by Dana Mentink
SEVEN
Mick heard a cry from Keeley and he was in motion, sprinting down the hallway, arriving just as something punched through the glass with a loud crack. He had no time to do anything other than put his body between hers and the window in case something else was going to follow. Shards of glass rained down on the flooring. The bottle projectile broke, the flaming rag inside ignited the gasoline with which the bottle had been filled. Flames spilled across the flooring, heading for pillows stacked in the corner.
He shoved her to the door. “Get the fire extinguisher from the kitchen.”
Despite the shock, she did not hesitate, pounding away down the hall. He kicked the pillows far from the approaching flames, coughing against the acrid gasoline fumes. Pulling the blankets off the bed, he tossed them away.
The fumes stung his eyes, flames undulating like predators looking for something to devour.
Keeley returned, thrust the extinguisher at him, and he tried to douse the fire. At first the flames resisted, but Mick had decided this fire was not going to win. He stubbornly went at it, approaching so closely the flames singed the tips of his boots and his face felt like a well-done fillet.
Finally, the fire relented. When it was down to a bare flicker he shoved the extinguisher back at Keeley. “Stay here and keep watch.”
She nodded, eyes enormous.
“You okay?” he could not stop himself from adding.
“Uh-huh,” she breathed.
“Call for help.” He made for the front of the house. No cars, no motorcycles. Staying low, he stuck to the shadows, moving as quickly as he could to the back. The backyard was nothing more than a small patch of grass enclosed by a wood fence that had seen better days. A few of the boards had been kicked in. Easy access. The yard had a gnarled apple tree, a small patch that was probably the beginnings of a vegetable garden and an old camper with two flat tires, parked on a section of gravel.
Heart thumping he stayed still and waited. No sound. No whisper of feet in the grass.
“Are you waiting out there, Tucker? Be a man and come out of the shadows,” he murmured. He did a slow sweep of the yard, first visually then step by step. Taking a penlight from his pocket, he eased up along the side of the camper. It was the only place Tucker could be if he’d had the nerve to stick around.
Back pressed flat against the cold metal siding, he crept up to the door, ready to test the handle. Slowly, he pulled the latch. The hinges creaked. Either Keeley left it unlocked, or…
Without warning, the door shot open, knocking him on his back on the gravel. He saw the incoming foot just in time to throw up a shielding arm. The kick jarred his forearm and glanced off the side of his head, sending an explosion of pain through his skull.
“Stop,” Keeley screamed from across the yard.
Mick rolled over and got to his feet. By the time he made it to the fence, it was too late, as his attacker squeezed through the gap in the fence. He bit back the disappointment that cut at him. Too slow, Mick. Again.
“Was it Tucker?” Keeley asked, face milk white.
“Probably. He’s gone.” Mick rounded on her. “What happened to staying inside?”
“The fire is out. My cell is dead, so I had to call from the kitchen phone. Besides, I figured two of us had a better chance against Tucker than one.”
He sighed. “We’re striking out so far.”
“But I’m armed this time.” She raised a frying pan to the light.
In spite of the tension roiling in his gut, he laughed. “Good to know.”
The sound of sirens broke the silence. They trudged back to the house, and Mick checked once again to be sure the fire was completely out.
The arriving police swept the yard, just as Mick had done. They found no trace of either Tucker or anyone else. Nonetheless, the officers took extensive photos and dusted for fingerprints.
“Plenty of prints,” Mason said. “We’ll see if any of them are Rivendale’s.”
There was the slam of a car door and John Bender ran in. “I was working late at the office, and I heard the sirens.”
Uttley gave him a cursory update.
“I knew he must have come here,” John said. “What happened?”
Keeley chewed her lip. “He threw a Molotov cocktail through the window and ran away.”
John shook his head. “Please come stay with me. I can’t stand worrying about you every minute. I know you don’t sleep well as it is.”
Mick saw color flame into Keeley’s cheeks. “LeeAnn was the insomniac. I sleep just fine.”
John must have seen it, too. “I have a spare room,” he said defiantly. “It’s not safe to stay here alone.”
“We’ll put an officer outside,” Uttley said.
“Should have been here already,” John snapped. “Why wasn’t anyone watching her?”
Uttley fixed steely eyes on John. “Because, Dr. Bender, this is a small department and we’ve already increased the patrols in the area. The officers have other duties, too. I’ve got to arrange for some off duty people to come back in and bring in some mutual aid.” His glance shifted to Mick. “Plus it seems she’s got someone watching her back already.”
Mick didn’t like the look, nor the tone. “Happened to be here, but like you’ve reminded me, I’m not a cop. She needs police protection.”
“She needs to come stay with me,” John said. “I’ll make sure nothing happens to her. LeeAnn would want it that way.”
“How do you know what LeeAnn would have wanted?” Mick could not believe he’d said it, actually used her name out loud, but there was no turning back the anger that ticked up inside. What did this scrawny neighbor know about anything?
John’s chin went up. “Because she loved me.”
In your dreams. Mick caught himself before he said it aloud.
“It’s not your call, Dr. Bender,” Uttley said.
His chin went up. “I’ll do whatever I have to do to keep Keeley away from Rivendale.”
“Enough.” Keeley shouted the word that stopped all three men in midsyllable. She fired a withering glance at them. “I am not leaving this house. I am going to do whatever I can to help capture Tucker so I can have my life back. Whoever wants to play bodyguard can jolly well pitch a tent in the front yard, but Tucker took away my sister and separated me from Junie and I’m not, let me say it again, not going to let him drive me out of this house.”
Uttley blinked. Mick stilled the smile that threatened. Tough as steel. Lovely as a sunrise. Keeley Stevens continued to surprise him.
“I’m trying to keep you safe,” John said, taking hold of her forearms.
Mick itched to move him forcibly out the front door.
“Thank you,” she said. “But it’s not your job to keep me safe.” She added in a lower tone, one filled with compassion. “And it wasn’t your job to protect LeeAnn, either.”
No, Mick thought with a sudden stab of pain. It was mine.
John fell back a step, breathing hard through his nose. Without another word he turned on his heel and left.
Mick didn’t mind that one little bit.
*
The police finally departed. Keeley felt the fiery courage that had filled her only a few moments earlier ebbing away. She caught sight of her precious camera and groaned. “And I still didn’t get my picture.”
A beeping noise sounded from the kitchen, but she could not move from the sofa where she had collapsed.
After a moment’s hesitation, Mick snapped into action. With a pot holder, he removed the browned loaf of bread from the machine and set it on the counter, whacking it gently loose from the pan.
“Butter’s in the fridge,” she said automatically.
“Do you want a slice now?” he said.
“Yes. With butter, please. Lots.”
He duly slathered a slice for her and carried it to her on a piece of paper towel.
“You eat a piece, too,” she said.
“Not…”
>
“Please.”
He cut another slice, sans butter.
They ate.
The warm, tender bread, studded with cinnamon and raisins and glistening with melted butter settled her nerves. “Do you like it?”
He gave her a thumbs-up.
For some reason it pleased her to know it. “It makes the best toast in the morning. Junie loves raisin toast.” A rush of grief surged through her body, and it took every ounce of self-control for her not to cry again. “I want my baby back.”
“Good news is Tucker doesn’t know where she is, or he wouldn’t have bothered busting your window.”
She stared at him. “You sure know how to cheer a girl up.”
He sighed. “Sorry. I could try to help.”
“How?”
“Tomorrow, I can drive you up to our sanctuary. You can get some amazing photos there, I promise.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“I hear an ulterior motive in your voice.”
“And my father’s a retired private investigator. He might be able to help us get a lead on Ginny.”
She examined him closely. Broad shoulders, fingers drumming on the knees of his jeans, square jaw tight with some kind of tension. “What I really want is to do this alone, Mick. I know you’re trying to help, but having you here, it’s hard for me.”
He did not look away, merely accepting. “I understand.”
“But I will do what it takes for Junie, and if your father can help, then I’ll go see him.”
He nodded, and she could see neither relief nor satisfaction in his eyes, only a flat, wide expanse of darkness, like a long stretch of bad road. She sensed it had been a torturous journey for him since LeeAnn died, too. That was something they had in common.
He got up. “Got any duct tape left?”
“Why? Is the bread machine letting loose?”
“For the window.”
The window, of course. It was now smashed, her room smelling of gasoline. She fetched some cardboard and tape, and while Mick patched over it, she cleaned up the glass and fire extinguisher powder. The room still stank, so it would be the couch for her tonight.
Was Mick going to make the long drive back to the sanctuary? Or stay with his friend Reggie? She wondered why she cared. He was so closed off.
He answered her question later, as he returned the tape to the kitchen drawer. “An hour and a half to the Sanctuary. Best birding is in the morning. Leave at 5:00 a.m.?”
If he expected her to flinch at the time, she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. She checked her watch. “Sure. It’s only eleven. That will give me a whole six hours of sleep.”
“You need more than that?”
He wasn’t joking, as far as she could tell. “No,” she said. “Where are you going to get your six hours?”
“Don’t need six. Gonna sleep in the truck, since I didn’t bring my tent.”
A glimmer in his eyes revealed a hint of humor there.
“Why don’t you stay in the camper out back?” she heard herself saying.
“Appreciate that,” he said, straightening as if he was standing at attention. “The truck’s adequate.”
And you don’t want to take anything from me, more than you already have. Good, she thought, because I don’t have anything to give you.
He closed the door behind himself and she locked it. Then she rolled into a ball on the couch, covered herself with as many blankets as she could and prayed.
*
It hardly seemed like six hours before her phone alarm beeped. She staggered into the kitchen and started the coffeepot. While it perked she threw on some clothes. The house was dead quiet. Mick must have not woken up. It gave her some small satisfaction to realize the guy was not as iron tough as he seemed.
Until she looked out the front window and saw him sitting on the front step, ramrod straight, long arms perched on his knees. How extremely awkward. After several minutes of wrangling, she finally yanked open the door. “Well, come in already, I’ve got toast, and don’t try to tell me you aren’t hungry.”
He followed her inside and sat stiffly at the kitchen table. He accepted two slices of raisin toast without butter and a cup of coffee, which he appeared to be trying to sip yet managed to down in three swallows. She refilled it, examining him. His face was scratched, but he didn’t appear to be as tired as she felt. There was no dark shadow of stubble across his chin. How had the man possibly managed a shave?
“You can call her from the road,” he said.
Keeley plunked her mug down so abruptly the coffee sloshed out. “What?”
“Call the child.”
“Her name is June. How in the world did you know that’s what I was thinking?”
“You’ve checked the clock three times since I sat down. And that’s what a parent would do, I gather.”
She huffed out a breath. “Sometimes I still can’t wrap my mind around the fact that I actually am a parent.”
His smile was sad. Wistful?
Something unexpected stirred in her mind. “Mick, do you have kids?”
The mug looked small in his big hand. The silence drew on for what seemed like a very long time. “No,” he finally answered. “I don’t.”
EIGHT
Mick briefed the on duty cop as they pulled out. The guy was not pleased at their travel plans, but he’d just have to deal with that. Hunkering down hadn’t accomplished much. If it was going to be a fight, Keeley seemed intent on making it a battle of maneuver instead of a battle of encounter. She had some of the qualities of a fine marine, he thought.
Mick had already laid things out for Reggie the night before.
“You should stay put and get yourself a weapon, but I’m sure you’re not going to do either of those things,” Reggie had huffed.
Mick felt uneasy about the drive. It was not so much that Tucker was possibly tracking their every move, as the fact that he knew Keeley was not the type to be able to sit silently for the duration of the trip. She would talk and she would expect him to reciprocate. There would be sharing involved. The thought made him sweat. Talking was like the embroidery his mother used to try to teach him before she died, all delicate strings that knotted and bunched against his clumsy efforts.
He’d never been much of a talker, but LeeAnn’s murder left him even more taciturn, which probably explained why his girlfriend of four months has finally dumped him six months ago.
“You’re a prisoner,” Beth had said the last time she’d seen him. “You let Tucker escape, and you stepped into the cell yourself.”
At the time, standing there in the exhaust fumes from her departing car, he’d berated himself for telling her about Tucker in the first place. See where sharing had gotten him, but her words prickled back through his mind. A prisoner of his mistakes.
You can’t outrun shame. His grandfather would have added, Only God can take it away, Mickey. Only God.
Yeah, well, Mick wasn’t about to go down that road. A man shouldered his own burdens, and he wouldn’t ask anyone, especially God, to relieve him of a burden he deserved completely. He wasn’t running after absolution. He didn’t deserve it anyway.
With his game face on, he opened the passenger door for Keeley. She stared quizzically for a moment.
“Oh. Thank you. No one has done that for a long time. It’s nice.” Her cheeks reddened and he swallowed hard as she climbed onto the worn front seat.
Did she think he was trying to play the part of a suitor? No, she would surely not have thought that. Had she? Great. He hadn’t even opened his mouth yet and already he was confused. He got in and they drove up the highway. The silence lasted for a good half hour until he felt her looking at him.
He kept his eyes on the road.
Her gaze bored into him still.
“What?”
“You drive slowly.”
He checked the speed gauge. “Fifty-five. It’s what the sign says.”
“Almost nobody.”
She laughed, and it was a delicate sound, musical. He was glad he had somehow caused it to happen, though he didn’t see the humor.
“Don’t marines value speediness?”
“Not if it gets you dead. Slow means I can avoid all the nuts on the road.”
“Hmm. I think that might include me, because I’d be doing sixty-five here, easy, unless I had Junie in the car.”
He saw her clutch the phone tighter and he knew she was resisting the urge to call. Gotta wait until sunrise, he could imagine her saying to herself. Too early to wake the child and her aunt.
After another fifteen miles, her attention was caught by a small roadside garage with a cracked sign tacked to the front.
“Quick Stop Garage,” Keeley said, pointing.
“Know it?”
“I don’t, but it was the logo on Ginny’s shirt when she bought all the snack cakes.”
He goggled at her. “You remembered that from the security camera footage?”
“I notice clothes,” she said, eyes still riveted out the window. “You can check your cell phone picture if you like. Black lettering on a light-colored background. Quick Stop Garage.”
He didn’t check. Instead he pulled into the minuscule parking lot, home to a car up on blocks and an ice machine that no longer dispensed anything but rust.
“You…” He was issuing a command to no one. She was already out of the car.
He hastened to join her. It was not yet 6:00 a.m. and the windows were dark.
Keeley rattled the front knob.
“They don’t open for another half hour,” he pointed out.
She peered in through the window as if she hadn’t heard him. “Place is pretty empty. It doesn’t look as if they’re doing very good business.”
He had to agree. The front window was cracked, the front step chipped. Whatever had been growing long ago in the front planter box was now browned rubble, overtaken by a scalp of wild grass. They weren’t doing a whole lot to attract customers.
“There’s a door around back. I’m going to check,” she said.
She trotted off on some detective mission. He sighed. Trespassing was never a good idea. He just hoped there wasn’t a dog. Dogs were a marine’s best friend, if you happened to be their handler. Otherwise, you might just look an awful lot like a threat. He still remembered getting on the bad side of a Belgian Malinois after some friendly roughhousing with his handler. A neat row of scars on his lower arm bore witness to that.