by Jen Blood
“I think Jenny killed Roger,” Diggs said. “There’s no confession from him on those tapes… I think she just got tired of being married to the guy, and cute little psychopath that she is, decided it was time to sever ties. Permanently. She may have gotten someone else to do his cross or she may have done it herself, but I doubt it had anything to do with whether or not he was a righteous man. And Wyatt…” he stopped, at a loss.
“Jesup always liked Wyatt,” George said. Everyone turned to look at him. He shrugged. “I think maybe it’s that simple. Before everything got turned around and kids were gettin’ poisoned and colleges blown up, I think he felt bad for what he’d done to a man that he knew, deep down, was good. And Wyatt was that. My son was a good man.”
I looked at Diggs, watching his face change as he thought about that. He nodded.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “That he was.”
We sat there for a few seconds of silence. I was reminded yet again of all that had been lost in this, for reasons I still didn’t understand. I finally had some names to hang on the conspiracy involving my father, whatever it might be: J. Enterprises; Max Richards; Mitch Cameron; Jenny Burkett… The fact that I wasn’t just running around after some nameless guy in a hood anymore was moderately comforting, but it didn’t help me sleep any better when I thought of just how little value these people seemed to place on human life.
I rallied, intent on finding a few more answers before everyone scattered to their separate corners. “And the rest of the story?” I asked. “Who the hell killed Jimmy Barnel and shot the reverend at the tent meeting earlier this week?”
“Jenny Burkett,” Diggs said. “She took Danny’s truck right after she doped him, drove out to Miller’s field, then took out Jimmy and winged the reverend.”
“I don’t suppose you have motive or evidence to support that theory,” Blaze said dryly.
“Motive is easy: she was trying to stir the pot,” Diggs said. “Fuel Jennings’ and Barnel’s paranoia by making it seem like there really were people out to get them.”
“Ensuring that Jennings would go through with the bombing the next night,” I said.
“And Barnel would be that much more convinced that the world was ending and he needed to get the hell out,” Diggs said. “Thanks in large part to an endless supply of speed and barbiturates I suspect Jenny Burkett and her people supplied.”
“All of which is supported by the final video he recorded before he took the stage in Kildeer auditorium,” Juarez said. “Most of it is just a lot of paranoid ramblings about the end of the world and government mind control, but it seems clear that he genuinely believed he was working in everyone’s best interest by taking out the hardcore sinners he couldn’t save, and then bringing the rest of his flock home with him.”
“That’s all well and good,” Blaze said, “but the bigger question for me is who the hell was pulling the strings? Who is this J. Enterprises? What part did Jenny Burkett-Lanahan-whatever-her-name-is play in all of it? Did she actively pursue Roger Burkett while he was in San Francisco, with the intention of moving here? And if so, why would anyone put the time and money and energy into a plan like this in a nowhere town in Kentucky? I still don’t understand the endgame here.”
The doctor walked in then and cleared his throat as he approached Diggs, who was clearly starting to flag.
“And I think that’s my cue to clear the room, folks,” the doctor said. “No playin’ twenty questions with my patient.”
“Of course,” Blaze agreed, standing. “We need to get on the road, anyway—my kid’s been virtually on her own for a week now. God only knows what I’ll have waiting for me when I get back.” She shook Diggs’ hand, then looked at us both solemnly. “No offense, but the next time the world’s ending, I hope you two stay home.”
“You’ll get no argument from me,” Diggs said.
Jack leaned in and hugged Diggs with a surprising absence of malice. It’s not that I wanted them to duel over me or something, but a trace of tension between them might have been a little reassuring.
“We still on for July?” he asked Diggs.
“You bet,” Diggs said. “I’ll supply the lobster if you bring the fireworks.”
This was news to me, but I said nothing. With the other goodbyes taken care of, I locked eyes with Juarez and felt a flash of panic. Decisions had been made and, logically speaking, I knew they were for the best. It didn’t mean it was easy, though.
“I’ll walk you out,” I said.
Blaze and George excused themselves once we were in the sterile hallways of Paducah General, leaving Juarez and me alone.
“You still have some stuff at my place...” I began.
“You can box it up,” he said. For the first time, a wash of sadness shined through. “Just mail it. I’m not sure if I’ll be back in Maine before summer.”
“Okay.” A couple of nurses walked by—both of them clearly checking out Jack on their way past. I held on tight when he hugged me, focused on deep breaths and not becoming a puddle on the floor. “I’m going to miss you,” I said into his neck.
He smiled when we parted, reaching out to cup my cheek in his hand. “You can call me if you need anything. Anytime—you know where I am.”
“You, too,” I agreed. I thought of Agent Keith’s words: Not everyone wears their obsessions on their sleeve. I got serious, holding his gaze. “If you need someone to talk or listen or...whatever, I’m here. So’s Diggs. I mean—I know it’s not exactly what we had in mind when you and I first started dating, but you mean a lot to him. To both of us.”
“It’s mutual.” He took a deep breath and glanced at his watch. Instead of leaving, however, he stayed for a second longer. He hesitated. “Stay safe, all right? I know you can take care of yourself, but it seems like you have more than the normal number of demons in your past. Promise me that if you and Diggs keep pursuing whatever it is you’re pursuing that you won’t tell me about—” I started to protest, but he held up his hand. “Just promise me, please? Promise that you’ll call me if you need help. I can’t guarantee that I can do anything, but I’d at least like the chance to try.”
I nodded. “I promise.” My ability to maintain any semblance of control was slipping fast, so I stood on my toes and kissed his cheek quickly, then nodded toward the exit sign at the end of the hall. “You should probably get going. You don’t want to keep Allie waiting.”
“Right,” he agreed.
We hugged one more time. He left. I stood outside Diggs’ hospital door for a few minutes after that, thinking about everything that had happened and everything that would happen, most of which seemed completely beyond my control. I’d be lying if I said I had no mixed feelings about watching Juarez walk out of my life—even if I did have Diggs waiting for me. As much as I love the man, Diggs has never been the safest bet where my heart’s concerned.
The doctor came out of Diggs’ room then and smiled when he found me waiting there.
“He said to send you in, if you were still out here.”
“It’s all right if I stay a while?” I asked.
“You seem to have a way of getting him to settle down that my nurses haven’t figured out yet,” the man said. “Stay as long as you like.”
Diggs’ eyes were closed when I went back into the room. I took advantage of that rare moment of repose to study him—this man I couldn’t seem to shake, no matter what fell across our path. He’d escaped the fire with second-degree burns on his back and first-degree burns to his hands. The bruises from his fight with Jimmy Barnel almost a week ago had faded, and three days of forced bedrest had done a lot to address the circles he’d had under his eyes when this whole thing began.
“Are you just gonna stand there staring, or are you coming in?” he asked without opening his eyes.
“I thought you were sleeping.”
“Nope.” He looked at me then, his blue eyes shining. There was a very faint trace of doubt in there, but no one but me would ever ha
ve noticed. “So...does this mean Juarez is on the road?”
“He is.”
“And you’re still here.”
“I am,” I said with a nod, trying for casual. “I mean—you’re still burned and broken and concussed. It didn’t seem right to just leave you in Kentucky.”
“I appreciate that.” He patted the side of his bed. “Come here.”
I went over and sat gingerly on the edge.
“I’m not gonna break, Solomon. Get up here.” He scooted over. I scooted over. We both lay back, his arm around my shoulders, my head on his chest. He smelled like burn ointment—surprisingly, not in a bad way.
“You all right?” he asked.
“I think so.” I fell silent, thinking yet again about everything that had happened. “Mitch Cameron was behind this,” I said quietly, after a long while. We hadn’t discussed this yet, but he didn’t seem surprised—at the revelation or the direction the conversation had taken.
“I thought as much,” he said.
“And J. Enterprises…”
“…has to have something to do with your father,” he finished for me.
I closed my eyes, listening to Diggs’ heartbeat. “They’ve killed a hell of a lot of people.”
“They have.”
He rolled to his side so he could look at me. I studied him for a minute, running my finger along the slope of his nose, his cheekbones and jaw. I lingered at his lips, tracing the lines there. He kissed my fingertip, scraping his teeth along the pad with just a hint of devil in his eyes. We had yet to acknowledge the kiss-at-the-end-of-the-world thing, or what we planned to do about it. The feel of his lips on my skin made the question seem more pressing than it had.
“So,” he finally prompted me. “What are you going to do?”
“About?”
“Are we still pretending Mitch Cameron doesn’t exist?” He looked at me seriously. “Because if that’s what you want to do, I’ll do it. We’ll pretend we never heard the name. Never saw his face.”
“And all those people you watched die three days ago?” I asked. “Glenda Clifton and the professor and your druggie friend? The boy soldiers and all the other men, women, and children… Casey, who almost lost her leg? The families I knew from Payson Church? What do we do about them?”
His eyes held on mine, eyebrows up. “I don’t know. This is your call, kid.”
I bit my lip, considering that. “I can’t drop it this time,” I said. Even saying the words was terrifying. He leaned in and kissed me, light and fast.
“Okay,” he said. “Then we’ve got work to do.”
He nodded to the drawer in the nightstand by his bed. “Open that up and hand me the envelope inside there, would you?” Suddenly, he was all business. I almost got whiplash at the shift. “And grab my laptop.”
He all but pushed me out of bed. Ah, the joys of dating a newspaper man.
“I thought you were supposed to be resting.”
“I’ll rest in a minute. First, I need to show you something.”
I fetched the envelope and his laptop. He pulled a memory card from the envelope and fired up his computer. A jumble of meaningless numbers scrolled endlessly across the screen as soon as he put the card in.
“What is that?” I asked.
“It’s encrypted.”
“Well, yeah,” I said. “I got that part. But where did you get it? What’s the relevance to what we’re doing here?”
“I’m not sure. But that professor I told you about? When I found his body, he was clutching this in his hand. When we were talking, he told me he studied Christian fundamentalism and cult behaviors. My focus at first was the fundamentalism, but what if that was a smokescreen? What if J. Enterprises—and whoever they represent—is more focused on the cult side of things?”
“The senator found murdered in Washington last spring—Jane Bellows,” I said. “She did a lot of work around legislation regarding cults. And obviously my father and the Payson Church…”
He nodded. We were on the same page. “The professor and his grad students were the only ones at Kildeer who were shot. As though Jenny needed to make sure that, whatever else happened, those three didn’t get out, and that the building went up in flames…”
“You think all this was over a professor in a third-rate college in Kentucky and his thesis on cults?”
He ran his hand through his hair. I caught just a hint of a tremor there and stood, taking the laptop from him.
“Okay,” I said. “We’re gonna talk about this later.”
“Why? I’m fine.”
“No. You’re not fine—you got blown up. A lot.” I took out the memory card, returned it to the envelope, and put the computer away. Diggs scooted back down in his bed. The fact that he didn’t fight harder told me he really wasn’t quite as unaffected by all this as he’d like me to believe.
“I’ll go and let you sleep.”
I caught a flicker of vulnerability on his face before he could hide it. I thought of the boy I’d seen on Barnel’s tape, with the Bugs Bunny boxers and the will of steel; the kid who wouldn’t be broken.
“Unless you’d rather I stay,” I said.
“You can if you want,” he said. God, he was a pain in the ass. “I mean… you know, if it’ll make you feel better.”
“It’ll only make me feel better if you actually sleep.”
He patted a spot beside him. “I will if you will.”
I kicked off my shoes and returned to the bed. We lay down facing one another.
“So…” he said.
“So…” I said.
He rested his hand on my side, niftily finding the hem of my shirt with little to no effort. I quirked an eyebrow.
“I thought you were sleeping.”
“I want to take you out.” His fingers moved lightly along my bare skin. It wasn’t doing a lot for my concentration.
“And I repeat: I thought you were sleeping.”
“Not now,” he clarified. “When we get home. It’s been a long time since we’ve gone on a date.”
I curled my hand around his roving digits and returned them to the outside of my clothes. “You know I just broke up with someone, right?”
I expected him to make a joke. Possibly disparage Juarez’s manhood or something. Instead, he stayed serious, a line at the center of his forehead.
“I know that,” he said. “If it makes you feel any better, Juarez gave us his blessing. He even wished me luck; I think he might be under the impression that you’re more woman than I can handle.”
“And what do you think?”
He grinned. “I think I’m gonna have a lot of fun trying.”
I fell silent again. I was completely on board with the fact that Jack and I weren’t meant to be; really, by the end it couldn’t have been clearer. But that didn’t change the reality, which was that I still had a bunch of his shirts in my dresser and his spare toothbrush beside mine back home. Diggs may have made a habit of bed-hopping for the past twenty years, but that had never really been my M.O.
“Well, I’m glad you guys have it all figured out for me, then,” I said. Diggs smiled, amused at my indignation. Somehow, his hand had made it back under my shirt. Tricky bastard.
“I told you: I just want to take you on a date.” He leaned in and kissed me, very lightly, his hand migrating a little higher up my shirt. He nipped my lip before he moved back again. That devil spark was back in his eye. “I’ve decided to sweep you off your feet.”
I laughed, though the look in his eye and the thing he was doing with his hand was really making me rethink my policy on bed-hopping.
“You have, huh? I don’t know that I’m ready for that.”
The spark faded, just a little, replaced with an intensity that Diggs rarely showed the world. “I’ve been half-assed about being in love with you for too long,” he said, his eyes never leaving mine. I forgot how to swallow. “I plan on making up for that.”
“Okay,” I said. Or croaked,
really. He looked infinitely amused, the intensity gone as suddenly as it had come.
“And that starts with a date,” he said simply.
“All right,” I said. His eyes drifted shut, but he was still smiling. I leaned up and kissed him, fast, then snuggled in with his arms around me.
Finally, an apocalypse with a happy ending.
Epilogue
Three days later, Diggs and I were ready to hit the road for Maine. The Durhams’ yard was overflowing, as Mae seemed to have had some kind of epiphany when Danny survived Barnel’s end times. She’d even invited Danny’s band, including a wheelchair-bound Casey Clinton and Casey’s brother and sister, Dougie and Willa. At the moment, the littlest Clintons were hanging out with Grace and Einstein: Einstein and Dougie chased each other around the yard while Willa sat beside Grace, gently brushing the dog’s silky fur.
George Durham was smuggling out paper cups of rotgut whiskey, and Buddy Holloway—who in all likelihood would be crowned sheriff before long—was pretending not to notice. The rest of the Durhams were also in attendance: Rick and Ida, Ashley and Terry and the Nordic toddler, Angus. Sally Woodruff had threatened to make an appearance, but Diggs assured her that while Mae might have turned over a new leaf, there was no way in hell she was ready to embrace a godless abortion doctor. At least, not yet. Sally had been surprisingly gracious about that.
“You sure you had enough to eat?” Mae asked when Diggs announced that we were heading out.
I was so stuffed I’d never button my jeans again. Diggs looked at me. “We should probably pack another couple of cookies for the road.”
I didn’t argue.
Diggs went over to say goodbye to Rick and Danny, who hung out together on the sidelines with the band. It seemed even they had gotten closer since the whole end-of-the-world thing. The fact that Rick had nearly gotten everyone killed by falling for a Bible nerd with a crazy apocalyptic grandpa had apparently endeared him to Danny; he said it took his brother down a couple of pegs. It didn’t hurt that Danny’s recollection of Rick’s project on the tunnels and catacombs beneath Kildeer Auditorium had saved everyone’s lives, either.