“Finish him,” Jed said.
“My pleasure,” Clint replied, raising the baseball bat.
And that was when Hank struck.
He grabbed a fistful of rocks and hurled them in Jed’s face, distracting him. Before the stones had fallen back to the ground, Hank drove his elbow into Clint’s groin. The flunky screamed in agony. He dropped the baseball bat as he collapsed into a heap, both hands cradling his smashed privates. Hank snatched up the bat, turned, and swung. Though Sam had shown reluctance to join in the more grisly aspects of Jed’s plan, he remained dangerous. Hank couldn’t afford to show mercy. The thickest part of the wood barrel hit the man flush in the ribs, breaking at least one, and down he went. Spinning, Hank landed another blow on Clint, strong enough to silence the goon’s shouting.
Hank rose on unsteady feet. Now it was just him and Jed.
“Well, looky here,” Jed said, still wiping dirt from his eyes. “Seems you had more stones than I gave you credit for.”
“You’re about to see how much fight I’ve got left,” Hank snarled.
Behind him, the blaze raged out of control. Heat singed his back, burning the exposed skin on his arms and neck. Glass cracked and wood creaked, a symphony of destruction. It wouldn’t be much longer before there’d be nothing left to save. But Hank didn’t dare look; he couldn’t risk taking his eyes off Jed.
As if to demonstrate how true that was, the man pulled a knife from his pocket. When he popped open the blade, it glinted in the sun.
“Show me,” Jed said.
Hank held the bat cocked, ready to swing, watching for the slightest movement. Jed stepped to his side, forcing Hank to do the same, the two men moving in a circle. Occasionally, Jed would feint, coming forward, testing his opponent, but he never fully committed himself. Not yet. Smiling wide, showing plenty of teeth, he looked like he was having fun.
“What’re you waitin’ for?” Jed asked. “Come get me.”
Rather than respond, Hank readjusted his grip on the bat.
But then, like a flash, Jed went for blood. He jab-stepped to the left, then quickly changed direction, slashing with the knife. The blade cut an arc through the smoky air. The tip pierced the skin of Hank’s forearm, leaving a painful, bloody gash several inches long.
“Little slow there,” Jed crowed. “You don’t move faster than that, next time, my knife’s gonna end up in your heart.”
Little as Hank wanted to admit it, the bastard was right. The bat was a powerful weapon, but he couldn’t swing as fast as Jed could strike with the knife. If he was going to survive this, if there was to be any chance to save his workshop, Hank had to be smarter. He had to guess where Jed was going to be before the man even moved. Then he would make him pay.
He’ll come straight at me this time…he’ll be looking for the kill…
Hank was right. And he was ready.
Jed reversed his strategy from before, lunging forward with his first move and dropping his outside shoulder, making it look like he was going to step away, but he never hesitated, going right at Hank. The bat found him first. Before Jed reached his intended target, the heavy barrel smashed into his hand, sending the knife flying and crushing fragile bones.
“Damn it!” he hollered in pain.
Unfortunately for Jed, Hank wasn’t done with him yet. The next blow hammered his shoulder. Another clipped his knee, dropping him to the ground. A final swing slammed into his ribs. In a matter of seconds, the tough had been transformed from a bloodthirsty braggart into a whimpering mess.
But then, as Hank was trying to figure out what to do with his defeated opponent, something in his workshop exploded.
The loud blast sent flames and broken glass shooting out the open doors. Debris rained across the yard. Immediately, Hank knew what had happened. In his work, he used all kinds of paints, stains, and varnishes. Most of them were strong, noxious stuff. The fire must have reached them, and at least one had blown up. There would likely be more.
Jed’s two flunkies still lay on the ground, moaning and nursing their injuries. Both men were close enough to the workshop that another explosion could endanger their lives. Hank knew what he had to do.
Shielding his face, he dragged each man away, dumping them farther back in the yard where he thought they’d be safe. Briefly, he wondered whether they would’ve done the same for him—he supposed Sam’s conscience might have gotten the better of him—but in the end he knew it didn’t matter.
As Hank wiped plenty of sweat from his brow, something moved out of the corner of his eye. It was Jed. He was crawling across the gravel, heading for his car. At the same time, Hank heard a noise, distinct over the din of the fire. He knew it as well as a child knows his mother’s lullaby.
It was his truck’s engine.
Gwen was back.
Beyond the windshield, Gwen watched as the cloud of smoke grew larger. A black spire stretched upward; when it was caught by the wind, it smeared across the sky like dark paint on a light canvas. She knew this wasn’t a harmless brush fire. This was a blaze raging out of control.
And she was convinced that it was coming from Hank’s house.
Fear gripped her, squeezing harder and harder by the second. Was Hank hurt? Had there been an accident? Her mind worked furiously to create an explanation for what she was seeing, but nothing she came up with put her mind at ease.
Though the truck wasn’t built for speed, Gwen pushed it as fast as it would go, stepping on the accelerator, forcing the speedometer’s needle to climb, making the vehicle shudder from the effort. She couldn’t get there fast enough. Gwen was so intent on the billowing smoke that she had to periodically remind herself to keep her eyes on the road.
When Hank’s place finally came into sight, it put her heart in her throat. Gwen jammed on the brakes, causing the truck’s tires to skid, then turned into the drive, still moving quickly.
The first thing she saw was Hank’s workshop. It was a raging inferno. Flames raced up the walls, charring the wood. They had burst out the windows and burned through a corner of the roof, hungry for more, insatiable until there was nothing left to destroy. All Gwen could think about was the exquisite pieces Hank had built by hand, like the one that had made Freddie Holland so happy. They would all be lost.
Gwen was so dumbstruck by what she was seeing that she didn’t immediately notice the car parked ahead of her in the drive. She hadn’t expected it to be there and had to swerve to avoid hitting it; she failed, clipping its rear bumper with her own, filling the air with the screech of metal against metal.
But there would be no missing the man who suddenly loomed before her.
Gwen screamed as she slammed on the brakes, but it was far too late to stop. With a sickening thud, she sent him flying like a rag doll, arms and legs pinwheeling through the air. One second he was there and the next he’d disappeared from sight. She wasn’t even sure who it had been.
Hank! Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no…
Throwing the truck into park, Gwen was out of the cab like a shot, running toward the fallen man. He lay in a twisted heap, one arm bent at an unnatural angle, clearly broken, as blood spilled from a cut on his forehead. He wasn’t moving. Though she was terrified she might have killed someone, Gwen was relieved to see that it wasn’t Hank she’d hit, but a man whose face looked vaguely familiar…
“Gwen!”
She turned and saw Hank. Gwen ran to him, but just as she was about to throw her arms around him, to hold Hank close and thank the heavens that he was all right, she stopped. Bruises marred his face and blood dripped from a cut on his arm. “You’re hurt!” she exclaimed.
“Compared to them, I got off easy,” he said with a weak smile, then pointed.
Gwen looked to see two other men sprawled in the yard. Both were rolling around, but neither looked like he had any fight left in him.
“I hit someone with the truck,” she said as her hands started to shake, realizing what she’d done.
“It’s
all right,” Hank told her, pulling her into his arms, quieting the tears that threatened to fall. “There was nothing you could have done.”
As Gwen tried to take comfort in Hank’s soothing words, a pair of explosions ripped through the burning building, shaking the air and making her jump with fright. Hank calmly walked them farther away and closer to the house.
“Your workshop!” she cried, her attention drawn back to what had sent her speeding to his side. “Your things! Call the fire department! We can still—”
“It’s too late,” Hank interrupted. He sighed, his eyes wet as he looked over the damage the fire was still causing, the broken glass, the sagging beams, the destruction of all he’d worked so hard to build. “It’s gone.”
By the time Hank’s workshop had been completely consumed by the fire, the sun had nearly set. The moon was already high in the still-blue sky, as if it had become impatient waiting for its celestial opposite to leave. The firemen had come and gone, spraying more water on the grass and nearby trees than on the burning building, trying to keep the blaze from spreading. One policeman remained, taking a statement from Hank.
Jed Ringer had been placed in an ambulance, his two flunkies stuffed into the back of a squad car. Gwen had been relieved that she hadn’t accidentally killed Jed with the truck, but from the way he howled in agony when he was lifted onto a gurney, she figured he had an awfully long mend ahead of him. By the time he healed, he’d likely be in a jail cell.
“They’re gonna figure it out,” Sam had been overheard saying to Clint almost as soon as the cops had arrived.
“Shut up, stupid!” his fellow goon had hissed back.
Sam had been right. When a policeman opened Jed’s trunk, he’d found a couple of canisters of gasoline, rags that could have been used for lighting fires, and a collection of knickknacks that at first seemed innocent, but ended up being the most damning evidence of all. Apparently, before Jed and his gang torched a place, they took a memento; Gwen recognized a birdhouse that used to hang from a hook on the Morgans’ porch.
Even though Hank was little liked around town, Gwen could see that the police officers and firemen were still sympathetic. She wondered how they’d feel in the coming days, after her article had been published in the newspaper and they learned that their disdain for him had been misguided.
Finally the last police car backed down the drive, leaving Gwen and Hank alone.
He stood with his back to her, staring at the wreckage of his workshop, ruined tools mixed with the ashes of his labor. Absently, he toed a still-smoldering piece of wood. If he heard her approach, he didn’t react.
“I’m sorry,” she told him, knowing it did nothing to fill the void of his loss.
“No reason to be,” he replied flatly.
“I feel bad all the same.”
When Hank didn’t respond or even look at her, Gwen frowned. Ever since she’d gone to call the authorities, he had been distant with her. At first, Gwen chalked it up to the trauma of being attacked, of having his livelihood stolen, to his being in shock, but now she wondered if it wasn’t something more.
“I also wanted to apologize for leaving so early this morning,” she said, knowing that this was as good of a time as any to broach the subject of her speaking with his father. She needed to tell him what she’d written. “I had some important things to do.”
Hank nodded but still didn’t speak.
Growing a bit frustrated, Gwen touched his arm. When he looked down at her, she saw that his bruises were getting darker and that soot stained his cheeks. It didn’t matter. She found him as handsome as ever. But almost as soon as his gaze found hers, Hank turned away.
“What is it?” she insisted. “What’s wrong?”
Hank took a deep breath, his broad chest rising and falling. “I saw you today,” he told her; it sounded like an accusation.
“You what?” she asked, confused. “Where?”
“At your folks’ place,” Hank answered. “Skip picked me up and we went looking for you. We saw you pull up to the house.”
Thinking back on it, Gwen couldn’t understand what Hank had seen that so bothered him. Had he not liked watching her argue with Kent?
“Then why are you acting like this?” she pressed.
When he turned back to her, his eyes were flat, piercing. This time he didn’t look away. “I saw you with Kent,” he said. “I saw you in his arms.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
EVEN SINCE HE and Skip had driven away from the Fosters’ house, his heart hammering, his hands balled into fists, Hank had wondered how Gwen would react to being confronted. He couldn’t imagine she would deny being in Kent’s arms; after all, he’d seen her. Would she be embarrassed, start crying, or admit that she couldn’t let go of the successful lawyer and the exciting life they had back in Chicago? Would Gwen say that making love to him had been a mistake?
The one thing he hadn’t expected her to do was laugh.
It started as a chuckle but steadily grew until her eyes were wet with tears. Completely taken aback, Hank had to ask, “What’s so funny?”
“You said that you saw me drive up to the house, right?” Gwen replied.
Hank nodded.
“Then I got out of the truck, went up the walk, and eventually Kent came down the stairs,” she said, laying out events just as they had occurred.
“And that’s when you hugged him,” he said.
“No, I didn’t,” Gwen disagreed.
“I saw it,” he snapped. The sight was burned into Hank’s mind; he wondered if he’d ever be able to forget it. Just thinking about them, Gwen’s head against Kent’s chest, his arms pulling her close, made him mad all over again.
But then she threw a glass of cold water on his anger.
“What you saw was Kent embracing me, not the other way around,” she explained. “Tell me what happened next.”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I told Skip to drive off. I couldn’t stand the sight of you in another man’s arms.”
Gwen smiled, a beautiful, delicate gesture that disarmed him further. “I wish you would’ve stuck around a while longer.”
“Why?” Hank asked, confused.
“What you saw may have been a nightmare,” she said, “but you missed the happy ending.”
Gwen told him that she’d pushed Kent away, that she had admitted to falling for another man, and that their relationship was over. She seemed genuinely hurt by the mean, spiteful things Kent had said once he’d understood she was serious. Gwen hadn’t wanted to hurt him, but there’d been no other way.
“I ended things with Kent because I’m in love with you,” she said. “This is where I want to be, by your side, forever.”
She rose on her tiptoes and placed her lips against his, kissing him gently. Even as Hank returned her affection, his head swam.
He felt like a damned fool.
How could he have doubted her? If he’d only followed Skip’s advice and talked to her, everything would’ve been out in the open and he wouldn’t have spent the rest of the day sick with worry. Hank supposed that part of the reason he’d been willing to jump to conclusions was because love was so unfamiliar to him. It was a lot like the smoke still rising from his workshop, impossible to grab hold of. But somehow, despite himself, that’s just what he had done.
“I thought that the way you left this morning,” he explained, “along with what I saw, meant that you regretted what we’d done.”
“Never,” Gwen said. “But looking back, I shouldn’t have driven off the way I did.”
“Where did you go?” he asked. “What was so important it couldn’t wait?”
Now it was her turn to take a deep breath.
“You didn’t need to worry about Kent,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean there isn’t reason for you to be mad at me.”
Hank had a sinking feeling in his stomach. “Why is that?”
Then she told him.
When Gwen explained to Hank
that she’d visited his father in the hospital, he looked shocked; his eyes widened, his jaw fell open, and he seemed to momentarily hold his breath. But when she told him the reason she had wanted to talk to Myron, that surprise quickly changed to anger; his gaze narrowed, his mouth clamped shut, he breathed raggedly through his nose, and the muscles of his neck and shoulders grew tense. However, it wasn’t until she said that she’d written an article detailing the truth about the accident that claimed Pete’s life, as well as the fact that it would be published in tomorrow’s newspaper, that he finally spoke.
“How could you do this?” he shouted, as mad as she’d ever seen him.
“I had to,” she said simply.
Hank began to pace back and forth in front of the wreckage of the workshop, too angry to remain still. He ran a hand through his hair, showing the bandaged cut on his forearm. “Everything I’ve done was to protect my father,” he told her. “But now you’ve ruined it all.”
“You had the best of intentions, but it hasn’t worked,” Gwen said. “Look at the state your father is in. Do you really believe that getting drunk, falling down, and hurting himself means that he’s handling his guilt well?”
“If people find out what he did, it’ll kill him!”
“I think Myron’s doing a good job of that on his own.”
Hank stopped and stared hard at her.
“It’s the truth,” she continued, desperate to make him understand. “When I talked to him, he didn’t hold anything back. He admitted to everything. He’s ashamed for what he did, for what he continues to do, and is tired of running from it. He doesn’t want you to carry this burden anymore. I don’t think he ever did.”
Hank shook his head. “You still should’ve told me what you were planning to do.”
“Why? You would have tried to talk me out of it,” Gwen said. “You told me that you made your decision on the spur of the moment, right after you found out Pete was dead. You weren’t thinking clearly. Surely you must see that.” She took a tentative step toward him, wanting to be closer. “But for you to cling to that choice now, months later, knowing that it hasn’t made a difference in anyone’s life, that it’s actually made things worse, means you’re just being stubborn. This has to stop, Hank. It has to.”
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