The Banty House

by Brown, Carolyn

  Ginger opened her mouth to say that they weren’t married, but she clamped it shut without saying a word.

  “Nothing but permission.” Sloan wiped his clammy hands on the legs of his jeans and then took out his pocketknife. “And your promise that you won’t tell anyone that I did this. When it’s over, just let everyone think it was a drill. I’ll be glad to give the police a description of the guy, but . . .”

  “No notoriety. I get it,” Warren said.

  Sloan nodded and looked up at Ginger, who was standing right beside him. “Go on back to Betsy’s room. Wait for me, and in case I’m wrong, do me a favor.”

  “You won’t be wrong, and I’m not going anywhere,” she told him.

  No pressure now. He didn’t have time to argue with her, and he’d never live with the guilt if she was hurt in the blast.

  “If . . .” He stopped. “Just promise me that if I’m killed doing this, you will put my name on the birth certificate as the baby’s father. You can’t put Lucas on it because his parents could find out later and cause trouble. A little girl doesn’t need to look at her birth certificate and see ‘unknown’ in the space for a father’s name.”

  “I’m not talking about this right now, because we’re going to walk away from this—together.” Ginger sure had more confidence in him than he had in himself. “Let’s get to it and not waste any more time.”

  “Betsy will kill me if anything happens to you,” he whispered as he started following the colored wires back to the detonator.

  “Then don’t let it,” Ginger told him.

  “Whoever built this thing is an amateur, but he’s got plenty of explosives wired to the timer.”

  “Is that a pipe bomb?” she whispered.

  “No, darlin’. It’s more sophisticated than that, but still not professional grade like a terrorist would use. But it’s plenty good enough to take out the judge.”

  You can do this, Tex. Chris Jones’s voice was so real in his head that he almost believed his old teammate was right there beside him. Sloan had been all jittery inside since he first realized there was a bomb in the bag, but just hearing Chris in his head calmed him. Suddenly, he felt like he was in Kuwait and all his team was right there with him and had taken positions to protect him as he did his job. His hands steadied, and he could concentrate wholly on what was in front of him without glancing at the timer every second.

  The person who made this particular bomb might not be professional, but he’d sure put together a confusing piece of art. Every single wire was the same shade of gray, making it hard to keep track of which ones he’d already traced and which ones he hadn’t. He’d seen something like this once before. He closed his eyes for ten seconds to recall exactly what that one had looked like. He could hear Bobby Joe chuckling behind him. “I’ll buy you a drink if you’ll hurry up. I’ve got a date tonight with a cute little filly over in the ladies’ barracks.”

  Sloan opened his eyes, found the right gray wire, and cut it. The timer stopped at three minutes and five seconds remaining.

  “We did it, Ginger,” he whispered as he stood up, and the two of them stepped out of the closet.

  “You did it. You just saved a lot of lives,” she told him.

  He wrapped his arms around her, hugged her tightly, and felt the baby kick against his belly. He took a step back, grinned, and said, “She just said ‘thank you’ by kicking me.”

  “I believe she did.” Ginger locked eyes with him.

  He leaned in just as she moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, but before he could kiss her Warren turned the corner in the hallway and was right in front of them. “How much time do we have?” he asked.

  “All the time in the world,” Ginger answered.

  “It’s disarmed,” Sloan said. “What about the person I saw trying to escape on the elevator?”

  “Our security caught her on the third floor. They’re holding her until the police get here. From what information I’ve got, she was mad at the judge for his ruling on a divorce last week.” Warren chuckled. “I guess it’s right what they say about hell having no fury like a woman scorned.”

  “Her? I could’ve sworn I saw a man running away,” Sloan said.

  “She’s tall and pretty good sized. I can see where you might think that.” Warren nodded.

  “I’m glad it’s all under control,” Sloan said.

  “Me too, and anytime you want a job working for me, you just say the word.” Warren wiped sweat from his brow with a white handkerchief.

  “Thanks, but I reckon I’ve got enough to keep me busy.” Sloan took Ginger’s hand in his and started back down the hallway toward Betsy’s room.

  “Hey, I didn’t even get your name!” Warren called out.

  “Sloan Baker,” Ginger threw over her shoulder.

  “That job offer still stands anytime, Sloan,” he said.

  “Thanks, but no thanks.” Sloan waved over his shoulder.

  “Why’d you go and do that?” Sloan groaned.

  “Because you wouldn’t. Let’s go get coffee and candy bars for the sisters. They all need a little snack,” she told him.

  “How can you be so calm?” he asked. “Until I felt my old team around me back there, I didn’t know if I could get my hands to stop shaking.”

  She stopped and tiptoed so she could brush a soft kiss across his lips and then took a step back. “They wouldn’t have come to help you if they blamed you for what happened over there. They were tellin’ you that it’s time to let all the guilt go.”

  “Maybe so.” He finally smiled.

  A deep voice Ginger recognized as that of Mr. Warren filled the hospital from the PA system. “Good evening, folks. We have just completed a safety drill. It’s now all right to open your doors if you wish to do so. Have a great rest of the day.”

  “They’ll never know how close a call that was,” Ginger said.

  “How’d you stay so calm during those minutes?” Sloan led her into the small gift shop and stopped at the selection of baby things.

  “I wasn’t calm,” she told him. “My stomach was threatening to give back that bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit you brought me. My hands were sweating, and a couple of times the whole hospital swayed to one side. I found out that I’m not ready to die, but I couldn’t run or even walk because my feet wouldn’t move,” she answered honestly. “I was glad that you hugged me, because I was on the verge of passin’ out stone cold.”

  “And here I thought you were a rock.” He grinned.

  “Had you fooled, didn’t I?” She let go of his hand and picked up five candy bars.

  He laid a cute little bow for a baby girl’s hair and a bill on the counter. “That’s a prize for the baby and to pay for the candy.”

  The clerk rang up their purchases and put them into a bag. “There you go. Y’all make a cute couple.” She smiled.

  “Thank you.” Sloan flashed a wide grin.

  “I was going to get that,” Ginger said. “I have my Easter egg money. And why did you let her think we’re a couple?”

  “Next time you can buy something for the baby. This is just a small token of thanks for giving me courage.” Sloan handed her the bag. “You take this, and I’ll carry the coffee. And, honey, it would have embarrassed her if I’d said we weren’t together. Besides, today I kind of like the idea.” Sloan tucked her free hand in his.

  Ginger smiled up at him. “Me too.”

  She’d helped him. She’d given him courage—he said so himself. A warm feeling wrapped itself around her like a fuzzy blanket on a cold night. He’d let someone think they were a couple, and that made her feel like she was floating two feet off the floor.

  They were halfway to Betsy’s room when Sloan asked, “Are we going to tell the sisters that this wasn’t a safety drill?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Ginger answered. “It’s way too good of a story not to tell them. They can keep a secret. And it will stop them from asking us all kinds of questions about why it took us s
o long to get back with the coffee and candy.”

  “I think I asked before, but I’ll do it again. How did you get to be so smart?” Sloan followed her into Betsy’s room.

  “I’ll have to blame anything I know on life,” she said as she showed the sisters the cute pink bow with feathers all around it.

  “Did you go to Dallas to get the coffee?” Connie asked.

  “Nope.” Ginger passed out the candy bars.

  Sloan gave everyone a cup of coffee, then sat down. “We got sidetracked.”

  “Doing what?” Betsy tore the wrapper from her candy bar and took a bite.

  “Sloan is going to tell you the story, but it can’t leave this room,” Ginger said. “And you ain’t goin’ to believe it.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  I want you to think about what I asked you to do at the hospital,” Sloan said when Ginger walked him out to his truck a couple of days later. He’d stopped by to say goodbye to Ginger and the ladies before he left on a three- or four-day trip that he should’ve taken when he first got back to the States.

  “You mean about listing you as the father? That’s a lie that could come back and bite you on the butt, Sloan,” she said.

  “I’ll take that chance, so promise you’ll give it some serious thought, please,” he said.

  “You said that when we thought one or both of us would be killed,” she told him.

  “But I meant it.” He tipped her chin up with his fist and gave her a sweet kiss.

  “You think about it while you’re gone,” she said. “We’ll talk when you get back.”

  “Will you think about it?” he asked.

  “I will,” she promised. “Be safe and call me. Now that I’ve got a smarty-pants phone, I can even get texts and pictures and we can FaceTime.”

  “That’s why I talked you into it.” He gave her a quick hug and got into his truck before he changed his mind about the trip. “See you in a few days. I expect to be back for church on Sunday. I want to see which one you choose.”

  He watched her in the rearview mirror as he pulled away. She stood on the side of the road in her faded skinny jeans and a T-shirt that was stretched out as far as it would go over her belly. She was still waving when he made the slight curve into town and lost sight of her.

  According to the map he’d pulled up on his phone, the first leg of the trip would take four hours. That would put him there by midafternoon and give him all the time he needed in the Crawford Cemetery to find Bobby Joe Daniels’s grave.

  “Well, Tinker.” He reached over with his right hand and rubbed the dog’s ears. “You’ll be able to say that you’ve been outside Medina County after this trip.”

  Tinker didn’t even open one eye; he just kept sleeping on his favorite throw from the house. Sloan had thought about asking Ginger if she’d go down to the house and check on Tinker every day, but she had her hands full with Betsy. The old gal had been cranky with everyone except Ginger since she’d gotten home from the hospital. Ginger did a fine job of keeping the peace, but Kate and Connie were about at their wits’ end with their middle sister.

  He turned on the radio and kept time to the music with his thumb on the steering wheel. One song that played reminded him of Bobby Joe’s sense of humor, and the next one made him think about the way the two kisses he’d shared with Ginger had affected him.

  “Putting those two together in my head is downright weird.” He chuckled. “But, Bobby Joe, you would have liked Ginger. You might have even fussed at me for not asking her out already, but she’s pregnant and she’s only nineteen, and it would be awkward if things went south between us. The Carson sisters would come gunnin’ for me if I made her cry, but I do like her a lot.”

  He remembered the first time he’d met the team. They’d been thrown together after he’d finished with his training after basic. He and Bobby Joe hated each other at first sight. Sloan never could put his finger on it, but there was something about that guy that just rubbed him wrong. Finally, he went to his commander and told him to either put him with another team or else get rid of Bobby Joe.

  The commander called them both into his office and asked Bobby Joe if he had a problem with Sloan Baker.

  “Yes, sir, I surely do,” Bobby Joe admitted.

  “What is the trouble?” the commander asked.

  “I just flat-out don’t like him,” Bobby Joe said.

  “And you can’t give me a reason why?” The commander stood up from behind his desk.

  “He’s always judging me,” Bobby Joe answered.

  “And you have the same problem with this soldier?” the commander asked Sloan.

  “Yes, sir. I don’t judge him, but I just don’t like him.”

  “Well, then, here’s the solution we’re going to apply to this problem. You two don’t have to like each other, but it might be best if you did, because I’m not splitting up this team. You are the cream of the crop, and you’ll learn to get along. From right now and for the next six weeks, while y’all are getting ready for your first deployment to Afghanistan, the two of you will not ever be more than thirty feet from each other. No, make that twenty feet. If this man”—he pointed to Bobby Joe—“goes to the latrine, you go with him. If this one”—he turned toward Sloan—“goes outside to sit in the sun, you go with him. You are to sit together during classes and eat beside each other in the mess hall. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.” They had both saluted.

  “Dismissed,” the commander had said.

  “I’ll always hate you,” Bobby Joe had smarted off the minute they were outside.

  “I don’t reckon I’ll shed too many tears over that,” Sloan had told him.

  Tinker brought Sloan back to the present when he reared up on his hind feet, looked out the window, and barked.

  “There’s a rest stop a mile up the road, so hold it until then,” Sloan told him. “Did I ever tell you about Bobby Joe? Well, I woke up in the middle of the night to find Bobby Joe was gone from our twenty-foot limit. I panicked. If the commander found out he’d gotten away from me, I could get a dishonorable discharge, so I went huntin’ for him.”

  Tinker looked up at him and whined.

  “Yep, I had to find him in a hurry, and since I know why you’re whimpering, the rest is kind of fitting. I found my friend in the latrine, curled up in a ball in the corner. He was holding his phone to his chest and bawlin’ like a baby. His girlfriend had broken up with him in a text, and he threatened to go AWOL. I talked to him all night long, and come morning, we were best friends.”

  He pulled into the parking lot of the rest stop, snapped a leash on to Tinker’s collar, and took him over to the doggy section. Tinker hiked his leg on a small bush and then pawed the earth. Sloan made a few laps around the park area with him, just to give them both some exercise, then took him back to the truck and gave him some water.

  Sloan got back behind the wheel and opened a bag of beef jerky. He gave Tinker a nice big piece and then bit off a chunk to chew on while he continued on up the road. He didn’t stop for lunch but drove straight to Hillsboro, Texas. He stopped at a convenience store for a cold soda on his way to the cemetery.

  “Would you know anything about a Bobby Joe Daniels?” Sloan asked.

  “Yep, that’d be my cousin. He got blowed up over in Kuwait a couple of years ago. He’s buried up in Crawford Cemetery. Grave is on the first road to the left after you go through the gates, down toward the end. Can’t miss it because there’s a big old granite stone that says Daniels on it. It’s where the whole family is buried,” the young man said. “Why’d you ask?”

  “I was a friend of his in the military,” Sloan said. “Thanks for the directions.”

  “Sure thing. What’d you say your name was?” the guy yelled.

  “I didn’t, but it’s Sloan Baker.” Guilt went with him as he left the place. He felt like he should have told the fellow that he’d served with Daniels, or that he’d been on the same team with him—or better ye
t, that he’d been responsible for his death.

  He drove to the cemetery, followed the directions he’d been given, and found the Daniels stone in the middle of a large section of ground. Headstones dating back to the 1800s were lined up all around the huge chunk of granite that had green moss growing on it. He found one with Robert Joseph Daniels at the back side of the group. A small American flag flapped in the wind above the grave, and a red rosebush was in full bloom at one end.

  “Hello, Bobby Joe.” Sloan whipped off his cap and knelt in front of the grave. The breeze shifted and brought a strong scent of roses with it. He inhaled deeply and tried to say something, but words wouldn’t come out past the lump in his throat. He felt a presence near him and figured it was his imagination, but then a shadow fell over his shoulder.

  “Good afternoon, Sloan,” a very familiar deep voice said.

  Sloan stood up and turned around slowly, half expecting to see Bobby Joe and find out that he had survived the blast after all, but the man leaning on a cane not five feet from him was an older guy.

  “I’m Teddy Joe Baker, Bobby Joe’s grandpa.” The man before him was exactly what Sloan would have thought his friend would look like in fifty years. “One of my grandsons works down at the convenience store. He called me soon as you left. I wanted to meet you since Bobby Joe talked about you so much when he called home.”

  “Pleased to meet you, sir.” Sloan extended a hand.

  They shook, and then Teddy sat down on a nearby bench. “I’ve been expectin’ you for more’n two years now. I keep in touch with y’all’s commander, and I been prayin’ for you every day since all this happened.”

  “I figured you’d rather shoot me as pray for me,” Sloan said. “If I’d been there, I could have defused the bomb.”

  “Son, didn’t they tell you?” The old man frowned. “It wouldn’t have mattered if Jesus Himself had walked into that place. It went off before they were halfway across the tent. They never even got to it.”

  “What?” Sloan’s knees went weak, and he had to sit down.

  “The commander said that it took months for them to get the scene re-created, but that’s what happened. The thing wasn’t on a timer. It was detonated remotely, maybe by a cell phone. Didn’t the commander call and tell you?”