Walk Through the Fire (Finley Creek Book 10)

by Calle J. Brookes

  On that thought, Annie looked up—toward the back of the community center, where someone important must have just entered. The wild buzz that went through the crowd gave that away. The crowd shifted.

  And there he was. Annie stopped walking.

  She didn’t move again until the Hendersons bumped her on the way to their seats. Mr. Henderson asked her if she was ok, if he needed to get her young man for her. And asked where he was.

  He’d thought Jake was her husband more than two dozen times before. She had corrected him at first, but he struggled to remember things lately. The boys adored the Hendersons.

  So did Annie.

  “Jake’s not here tonight. He’s…working. I’m fine. Just a bit nervous in the crowd.”

  “You’ll do fine, sweetheart,” Mrs. Henderson said. She was a good fifteen years younger than her husband, and able to handle just about anything that came her way. Annie wished she had half Gabney Henderson’s confidence tonight. “Just be honest in what you say. Everyone will respect that. And the mayor…I believe he’s a reasonable man. He always was when I had him in the fourth grade.”

  “You were Tur—the mayor’s teacher?” Mrs. Henderson had taught at the larger Hughes-Barratt Elementary School for thirty-something years before retiring to take care of her husband when she’d been fifty-seven.

  “Yes. All of the Barratt boys, at one time or another.”

  “What was he like?” The question slipped out before she could stop it. Mrs. Henderson’s eyes twinkled for a moment. Annie fought the blush. “I mean…I…”

  “I know, sweetie. He’s grown into a fine-looking man. If you had to be pinned to a man, Turner is a good one. He was always a kindhearted boy. But a definite charmer. Politics suits him. He’ll do well leading the city. He always did want to help people. We need more politicians like him, and Marcus Deane.”

  Annie’s gaze shifted to the man in question.

  Just as he looked up. And his eyes met hers. His lips moved, saying something. She just knew it was her name.

  He took a half-step toward her, until the city councilman next to him stopped him.

  Annie’s breath caught. It was the first time she’d seen him in the week since Delancey McKellen had been relocated to Mel’s and Turner had been beaten up in his own front yard.

  Mel and Jillian were keeping her updated on how the woman was doing.

  She’d wakened and was now spending most of her time being entertained by Turner’s brother, Trevor.

  That was all anyone would tell her.

  Turner watched her for a moment, and she knew it was her that had his attention. His eyes always told her exactly what he was thinking when he looked at her.

  The man wanted her. Badly.

  The mayor was detrimental to her sanity. It was time Annie admitted it. A part of her wanted to do something crazy and go to him.

  But that was just crazy. She shouldn’t be acting like a fourteen-year-old being smiled at by the high school quarterback.

  Annie had more common sense than that.

  “I need to take my seat,” she murmured.

  She took her seat next to her sister, feeling like the entire room was going to press in on her.

  Annie looked up. Turner was watching her again.

  She just knew. She’d be talking to him before the night was over.

  67

  Dennis Lee had to say, the Boethe Street Community Center had a good turnout tonight. His constituents were the kind who took things to heart. Good people for the most part, just not a lot of middle-class ones in the bunch. Blue-collar all the way.

  Dennis Lee didn’t consider himself a classist, by any means. He’d started off hauling trash each night from three restaurants near the center of Boethe Street more than four decades ago. It had always been Boethe Street for Dennis Lee.

  He’d been born there, lived there, married there, worked there, and beaten there. When he’d left, he’d always returned there, until he’d just accepted that Boethe Street was where he was meant to be.

  He’d made his first million dollars building there twenty-five years ago.

  And he would make his one hundredth million now.

  Dennis Lee was the kind who counted that type of thing.

  He had fourteen of his men in the crowd. They were to take notes of any talk they heard around them. Make notes of who was going to be problematic.

  And then they were to report back to Dennis Lee. The mayor, that damned Barratt asshole, was going to be there tonight. Dennis Lee wanted to hear what he had to say. See if he could do his own version of crowd control somehow.

  Officer Eugent was at the back of the room. He had an apartment—subsidized by Dennis Lee—near the center of Boethe Street’s residential area. It was a small complex, no more than twenty units, but it was profitable. Dennis Lee had been born in the corner bottom unit. It held a special place in his heart.

  It was one of the businesses he was going to rip down himself. With relish.

  Maybe even man the controls to the machinery as a symbol of progress for his section of Finley Creek.

  He hadn’t meant to enter politics. That had been a biproduct of protecting his assets. But Dennis Lee had found he enjoyed it. Who cared if he was as crooked as they came? He always had been.

  Jenny came in, dressed in a sedate blue suit perfectly appropriate for a lower-class community meeting. It had taken him a while to help her with her image. Make her see she had to be relatable to her constituents.

  He ran the north section of Boethe Street as part of his district. Jenny ran the south. That stick Buchanan bordered them both to the east. It was time for Carl Buchanan to retire to play chess in the damned park. Get someone younger—and more malleable—in his position. Dennis Lee had a nice little candidate in mind already.

  It was one reason he’d cultivated the relationship with Jenny a few years back. Things ran more smoothly when he had Jenny’s cooperation.

  It hadn’t hurt that she was a little fireball in the sack. The woman loved to be touched and touch in return. She craved it. No wonder dickless Wallace hadn’t been enough for her.

  A man liked a woman who knew what she wanted and went for it.

  Turner was at the front of the podium now, looking at the crowd. Dennis Lee couldn’t miss the bruises. He smiled.

  Hopefully, the boy hadn’t gotten the message and taken it to heart. He’d best just stay out of Dennis Lee’s way.

  Dennis Lee just sat back, greeting people every chance he could—he couldn’t get re-elected if no one knew his name—and watched.

  68

  Turner studied the crowd, trying to get a feel for the atmosphere quickly. His attention was half on his deputy mayor Carl and half on the people coming in to the small, midcentury brick building.

  A flash of jade green caught his attention.

  Scrubs. Familiar ones.

  Annie.

  Turner’s palms slicked and his heart rate picked up. He felt like a teenager, entranced by the pretty girl for the first time. Suddenly, the meeting, the people around him, didn’t bother him as much. Not with the thought that she was there.

  Now he just had to make certain he didn’t embarrass himself in front of the woman he wanted.

  Ridiculous. He felt like he was in junior high again.

  Turner wanted to make his way to her, but that didn’t happen. The director of the community center brought the meeting to order, and then Turner was up. And no one was very happy to see him.

  Elliot had four officers in plain clothes in the crowd and two uniformed on each entrance. They were there mostly to keep Turner from getting toasted. He didn’t expect an attack here. Not directly like this. But it could happen.

  Never had he felt more like a target. At that moment, he wanted Annie as far away from him as possible.

  It was time for the meeting to begin. He waited for Carl to say a few words. Everyone was aware of what had happened to Carl’s grandson. Carl had mentioned his recovery
a week or so ago in the paper. He gave another quick update but was careful to keep Jason’s privacy protected.

  Carl had a way with the people. He was one of those people who were genuine in what they did. The crowd settled as Carl spoke.

  Turner mentally prepared what he was going to say.

  No one tonight was happy with him. He was the public face of a city facing horrible conditions for a while to come. Many other mayors had cracked under similar pressure. He’d discussed it a few times with the governor of Texas when their paths had crossed. No matter what happened out there, whether it was Turner’s fault or not, he was going to be blamed with it.

  It happened in politics all the time. He just had to be prepared for it. As he stepped up to the podium, his eyes landed on hers.

  69

  He was getting annihilated up there. But her neighbors wanted answers Turner just didn’t have. Answers no one could reasonably have right now. There just hadn’t been enough time to have the answers they wanted.

  No one in Finley Creek or Barratt County had been forgotten. Ninety percent of the people in the room were there because of damage from the storm. It had hit their neighborhood extremely hard. Most of the damage from the storm had occurred on the southern side of the town, including the hospital and the area directly behind it and just north of it. Her area.

  The Clean Up Boethe Street initiative had taken a definite backseat to the reparations from the storm. She understood it. He’d saved all but five houses from the initiative, after all. Shouldn’t that count for something? It had to.

  After Harley, a rude, obnoxious ass who had bluntly told her once he didn’t want boys of her kids’ type living in his neighborhood, practically blasted Turner as being responsible for the storm itself. The things Harley had said to her over the years were unprintable and unrepeatable. Only Jake’s regular presence was enough to keep him at bay. The guy had always been a jackass.

  When the crowd was getting restless and the questions were starting to repeat, and the hostility grew, Annie couldn’t take it any longer. Annie stood.

  Josie grabbed her hand. “What are you doing? Sit down, Ann.”

  “This is just getting stupid, Jo. Nothing is getting done. And people are running out of time. And he…Turner doesn’t deserve this. At all. He’s not like they’re making him out to be.”

  Annie raised her hand, and the deputy mayor looked at her. She recognized him from the hospital, where he’d sat with his grandson after a recent surgery. He’d seemed like a perfectly reasonable man. He was also on the board of directors of the hospital.

  She squared her shoulders. “I have something to say, and I’m going to say it.”

  The deputy mayor held up a hand and the crowd quieted reasonably well. Turner stood at the podium next to him. “Annie?”

  Annie pulled in a breath and tried to stop the shaking. What she was doing was crazy.

  Turner Barratt didn’t need her to defend him.

  Not by a long shot.

  There were others at the front of the community center. At least three were from the city council, she thought. And the deputy mayor. He was watching her with a kind expression on his face.

  All of them were watching her.

  But she had never let herself look like a fool in front of people. She was going to say what she had to say, and then she’d sit down, shut up, and never do this again.

  70

  So that was the little thing they were calling the Mayor’s Mystery Lover. How cute.

  Dennis Lee meant that.

  She reminded him of his Martina, with that brown hair and the pale eyes. She wasn’t any bigger than his Martie, either. Younger, by a good ten years, than his daughter. Probably just as unworldly.

  But the nerves were what got to Dennis Lee the most. The girl was about to shake apart.

  No doubt she wasn’t used to be in the limelight like this.

  The girl squared her shoulders and stepped up to the podium. She turned toward the mayor and looked at him.

  Turner betrayed exactly how he felt about that girl right then and there. If he loved her that much, the last thing he needed to do was broadcast it to whomever was watching.

  Didn’t see Dennis Lee all over his Jenny-girl like that. Fool.

  No. She was close to that friend Carl of hers. He would never understand the appeal of that dried stick. Carl Buchanan had always been a sanctimonious ass.

  It would do Carl some good to find a pretty lady and take a tumble or two. Or two thousand, make up for the lays he hadn’t gotten in the last forty years. Of course, that would cause his starched white undershorts to explode. Carl wasn’t exactly the type to attract the ladies.

  “I…” the girl said, drawing his attention back her way. Pretty girl. No wonder the mayor wanted her. “We have to be reasonable. All of us. For one thing, Turner Barratt didn’t cause the storm. And from the moment it hit, he’s done nothing but try to make it better for everyone he could. I should know. Most of you are aware that he pulled me from the rubble himself. We’d been trapped together. I was in his office, trying to convince him to help us.”

  “I just bet you were!” An idiot in the front row called out. Several of his contemporaries laughed.

  “Sit down and be quiet, Harley Borlin. I’m not finished talking. And you will listen to what I have to say.”

  Dennis Lee snorted. So the little buttercup had some fire in her shorts. Good for her.

  “Yes, ma’am! So the mayor’s why you won’t go out with me, Annie?”

  More laughs.

  “She won’t go out with you because you’re just a stupid pig, Harley!” a young girl called out from across the room.

  Typical community meeting on Boethe Street.

  Dennis Lee sat there and laughed to himself as the woman in front of the room told them all how wonderful the mayor was, how he was doing his best to help them all.

  And that’s when Dennis Lee figured out how to keep the mayor in line the best he could. People were remarkably easy to manipulate, after all.

  No doubt it would work again.

  71

  Carl watched the meeting as it swirled around him. It was far livelier than the city council meetings usually were. There were nearly one hundred and fifty people present. A crowd that felt passionately.

  It took Carl a moment to recognize the lady now speaking. Turner’s Annie; that’s who she was.

  Annie had a lot to say, and he had to hand it to her. She’d handled herself better than he had thought she could. She was so quiet and shy; it was easy to overlook her.

  If a man wasn’t discerning enough to see her for the intelligent woman she was.

  From what he’d seen of her around the hospital, she probably was a good fit for Turner. A bit on the young side for the mayor, but a smart politician could make that work. Turner was idealistic in a lot of ways. A young, innocent woman would be more his speed than one who had been a bit more jaded by the world. Carl could understand that.

  She’d be a pretty thing, standing beside Turner as he campaigned again. Maybe with a few pretty babies playing around their knees. Turner would be a good father. That was something Carl was easily convinced of. A natural.

  And as a nurse, one who’d been injured in the storm, many of the Finley Creek citizens would relate to her just fine.

  If Turner even planned to run. Carl would have to ask him that.

  Carl had briefly considered vying for the top town position, but with what had happened to Jason and how his grandson needed help dealing with the trauma associated with his closest friend’s injuries, Carl just couldn’t justify the time the city would need now.

  Not with the storm and it’s aftereffects.

  Better a man unencumbered for now.

  Jennifer would just have to get over it.

  Or run herself. Like she’d been planning.

  It had been a nice evening they’d shared, after the dinner at which he’d told her he didn’t plan to run for mayor.
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  She’d laughed and teased him about knowing she would be the better candidate. The two of them had always had a slightly competitive relationship. And it was truth; he had liked challenging her when he could. They were both cerebral people, liking the chess game that business ultimately was.

  It was a strong relationship, one that had lasted fourteen years now. But it would always remain competitive.

  They fed off it.

  Carl was worried about her. What her husband had done had greatly shaken her. How could it not?

  You didn’t sleep next to a man for thirty-something years and never realize he could kill. That had shaken her confidence in ways Carl didn’t know how to fix. Thank God Wallace hadn’t killed anyone.

  He didn’t think Jennifer would have been able to live with the knowledge of that.

  He wanted to fix things for her. Despite her slightly chilly personality and her manipulative ways, he loved her. He always would.

  He would give her time to get over what Wallace had done to her, give her time for the publicity to die down from it, then he would ask her to divorce her husband and be with him the way she should have years ago.

  Carl was looking forward to it. They’d take care of Jason together and have the sort of life she deserved.

  But first, Turner looked like he could use a bit of help with Annie. Carl stepped in to do what he could.

  72

  He held her hand as they walked. Through the neighborhood she’d grown up in. Without her sister. She thought it had been the deputy mayor who had arranged it all. Something about Turner grabbing another tour of the area to check progress.

  As soon as the crowd had cleared from the community center and Turner was free to leave, he’d taken her hand in his and led her right out of the building.

  Annie didn’t know how that had even happened, or why she had let it.