by Alana Terry
It was just as well. Just a few more minutes. Then she’d be home.
At the doorway he turned. Something small was in his hands. He aimed it at her.
Kimmie didn’t even hear the gun’s explosion. Chuck’s words and threats meant nothing anymore. She closed her eyes. She was ready to go home.
CHAPTER 47
It was everything her mother told her it would be. The streets were made of glass, the gates of the most exquisite jewels.
He was there. She could sense him even though she didn’t see him, the warmth of his fatherly love soothing over any pain, silencing any fears. She wanted to run to him, but something was stopping her.
She didn’t understand. She could hear the distant music and wanted to join in the majestic chorus, but she was too far away. She couldn’t make out the melody, could only faintly hear it, sense it as a vague echo of what might have been.
It was getting quieter now, fading further off into the distance. Kimmie was frantic to find out what she had to do to get it back.
Is someone there? Is that you, Mom?
The music stopped, and the pain that battered every inch of her body immediately stole away any memory of the joy or peace she had previously felt. It had all been a dream. There was no heavenly bubble of protection, no glorious music, no majestic homecoming.
She was still alive. For all Chuck’s threats, he hadn’t managed to kill her after all.
Someone was with her, someone watching over her, trying to wake her up.
Mom? Are you here?
As soon as she tried to speak the words, Kimmie remembered her mother was in a different place, the paradise that Kimmie had only managed to glimpse from the other side of an unscalable chasm.
Her mom couldn’t help her now. Nobody could.
Kimmie shut her eyes again, wondering just how much longer she’d have to wait before she heard that heavenly music once again.
CHAPTER 48
It was hard to guess how many times Kimmie had drifted in and out consciousness, begging to wake up in the paradise she’d envisioned, only to find herself still lying in a broken heap on a bloodstained carpet. Where was Pip?
That one thought alone gave her reason to try to rouse herself. She had to find out if her brother was okay. Searing pain in her shoulder made crawling impossible, so she used her legs to scoot, inch by inch, collapsing every few feet from the effort. Through the roaring in her ears, she heard the Bible songs her mother used to sing.
I can do all things, I can do all things, I can do all things through him who gives me strength.
She didn’t know how far she’d moved. It felt like miles, except she was still in Dwayne’s bedroom. She had to make it downstairs. Had to check on Pip.
I can do all things, I can do all things, I can do all things …
Throughout the past ten years, the bulk of Kimmie’s prayer life had been spent asking God to release her and her family from Chuck’s tyranny. When the Lord remained silent, she eventually grew tired of asking. But now, the instinct to pray, to plead, to call on the Lord for help, was just as strong as the urge to survive. She had to keep going. Had to make sure her brother was okay. She didn’t know the extent of her injuries and wasn’t sure if she was putting herself in more danger by trying to move. All she knew was that if Chuck had been angry enough to do this to her, he might have done anything to Pip. She had to find out. And if her brother was still in danger, she would fight her stepfather until her dying breath to keep Pip safe.
Down the hall, a trickle of wet blood following behind her, she pressed on to the staircase.
What now?
She couldn’t think about the pain. Couldn’t even think about her own survival. All she had to push herself forward was the image of her brother’s scared face. She had to get to Pip.
She tried to call out to him, but it hurt too much. She couldn’t inhale enough air. She blacked out on the top of the staircase, and when she opened her eyes again, they stung.
Smoke.
She did her best to look behind her but could only turn her head a few degrees before the pain rippled down to her ribs and radiated through her entire body. The smoke was coming from upstairs. She had to go down. She had to get to Pip.
Scooting on her bottom like a tiny toddler pretending the stairs were a giant slide, she grimaced against the pain and worked her way down. She nearly passed out once more on the center step but forced her eyes to stay open even though her mind registered nothing but the pain.
Pip. She had to save Pip.
Whatever Chuck had done, the fire was upstairs. She still had time. She had to save her brother.
At the bottom step, adrenaline soared through her, and she managed a few whole steps before tottering down. Her head was light. The pain in her shoulder made it nearly impossible to focus on anything else.
Help me, God.
She was moving again. It wasn’t graceful or efficient, but she struggled forward inch by painstaking inch to the living room, her lungs stinging with every breath she took. Whatever flames upstairs were causing the smoke, she couldn’t hear them over the roaring of her pulse in her ears.
Just another ten feet to the living room.
“Pip,” she croaked, steeling herself for whatever she might find. Would he be injured too? She had no idea how she’d carry him, but she’d muster the strength to get him out of this house and to safety. That’s all that mattered. She might be dead in ten minutes, but as long as she got Pip outside, it would be okay.
She grabbed onto the doorframe and pulled herself forward with a groan.
She was in the living room.
But her brother wasn’t there.
CHAPTER 49
Kimmie woke up from another blackout, trying to remember what she was doing on the floor in a room full of smoke.
Someone was calling her name, someone muffled and far away.
Where was Pip?
She tried to push herself up, but there was no connection left between her brain’s demands and her body’s ability to comply.
“Pip!” She was screaming the word, or at least she thought she was, but she couldn’t hear herself.
Smoke stung her lungs. She tried to cough, but the hot pain streaking from her ribs immobilized her completely.
What had Chuck done to Pip?
“Kimmie.” She ignored the voice. She had a job to do. She couldn’t fail her brother. If only she could remember how to move.
A man’s face frowned down at her. Fingers touched her face, but she didn’t feel them. He was saying something to her, but she couldn’t understand the words. It wasn’t until he tried to move her that she fought him off. No, she needed to save Pip. He couldn’t take her anywhere.
She thrashed her body, fighting him off, confusion and pain clouding out any higher reasoning. She screamed her brother’s name, the first time she’d managed to make her own voice heard.
He whispered something in her ear, but she couldn’t hear it over the deafening roar of flames.
CHAPTER 50
Kimmie blinked her eyes open.
“Can you hear me?” A kind face gazed down at her, the relief evident in his eyes.
Her lips were dry and cracking.
“Don’t try to talk,” he told her. “They’re taking you to the hospital. You’re going to be all right.”
She didn’t believe him. He was lying to her. She was dying. There was no way to recover from injuries this severe. And she’d failed to save her brother.
The stretcher she was lying on bounced as it was wheeled down her sister’s walkway. Ahead of her she saw the iron gate wide open and wondered how the ambulance had managed to get inside. The stretcher turned as they approached the vehicle, and she saw her sister’s home engulfed in flames.
“Pip!” The sound was deafening, a roar of pain and terror and trauma and disbelief. “Pip!” Her soul screamed out the words, but all she could hear were kind assu
rances from the man beside her.
“Everything’s going to be okay.” Yet another lie.
The stretcher was hefted into the back of the ambulance. She shut her eyes, but all she could see were the flames that had claimed her brother’s life. She hadn’t reached him in time. It didn’t matter what happened to her now. They might as well let her die as quickly as possible.
She was ready.
There was nothing left for her on earth.
CHAPTER 51
Kimmie woke up to the sound of a muffled conversation.
“… captured right near Northern Lights Boulevard …”
“… arson and attempted murder …”
“… still can’t believe how this could have happened.”
She opened her eyes. “Hello?”
Her sister was at her bedside in an instant. “You’re awake. Hey, over here. She’s awake. Someone go get the nurse. Wait, I’ll use the call button. Do you need more morphine?”
Kimmie squinted her eyes in the blinding overhead light and wondered if this was how Chuck felt when he woke up with a hangover.
“How are you doing?” Taylor was beside her. There was something familiar about his presence. Memories of smoke and flame flashed in her mind.
“That was you?” Her voice was hoarse and untested, unfamiliar even to herself, but he smiled.
“Yeah. That was me.”
“Wasn’t he heroic?” Meg crooned.
He reached out and took Kimmie’s hand. She squeezed as tightly as she could. She wanted to hear the truth from him. Meg would just ruin it all with her tears and emotionalism. Taylor would tell her the truth. He’d help her accept what happened.
“Was Pip …?” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the question but continued to hang onto him, praying he’d understand.
Taylor glanced at Meg. No, Kimmie wanted to hear it from him. She gave his hand one last, pleading squeeze, and Taylor cleared his throat. “You want to hear everything?”
“I think she should rest,” Meg inserted.
Shut up, Kimmie wanted to say but kept her eyes focused on Taylor.
He set his other hand on top of hers. “Pip was in the house when your stepdad started that fire. We think Chuck was looking for letters your mom sent Meg, letters depicting the kind of abuse you and your family suffered, letters indicating she was planning to run away but was afraid if Chuck found out, he’d kill her. He wanted to destroy what evidence he could, and when he didn’t find what he was looking for, we can only assume he torched the place in hopes of covering his tracks.”
Kimmie didn’t care about motive or method. She only wanted to know how much her brother had suffered.
“Pip was a very brave, very smart little boy,” Taylor went on. “When I got to your sister’s place, I called the fire department and saw you in the living room. I got you out but you were worried about Pip so I went back to look for him. I found him hiding in the bathtub, surrounded by his toy cars.”
Kimmie’s throat seized in pain when she asked, “Was he hurt?”
Taylor shook his head. “He’s doing great. The doctors want to check him out, but from everything we can tell, your stepdad never laid a hand on him. Besides a little smoke inhalation, he’s going to be just fine.”
CHAPTER 52
Five days later
“Come on, hot stuff. Recovering from shoulder surgery is no excuse to miss your big date.” Meg dumped her bag full of cosmetics onto Kimmie’s hospital bed. “You know, there’s absolutely no way this guy would drive four hours and a half one way on his day off if he wasn’t already totally into you. Not to mention the fact that he singlehandedly broke down my door and rushed into a burning building to save your life.”
“And Pip’s,” Kimmie added weakly.
Meg grinned. “Right. And Pip’s. Which reminds me, you know that daycare he’s been going to? They actually have a worker going on maternity leave in exactly four weeks, which means if you want the job, it’s yours.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, but you can thank me later. Right now, I just need you to shut your eyes so I don’t poke you with my liner. No, don’t scrunch them up like that. Just look down. Like this.”
“Did anyone ever tell you that you’re bossy?”
“Thank you. Oh, speaking of bossy, you’re not going to forget to ask him about that prescription, are you? You can learn a lot about a man by what drugs he takes.”
“No, I’m not going to ask about his prescription. That’s his business.”
Meg shrugged. “Well, then, don’t come whining to me when you find out he’s got some fatal illness right when things are starting to get serious. Or have you ever considered that he could have an STD?”
“Will you cut it out?” Kimmie snapped.
“Fine. Fine. Now are you going to let me do your makeup or what? This man risked his life to save you. The least you could do in return is let me make you presentable.”
Four days later
“So you ready to be back home? Or at least back at your sister’s?” Taylor asked.
Kimmie held the hospital phone close to her ear in order to hear better over the sound of Pixar’s Cars playing loudly on the TV. “Yeah. It’ll be good to spend more time with Pip.”
“Is he enjoying that daycare?”
“Yeah. It’s a really nice place. I’ve talked to the director there a few times. She said her daughter was a lot like Pip, didn’t talk for the first few years, things like that, and now she’s a senior at Dimond High and planning to become a speech pathologist.”
“That’s awesome. Hey, is Pip there with you now?”
“Yeah.”
“Let me talk to the little Buster.”
Kimmie called Pip over, wincing when he jostled her injured shoulder as he made his way to his perch on her pillow, his favorite seat in her hospital room. “Trooper Taylor wants to say hi.”
She handed him the phone and could hear Taylor’s voice on the other end. “Hi, buddy. Are you having a good day?”
Pip stared at the receiver then ran his favorite car up and down it.
“What’s that noise?” Taylor asked. “What’s he doing?”
“He’s driving his car on the mouthpiece,” Kimmie explained. Giving her brother a kiss, she brought the phone back to her ear.
“That was one of our best conversations yet,” Taylor joked.
“I think he likes you.”
“Yeah?” Even across the miles, she could hear the grin in Taylor’s voice. “What makes you think that?”
“That was his favorite car. If he didn’t like you he would have used the dump truck.”
Twelve days later
Meg stood at the top of the staircase, shaking her head. “No. Absolutely not.”
Kimmie looked down at herself. “What’s wrong?”
“Nobody goes to La Mesa’s in flats and a plain brown sweater.”
“You’re the one who gave me this plain brown sweater.”
“And it’d be fine if he were taking you out for McDonalds. This is La Mesa. Sheesh. Super high-end.”
“I didn’t know.”
Meg rolled her eyes. “You’ve got to keep up with the times. Now go change”
Kimmie glanced at her clothes. “But I like this sweater.”
Meg rolled her eyes. “Sometimes I think you’re totally hopeless. You have no idea how into you this guy is. First he saves your life, then he spends every single day off driving all the way out here to take you to the fanciest restaurants in Anchorage. How clueless do you have to be?”
“About as clueless as the woman who didn’t know her husband was having an affair with the office assistant?”
Meg waved her hand in the air dismissively as she hurried down the stairs. “Touché. But I did know about it, for the record. I just didn’t want to say anything until we’d been married five years. And the timing couldn’t have been better. I’m getting
my share of the insurance money from the fire, and he can have the rest. Including Miss Secretary. And hey, if Taylor wants you to sign any prenups before you guys tie the knot, tell me and I’ll have my lawyer look it over for you. That guy literally saved my life.”
Kimmie rolled her eyes. “It’s our second date. The only knots I’m working on right now are the ones in the back of my head. Even with the physical therapy, I can’t manage to reach back there to get it brushed out.”
“That’s what you have me for. That and making sure you don’t walk into La Mesa’s looking like a thrift-store special. Come on. Let’s get you back to your room. I hate to say it, but we have a lot more work to do. By the way, did Officer Hard Abs ever respond to your text? What did he say?”
“It wasn’t my text, and I’m still mad at you for stealing my phone like that. You had no right, you know.”
Meg pulled Kimmie into her bathroom and started attacking her hair with a brush. “Ok. Sorry, not sorry. Now what did he say? Did he tell you what meds he’s on?”
“Actually, he told me he takes nothing but a multivitamin.”
“What about his prescription he picked up from the pharmacy?” Meg was yanking her hair mercilessly, but Kimmie still wanted to stretch the story out a little longer. Her sister deserved it.
“The day we ran into him in the clinic, he was picking up flu medicine for a little old lady who was too sick to leave her home.”
Meg stopped assaulting her with the brush and stared into the mirror. “Seriously? You’re not pulling my leg?”
Kimmie grinned. “I might be. Guess you’ll never know, will you?”
Meg reached into Kimmie’s pocket. “But I can look at your phone, can’t I?”
Kimmie giggled as she tried to push her sister away. “You can try, but I already deleted the text.”
“I should have never taught you how to use a cell.”