshift canteen just beyond the glaring spotlights that bathed the side of Devil Butte in brilliant light, she was close to shattering.

Silhouetted by the harsh glow, rescue workers in protective clothing and miners’ helmets struggled to reach the spot below a thick slab of red rock where her eight-year-old daughter, Victoria, was trapped in the entrance of an unknown cave. Torrential rains had tumbled tons of rock and earth from the face of the butte, exposing the dark pit.

In the past ten hours since her arrival, she’d experienced shock, disbelief, terror, and finally a numb misery that increased minute by minute. Only one thing remained constant. Vicki was alone in that pit—and time was running out.

Karen had been on duty at Vanderbilt Memorial when Cassidy had called around ten that morning, and told her to come home. She could still hear the raw note in her husband’s distinctively husky voice, the stark undertones of desperation. The unspoken plea for help.

Somehow she’d managed to get through the roadblocks and detours set up by the state police, and she’d reached the site to the west of the main house shortly after Lieutenant Brendan Gallagher and the fire department’s mountain rescue unit had begun on the rescue shaft now angled down toward her little girl.

Cassidy had been like a crazy man, shouting at Bren to let him help, threatening his poker buddy with castration and worse if Bren didn’t give him something to do. Something. anything. If he had to, he’d claw his way to his daughter with his bare hands.

Catching sight of Karen half running, half stumbling down the mud-scoured slope, Bren had silently pleaded with her for help. She’d put aside her questions long enough to coax Cassidy away from the knot of grim-faced, dedicated men. A shiver transited her spine at the wild suffering she saw in his eyes. For an instant she wasn’t sure he even knew who she was. And then his arms crushed her to him, his need a living thing.

Between hard shudders, he told her about Vicki’s trip to the butte with her dog, Rags, and her regular baby-sitter, Wanda June, to watch the clouds. About the tons of mud that had torn down the hill. Of their little girl’s sudden disappearance and Wanda’s frantic search of the area before she’d run across the storm-ravaged pastures to find Cassidy.

It had been Rags who’d led him to the raw gash in the granite.

The torn flesh of Cassidy’s face and hands bore testimony to his attempts to reach their child. But his shoulders had been too broad to allow him to reach into the black pit where Vicki had been trapped.

Knowing her husband’s almost irrational fear for his daughter’s safety, Karen had a good idea how terribly he’d been suffering when he’d all but ridden a gelding into the ground in order to call for help. She suspected, too, that leaving Vicki with only Wanda and Rags to guard the site had almost torn him apart.

But when Karen tried to comfort him, he suddenly stiffened, as though jerked out of a terrible nightmare. His face twisted, his head snapped up. The arms that had bruised her flesh, so tightly had they held her, relaxed.

Suddenly he was in control again, his gaze steely, his emotions shuttered safely, as he jerked his hat from his head, placed it on hers and ordered her into taking his slicker, all the while castigating her for not wearing a jacket, for driving too fast, for a half dozen things she no longer remembered.

It was Cassidy’s way. Reaming her out while at the same time making her breakfast after she’d worked a late shift the night before. Growling orders at her as though she were one of his wranglers even as he put in endless hours helping her paint Vicki’s room or till the garden plot.

Maybe he never said he loved her in so many words, but a woman knew when she was loved. For all his firmly rooted beliefs and sometimes inexplicable opinions on the way of things, Cassidy was a gentle man at heart.

Karen was sure of it.

With a sigh, she searched for her husband’s tall form. But though she recognized friends and neighbors and the whey-faced paramedic she’d helped to patch up various minor injuries, Cassidy was nowhere in sight.

Had he gone back to the house for a moment? Or taken Wanda June home to be with her family on their neighboring ranch?

But no, Wanda was still huddled into a blanket in the first aid tent, looking scared and forlorn and far younger than her sixteen years. In the stark light, her normally vibrant face was pinched and drawn.

God, but it was a hellish night, Karen thought, swiping a tired hand over her face. Somewhere to the south, lightning rent the air like the vicious slice of a scalpel while thunder crashed and rolled in its wake. The trailing edge of the storm had finally moved out around six that evening, leaving chaos in its wake. Power in the Grand Springs area had been out since last evening, and according to the reports on the radio, many roads were closed and the emergency resources were stretched to breaking. It would go down in the history books as one of the worst storms to hit Colorado in a hundred years.

A sudden movement to the left caught Karen’s gaze an instant before Rags stuck his cold nose against her thigh. Ignoring the mud, she dropped to her knees and threw her arms around the Australian shepherd’s shaggy neck. Oddly, the warm, pungent odor of dog and dirt served to soothe her in ways that nothing else could manage. Perhaps because she’d so often smelled that same combination on her daughter’s skin.

“Oh, Rags,” she whispered. “She has to be all right. She just has to.” His tail wagged once, but his heart wasn’t in it.

“Everything will turn out just fine,” she murmured, her voice hollow as she got to her feet again. As hollow as the comforting words she’d shouted down at Vicki only a few minutes ago. Words that echoed obscenely in the bottomless void where Vicki waited for someone to come for her.

As though sensing her thoughts, Rags licked the hand that had fallen to her side, then turned to jog to the spot in front of the jagged hole where he’d been hunkered down almost continuously since Vicki disappeared.

Her eyes filled with tears at the sight of her daughter’s beloved pet waiting patiently for his mistress’s return. And heaven help anyone who tried to make him move.

Oh, baby, don’t give up, Karen prayed as she pulled the slicker closer to her throat. We’re coming. Daddy and I are coming for you.

She saw Cassidy then, standing alone at the edge of the light, an intensely physical man who expressed himself with actions and kept his own counsel, taller than most, his large, well-muscled body a match for any there.

She took a hasty step, then stopped, suddenly uneasy, as he tipped back his head and looked up at the sky. There was a look of stark anger about him that chilled her to the bone as she, too, stared upward.

The overcast sky seemed as solid as the hard red Colorado ground, yet she knew those murky, threatening clouds contained enough water to swamp the ravine and half the ranch with torrents of angry, swirling, liquid mud, tearing down trees, scouring away precious grass, filling every crevice.

“No,” she whispered, staring helplessly at the black hole in the ground. “Please, God, don’t let it rain again. Please, please, don’t.”

* * *

Standing alone at the edge of light, Cassidy Sloane fought down a fierce need to fall to his knees and beg whatever God might be listening to spare his daughter’s life. Not that it would do any good, of course. God had abandoned him a long time ago—and with good reason.

Still, somewhere in his cynic’s heart, buried among unspoken longings and shameful secrets, he still hoped for a miracle. A reprieve for an innocent little girl whose only “crime” had been a desire to see the top of a cloud from the edge of the butte.

The need to plead came again, stronger this time. Almost as strong as his need to lash out at that same God. Or fate. Or even the damned weathermen who hadn’t foreseen the monsoon-like deluge.

As though issuing a parting taunt, thunder rolled again, more distant this time, and off toward the eastern part of his land where the stream feeding his meadows hooked toward the south.

His tired gaze fixed in that direction, Cassidy was startled from his dark thoughts by the sound of a gruff voice calling his name. Heart thudding, he spun around to find a familiar bearlike man bearing down on him.

Lieutenant Brendan Gallagher of the Grand Springs Fire Department stood a good two inches taller than Cassidy’s own six-one frame and still carried most of the muscle he’d developed while representing Burke Senior High at the state wrestling finals three years running.

“How much longer, Bren?” Cassidy demanded when the man was still a half dozen strides away.

Gallagher swept off his battered orange helmet and set it atop a cluster of oxygen cylinders. “Two, three hours, if the rain holds off.”

“That’s what you told me two hours ago, Gallagher!” Cassidy realized he had raised his voice, drawing startled looks from some of the nearby volunteers dispensing coffee and sandwiches to the exhausted men. The Ladies Aid Society from one of the churches, someone had told him.

Gallagher moved a massive shoulder. “Maybe less. Hard to say exactly.”

At the exchange of words, one of the volunteers stepped away from the fire department’s mobile canteen and came toward the two men, holding out two large white foam cups filled with steaming liquid.

“Coffee, Lieutenant?”

“Thanks,” Gallagher muttered before eagerly lifting the cup to his lips.

“Mr. Sloane?” The plain-faced woman in an army surplus poncho thrust a cup toward Cassidy. “Would you like some?”

“No.” The clipped word had no sooner passed Cassidy’s lips when he realized how ungrateful he’d sounded. “No, but thanks for offering,” he said, tempering his response. Tact was Karen’s forte. Not his. But that didn’t excuse unprovoked rudeness.

“You’re most welcome.” The woman hesitated before adding in a kindly tone, “I just want you to know that we’re all praying mighty hard for your little girl.”

Cassidy’s throat worked. Asking for help for his child had been easy. Accepting it for himself was all but impossible.

“I appreciate that, ma’am. Thank you.”

The woman’s eyes were shiny with unshed tears as she touched his arm, then turned away to return to the beat-up wagon.

Short of patience under the best of circumstances, Cassidy nevertheless forced himself to wait while the other man drank greedily. After brutally long hours of digging, with only occasional breaks, Brendan looked played out. But in spite of his leprechaun eyes and choirboy’s smile, Bren Gallagher was tempered steel, with ice water in his veins, and, according to men who’d worked under him, one tough man to cross.

At the moment, Cassidy didn’t care what kind of reputation Bren carried. Nor would he let himself think of Bren as a friend. No, pared to the basics, Brendan Gallagher was simply the man keeping Cassidy from his daughter. His feisty, bright-as-a-new-penny Victoria.

Vicki to her mom. Vick to him, more often than not. His little tomboy with angel eyes the same shade of dark brown as his own, though without the jaded remoteness he glimpsed in his shaving mirror on a daily basis.

Was it only this morning at the breakfast table when she’d flung her arms around his neck and begged him to let her ride out with him to check on the horses in the south pasture?

Afraid for her safety in the lousy weather, he refused and, instead, ordered her and Wanda June to stay within sight of the ranch house. For once Vick had done what he asked, wandering through the wet fields in a wide arc less than a mile from home.

The next time he heard her voice, it had come from far below the surface where she was wedged between slabs of icy granite like a cork in a bottle, calling feebly for help. When he answered, he’d gotten no reply.

Since then, the only constructive thing he’d done had been calling the fire department and threatening the dispatcher with mayhem if the man didn’t get a crew out to the Lazy S in record time.

“Beats me how something as vile as this could taste so good,” Gallagher muttered when the cup was empty.

Too anxious to be polite, Cassidy released his pent-up frustration in a rush. “Dammit, Gallagher, I’ve had it with standing around with nothin’ to do but watch other men work. That’s my kid down there. They’re doin’ my job.”

“Right now your job is taking care of your wife.” Though calm, Bren’s voice carried a ragged edge of fatigue.

“Karen doesn’t need me to hold her hand.” It was foolish to wish she did, Cassidy thought, his gaze searching for her small, quick form all but swallowed up by his yellow slicker. He saw the slicker first, and his favorite Stetson covering that mass of curly brown hair that she kept short because it was easier to manage that way. Soft, gold-spun hair he’d always longed to see brushing her shoulders—or his chest when they made love.

Outlined in the eerie blue glimmer of the propane lantern, her face was wan but composed as she bent over the table, calmly applying a large gauze dressing to a stocky firefighter’s forearm. Several other men slumped against nearby rocks or sprawled on the ground, waiting their turn to be patched up.

Chiseling away a mountain of granite chip by chip was tedious, spine-jolting work, but the crew didn’t dare dynamite or even use hydraulic equipment for fear of injuring Vicki in the process. But using pickaxes and chisels in such close quarters had its risks, too, mostly to the men doing the work.

At least Karen was busy, while he had nothing to distract him from his dark thoughts. As though sensing his gaze, she turned her head to look his way. Though a good fifty feet stretched between them, he felt her compassion reach out to touch him. Something gave way inside, leaving him feeling more vulnerable than he could handle.

Sick inside, Cassidy studied the worn toes of his working boots, grimly working to drive his stampeding emotions back into the sturdy mental corral where they belonged.

Damn, but he was tired.

“Straight talk, Bren,” he grated as the other man tossed his cup into a trash container near the canteen. “What are Vicki’s chances of…” He had to take a moment to corral yet another unwelcome surge of emotion. “What are her chances?”

Gallagher squinted skyward “If another storm doesn’t move in, floodin’ us out, I’d say your daughter’s chances are damned good.”

“Keep me posted, okay?”

Bren nodded. “You got yourself a deal.” With that, he snatched up his helmet and headed toward the tunnel.

A rustle of brush had Cassidy turning suddenly to find his wife hurrying toward him. “Cassidy, what did Brendan say?” she asked in the rushed, almost breathless tone she’d acquired over the years as her schedule had become more and more crowded. “Is Vicki all right? How much longer before they have her out of that horrible hole?”

Cassidy knew enough about the caprices of nature to realize just how much Bren hadn’t said. At the moment, however, he didn’t see any reason to share his private dread with Karen. It was bad enough for her as it was.

“Bren figures three hours, maybe less.”

Karen stared at him in stark distress. Tiny droplets of the moisture-laden air clung to her hair, and wispy curls clung to her neck and cheeks. “Three hours?” she whispered in aching disbelief.

“Honey, they’re working as fast as they can.” That, at least, was the truth.

“It’s going to be all right, isn’t it?” She looked tired and worried and terribly fragile, but it was the misery in her eyes that ripped at him in ways she would never understand.

“These guys are the best, Kari,” he hedged. “They know what they’re doing.”

“I’ve been talking to her every few minutes so she won’t be scared, but she didn’t answer. I don’t know if she…” Her voice broke and she bit her lip.

He knew the words she wanted him to say, the promises she was desperate to hear, but he couldn’t make himself lie. Instead, he started to reach for her, only to be interrupted by the approach of Vicki’s sitter.

The fourth of six sisters, Wanda June Peavy lived on a nearby ranch with her parents and grandparents. She had been Vicki’s companion and substitute mom for the past three years, ever since Karen had graduated from medical school and started at Vanderbilt Memorial, first as an intern, and now as a resident.

“Is…I mean, I saw Mr. Gallagher talking to you,” the distraught girl said in a trembling voice when she reached them.

“He thinks it won’t be long now,” Karen hastened to reassure the girl whose face was now tear-stained and ashen.

“It’s all my fault, Dr. Sloane. I told Vicki to stay back from the edge, but I was trying to see if the clouds were moving back toward us. I heard Vicki scream, and when I t-turned back to look, she was g-gone.”

“Stop blaming yourself right this minute,” Karen declared in a fierce tone as she took Wanda June’s cold hand in hers. “I know how stubborn Vicki can be when she’s got her mind set on something.”

The teenager blinked hard. “I should have been watching her closer.” She dropped her gaze and shifted her booted feet. “I keep thinking, if I close my eyes and wish hard enough, I could make this all into a dream and everything would be okay when I woke up. But…I can’t ever make it go away.” Casting an agonized look at Cassidy, she burst out, “You hate me, I know you do! And I don’t blame you. I deserve to die!”

“Don’t ever say that again. Don’t even think it,” he rasped, his voice rough. “Accidents happen.”

“But—”

“Enough!” He reached out to enfold Wanda June in a clumsy bear hug, his big hand awkwardly patting her back as though she were six instead of sixteen. When he lifted his head to look at her, Wanda June offered him a watery smile.

“Okay now?” Cassidy asked when the sitter’s breathing evened and the trembling eased off.

“Yes, I think so.”

The girl lifted her head and took a step backward. “Honey, you need to rest,” Karen told her gently. “Why don’t you go on home?”

“I’d rather stay here until…you know.”

Karen drew a breath. “Okay, but I want you to wait in the truck where it’s dry.”

Wanda June nodded. “Call me if…when…?”

“I will. I promise.”

Karen watched until Wanda’s slender silhouette blended into the darkness, then shifted her gaze to Cassidy once more. “Thank you for that.”

“For what?”

“For helping her to forgive herself.”

“She’s just a kid, doing the best she knows how. I knew better, and I let Vicki go out in this weather, anyway.” Because he’d never been able to say no when she’d sugared him the way he’d taught her to sugar her pony.

“Cassidy, don’t.” He jerked free of her touch. “Let it be, Karen.”

“No, not this time.” Karen took a deep breath “You couldn’t have known that cave was there. No one knew, not even the old-timers. And a mud slide can happen anytime, to anyone.”

“But it happened here! On land I thought I knew as well as my hand.”

“Cassidy, what happened was a freak occurrence, a one-in-a-million accident. If you need to blame someone, blame Mother Nature, because it’s not your fault any more than it’s Wanda June’s.”

“Bullshit. We both know it’s because of my weakness that our daughter is down in that cold hellhole, fighting to stay alive.”

“Stop beating up on yourself. You were on the other side of the ranch when she fell. Besides, you’re the strongest man I know.”

“Oh yeah, I’m strong, all right. So strong I gave in and let you go back to your precious job when I knew you belonged at home with our daughter.”

Karen’s mouth fell open. He knew he’d hurt her, but the resentment he’d bottled up for too long came tumbling out. “Oh, yeah, I knew better, all right,” he went on mercilessly, his fists knotted, “but I kept thinking you’d come to your senses.”

“I…see,” she murmured carefully. “Yes, I understand how you could come to blame yourself.”

She took two steps backward before stumbling over some unseen obstacle. Cassidy was at her side instantly, his strong arm wrapping around her waist to keep her from falling.

“Kari, I didn’t mean…I don’t—”

“Cassidy! Karen! Come quick!” It was Gallagher’s voice. And his tone was urgent—and exultant! Karen was already fighting tears of relief when he added excitedly, “We have her! Hot damn, she’s safe!”

Chapter One

March 18

As Karen turned onto Gold Rush Street where she’d lived for most of her childhood, she couldn’t help smiling to herself. In one of Grand Springs’s oldest neighborhoods, the thoroughfare was wide enough for four cars and lined with huge, gnarled oaks and towering cottonwood trees that covered the generous front lawns with glorious red and gold leaves in the fall and wisps of white every summer.

After parking the car in her mom’s driveway, Karen propped her arms on the steering wheel for a moment and gazed through the windshield at her childhood home. Built in the twenties for a bank president, the house itself had an oddly disjointed style and a seemingly random mix of red brick and shiplap siding, which always reminded her of a slightly eccentric but sweet-tempered dowager taking her ease in the sunshine.

With a weary sigh, Karen closed her eyes for a second, wondering why on earth she’d come here. Although she’d told her mother she would be stopping by to drop off some steaks from a steer Cassidy had had butchered last week, that was only an excuse. The truth was that Karen had needed to come home, if only for a while, to lick her wounds and regroup.