Then a worse thought struck, “Had they been able to trace her computer? Were they able to identify her through her Host ID? Is that even a thing anymore?” It had been a long while since her computer science and entry level coding classes. In that field, everything turned over every six months. She had last tried her hand at coding several years ago. Who knew what they were using these days?
Carmen wondered if there was some way she could find out if the car had been found and decided to get in her car and drive down to the wretched area where she left it and see if it was still there. Calming down now that she at least had something to do, she climbed into her white S-class Benz and made her way to the hood. A white big body Benz is many things, but subtle is not one of them. Everybody in the hood saw when she drove through. It was noticed when she circled a particular block once, twice and then a third time. Someone wondered about this fancy lady and her intentions. When Carmen left the hood she had a tail and since he wasn’t driving an ostentatious luxury vehicle, she didn’t notice she had aroused someone’s curiosity. Carmen, having determined the car was nowhere in the vicinity, left unsatisfied and still wondering where it was.
On the way to her home, she ran through a list of likely scenarios and when it dawned on her, she was surprised she had been so long in figuring it out. Shan had one of those credit watch services! Everybody had one these days, all the banks were offering them in every other monthly statement. She might have even had some type of insurance to protect herself from having to pay anything. Damn it! She should have planned for this. It didn’t matter, there was always Plan B. Carmen decided it was time to escalate.
She made a call. Night fell.
Chapter Forty-Two
It was a quarter past two in the morning. The nondescript sedan with stolen plates turned quietly onto the cul-de-sac. Its engine was a quiet purr; the flat black paint offered no reflection from the porch lights lining the street.
Inside two people kept talk to a minimum. They both knew what they were here to do. The smell inside the car was sharp and metallic, adrenaline raced through them and anxiety made sweat pool in their armpits and run down their backs. There was no music. The dome light had been removed. The interior panel lights dimmed as low as they possibly could. Their hair had been covered with kitchen nets and gloves covered their hands.
They had decided to attack from the front of the house because neighbors on either side had dogs. They were hopeful that avoiding the rear of the home would keep the dogs from a frenzy of barking. Also, they needed to get this done in less than two minutes. In and out as quickly as possible, was the only way to get away with something like this. Two dark clad people approached the lovely ranch style house. A flick of two lighters and then two bricks are hurled through the bay window, followed immediately by flaming bottles. The dogs went crazy with barking.
The curtains went up in flames immediately. One of the bottles landed upside down on the sofa and it also began to burn. They were off the street and headed for the highway before the smoke alarms went off. Urgently wanting to speed but knowing that was a bad move, the driver kept to the limit. The passenger was breathing hard and grinning.
“Now, let’s see how little Miss Goody Two Shoes feels about that,” she thought.
Jack was on his feet as soon as the bricks broke the glass. He had been waiting for something, he just hadn’t known what. His sleep had been troubled for days. All he knew was if that crazy heifer had just broken the bay window in his front room, he was going to break his foot off in her behind.
Before he even had the bedroom door open he heard another thud. As he walked down the hallway, he smelled lighter fluid burning and immediately knew this was much more than broken glass. Moving faster, he went into his oldest daughter’s room and snatched her out of bed. His wife was out of the bed in the hallway looking scared.
She spoke one word, “Fire?”
He said, “Yes! Get out, now!” he handed her the oldest as he strode into the baby girls room and got her out of the brand new big girl bed.
His wife was already at the garage door exit and had her purse in her hand, which she snagged walking by the table, when he caught up to her. Unsure about the safety of using the auto garage door opener, he lifted it himself and watched her back out of the garage. He grabbed the fire extinguisher from the utility room and headed back inside to see if it was remotely possible to save his house. He headed for the living room and saw flames going up the wall by the window and the couch burning. He put the couch out first, because it wasn’t really totally engulfed. The throw blanket his wife put on it was burning quite intensely.
As he was putting the couch out, he felt water splash on him and turned to see his wife outside in bare feet and a short nightgown that said, HOT with a mug of coffee on the front, pointing the hose through the window.
Aloud he said, “God, I love that woman!”
Then, he heard the sirens in the distance. The blanket was no longer burning, so he turned his attention to the curtains and wall. The water had helped there. It all seemed to be under some pretty decent control. Then the bottles exploded.
Alera heard two loud noises, almost simultaneously and then she heard her husband screaming. Through the window she saw his shirt was on fire. She immediately forgot about saving the house and aimed her hose directly at him.
There were mini fires all around the room because of the explosion. The table cloth was burning, the artificial flowers and the lamp shade. Jack was on fire, screaming, turning in circles trying to get as wet as possible from the hose his wife was aiming inside. He felt like he was on fire all over. At this point, it was time to get out and hope the fire truck arrived. He aimed the fire extinguisher and used it to create a path to the door. Thank God the room wasn’t entirely in flames, but he knew fires grew fast and he had very little time.
He clawed the front door open and ran down the porch. As soon as the door opened he was being sprayed directly with the hose his wife was wielding. He surveyed his family, wife in her nightclothes, hair still wrapped, face tight, eyes wide with fear and his daughters in the car screaming and crying. The neighbors came running outside with cell phones and fire extinguishers to try and help.
The fire truck came screaming around the corner with lights flashing, adding to the already chaotic scene. An ambulance was literally on its tail and before Jack knew it, he had been hustled to the back of the bus.
In a fog of shock, he looked at his wife and asked, “Are the girls okay? Are you hurt?”
Struggling not to cry, Alera nodded, “Yes, the girls are perfect, not a hair on their heads disturbed. I’m okay.”
Alera looked at Jack and was afraid. The burns looked terrible to her eyes; she just hoped it wasn’t as bad as it looked. She hoped they didn’t get infected. He had glass embedded in his legs and probably other places she hadn’t noticed.
Sharing a moment before Jack was rushed off and Alera had to leave to follow the ambulance, he said, “Tell the police about Carmen. I know it was her.”
Nodding her head, she said, “I will.”
To herself she thought, “I’m going to kill that bitch.”
Walking back to tend to her girls and speak with the fireman who was waiting for her attention, she told him what she knew. She gave her cell number and told him she had to get to the hospital to see about her husband.
After getting the girls secured in their car seats, they fell asleep from exhaustion and fading adrenaline. It was the longest drive of her life.
Chapter Forty-Three
Katy was pulled out of a deep sleep by the sound of the phone. Filled immediately with fear only a parent can understand she snatched it off the base and said, “Hello?”
There was a muffled sound, almost as if someone was trying not to cry, that only served to make her more nervous.
Again, she said, “Hello! I can hear you. Did something happen to Shan?”
“No, ma’am, Shan is fine. This is Alera. Jack’s wife,
” were the words that drifted from her phone.
Puzzled and no less worried, Katy asked, “Did something happen to Jack, honey?”
With a sharp, barking laugh Alera said, “Yes. Something happened to Jack. Carmen. She set our house on fire with Molotov cocktails. The front living room is a charred mess. Jack was attempting to put the fire out with a fire extinguisher when the bottles exploded and he was set afire.”
Gasping, Katy was on her feet at “house on fire” and had pulled on the previous day’s jeans and t-shirt by the time Alera finished talking.
“What hospital are you in?” she asked.
“Good Shepherd,” Alera replied.
“I’m on the way. Have you spoken to his family?” she asked.
“Yes, but his parents are in Houston visiting extended family and will not be here for several hours. They are getting on the road now,” Alera explained.
“Where are your girls?” Katy asked as she began filling a mini cooler bag with bread, peanut butter, fruit, popcorn, candy, juice and bottled water.
“They are here, struggling to sleep in the waiting room,” was Alera’s dull response. She sounded as if she needed to be sleep, the adrenaline crash was surely leaving her feeling weak and she was likely in shock herself.
“I will be there in twenty minutes,” Katy said before disconnecting.
She spent the next five minutes putting throw blankets and travel pillows in a reusable grocery bag and then she was backing out of the garage faster than she should have been.
On her way to the hospital at 3:00 in the morning, she calculated the time in Oman and figured it had to be about noon. The children leave at noon and it is a Thursday so Shan should be getting ready to leave. Katy decided to get to the hospital, help the girls settle more comfortably, and get more details from Alera before calling Shan. Right now, all she knew is that Jack was in surgery, had been burned and the house was damaged but not destroyed.
She also knew who had done it and that made her even more concerned. This was not spite. This was crazy, bone deep and body wide. Fifteen hectic minutes later, Katy was rushing through the hospital looking for Alera. She found her sitting with the youngest sleeping in her lap and a dazed look on her face.
Gratitude shown from her eyes when she saw Katy, “Hey Miss Katy, thank for coming.”
“Of course, I came. Now give me this baby,” and with the ease of a longtime mother, Katy created a pallet and transferred both of the sleeping girls to the makeshift bed.
For a moment they just stood there looking at the girls and then Alera turned to Katy and said in a tone of disbelief, “That woman set my house on fire while my girls were sleeping inside.” At this moment, the reality set in that for a few terrifying minutes tonight, her girls had been inside a burning house and Alera cried.
Katy wrapped her arms around her and sat her down while she cried it out. Alera’s girls were safe, her husband was in surgery and her house may or may not still be burning; this was a cry long delayed. Katy didn’t rush her.
After a few minutes, Alera managed to run out of tears and was wiping her face with tissues provided by an observant nurse.
“Here Alera, have some chocolate and a water. You really need the sugar to guard against the adrenaline crash. Have you been checked for shock?” asked Katy.
“Yes, I’m not in shock. I mean, not medically anyway. Am I in shock a woman from ten years ago has fixated on my husband and his ex? Yes. I would think she should be satisfied at having destroyed one marriage. Is she trying to destroy this one? Did she want to kill our children? Why? Because he won’t tell her where Shan is? He doesn’t even know! Or does she just want to make him miserable for some reason? People don’t behave this way. I don’t understand,” Alera was unable to comprehend the breadth of this woman’s venom.
“Oh Alera, there is no real answer for you, we don’t really know what Carmen’s motives are, but they don’t matter,” Katy assured her.
“What matters is that the police find and arrest her for this and if they can’t deal with her, we will find a way to rid our lives of this pestilence,” Katy said.
“Now, what happened?” she asked Alera.
Alera retold as much as she could.
“We had been in the bed close to five hours, so we should have been sleeping deeply. Lately though, Jack has been doing a lot of lying quietly and pretending. I think he has been worried about Carmen doing something else. I haven’t been sleeping because I can feel his tension. I’m so grateful for that.”
“The breaking of the bay window is what woke us up, initially. I was a little confused by what I heard, but Jack was already on his feet and walking to the bedroom door. By then, I was getting up to see about the noise too. As soon as Jack hit the threshold, we heard two more thumps and a whoosh. We smelled burning immediately. Jack had already started down the hall.”
“Lord have mercy!” exclaimed Katy, then “Go on, I’m sorry.”
“Basically, Jack went into emergency mode and grabbed Maliah, then Noel and rushed me out of the house. While I was backing out of the garage, he ran in with the fire extinguisher.”
“I went to the front and parked the truck, then ran to the water hose so I could spray the roof down and then started spraying in through the broken window. I guess we are lucky it didn’t break just a few panes, whatever they threw left a gaping hole. I was able to spray the hose on Jack when the bottles exploded and he just ran out the house at that point,” Alera finished her tale.
“I am grateful you and the girls suffered no injuries. I am sorry I didn’t think to bring some clothes, bless your heart you are wearing scrubs,” said Katy.
“The nurse, may she be forever blessed, brought them to me because I showed up in my nightgown. The Red Cross is apparently on the way here to set us up in a hotel. I can’t leave though, because I need to know when Jack gets out of surgery,” Alera said tiredly.
“Don’t worry about any of that. I will take the girls with me, until his folks arrive and then you and the family can make whatever plans you need to and I will pitch in however you need it,” Katy assured.
Then, “What is Jack’s condition?”
“To be honest Miss Katy, it was all so much at once, but the best I can understand is that he has suffered second degree burns on his back from his shoulders to his hips. There are some small patches of skin that have third degree burns.”
Alera continued, “He is in surgery because apparently he also has glass embedded in some of his burned skin. This is a very big deal because they need to get every shard of glass out to avoid future infection.”
“Okay, Alera. We will pray there are no shards of glass in his skin and that he has no infection and that he will heal as quickly as medical technology and the Lord’s will allows,” Katy said.
Then, each in her own thoughts, they settled back to wait a while longer.
Chapter Forty-Three
Shan was tired and sore, but smiling. Her first tennis lesson had been fun. Abdulla’s chosen method of teaching had been to say, “We will just play the game and I will teach you as we go.”
“Wait. What? No, I can’t just play a game when I don’t know the rules,” Shan insisted.
“I will tell you as we go along. Now go stand on the other side of the net and hit the ball when it comes to you,” Abdulla said.
Complaining under her breath, Shan stood on the other side of the net and waited on a ball to come her way. Mindful of her lack of expertise, Abdulla had actually been a pretty good teacher. Most of the evening, the lesson consisted of him just moving her to different spots on the court and lobbing balls, which she was supposed to hit with her front or back hand swing.
Then, he told her, he was going to serve the balls faster in two different places. That was when she got sweaty, running from one side of the court to the other. He only made her run left and right, though. He obviously knew how to play; he served the ball in the same general area for close to an hour and then vari
ed between two spots for another.
Now, she was home and he had gone home to shower and change before returning for a Texas staple: chicken fried steak. She was going to smother it in gravy, whip up a batch of mashed basil and garlic potatoes with steamed asparagus for side dishes and serve him sweet iced tea.
After that tennis lesson, she had burned enough calories for this meal. They would probably burn more after the meal. She was just turning her steaks over in the skillet when her phone rang. She picked it up and said, “Hello,” while continuing with her cooking.
“Hey Mother love, how are you?” she asked when she heard her mother’s greeting.
Moments later, the smile she was wearing died. Then, she was sitting, breathless with shock in her chair.
“She set his house on fire while he and his family were sleeping?” Shan whispered.
“Oh my god,” she said.
She listened as her mother updated her on Jack’s condition and shared she was headed back to the house with the girls. Apparently, Jack’s parents had decided it would be best for his mom to fly directly to Longview and his dad would drive. This allowed his mother to get there faster. Her flight had landed and she would soon arrive at the hospital. Katy had felt that would be a good time to get the girls to a real bed and the window of time Alera spent alone would be minimized.
Jack had come through surgery, but would remain immobile for a period of weeks and then the medical team would assess his need for skin grafts. Shan felt poleaxed. After ending the conversation with her mother, she really couldn’t think.
Once again, she was on autopilot. Mechanically, she finished the steak, prepared the potatoes and asparagus as she waited on Abdulla to arrive. He arrived and immediately noticed her mental distance. She wasn’t talking and she kept having him repeat himself. He watched as she finished setting the table and put the food out, which by the way smelled like meat heaven.
Adored in Oman (Book 2 in Teach Me, Love Me Series): Interracial Romance Page 13