“You don’t look so good,” Stan said with a grin.
“What can I say?” Mark asked weakly. “I’ve always wanted a cleft in my chin, but I didn’t expect one across the side of my head.”
The men laughed with relief—he still had his sense of humor, and Allie felt an overwhelming joy. He was still Mark, the Mark she’d fallen in love with once, the Mark she had married, the Mark who had, once upon a time, been able to make her laugh—until the fears and anxieties and disappointments of the last few months had interfered.
“So,” Stan probed, growing more serious. “Did you remember something about the killer?”
Mark shook his head. “I wish. No, I’m worried about Allie, man.”
Allie blinked back the mist in her eyes. “Why, Mark? What do you mean?”
“I’ve been watching over you since the murders started. Now I can’t, and I don’t like it. So Stan, I wanted to ask you a favor.”
“What?” Stan asked. “You know I’m doing whatever it takes to find the killer.”
“I know. But I want you to find Allie a bodyguard. I’ll pay him whatever it costs. I’ll sell my car if I have to. I can ride my ten-speed to work, or walk. But I want someone watching over my wife while I’m in here.”
Allie took his hand, and he closed his fingers around hers and pulled it to his lips.
“I can do that, buddy,” Stan said. “No problem. I’ll call T.J. Porter. He’s always looking to make some extra dough, and he’s got a bunch of debts to pay off. Besides that, he’s a giant, and looks menacing enough to scare off the meanest scumbag.”
“Yeah, he’ll do fine.”
Allie wasn’t sure she liked the idea of someone being with her twenty-four hours a day. “Mark, don’t you think I’ll be okay as long as I’m here?”
“No, I don’t,” he said. “You aren’t safe anywhere.” He looked up at Stan. “Hire him, and get him here tonight, okay? I know it’ll be late, but you’re a big, important cop, and you can coax security into letting him in, right?”
“I’ll do my best. I’m more worried about getting him to come on such short notice. He may even be on duty.”
“I’ll be forever beholden, Stan. Think if it was your wife.”
Stan had thought of that. “You got it. Somebody’ll be here, even if it’s me. But Mark, they won’t allow a gun in here.”
“Not even for a cop?”
“For an on-duty cop, maybe, but not for a Newpointe off-duty bodyguard.”
Mark looked distressed. “Well, a gun wouldn’t have done me any good today. But I managed to keep him from hitting Allie. I want someone who’ll do that.”
“T.J.’ll do it, if I can get him. I’ll do my best.”
Mark seemed to rest at that idea. “Okay. I’m counting on you.” He turned to Nick. “So, Nick, are you gonna pray with me, or what?”
Nick grinned. “You bet I am.”
Holding hands, they all prayed together for God’s victory in all of this.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
They were on their way back into the waiting room when Stan’s beeper began to vibrate. He checked the number. It was the Kenner Police Department where he’d spent the afternoon, and the extension was for Peter Blanc. He quickly went to the phone and called the detective back.
“Blanc,” the man barked.
“Blanc, Stan Shepherd. Did you page me?”
“Yeah. We gotta witness, called in just a while ago. Said she remembers lettin’ in a man in uniform right before the shootin”. Said he was a fireman and was answerin’ a call, so she let ’im right in.”
“A fireman? Did you check with the fire department to see if they really had any calls?”
“I know how to do my job, Shepherd. Yeah, I checked, and there was no calls from the airport today, ’cept in regard to the shootin’.”
“A fireman,” Stan repeated, incredulous.
“Said he was wearin’ a bunker coat hangin’ open and fireman’s hat with that clear mask down.”
“She didn’t think that was odd?” Stan asked.
“Said she was busy and took ’im at his word.”
“What was his description?”
“Average height, she says, somewhere ’tween five-eleven and six-two. Didn’t notice eye or hair color under the hat and mask. Says she prob’ly couldn’t ID him.”
“Did she see him again after the shooting?”
“Nope. Says she was distracted and takin’ cover. One thing,” Blanc said. “She said his shirt under the bunker coat was gray. Our firefighters wear blue. What they wear in Newpointe?”
Stan closed his eyes, letting the horror sink in. “They wear gray.” He felt nauseous. “How come the other witness didn’t mention the bunker coat?”
“I was gettin’ to that,” Blanc said. “We searched that air conditioner unit he was on again, and found a bunker coat and hat wedged down between the unit and the building. He prob’ly ditched it before he started shootin’. Guess what fire department was identified on the hat?”
Stan didn’t want to know, but he forced himself to ask. “What?”
“Newpointe,” Blanc said. “Our man may be one o’ your firefighters.”
Stan couldn’t speak. “Look, do me a favor, will you, Blanc? Don’t leak this. We don’t have that big a fire department in Newpointe. If the media gets hold of it, they’ll blow it for us. I have to be careful, or we’ll spook him and lose him. Can I have your word that you’ll keep this just between us?”
“You think you can narrow it down?”
“Yes. Do I have your word or not?”
“All right, you got it. I got better things to do than start a frenzy.”
Stan hung up and tried to think. His head was beginning to throb, and he was shaking. Someone touched his shoulder, and he jumped. He turned around and saw his wife. “Celia.”
“Honey, are you all right?”
“Yeah, fine. I have to call T.J. Mark wants a bodyguard for Allie. But I have to get back to the Northshore. I’ve got a lead on the killer.”
Nick was standing nearby. “A lead? Really?”
“Yes.” Stan tried to remember if he’d eaten. He felt lightheaded. Vaguely, he remembered eating something…lunch? Breakfast? He wasn’t sure. “Look, Nick, can you stay until T.J. gets here, assuming I can get him?”
“I think so.”
He dialed information to get T.J.’s number.
Moments later, Stan headed back across the waiting room to Allie. “T.J. is coming, Allie. I called down to security, and they said the doors will stay open until ten. He should be here before that, although he might be cutting it close because he’s on duty and has to wait for a replacement.”
“Okay,” she said.
“I’ll stay with you until he gets here,” Nick said. “Then I’ll head back to the station.”
Stan fought the urge to tell Nick what he knew, so that he’d be careful whom he trusted. But he couldn’t. Everyone was suspect.
As he and Celia left, Stan had the feeling that his real work was just beginning.
A few minutes later, while Allie was saying good-bye to Eddie, who was shaking so badly he would undoubtedly head straight to the nearest bar, the waiting room phone rang and someone called out, “Branning family.”
Jill was closest to it and took the phone. “Hello? This is Jill Clark.”
“Jill, hi. Dan Nichols. I just wanted an update.”
She smiled. “Hi, Dan. Well, let’s see. Mark is conscious, and there doesn’t seem to be any apparent brain damage. He’s talking a lot, making demands, worrying about Allie.”
“You’re kidding. He’s doing that well?”
“Yes. God was really with him.”
He let out a heavy breath. “Man, I thought it would be—I don’t know. A whole lot worse.” His voice cracked.
“We all did.”
“Cale and George just came in to relieve some of us. I’m about to get off for the night.”
“Really?�
�� she asked. “Are they ready to come back this soon?”
“Said they needed to get back to work to get their minds off their problems. George said Tommy’s already asleep and his parents are baby-sitting, and he says he hasn’t been sleeping so well. Anyway, they insisted, so I thought I’d come down there and hang out for a while.”
Her heart leapt slightly, but she told herself that was silly. He was just a man. “Well, okay. You’ll have to hurry, because I think they lock the doors at ten. And I’m not sure you can get out if you’re in past that time.”
“So I’ll stay all night. I can sleep anywhere. Besides, I’ve worried about Allie all day. She shouldn’t be alone, not with this guy out there still running loose. If he’d shoot in broad daylight at a crowded airport, he could be capable of anything.”
“Already taken care of. Mark got Stan to hire T.J. Porter to be her bodyguard. He’ll come as soon as he can find a replacement. He’s on duty right now.”
“Well, why don’t I call and tell him he doesn’t have to come? I could stay with her all night, and he could come in the morning. I wouldn’t have a weapon or anything—”
“They wouldn’t let you, anyway.”
“Well, right. But my presence might be a deterrent if the creep tried to pull anything tonight. I’m no Hulk Hogan, but I don’t think your average Joe would want to take me on.”
Jill grinned. Maybe the rumors about his vanity were true.
“I know Allie would appreciate it, Dan. And Mark would feel good knowing you were the one here. Frankly, I’d appreciate it, too. I was planning to stay all night with Allie, but I’ve been a little concerned, too. I’m not much protection. Nick’s here now, but he plans to go back to work tonight.”
“Tell him help is on the way. I’ll be there in half an hour.”
“It takes at least forty, Dan.”
“Not the way I drive,” he said.
It was the first time Jill had laughed in days.
Chapter Forty
Dan looked like a breath of fresh air when he blew into the ICU waiting room wearing his gray firefighter’s uniform. Just having him here made Allie feel closer to Mark, for Dan was his closest friend.
She noted the unusual grin on Jill’s face when Dan came in, and she wondered if there was some interest developing there that her friend hadn’t confided.
“Thanks for coming, Dan,” Allie said, kissing his cheek. “When Mark asked for a bodyguard, I really dreaded it. I like T.J. and everything, but I don’t know him that well. I’m glad you came instead.”
“No problem,” Dan said. “I should have changed clothes, though. This uniform caught a lot of attention from the press downstairs. Guess all us Newpointe firefighters are celebrities now, whether we want to be or not.” He sat down and crossed an ankle over his knee. “CNN called the station a while ago. Wanted to interview some of us. I couldn’t go on national television until I’d had a haircut though, so I passed.”
Allie was surprised. “Your big chance to be discovered, Dan, and you passed?”
He winked. “I figured I’d let the others have a chance. Maybe after the haircut. Anyway, thank goodness for Cale and George or I couldn’t have come.”
“How are they?” Jill asked.
“Down. But they’re okay. Cale really needed to get back to work, be around his friends, get his mind off of things. And George just wanted to help in some way.” He gazed down at Allie. “So how are you doing?”
“I’m okay.”
“Have you eaten?”
She shook her head. “I’m not hungry.”
“Allie, you have to eat.”
“She’s fasting,” Jill said. “It’s okay. She knows what she’s doing.”
Jill didn’t mention that she was fasting, too, but Allie understood why. Somehow, the privacy of the decision lent more reverence to it—something that was just between God and them.
At eleven P.M., the families were called in for their last visit of the night. Dan walked Allie to the door of ICU, then he and Jill went to the window looking down onto the small courtyard behind the hospital.
“It’s gonna be a long night,” Jill whispered, looking out on the lights flickering off the surface of the pond. It all seemed surreal—her being here, knowing that today her best friend’s husband had been shot in the head.
“You’ll make it shorter,” Dan said. “I’m sure Allie appreciates your friendship right now. How long have you two been friends?”
“About five years,” Jill said. “Since she and Mark got engaged.” She smiled at the memory. “You know how it is. Most of my friends from high school moved away. I got to know Allie at church, and we just hit it off. She and Mark were constantly trying to fix me up with some friend or other.”
“Really?” he asked. “Wonder why they never fixed you up with me?”
She laughed. “Maybe because I put a stop to it after the third or fourth time. I convinced them I could wait for Mr. Right to find me.”
His grin was so disarming she had to look away. “And has he?”
“Nope,” she said. “Still waiting.”
“So how’d you feel when they split up?”
“Depressed,” she said. “I always thought if there was ever a couple whose marriage was made in heaven, they were it. I haven’t given up yet, though.”
“I’ve wondered if you were planning to represent Allie if they had a divorce.”
“I would, of course, but I really hate for it to come to that.”
“Yeah, me too,” he said. “Maybe this shook them up enough to change things.”
“I don’t know. I gotta tell you, I’ve been amazed at the way he’s tried to protect her through all this. Maybe we all need a glimpse of life without someone we love once in a while, just to teach us not to take them for granted.”
“So you think they’ll get back together when this is over?”
“Who knows?” she said. “A woman doesn’t fast and sit in a waiting room all night keeping vigil for her husband if she doesn’t love him. She doesn’t fall apart the way I saw Allie do today if she’s lost her feelings for him. And a man doesn’t take a bullet for just anybody.”
“Well, no one ever thought they didn’t love each other. But they had some pretty fierce differences. He got to where he didn’t like to go home anymore. Said she was always nagging him about things.”
Jill bristled. “He called it nagging. But she had a right to confront him about his time in bars with his friends from work, about the fact that he wasn’t pulling his weight in the shop on his days off from the fire department, about his relationship with other women—”
“Boy. She didn’t leave anything out, did she?”
Jill was a little embarrassed that she’d said so much. “We’re close. We talk a lot.”
“Yeah, well.” Dan crossed his arms and looked at his reflection in the window. “That’s one of the reasons I’ll never get married. The minute you tie the knot, you’ve got that other person telling the world every little thing you do in private. Your life is thrown out there for everyone to criticize.”
“Oh, come on. Don’t tell me Mark didn’t talk to you about Allie.”
He abandoned his reflection and turned back to her. “Of course he did. That’s what I mean. They did it to each other. One of them did something wrong, and the next thing you know, they’re telling their friends what a jerk the other one is. And a guy like me, who’s never been married, stands back and watches, and thinks they’d all be better off if they were single.”
“Single isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” Jill said. “Before their breakup, there weren’t many days when I wouldn’t have traded places with Allie in a minute. Not to be married to Mark, but just to belong to someone, to have that hope of having a family.”
“A family would be nice,” Dan said with a soft chuckle, “if it weren’t for that pesky marriage thing.”
Jill looked seriously at him, wondering if she’d misjudged him all those tim
es she’d seen him in church.
“No, don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I’m thinking of Paul, and his encouragement to stay single. He felt marriage distracted people from God’s work. That’s why it was preferable not to be married.”
“But that wasn’t God’s instruction to his children,” she said. “It was Paul’s opinion, that was all. The whole point of that passage was to tell us how focused and devoted we should be to Christ—not to tell us that marriage is wrong. God loves marriage and family. Even in Eden, his first commandment was to be fruitful and multiply.”
“True. But the earth is populated now. We don’t have to fill the earth with our offspring anymore.”
“So marriage is obsolete?” she asked with a smirk.
He shrugged. “No. I just think it’s a lot less complicated to be single. Look at all these guys in the fire department. Most of them are going nuts protecting their wives, scared to death of losing them—and they might. It may be a good thing that there’s nobody I can lose that would make me grieve like that.”
“And you’re determined to keep it that way?”
“Well, yeah, sort of. I like being unattached. Hey, if I want to take off for a trip on my days off, I can. I don’t have to make arrangements, leave instructions, call home every night…”
“Don’t you ever wish you had someone to call home to—or better yet, take with you?”
He laughed, and she noted the laugh lines crinkling out from his eyes. “Sometimes. But then I remind myself that there are strings attached in every relationship. Conditions. Expectations.”
“And you stop wishing?”
“Something like that.”
She didn’t know why that disappointed her so. “I’m glad it’s so easy for you,” she said.
Dan got quiet for a moment. “So if you wanted to get married, Jill, why didn’t you?”
She shrugged. “I could have. I was serious about someone in college. But I had dreams of going to law school, and we broke up, and he married someone else. Since then, I’ve been in a few relationships, but they’re either self-centered, or they’re sports-centered, or they’re big around the center…”
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