Southern Storm

by Terri Blackstock

  Sadie hoped her own fragile look didn’t attract the same kinds of men.

  Was Trevor like the many men who’d come in and out of her mother’s life? Wild, dangerous, reckless?

  No. She turned from the mirror and banished that thought. Trevor was not like Morgan and Jonathan said. He was decent, sweet . . .

  . . . and looked like he belonged in Hollywood.

  It would all turn out fine, and Morgan and Jonathan would never know she’d lied.

  Caleb had already been bathed and was dressed in his pajamas, taking his bedtime bottle as Morgan rocked him. For so long, Sadie had served as his surrogate mother, and it had been a heavy burden. What a miracle that Morgan had stepped into that role, and now he had two surrogate parents who delighted in him, leaving Sadie to enjoy him as a sister and not his sole protector.

  She left them thinking she was walking to the Methodist church for the dance, but instead walked toward the boathouse that Morgan and Jonathan kept for the tenants of Hanover House. It was the place she had discovered months ago when she was a scared runaway with a broken arm. It had been a comfortable place to rest and hide. It had also been a place of terror where bullets had been fired and people had been killed. But now it was a place of redemption, she thought, where Trevor Beal would meet her, and things in her life would begin to turn around.

  When she walked up the long dirt road toward the Bull River that fed into the Atlantic, she saw him leaning there against the wooden structure, his arms folded and his feet crossed at the ankles. He looked like one of those renegade guys in a prime-time television show, with his dark hair and his blue eyes and that knowing grin on his face. Her face flushed with pleasure at the sight of him.

  “So, you came,” he said, pushing off from the wall. “I was afraid you wouldn’t.”

  She smiled. “Me? Why wouldn’t I?”

  He put his arm around her shoulders and kissed her on the lips, startling her. She hadn’t expected that. She had kissed guys before back in Atlanta, greasy motorcycle types with tattoos on their arms and no familiarity with shampoo bottles or soap.

  They’d been some of the ones who came and went from her house when Jack was manufacturing his crystal meth and raking in the bucks as he made it available. She’d never had a guy kiss her in a chaste way that suggested he had nothing further in mind.

  “You look awesome,” he said, his face near hers. “Absolutely awesome.”

  She started to tell him he did too, but her throat seemed to tighten. Taking her hand, he pulled her to his car—a black Firebird that she had often watched driving away from school.

  He helped her in. “So you’re okay with this?”

  She looked up at him, and her fears fled. His eyes were so crystal clear, so honest. “I think I am,” she said, “only I feel pretty crummy about lying to them. I told them I was going to the Methodist dance.”

  “So we’ll go.” He went around the car and got behind the wheel. “I’ll drop you off at the door and you can step inside, buy a ticket if you want to, walk through. Hang out for a minute. Then you can say you were really there.”

  She thought about that for a moment. That would make her feel less like a liar. “That might help. But I can’t be seen there with you.”

  “I’ll wait in the car, and then we’ll go out to eat. There’s a new restaurant in Savannah that I’ve been wanting to try. I’ve heard a lot about it.” His voice was a lazy rumble that made her heart flip into a triple-time cadence.

  “But we could be seen there too. I really don’t want to make Morgan and Jonathan mad. Maybe we ought to stay here, just sit out in the boathouse and look at the water and talk.”

  Those eyes. She watched them laugh as if he loved the idea. “Sounds good to me. Just the two of us, alone.”

  She looked away quickly. Maybe that was a mistake—to be alone with him. “Or maybe we could get a hot dog on the beach and go for a walk. Not a date, so I wouldn’t really be lying that much.”

  “And don’t forget that Crystal’s having her party tonight. We could still go if you wanted.”

  She laughed bitterly. “Yeah, like I’d really want to go to that.”

  “All right,” he said, “but first things first. We need to eat, and I don’t want to buy you a hotdog. You’ll think I’m cheap.”

  Cheap? In his brand-new Firebird that made her feel like Somebody?

  “Come on,” he said. “We’ll go into Savannah and eat at this little place, and we won’t call it a date. It’ll be just two friends interviewing each other.”

  “Interviewing?” she asked.

  “Yeah. You used to work for the paper, right? Just pretend you’re interviewing me and I’m interviewing you.”

  “We’re playing games with words,” she said. “Trying to make me feel better about telling lies to people I love.”

  “Well, we’re playing games with words whether we sit at the beach or go out to eat. You’re on a date with me, Sadie. Face it. You lied to Morgan and Jonathan, but it was for a good reason.”

  She didn’t like the reality of that, but she wasn’t about to back out now. “Okay, let’s go eat.”

  “Then when we get back it’ll be getting dark and I’ll drop you by the dance. You can go in and make your little appearance and come back to the car. Then we’ll go sit on the beach and talk. By then it’ll be too dark and nobody will recognize us.”

  It sounded good to her, so she tried to relax as he started the car and pulled away from the boathouse.

  They sat over mozzarella sticks and hamburgers, and Sadie listened to funny stories about Trevor’s charades with his teachers in school.

  Finally he took her back to Cape Refuge, to the Methodist church. She ran in and paid for a ticket, walked around the rec hall and heard the band, saw the people dancing and having fun, and quickly headed back out to his car.

  He drove them to a public parking lot on the side of the beach, and they walked across the sand and sat on a blanket he’d brought, watching the waves hit against the shore. Not too far away they could see the firelight of Crystal’s party. The music made its way all the way up to where they were, and she heard the sounds of laughter and people having fun. She looked in that direction and wondered if Trevor wished he were there.

  “I heard that Crystal’s parents let her have alcohol at her parties,” Sadie said.

  “Oh, sure,” Trevor said. “They’re real laid-back. They don’t get all hung up over the stuff most parents do.”

  She didn’t know what to think about that. Were Morgan and Jonathan “hung up”? Her own mother sure hadn’t been.

  “What about yours?” she asked. “Do they let you drink?”

  “They let me do what I want,” he said. “They trust me.”

  Somehow she had expected him to say that, and as she turned it over in her mind, it seemed reasonable and healthy.

  He put his arm around her so naturally that it was as if they’d been going out for a very long time. It made her feel as if she belonged to someone, as if she had worth and value, as if she wasn’t the school outcast whom everyone wanted to avoid.

  “So when do you have to be home?”

  “Ten. That’s when the dance is over.”

  “All right.” He looked over at the party still going on. The music drifted up on the wind.

  “You’re going to go to the party, aren’t you?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Well, why shouldn’t I? I mean if you’re not going to be with me, I’ve got to have something to do.”

  She knew he was right. She couldn’t expect him to go home and moon over her. She supposed it was fine. She just hoped word didn’t get around that he had been out with her earlier tonight. She hoped she could trust him to keep the secret.

  As he walked her back toward Hanover House, she realized how much she dreaded the secret she was keeping. The more people knew about it, the more likely she would be to get into trouble. She didn’t want Morgan and Jonathan to be disappointed in her.
>
  He held her hand as they walked back, and finally he stopped across from Hanover House and kissed her on the lips. This time it was a slow, mournful kiss, a kiss that said good-bye . . . but not for long.

  “Say you’ll go out with me again,” he said.

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow night.”

  Sighing, she looked up at her house. “I don’t think I can come up with another lie for tomorrow night. I’m going to get caught.”

  He pulled her closer. “It’ll be okay,” he said. “Just tell them you’re going for a walk along the beach. Some friends of mine are having another party tomorrow night. Don’t worry, Crystal won’t be there. It’s mostly friends I know from my boating club. For the most part they’re college-aged, so you probably won’t even know them.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “The more people that see me with you . . .”

  “What do you think, they’re going to call Morgan up and say, ‘Oh, by the way, I saw Sadie out with Trevor last night’? These are the kind of people who mind their own business.”

  He tipped her chin up and kissed her again, and she melted in it, washed in a tide of protection, propriety, possession. She liked the way that felt.

  “All right,” she whispered. “I’ll meet you out at the South Beach Pier at eight. How’s that sound?”

  “Eight? That’s too late.”

  “It has to be late,” she said. “I’ll tell them that I’m going to my room to read and that I’m turning in early, and then I’ll sneak out when they’re not looking and I’ll meet you, okay?”

  He chuckled. “I kind of like this clandestine stuff. Makes me feel real decadent.”

  Decadent wasn’t something she’d ever wanted to be, but she dismissed that thought. “I probably can’t stay long. I don’t want to make any noise coming back in, and the later I get there, the more locked up everything will be. They have rules.”

  “All right,” he said. “So we’ll do whatever you have to do to keep from getting caught. I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

  Sadie floated back into the house. Morgan waited in the den, hemming a skirt that she had on her lap. She had made it for Sadie to wear to church. “Hey,” she said as she came in.

  “Hey, there!” Morgan sounded oblivious. “How was the dance?”

  Sadie had trouble looking her in the eye. “Fine.”

  “Did you like the band?”

  “It was okay.”

  Morgan stared at her for a moment, and her smile faded. She got up and came to face her, and Sadie wondered if she could see the deceit on her face. “Honey, what’s wrong? Did something happen?”

  Sadie forced a smile. “No, really. It was fun. I’m just tired.”

  Morgan looked skeptical. “Then you’ll go back to the next one?”

  “Maybe.” She started up the stairs. “Is Caleb asleep?”

  “Yeah, I put him to bed a couple of hours ago.”

  Sadie stood there awkwardly, knowing that she had guilt written all over her face. “I think I’ll go on to bed then,” she said.

  “Okay, goodnight, honey.”

  “Goodnight.” She didn’t look back at the worried expression on Morgan’s face as she hurried to her room.

  CHAPTER 27

  Cade woke, still locked in the tiny room, with the pain of his bullet wounds radiating through his body. His sheets reeked with the smell of blood, and cold air blew from the vent over his bed. He shivered and tried to sit up.

  She had taken out the toilet lid and the commode seat, so he couldn’t use them as weapons. He sat up, wincing at the stabbing pain in his side. Slowly, he slid his legs off the edge of his bed. His broken left leg was swollen and bloody, and as he brought it to the floor, the pain exploded.

  He imagined his body splitting apart into a million directions, then falling like shrapnel to the concrete floor. He fell back onto the thin mattress.

  He was going to die here.

  From the foggy depths of his brain he groped for Scripture, something to cling to like a hand, something to remind him that he could make it. He had memorized much Scripture in his life. Wayne Owens had seen to that.

  “O LORD, do not . . . do not rebuke me . . . in your anger . . . or discipline me in your wrath. Be merciful to me, LORD, for I am faint; O LORD, . . . heal me, for my bones are in agony. My soul is in anguish.”

  He had learned that passage from Psalm 6 when he’d made it his business to memorize as many psalms as he could. He’d never expected to need it so much. Every morning, he had met Wayne at Cricket’s, and over coffee he would recite the Scripture he’d memorized the day before. Wayne had committed to learning the same passages, and they had recited them together, their eyes transfixed on each other.

  Oh, how he missed Wayne.

  “How long, O LORD, how long?” His throat was raspy, hoarse, almost too weak to be heard. “Turn, O LORD, and deliver me . . . save me because of your unfailing love. No one remembers you when he is dead. Who praises you from the grave?”

  He had often wondered if David understood about heaven, that there was a place of joy and peace where our hearts would overflow. If he had, would he have written those words?

  Yes, maybe, Cade thought. Maybe from the depths of his own danger, he had only seen death as being a dreaded end. Cade understood that.

  “I am worn out from groaning; all night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears. My eyes grow weak with sorrow; they fail because of all my foes.”

  Yes, he had foes, though he didn’t know what they wanted with him. Whether they would murder him in revenge for the life he had taken, or use him for some other evil intention, he didn’t know.

  “Away from me, all you who do evil, . . . for the LORD has heard my weeping. . . . The LORD has heard my cry for mercy; . . . the Lord accepts my prayer.”

  Peace calmed him in the midst of his pain, and he knew that God heard the Scripture he prayed aloud.

  “All my enemies will be ashamed and dismayed; . . . they will turn back in sudden disgrace.”

  Let it be so, Lord, his mind cried out. Please turn them back in sudden disgrace.

  He wondered who was looking for him. He pictured Blair sitting at her computer day and night, pulling up databases and searching for answers—the armchair detective who should have been a cop herself. Would this be more reason for her to never acknowledge God? Would this be yet more evidence that no one sat on a sovereign throne, governing the universe?

  That thought filled him with more despair than his own imprisonment.

  He closed his eyes and wondered if she’d seen that sham of a letter he’d been forced to write. Did she believe he’d been hiding some secret girlfriend?

  Surely not. Too much had passed between them. She must know that she was the woman he’d been waiting for. Even though he’d never said it, never even acted on it . . . she must know.

  He had long ago resolved in his heart not to break God’s heart by marrying an unbeliever. That wasn’t the kind of life he wanted for himself. How could he become one with a woman whose philosophies and life goals were so radically different from his own?

  That meant that he remained a bachelor, biding his time and praying for God to change Blair’s heart. So far it hadn’t happened. The wait had been long.

  But she must sense his feelings for her, and in his heart, he sensed hers too. She wouldn’t believe he’d eloped, would she? She’d never buy that.

  But if she did have doubts, there was always his signature to clue her in. Blair knew he never went by Matt.

  Please, Lord, don’t let her believe that letter.

  He heard a scraping sound and knew that Ann was coming again. The bookshelves were being moved, the door unlocked. He lay there, defenseless, knowing that he could never make a run for it now.

  She came in cautiously, checking to make sure he hadn’t found some kind of weapon to waylay her before she could get to him. He wished . . . oh, he wished . . .

  �
�I brought you some water,” she said, handing him that two-liter bottle again. It was drugged, he knew. If he drank it, he could be out for days.

  “Thank you,” he whispered. He set it down on the concrete floor next to the bed.

  “Drink it now,” she said.

  He shook his head. “I’m going to throw up. I’ll drink it later.”

  “You need food.”

  He could tell from her tone that she had no intentions of bringing him any. Not now.

  He looked up at her. “Mrs. Clark, I need a doctor. I’ve lost a lot of blood, and the bullet shattered the bone in my leg . . .”

  “No doctor,” she said. “That doesn’t fit into my plan.”

  “So what is your plan?” He gritted the words through his clenched teeth. “What are you holding me for? Ransom?”

  She laughed then. “One ransom note and they’d be on me in thirty seconds. No, not ransom. I doubt if anyone in Cape Refuge would pay it anyway. They all believe you ran off with a woman. It’s all over the news. They’re not even looking for you anymore.”

  Now he really did feel like he was going to throw up. “Then what do you plan to do with me?”

  “I plan to kill you.” Her tone was matter-of-fact. “But not yet. You’re still of some use to me.”

  She was crazy or evil, or both.

  “I didn’t kill your husband on purpose. And he was shot first. Maybe you shot him.”

  Her face was stone cold. “He shot himself.”

  “I don’t think so, judging by where I am right now.” He caught his breath, shivered at the pain. He watched with a chill as she left him there on his bloody sheets, locked the door, and scraped the bookshelves back in front of the door.

  He forced himself up on his good leg. Pain shot through him as he grabbed the water bottle, unscrewed the top, and dumped its contents into the toilet. Then he put the empty bottle in the tank, where the clean water flowed in, and filled it up. Desperately, he drank a third of it.

  Then he hopped back to his bed, his nerve endings screaming out with each jolt, and fell back onto his rancid sheets.