Her gaze flew from Cal's face to Ethan's and back again. What she saw there made her stomach sink. It had been bad enough to have these men regard her as Gabe's enemy, but now they seemed to have decided she was good for their brother. She shuddered as she contemplated where that might lead them.
"It's fine with your mother," Ethan said.
"She doesn't mind one bit if you stay here," Cal added.
Only Gabe paid any attention to her wishes. "It is all right, isn't it?"
She couldn't say no without looking like an ogre, so she nodded.
"Yippee!" he squealed. "Rosie, I get to stay!"
Rosie celebrated by slapping Rachel's cheeks with her small wet hands.
Gabe began to steer her toward the door, only to have Jane finally come out of her trance. "Rachel, would you like to borrow some shoes? I think I have a pair of sandals that—"
"She won't need them," Gabe said.
They reached the front door, and Cal shot forward. "Rachel?"
She stiffened, determined to throw every word of his sniveling apology right back in his face.
But instead of apologizing, he gave her a lady-killer grin that made her understand exactly how a brilliant woman like Jane could have fallen in love with someone so bullheaded.
"I know you hate my guts, and it'll probably take you a lifetime to forgive me, but…" He scratched his chin. "Could I please have Rosie back?"
Chapter Twenty-Five
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Gabe turned off the shower in the cottage, grabbed a towel, and quickly dried himself. He couldn't blow this. No matter what, he had to knock some sense into that sweet stubborn head of hers. His life depended on it.
Wrapping the towel around his hips, he stepped out into the hallway. "Rach?"
No answer.
Panic raced through him. She'd suggested he take his shower first. What if she'd been trying to get rid of him so she could fetch Chip and leave town?
He flew down the hallway, poked his nose into Chip's bedroom and his own, then into hers.
She hadn't gone anywhere. Instead, she'd fallen asleep on top of the quilt, her wrinkled dress bunched around her legs, grubby toes peeking out.
His shoulders slumped with relief. He smiled, got dressed, and spent much of the afternoon just sitting next to her bed and watching her sleep. It was the most beautiful sight he'd ever seen.
Three hours later, she finally stirred, but he wasn't there because he'd gone out to check on Tweety Bird. It was a good thing.
"Rach! Rachel, wake up! I need you!"
"We should have told them we got M-A-R-R-I-E-D." Kristy spelled out the word as she gazed across the interior of Jane's Range Rover at her new husband. "But they looked too frazzled to handle any more drama. I still can't believe Cal threw Rachel into jail."
"What I can't believe is that we offered to baby-sit these two little imps when we haven't even been M-A-R-R-I-E-D for a full day."
He glanced in the rearview mirror at Rosie and Chip. While Chip inspected a scab on his elbow, Rosie chewed contentedly on Horse's paw. They had borrowed the Range Rover because it was easier than moving Rosie's car seat. Now both children were sandy from their afternoon outing at the park.
"Cal and Jane have had them all morning," Kristy pointed out, "and we only took them for an hour."
He turned into the lane that led to the top of Heartache Mountain. "It's our honeymoon, for pete's sake. We should be making a baby of our own."
Kristy smiled. "I can't wait. But Cal and Jane needed a break. Today has been hard on everybody."
"Speaking of hard…"
"Ethan Bonner!"
"Don't you try to act all coy with me, Mrs. Bonner. I've seen your true colors."
"You want to see them again?"
He burst out laughing.
"Why'd you call Kristy 'Mrs. Bonner'?" Chip piped up from the backseat.
Ethan and Kristy exchanged guilty glances, then Ethan tilted his head toward the back while he kept his eyes on the road. "I'm glad you asked that, Chip. As a matter of fact, we want you to be the first to know… Kristy and I got married yesterday."
"You did?"
"Yep."
"That's good. Do you know there's lots of planets all over the place? And some of them are a trillion years old."
So much for the importance of marriage to a five-year-old.
Kristy started giggling all over again. Ethan smiled at her, and love spilled from his heart. How could he have been blind for so long?
They turned the final bend that led to the cottage, and both of them saw it at once. Kristy gasped. "The garage is on fire!"
Ethan shoved his foot on the accelerator, and the Range Rover shot toward, the cottage. A shower of gravel flew up as he braked. Kristy threw open the door and jumped out.
He slammed on the emergency brake and shot Chip a quick, warning glance. "Stay right here! Don't move!"
Chip gave a frightened nod, and Ethan leaped out just in time to see Gabe and Rachel appear from the back of the cottage. While Gabe raced forward with the garden hose, Rachel rushed toward the outside faucet to turn it on.
Kristy was heading for the cottage. He followed her inside, and they whipped up several scatter rugs, then hurried back out with them.
As Gabe saw them coming, he thrust the hose at Rachel. "Keep the perimeter wet!" Ethan knew he was far more worried about the fire spreading to the cottage than the fate of the dilapidated old garage.
Gabe grabbed one of the rugs from Ethan. "You take the back. I'll take the front."
They separated, and began beating at several of the smaller brushfires. Ethan could have worked more efficiently if he'd been alone, but he kept looking around to make certain Kristy wasn't getting too close to the flames.
Luckily, the ground was still damp from the rain they'd had early Saturday morning, and they soon had the fire under control. Nothing was left of the garage except a smoldering pile of rubble, but the cottage was safe.
Kristy turned off the faucet and Rachel dropped the hose. Ethan came up to them. "What happened?"
Rachel pushed a strand of hair back from her face with her forearm. "I don't know. I was sleeping, then Gabe called me outside, and I saw the flames."
"You're soaked," Kristy said.
She was bedraggled, too, in a wrinkled calico house-dress that looked as if it had been slept in and a pair of men's black rubber shower thongs.
"Look what I found in the weeds over there." Gabe appeared holding the red plastic gas can that was always kept in the garage.
"Anything left in it?" Ethan asked.
Gabe shook his head and threw the can down in disgust. "I don't care if I have to order twenty-four-hour surveillance. I'm getting to the bottom of this."
Rachel squeezed Kristy's hand. "It's a good thing the two of you stopped by. We would have had a hard time putting it out by ourselves."
"We came over to bring Chip back. We also have something to tell you." Kristy exchanged a conspiratorial smile with Ethan, and then her eyes widened. "Ethan, we forgot. We left the kids in the car."
"Kids?" Rachel moved toward the front of the cottage.
"We took Rosie, too," Ethan explained, as the rest of them followed. "Jane and Cal needed a break."
"What do you have to tell us?" Rachel asked.
Ethan smiled. "Maybe we'll let Chip break the news."
They rounded the cottage. Kristy drew in her breath, and then all of them froze.
The Range Rover was missing. And there was no sign of the children.
Bobby Dennis couldn't get enough air. He kept opening his mouth and trying to suck more in, but it was as if his lungs had shrunk. Both kids in the back were crying, and the boy wouldn't stop yelling at him.
"You let us out right now, or Gabe is going to shoot you with his gun! I mean it! He's got a million guns, and he'll shoot you, then cut you up with a knife!"
Bobby couldn't stand it anymore. "Shut up or you're going to make me wreck!"
The boy shut up, but the baby kept screaming. Bobby wanted to ditch the car and get away from them, but he couldn't because he'd left his Lumina behind miles ago. It was parked near the road that led up to Heartache Mountain.
Bobby'd been so wired he hadn't even seen the kids in the back when he'd jumped in the car. If he'd seen them, he sure as hell wouldn't have given in to the temptation to steal the Range Rover.
How had everything gotten so screwed up? It was Rachel Snopes's fault. If it wasn't for the Temple, his parents wouldn't have gotten divorced. Because of the Temple, his mom had gotten so religious that she'd driven his dad away.
Bobby still remembered how he used to have to go to services with her and listen to G. Dwayne Snopes preach, while his bitch of a wife sat there drinking in every word. G. Dwayne was dead, so Bobby couldn't get back at him, but after all these years, he'd finally gotten back at his wife.
Except everything was going wrong.
Even though he'd been drunk, he knew now that he never should have torn apart the drive-in. But when he'd come into the snack shop, she'd looked so happy working there it made him sick. It wasn't right she should be happy when his mom was bitching at him all the time, and his dad didn't call him anymore.
Him and Joey and Dave had been drinking Mountain Dew and vodka during the second movie. Afterward, Bobby had wanted to party some more at this kid's house he knew, but Joey and Dave said they were tired. Buncha losers. Bobby'd gotten rid of them, had some more vodka, then gone back to the drive-in. Everybody had left, so he'd sneaked in and sorta gone crazy.
It wasn't till Saturday afternoon when he was driving around that he'd thought about the stuff he had locked in his trunk and started to worry about what he'd do if his mom or somebody found it. That's when he'd spotted Rachel's piece-of-shit Escort parked by those new condos. The street was quiet, nobody was around, and he'd been scared, so he'd hidden the stuff from his trunk under the boxes she had in the back. Today he'd heard she'd been arrested and put in jail. That made him feel good until he heard she'd got out right away.
He realized he was coming up too fast on the car ahead, and he swung into the left lane.
There was a pickup heading right toward him.
Adrenaline rushed through Bobby's veins. A horn blared, and, at the last moment, the pickup shot off the road, landing crookedly in a ditch.
"You're going too fast!" the boy cried from the backseat.
Bobby wiped the sweat out of his eyes with the shoulder of his T-shirt. "I told you to shut up!"
If only his mom hadn't found the weed in his closet this morning, she wouldn't have kicked him out of the house. She'd said it was for good, but he hadn't believed her until he'd gone back a couple of hours ago and seen a locksmith's truck parked in the drive. The truck had a sign on the side that said 24 Hour Service.
He didn't know what to do. The last he'd heard, his dad was down in Jacksonville, so he decided to go there, but he didn't know if his dad would want him.
He'd drunk a couple of beers, smoked some weed, and as he was driving around, he'd passed the road that led up Heartache Mountain. He couldn't stand the fact that Rachel was out of jail and probably still all-smiley and everything. The next thing he knew, he'd ditched his Lumina in the trees and climbed through the woods.
He figured Gabe and Rachel would be cleaning up the drive-in, and he decided to burn the house while they were gone. But just as he'd sneaked the gasoline can from the garage, Gabe had stepped out on the back porch. Bobby wasn't crazy enough to burn the house when people were in it, so he'd thrown the gasoline on the garage instead.
When the fire had caught, he'd watched it for a minute and then started to go back through the woods to get his Lumina just as the Range Rover came up the road. Sixty thousand easy for a car like that.
After Pastor Ethan and Kristy Brown had jumped out, he'd gotten in and taken off. The damn kids in back hadn't made a sound till he was way down the highway. Now, all they were doing was making noise.
"If you let us out of the car, I won't tell Gabe what you did!"
Bobby punched the accelerator. "I'll let you out, okay! Just not yet. I got to get farther away."
"Now! You gotta let us out now! You're scaring Rosie!"
"Shut up! Just shut up, will you?"
The curve came at him too fast. He heard himself make this funny sound in his throat, and then he hit the brakes.
The boy screamed in the back.
The car began to fishtail, and Bobby's mom's face flickered in his head. Mom!
He lost control.
Rachel couldn't stop making whimpering sounds. Please, God… Oh, please… Please...
Gabe's knuckles were white on the Mercedes's steering wheel, his face gray beneath his tan. She knew he was thinking the same thing she was. What if they'd turned the wrong direction on the highway?
She told herself the police would find the children if she and Gabe couldn't. Kristy and Ethan had stayed behind to notify them. And the skid marks at the bottom of the lane had been distinct. Still… They'd already gone over ten miles. What if they'd guessed wrong? Or what if the bastard they were chasing had pulled off onto a side road?
She couldn't think about that. If she did, she'd start screaming.
Gabe sucked in his breath. "The car."
She saw it then. "Oh, God…"
The Range Rover was turned upside down in a ditch ahead to their right. Vehicles had stopped; people were clustered together. There were two patrol cars and an ambulance.
Oh, God… Please… Please, God…
The Mercedes's tires squealed, and a shower of gravel hit the undercarriage as Gabe pulled off the road. He jumped out of the car, and she ran after him, pebbles biting through the soles of the sandals Kristy had tossed at her. She heard him call out to the state trooper standing next to the ambulance.
"The children! Are the children all right?"
"Who are you?"
"I'm—I'm the boy's father."
The trooper jerked his head toward the stretcher. "They're stabilizing the kid now."
Rachel reached the stretcher just after Gabe did. But it wasn't Edward. They gazed down at Bobby Dennis.
Without a word, Gabe spun toward the car and bent over to look inside where one of the doors gaped open. He immediately straightened. "There were two small children with him. A five-year-old boy, and a baby girl."
The trooper grew immediately alert. "Are you saying this kid wasn't the only one in the car?"
Gabe offered a brusque explanation while she ran to look inside the Range Rover. The straps on Rosie's empty car seat dangled. Rachel looked frantically around and saw a white baby shoe in the weeds ten feet from the car.
"Gabe!"
He raced over to her.
"Look!" she cried. "Rosie's shoe." She squinted against the fading sun and spotted a tiny pink sock hanging in the weeds near a line of trees that marked the edge of a densely wooded area.
Gabe saw the sock at the same time she did. "Let's go."
Without waiting for the trooper, they moved into the woods together. Prickly bushes snagged at her skirt, but she paid no attention. "Edward!"
Gabe's voice boomed. "Chip! Call out if you can hear us!"
There was no response, and they forged deeper into the trees. Gabe's legs were longer than hers, and he quickly moved ahead. "Chip! Can you hear me?"
A low branch snared her shirt. She yanked it free, then looked up to see that Gabe had frozen in place.
"Chip? Is that you?"
Oh, God… She stopped in place and listened.
"Gabe?"
The voice was small and achingly familiar, coming from somewhere off to their left.
Gabe raced ahead, calling out. She rushed after him, her heart pounding.
The terrain sloped downward, and she slipped, then righted herself. Gabe disappeared. She followed the path he'd taken through a thicket of pines and came out in a clearing by a small creek.
That was when she sa
w them.
Edward sat huddled against the trunk of an old black gum tree some thirty yards away with Rosie curled in his lap.
"Chip!" Gabe's shoes pounded the ground as he flew across the clearing toward the children. Rosie had been quiet, but as soon as she saw him, she started to scream. Both children were dirty and tear-streaked. Edward's T-shirt was torn and one knee was scraped. In addition to her missing shoe and sock, Rosie's pink romper had a grease smear across the front. Gabe went down on his knee, snatched her up with one arm, and threw his other one around her son.
"Gabe!" Edward clutched at him.
A sob tore her throat as she ran forward.
Gabe thrust Rosie at her and pulled Edward to his chest, then pushed him away far enough to lift his eyelids. "Are you all right? Does it hurt anywhere?"
"My ears."
Gabe immediately turned Edward's head to look. "Your ears hurt?"
"Rosie's got a loud scream. It hurt my ears."
Gabe visibly relaxed. "Is that all? Anything else?"
Chip shook his head. "I was real scared. That boy was bad." He started to cry.
Gabe gave him a quick hug, thrust him at Rachel, and took Rosie to check her over.
Edward trembled in her arms and spoke against her belly. "Mommy, I was so scared. The car turned over, and I was afraid that bad boy would wake up and run off with us again, so I got Rosie out of her seat and carried her, but she was heavy, and she kept screaming 'cause she was scared, too, but finally she stopped."
Rachel spoke around her tears. "You were so brave."
Gabe, in the meantime, had quieted Rosie. Rachel looked up at him, and he nodded. "She's fine. We'll have them both checked, but I think they're all right. Thank God they were buckled in when that car went over."
Thank you, God. Thank you.
Rosie rested her head against her uncle and brought her thumb to her mouth. Her little chest heaved as she took a few comforting sucks.
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