by Karen Young
“Buck! By golly, glad to see you, son!” His father-in-law’s smile was warm with welcome. With his reading glasses at half mast, his finger marking his place in a Delta magazine, he stepped back to let Buck in. “It’s about time you gave us a visit. Come in, come in.” He called out over his shoulder, “Beatrice, we’ve got company!”
Buck stepped inside…reluctantly. “I know it’s late—”
“Not a bit. I hear you’re taking over at Belle Pointe. How’s it going?”
“Right now I’m just trying to keep ahead of boll weevils and budworms. Kill off a few million and double that number come back.”
“Delta farmer talk,” Franklin said, smiling. “And here I thought you were a professional baseball player.”
Buck realized he didn’t think much about the Jacks lately. His gaze moved beyond Franklin, scanning the stairs. “Is Anne here? I need to talk to her for a minute.”
“You just missed her.” He turned as Beatrice approached, drying her hands on a tea towel. “Bea, here’s Buck wanting to see Anne. Did she say where she was going?”
Beatrice’s face lit with pleasure. “Buck! What a nice surprise.” Without missing a beat, she walked over and kissed his cheek. “How’s that knee?”
He gave himself a pat on the thigh. “Around this time of day I sure know it’s there,” he admitted.
She gave him a chiding look. “I can’t imagine that Tyrone approves of the long hours you put in at Belle Pointe, does he?”
Did everybody in Tallulah know the details of his life, he wondered. “No, he nags me worse than my—” He stopped, realizing his wife didn’t nag him anymore. About anything. “I was wondering if you knew where Anne was.”
“She went to the Spectator offices to get her laptop,” Beatrice said. “I think she has her cell phone with her. If you call, she’ll let you in, otherwise—”
“She went alone?” He frowned at the thought.
“Well…yes. She—”
“It’s past ten o’clock. They roll up the sidewalks in Tallulah at night.” He pictured the Spectator’s dark and empty offices and his blood ran cold. “She’s alone in an empty building? Did you think to tell her what a reckless idea that was?” he said to them. “Anything can happen.”
Franklin cleared his throat. “Actually, I didn’t know what she had in mind when she left. She didn’t tell me where she was going and…” He coughed delicately. “To tell the truth, I assumed she was going to meet you.”
Buck already had the door open. “I’ll head that way now. If you reach her, try to talk some sense into her. How long has she been gone, Beatrice?”
“Not ten minutes. You could very well catch her before she gets there.”
“Call her anyway,” he ordered before thinking to add, “Please. And tell her I’m on the way and to be sure those damn doors are locked.”
“Yes. Yes, I will,” Beatrice said in a faint voice, but he was already making for his car in long strides and never heard her. That poor knee was never going to heal, she thought. But she was almost smiling as she watched him peel out from the curb in his SUV. It appeared that Buck had taken just about as much of Anne’s rebellion as he could stand. Those two might be estranged, but if she were any judge of human nature, they wouldn’t be much longer.
She glanced up to find Franklin wearing a bemused look, too.
“About time, eh?” he said to her.
“Finally.” Beatrice picked up the phone to call as she’d been instructed.
Buck made it to the town square in six minutes flat. He spotted Anne’s empty Mercedes parked in front of the dark and deserted Spectator building. He stopped beside it and got out, primed to give her hell for pulling such a foolish stunt.
At the door, he swore fervently as he realized he’d forgotten to ask Franklin for an extra key. But it wasn’t necessary. With a start, he realized the door was unlocked and ajar. His frown went darker. She hadn’t even locked the damn door. He gave it a furious shove with the flat of his hand and that was when he smelled smoke.
A burst of terror caught him in the chest.
His heart pounding, he peered into the building, but could see no flames. A few steps inside and he realized the smoke seemed to come from offices in the rear. As he made his way around desks and down the hall, he fumbled with the cell phone on his belt. Pulling it out, he sent frantic looks right and left, trying to locate the fire. Trying to locate Anne. Choking and coughing, he looked around for something to cover his mouth. Nothing. He tugged at the tail of his knit shirt and held it over his mouth and nose.
“Anne, where are you?”
No answer. And no light. Thinking the fire must have tripped the master switch, he felt his way further down the hall. The office was dark except for a dim reflection of the outside streetlight through the front windows.
With dread in his heart, he dashed toward the rear of the building, making for the door to the basement. If she was here to get her laptop, it had to be down in the archives. She wouldn’t head into a basement that was on fire just to retrieve a laptop, would she?
Hand shaking, he punched out 911 on his cell phone. Then, holding the phone at his ear to wait for a response, he stepped through the door to the archives and stopped at the top of the stairs. “Anne, are you down there?”
“Here! I’m back here. We need help, Buck. Paige is hurt.”
We? Paige?
“Nine-one-one,” said a calm voice in his ear. “What is your emergency?”
“I’m at the newspaper office on the square, the Spectator,” Buck shouted. “There’s a fire. And we might need an ambulance. Hurry.” Without waiting for a reply or punching off, he clicked the phone back on his belt and took the stairs down two at a time. He was vaguely aware of pain in his knee, but his only thought was to get to Anne.
Smoke was thick and heavy, and in the pitch darkness it was impossible to get any bearings. He dropped low near the floor to avoid the worst of the smoke and moved deeper into the basement. He still hadn’t spotted any flames. “Anne, where are you? Call out so I can find you.”
“Here…we’re here.”
He made a half turn at the sound of her voice, took a few steps and crashed into one of the metal shelves, almost knocking it over. Remembering they were arranged in straight aisles, he put out a hand and used it to guide him toward the rear of the basement. Now he could see flames, but so far the fire did not appear to be out of control. The danger in a situation like this, he thought, was smoke inhalation.
Then, by some miracle, he almost ran right into Anne.
She sat crouched on the floor and by the light of fire, he could see that she was cradling Paige in her arms. His niece was not moving.
“Jesus.” He went down on his good knee beside them. “Is she…”
“She’s inhaled a lot of smoke. We have to get her out of here, Buck, but I don’t know where the stairs are. I tried to—”
“I do.” With luck. He gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “We’ll be okay. We just need to follow this set of shelves. They end right at the stairs. Don’t stand up. Just keep low where the air is better.”
“What about Paige?”
“I’ll carry her. You catch hold of my back pocket and don’t let go.”
He bent and lifted the teenager, who weighed less than some of the weights Ty had him lifting. But in his therapy, he didn’t put weight on his knee as he was now forced to do. “Hold on, here we go.”
Low to the floor, he took a second or two to inhale deeply and stood up. Keeping the set of shelves on his left, he hurried along the narrow aisle until the shelves ended. Light from the flames behind them offered no illumination here. Praying that he remembered about where the stairs were, he left the security of the shelves and headed blindly across the empty floor. Three strides, four, five. And he bumped into the stair rail.
“Thank God!” Anne said on a strangled cough. Slipping in front of him, she scurried up the stairs and held the door for Buck as he c
arried Paige through.
“Close it,” he ordered when they emerged in the hall. “Confine the fire to the basement.” He was breathing hard, coughing and wheezing, and his knee was throbbing painfully. Outside, they heard sirens. And in seconds someone bellowed, “Anybody in there?”
“Here!” Buck shouted. “In the back. The fire’s in the basement.”
Two firemen outfitted in full gear and carrying flashlights materialized out of the smoky darkness. Behind them, two more firemen appeared. Buck refused to give Paige over to them, but carried her through the office to the front door.
Outside, he stood with his niece in his arms and inhaled deep gulps of fresh air. Beside him, Anne coughed and gasped as two EMTs appeared with a stretcher. Buck gently placed Paige on it and then reached for his wife.
With his arms tight around Anne, they both watched as one of the EMTs slipped an oxygen mask over Paige’s face and another covered her with a blanket. Instantly, she began to cough and claw at the mask to tear it off. The female EMT at her head leaned close and spoke quietly to calm her.
“She has a head injury,” Anne said, pushing against Buck to get to Paige, but just then Claire’s Jaguar screeched to a stop and in a heartbeat, she was out and running toward the ambulance. Close behind, a police unit pulled up, blue lights flashing. Jack Breedlove climbed out and, with a quick glance at the group huddled around Paige, headed to the door of the building.
“Paige! Omigod, Paige!” Claire dashed toward the ambulance where the EMT was securing the teen to the stretcher with a safety strap.
“Mom!” At the sight of her mother, Paige burst into tears.
Claire bent and tried to take her into her arms, but was hindered by the oxygen mask on her face and the security strap holding her down. “Oh, Paige, baby, what happened? Are you hurt?” She looked up anxiously at the EMT. “Is she okay? Does she have any burns?”
“I don’t know the extent of her injuries yet,” he said. “She appears to—”
“I’m okay, Mom. I never got close to the fire.” Paige’s momentary spate of tears was done as abruptly as started. Her spunky spirit was back. “It was just the smoke. And I hit my head on something when the lights went out. That’s all I remember until Uncle Buck picked me up. I remember thinking I should walk because I didn’t want him to hurt his bad knee carrying me, but I couldn’t.”
“You don’t need to worry about my knee,” Buck said, fighting an urge to give her a good shaking for scaring the hell out of him. “What you need to worry about is why you were here at this time of night.”
Anne heard the edge in his voice as he shifted his gaze to her. “Both of you.”
“Aunt Anne didn’t know I was here,” Paige said meekly.
“I came to get my laptop,” Anne explained. With everyone looking on, she didn’t add the reason she wanted to get on the Internet. Paige’s close call made her search for her biological parents seem somehow insignificant. If Buck hadn’t arrived when he did, she wasn’t sure she could have gotten Paige out in time to avoid a tragedy.
Jack Breedlove approached with a fireman at his side. “Fire’s out, folks,” he said. “Sykes here has the status.”
Sykes removed his helmet and rubbed a hand over his face. “Not too much damage. More smoke down there than fire. We’ll know more after daybreak. Can’t see much now.”
“I’ll have the premises sealed off,” Jack said. “And, Sykes, you’ll launch an investigation as to the cause?”
“You bet, Chief.” He looked at Anne. “Tell your daddy we tried not to do too much damage with the water hoses. Newspaper and microfiche can go up like tinder, but those old metal file cabinets acted like a barricade, so it was confined for a spell…which accounts for all that smoke.”
“You have any idea what started it?” Jack now stood at Claire’s shoulder, looking as if he wanted to touch her.
Sykes gave a definite nod. “Looks like somebody set it. Several clues telling me it was an amateur, but yeah, I’ll go out on a limb and say somebody wanted the Spectator burnt up.”
Jack’s expression was fierce. “You say clues. Such as—”
“He used an accelerant,” Sykes said. “It’s dark down there now, but you can smell it. What with the metal file cabinets and that old tarpaulin draped over the artificial Christmas tree—they’re fire retardant, don’t you know—it was more smoke than fire, but sooner or later it would have turned nasty. Good thing it was caught when it was.” He looked at Paige. “You had a close call, missy. Lucky Buck was around to rescue you.”
“She’s lucky Anne spotted her down there,” Buck said grimly. Anne recognized the signs. He never showed fear. It came out as anger. From the glint in his eye, she knew he would have a few pithy questions for her.
Paige gave her mother a wary look. “I know you’re gonna, like, ground me for doing it, but it was necessary, Mom. I had a good reason.”
“There is no good reason for you being in a deserted building alone at ten o’clock at night,” Claire said sternly.
Paige fumbled with the strap that confined her to the stretcher. “Can I please get up?”
“Not until I’m told you’re okay.”
Paige’s mouth set stubbornly. “I said I was fine. I just—”
“Listen to your mother, Paige,” Jack said in a tone similar to Buck’s.
To everyone’s surprise, Paige subsided. She looked from Claire to Jack. “I thought you were at the mall in Memphis,” she said to her mother.
“Is that why you thought you could sneak out of the house?” Claire asked. “Where’s Miriam?”
“Still asleep in front of the TV, I guess. That’s where she was when I left.”
“How did you get here?” Buck asked. “What were you doing in the archives at this time of night?”
“I wanted Aunt Anne to have the journals and I knew I’d have to sneak them out of the house because nobody at Belle Pointe would let her have them except maybe Mom, and I didn’t figure she’d go against Gran to let Aunt Anne look at them.” She sent a quick, sideways look at her mother. “So I took them and hid in the back of Mr. Pittman’s pickup and I got out when he stopped at the red light at the square. He never even knew.”
“I’m going to kill you when we get home,” Claire threatened.
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Paige, are you saying you were in the building when the fire started?”
“Uh-huh. I was looking for a place to hide the journals so nobody else would, like, stumble on them or something and I heard this loud whooshing sound. Just suddenly, you know? There was this explosion. So I was way back in the archives and I knew I had to save the journals. If they got burned up, everybody would really kill me.”
“You could have died in that fire!” Claire cried.
“Aw, Mom. I didn’t even come close to dying.”
“You did, Paige.” Buck’s profound relief was quickly changing into something hard and stern. “And Anne would have died, too. You were overcome with smoke and she couldn’t find the door. The two of you could easily have died tonight.”
“I’m sorry,” Paige said, eyes down, shoulders drooping.
Jack touched Claire’s shoulder. “I need to talk to Milton Sykes for a few minutes. If the EMTs think Paige is okay to go home, I’ll drive the two of you. You’re probably too shaken to be driving.” His gaze shifted to Anne. “I have a few questions for you, Anne, but they can wait until tomorrow morning. Can you come down to the police station?”
“Yes, of course. But I need to call my dad and tell him—”
“I’ve already done it,” Buck told her. “He’s on his way. Beatrice, too. They were pretty upset.” He saw the look on her face and added, “Don’t say it. After a close call to his newspaper and his favorite daughter, you can’t expect him to wait until morning to check it out.”
“I just can’t believe this happened.” Anne took a deep breath. “Who would want to destroy the Spectator? It’s the town’s history, records of facts and
events that would be lost forever. It’s—”
She stopped at the look on Buck’s face. “We can talk about that later,” he told her. “Right now, I think that’s your dad and Beatrice heading this way. If not, Jack’s sure to ticket the driver since he just shot through the red light.”
“Oh, Lord…” Anne put her hands on her cheeks and said to no one in particular, “Just let me get through this night.”
“I’ll be glad to help you there.” Buck growled the words in her ear. She didn’t realize he’d been standing so close. She took in a deep, deep breath and turned to face her father and Beatrice.
Her stepmother was almost as upset as Franklin. Spotting Anne, she rushed over and pulled her into a fierce embrace. Anne felt her trembling and realized with a rush of emotion that she’d come to feel deep affection for Beatrice and hated the thought of distressing her.
“Oh, Anne, what a close call! Buck was right. You shouldn’t have come here at night alone. I shouldn’t have let you. What was I thinking? What if Buck—”
Anne squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry for giving you such a scare, Beatrice. Because Tallulah’s so small, and I feel so safe here, I just didn’t consider it being in the least risky. Paige and I were lucky that Buck showed up when he did.”
She hadn’t yet had a chance to ask him why he’d decided to talk to her after avoiding her for two weeks.
Beatrice touched Anne’s cheek with a shaky hand. “I don’t know when I’ve been so scared. Don’t ever do that again.”
“Not if I can help it.” She turned to her dad. Franklin opened his arms and she walked into his embrace. With her throat tight, she held on to him. Here was someone who wouldn’t scold or berate her for her foolishness. But she could tell that he was as shaken as Beatrice and unable to say a word for a long minute.
“You are so precious to us, Annie-girl,” he whispered.
“I’m sorry, Dad. I just didn’t think.”
“You couldn’t have waited until morning to get that damn laptop?” It was a rebuke, but a gentle one.