Because of a Girl

by Janice Kay Johnson

  The hammer was gone. Jack would have gotten more creative with his profanity if he could have afforded the air.

  “Let me!” he shouted, and began wrenching at the first board he could get his fingers around. The pain was excruciating. One groan after another was torn from him.

  He’d have been dead if he hadn’t been wearing a vest.

  Suddenly there was some give. Nails screeched. He braced one foot against the cabin side and put all his weight into yanking.

  When the board ripped free, he fell back.

  * * *

  “I’M GOING TO turn around,” Meg said suddenly, lifting her foot from the gas. “I don’t see him behind us.”

  Asher was craning to see, too. “Yeah, he must be going back to Frenchman Lake.”

  It took her a minute to slow enough to make a U-turn in the middle of the road. Long enough to give Meg a chance to think, and to see a rising column of oily, dark smoke.

  “What if...what if he killed Jack?” Her voice shook. “He’ll get away.”

  “And what if he has Sabra with him?” Emily asked.

  “We saw him.” Asher’s assertion was undeniable. “We know he was there.”

  “But we didn’t see what he did,” Meg argued.

  The lane came in sight.

  “Let me out,” Asher said suddenly. “Me and Emily. Then you can tail him. We’ll call the second we know anything.”

  Meg drew a shuddering breath. She wanted to go to Jack. Tell Asher to follow Bouchard. But he was an inexperienced driver. What if he was tempted to speed, and lost control? Plus, she was in no shape to help anyway.

  “Yes. Okay.”

  She braked. The two leaped out and ran. Meg was reassured to see that Asher still carried the tire iron.

  Once again, she stepped on the gas and rocketed forward.

  * * *

  ANOTHER THICK BOARD gave way with a groan. The gap was finally wide enough for a petite teenage girl to wriggle through.

  But not a hugely pregnant one.

  One more.

  His body was screaming at him, but he couldn’t listen. Fire had wrapped the corner from the front porch and flames licked the dry shake roof. As he gripped yet another board and yanked, putting his weight behind it, a terrified Sabra was pushing from the other side. Sweat and tears ran down her face.

  He heard a yell, but he didn’t let himself turn. Long spikes anchored this board. It wasn’t surrendering a millimeter.

  Suddenly someone else was beside him. Asher, and out of the corner of his eye Jack saw Emily, too, hand clapped to her mouth in horror.

  Asher brandished a tire iron. Close to Jack’s ear, he called, “Let me try to wedge this in.”

  Jack wrenched backward with everything he had. Nothing. The gap wasn’t wide enough for the tire iron to be any use. Asher flung it aside and grabbed hold, too.

  Jack looked him in the eye. “One. Two. Three.”

  Both yanked, Jack giving a raw bellow. The board came loose with a screech. Asher fell back. Jack gave one more pull and threw the board aside. Sabra was already scrambling out.

  Jack held out his arms, and she fell into them. He turned and stumbled away, the heat searing his back. His face felt scorched. He wouldn’t have been surprised if his hair had been on fire.

  Ten feet, fifteen.

  Sabra struggled free. He took one of her hands, Asher the other, and they ran.

  Behind them came a crash accompanied by a leap of fire and sparks.

  Jack let go of the girl’s hand and fell to his knees, retching.

  * * *

  MEG TOPPED THE last hill before the highway and saw the BMW had already made the turn. At the corner, she braked only enough to be sure the intersection was clear before she accelerated in pursuit of the monster who either had Sabra with him or had left her for dead.

  Who must think Jack was dead.

  She groped for her phone and managed to dial 9-1-1.

  “What is the nature of your emergency?” a dispatcher asked with brisk efficiency.

  “I’m pursuing a man in a black BMW who I think shot a police officer, Detective Jack Moore from Frenchman Lake.”

  The dispatcher requested location and direction of travel. “A state patrolman is approaching from the north. You need to stay within the speed limit and not risk a confrontation.”

  “He’s sticking to the speed limit right now. But if he doesn’t... I can’t let him get out of sight. He could dump a body.”

  That bore a whole lot of explanation. Meg wasn’t sure she was coherent enough for the dispatcher to understand. All Meg knew was that they could give her a damn ticket for speeding, but she wasn’t letting Remy Bouchard out of her sight until she saw him in handcuffs.

  An RV passed going the other direction, momentarily rocking her car. Not my car. Asher’s. Lucky. Her poor old VW would have been left behind before they reached the Frenchman Lake city limits.

  Nobody had come up behind her. As far back as she could see, the highway was deserted.

  She stole a glance at the speedometer to see that her speed had now crept up without her being aware. Five miles over the speed limit. He had to have started wondering about her. What if he realized he’d seen this same Jeep Cherokee earlier? Oh, God—could he shoot while he was driving?

  She should back off, but the highway ahead was empty now, too. Meg didn’t remember any real turnoffs, but she wasn’t sure she’d have noticed them earlier, especially once she was on the phone with Jack. What if she got too far behind, and he just...disappeared?

  Ten miles over the speed limit. The Cherokee had begun to shake, as if its bones rattled.

  Clenching the steering wheel, she willed her phone to ring. A state patrol car to appear ahead.

  She thought she might be praying.

  * * *

  ON HIS HANDS and knees, Jack heaved violently. Every spasm felt like a bomb blast inside his body. Asher hovered, his fingers opening and closing into fists, wanting to help but unable to do anything. A few feet away, the two girls clung to each other, sobbing. Jack kept hearing, “You came for me. I can’t believe it. You found me.”

  “You’re my best friend,” Emily wailed.

  He had to get a grip.

  “Call Meg,” he gurgled.

  “What?” Asher crouched next to him.

  “Call Meg,” he ground out.

  Comprehension lit the boy’s face. “Oh!” He pulled a phone from his pocket. An instant later, Jack heard the ringing.

  He tasted bitter bile as his stomach kept trying to expel nonexistent contents. What a counterproductive response to pain, he thought in some remote part of his brain, as the agony dug in its talons.

  Above him Asher started talking. “Meg! We have Sabra. She’s safe.” Pause. “Jack, too. Um...” He looked down at Jack. “I mean, he’s hurt, but I can’t tell how. He’s not, like, bleeding. He managed to get Sabra out, though. I’d call nine-one-one and ask for an ambulance, except I don’t know where we are.”

  Jack breathed slowly, carefully. Nothing happened. He reached a hand up. “Let me talk to her.”

  Asher gave him an alarmed look but handed over the phone.

  “Meg,” he managed in a scratchy whisper, “let him go. We’ll get the son of a bitch later.”

  “Are you all right?” Strained and desperate, her voice came to him like a lifeline.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Yes.” She did nothing but breathe. “Okay. Yes. I’m... I’m slowing down. There’s supposed to be—oh, my God! There he is. A state patrolman.”

  “Bouchard is armed. Did you warn them he might be?”

  “I think so.”

  He managed to rise to a kneeling position. “Pull over. Stop. Do it, Meg
.”

  “I said I would!”

  “Okay.” Jack tried for soothing, while his inner beast raged. “Can you see what’s happening?”

  “The patrolman put on his lights and he did a U-turn so he’s behind Bouchard. I can hear his siren, too. I’m not sure he’s slowing down...no, now he is.”

  Jack waited, sweating.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  MEG STARED UNTIL her eyes burned. She wished she was closer so she could see better what was happening...but she also wished, suddenly, that she wasn’t here at all. What if Bouchard shot that state patrolman? What if he then got back in his car, turned around and came after her?

  “We heard gunshots,” she said into the phone she still clutched.

  “Bastard shot me.” There was only the sound of harsh breathing for a minute.

  Fear constricted her throat. “Jack? Are you—”

  “Wearing a vest. Stopped the bullets.” Then, “He had Sabra blockaded in a cabin. Poured gasoline on the walls and set it on fire.”

  “He’s a monster,” she whispered.

  “Yeah.” A voice rough with disgust and a kind of disbelief had her fingers tightening until they skidded on the slick surface of the phone.

  “The state patrolman is getting out,” she said. This had to be the most dangerous moment. He was exposed for the distance it took him to reach the car.

  But Bouchard would think he could still get away with this, she knew suddenly. Lacking any kind of conscience, he’d smile, hand over his license and registration, make a joke. If Sabra and Jack were both dead, and the fire eliminated fingerprints...

  Her mind took a frantic jump.

  Hadn’t it occurred to him that DNA from Sabra’s baby could be linked to him? No, he would have dismissed that because he might think, with Jack dead, nobody would connect Sabra’s disappearance to him at all. The medical examiner would determine the baby hadn’t been Asher’s...but investigators wouldn’t legally be able to take DNA from Mr. Bouchard without evidence that he could be the father.

  Except he had to be wondering who was in that Jeep Cherokee. Why had it been following him? Why was it still parked on the side of the road? What had the driver seen?

  She so hoped he was sweating.

  The officer suddenly planted himself in an aggressive posture, gun pointed. No longer breathing, Meg waited.

  “What’s happening?”

  She could tell Jack was trying to yell.

  The car door swung open. Bouchard stumbled out, hands in the air, and turned to face the car. The patrolman did something with one hand...and Meg closed her eyes and let her head fall forward.

  “He’s been handcuffed.” She straightened, really breathing again. “I can’t believe this. I’m coming back.”

  “The officer may expect you to wait.”

  “I don’t care.” She was already executing a U-turn. “I have to see you.”

  “Okay, sweetheart.” This time, the roughness in his voice said something else altogether. “Drive carefully.”

  * * *

  ASHER HAD HELPED Jack to his feet so they could get farther away from the inferno. Sabra and Jack collapsed beneath a poplar tree while Asher trotted down the long driveway in hopes of finding an address on a rusting mailbox none of them remembered seeing.

  He was back, shaking his head, when the Jeep Cherokee came barreling up the driveway toward them.

  Once again, Jack went to his hands and knees in hope of being able to stand to meet Meg, but he got only as far as his knees. Meg threw herself out of the car, tears pouring down her cheeks. He thought her eyes flashed gladness at the sight of Sabra, but then they fixed on him.

  “Jack. Oh, my God. Jack.”

  He struggled to rise. She fell to her knees and wrapped her arms around him. He expelled a sound of pain even as he enclosed her in an embrace.

  “...so scared.” Her mumbles were hard to make out. “You’re hurt. Why didn’t you say?”

  “Bruises. Maybe a cracked rib.” Words weren’t coming easy to him. Not when all he wanted to say was, I love you. Please will you take me home with you?

  She kept crying, and he wasn’t sure those weren’t tears tracking his face and dampening her hair.

  At last she wiped her cheeks on his shirt. “I called for help. They knew where the lavender farm is.”

  “Can’t miss the smoke if they get close.”

  “No.” Blotchy, wet, dirty, the face she lifted to him was beautiful. “I can’t believe you saved Sabra.”

  “Group effort. Meg...”

  But she was looking past him, and fresh tears fell when Emily flung herself at her mom. Then Sabra was there, too, and Jack let himself sink back onto his ass.

  Pretty pathetic that he felt abandoned.

  Just then Meg’s head turned until she saw him, as if he was her anchor, and he relaxed. They’d have time.

  He cocked his head, sure he heard a siren.

  * * *

  THE ER DOCTOR at the hospital in Walla Walla really wanted to keep Jack overnight.

  Even hours later, he looked awful. Meg could tell he hurt way more than he wanted to admit. After the splinters had been removed, his hands had been cleaned, disinfected and wrapped in gauze. Pain medication glazed his eyes.

  “Will you listen to her?” Meg said. “You really should stay.” She hoped she sounded more certain than she felt. What she wanted desperately was to take them all home.

  “No,” he repeated, sounding patient but unmovable.

  Sabra’s doctor had made noises about keeping her, too, but really, she was only mildly dehydrated. An ultrasound had shown her baby was active and appropriately sized for the gestational stage.

  Both doctors had exclaimed when they saw Meg, too, necessitating repeated explanations. She felt like she should be a patient. Every muscle in her body had stiffened, which wasn’t fair when she had hardly gotten out of the car.

  They all smelled like smoke when they finally escaped. Meg anxiously eased Jack into the front passenger seat and let the kids squeeze into the back.

  As she was getting in, he reached for the seat belt, then grumbled something she couldn’t make out.

  “What did you say?”

  He clicked the belt into place. “It feels like the damn San Andreas Fault is moving in my body.”

  “Oh, Jack! We can go back in—”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Can we just go home?” Emily said from the back, sounding tremulous.

  Meg’s shoulders sagged. “Yes. Except we’re stopping to pick up Jack’s car, remember.”

  As she drove, what she and Jack wanted was to hear Sabra’s story. They’d been in another cubicle when the Whitman County detective had interviewed her.

  The headlights pierced the night ahead. The interior of the Cherokee was mostly dark once they left town.

  Sabra talked in a low, halting voice. Nothing she said at first was any surprise.

  Despite Bouchard’s urgings, she had refused to have an abortion. He had claimed he and his wife lived together like strangers, that he loved Sabra, so when she pressed he had said he’d get a divorce. It would just take time. Only months passed, and she started realizing how evasive he was. She got mad.

  The day she disappeared, she had stuck enough clothes in for a day or two and, after Meg dropped her off, she’d gone to Remy’s car and hidden on the floor in the backseat.

  “He left it unlocked for me. So we could go to his house and talk. I told him everyone would know the baby was his if he didn’t move out.”

  Meg winced.

  What Bouchard told her was that he had a cabin set up for her. It would only be temporary, but he could come see her a lot. When they got there and she saw how primitive it was, an
d that it had no windows, he had had to force her inside. And then he nailed the boards over the door.

  Meg tensed, imagining what Sabra had felt as he ignored her pleading.

  Bouchard had left her a flashlight, and she found drinks and food and a plastic cooler and a really icky camp bed. She had screamed and cried and tried to get out.

  “But my hands were bleeding and I broke the only chair, and I couldn’t make any of the boards move at all.”

  Bouchard had come every few days and pried a board off the window—the one she had been looking out when Jack found her—to pass her food and anything else she needed.

  “He’d talk to me,” she said. “It was beyond bizarre. First he kept lying and saying we’d get married, that he just couldn’t let me tell anyone we were together yet. But he didn’t care when I cried or begged or anything. And then...” She went silent for a minute. Light from the beams of a passing truck glanced over her face and allowed Meg to see that the girls were holding hands.

  “And then?” Jack prompted.

  “He said I wouldn’t be able to prove anything if it weren’t for the baby.” Stress threaded her voice. “He yelled and yelled. Why did I have to get pregnant and wreck everything? And did I really think he’d marry a dumb teenage girl like me? When his wife was smart and made lots of money and they had kids together?” She bent her head, her hair falling forward. “I was so stupid.” Finally she said, her voice soft, “He told me I’d have to stay there until I had the baby. He’d take it away, and I could go home, because no matter what I said, people would believe him and not me.”

  “Did you think that was true?” Jack asked.

  “I didn’t know. It was so scary there that... I just wanted him to let me go! Only I think he meant to kill my baby.”

  Meg heard a quiet growl from Jack. It felt so natural to reach out and take his hand, which he gripped hard.

  “The last time he came—before today, I mean—Remy said he wasn’t sure he could let me go. That my friend and a cop were both sniffing around, so it might be better if I just disappeared. I asked him if he was going to kill me, and he wouldn’t answer. He just nailed the board back over the window and drove away.”