* * *
At the crossroad, Axell glanced to his left, in the direction of the school, then back to the right, in the direction of town. He wanted to see Maya. He wanted to set things straight with her.
He couldn't set things straight until he'd straightened out a few things in town first. Acting against the strong urge to turn left, he steered the Rover toward Wadeville.
The instant he hit town, he saw the huge black Cadillac in front of Cleo's shop.
Swearing, he screeched the Rover into a U-turn, slammed to a halt in a loading zone past the Curiosity Shoppe, and jerked the key from the ignition. The first thing he would straighten out was Maya's damned sister. He was in just the right mood for flinging her up against a wall, and smacking some sense into her.
A tall bald-headed black man in an expensive pin-striped suit loomed over the counter, pushing his face into Cleo's. As usual, Cleo wasn't giving any ground, but Axell thought he saw fear flicker across her face.
Not in any humor for diplomacy, Axell jerked the front door wide open and held it. "OUT!" he shouted. "Get your ass off my property before I throw you out!"
The black man turned his head and gave him a glassy stare. "You, and how many others?" he asked coldly.
All that unleashed testosterone slam-dunked straight into Axell's bloodstream.
Releasing the door, Axell grabbed the heavy metal kaleidoscope off its tripod. "Out," he repeated with more calm than earlier.
Cleo emitted an "eep" of dismay, whether for the kaleidoscope's fate or his, he couldn't ascertain. The black man sniggered and reached for his inside pocket—one of two moves Axell had anticipated. He hadn't been All State quarterback because he was dumb, or slow.
Before the other man could produce his gun, Axell swung. He had enough fury behind the swing to crack something. Unfortunately, it was the kaleidoscope and not the dealer's brick-hard head.
The man staggered but remained upright and groping for his weapon.
He hadn't spent his adolescence in a bar without learning to fight dirty. Feinting with the remains of his weapon, Axell waited for his opponent to dodge, kicked high and hard, and almost winced in sympathy as his foot connected with its soft target.
The other man screamed in mortal pain and crumpled.
"My God, Axell," Cleo whispered prayerfully, leaning over the counter to watch her tormentor squirm in agony. "Can you kill him now?"
"Call the cops and give me something to tie him with." Axell glanced around and found an extension cord plugged into Maya's mobile collection. He snapped it out of the socket, then glanced warily at Cleo, who hadn't moved.
"I can't call the cops," she murmured. "They'll revoke my probation. I can't go back to jail."
"He's a dealer, you can't protect him," he said coldly.
"He'll hurt Matty if I don't," she whispered.
"Not after I'm done with him." Axell jerked an expensively cuffed wrist away from the source of his prisoner's pain and wrapped the electrical wire around it. "Call the cops."
"You gonna pay for this," the man on the floor muttered from between clenched teeth. "Nobody messes with me, man."
Axell ignored the empty threat and pinned his gaze on Cleo. "Where's the dope?"
He gave her credit for not being stupid enough to deny the obvious. She glanced nervously toward the back of the shop. "In the boxes labeled 'china.'" She still didn't reach for the phone. "Take him out of here, please," she begged. "I'm straight. I promise. But I owe him a lot of money, and he's got friends—"
"Damn straight," the dealer shouted. "And you're gonna pay, like I make all double-dealers pay."
"Go find that box," Axell ordered. He'd be damned if he let the drug cops claim his building for illegal possession, and he'd be damned if he let a dealer go free.
"You don't touch my stuff, man!" the dealer screamed. "You got no right—"
Axell jerked the extension cord tighter around cuffed wrists, then searched the pockets of the pin-striped suit, locating the gun and car keys. "And call the cops or I'll turn you in with this animal."
Terrified, Cleo ran toward the back and returned with a couple of small cardboard boxes. "This is all I could find."
"Don't you dare!" The dealer struggled against his bonds as Axell stood up. "That's high-quality stuff. Look, I'll cut you a deal, same one I had with the old man..."
Axell halted and stared down at the panicky dealer, his brain finally kicking in. "What kind of deal?" This man threatened kids. This man could kill people.
"You just give me a key to this place, like I had in the old one. I need a new place to stash my stuff. I'll cut you a piece of the take, just like I did with the old dude. You don't have to get your fingers dirty a'tall."
"How much of the take?" Axell demanded, grasping for clues.
"Depends. The old man had lotsa places to meet so the cops wouldn't get suspicious. This one piddly building ain't much." More confident now, he negotiated.
"What if I have lots of buildings?" Axell asked quietly.
"Then we're talking," His eyes narrowed warily. "But you ditch on me, and you end up like Pfeiffer. He owed me big time, and I made him pay, and I got my own back, too." He looked up at Cleo who had picked up the receiver again. "You'd better not finish that call, girl."
While the dealer was looking away, Axell shook his head slightly at her. Cleo hovered with her hand above the phone, watching both of them uncertainly.
"You got your own back?" Axell asked calmly. "How?"
When Cleo didn't hang up, the dealer turned over and glared at Axell. "I ain't sayin' nuthin' more."
Axell jerked his head at Cleo and threw her the car keys. "Put the stuff in his trunk where it belongs, then set the car on fire."
"Wait!" the dealer screamed.
Cleo halted with her hand on the door.
"I got connections," the man threatened. "They'll do most anything for a price. They take care of things for me. They'll take care of her," he warned, jerking his chin in Cleo's direction, "if you don't let me go."
"What if I want something taken care of?" Axell asked quietly, afraid to hear the answer but too close to the truth to stop now.
The prisoner sensed the danger in his captor's voice. Narrowing his eyes, he watched Axell carefully. "I get a piece of the action," he warned, "so it costs."
"If I want one of my places burned?" Axell suggested. Hiring arsonists to scam Yankee insurance companies was almost a Southern tradition.
"Untie me, and we'll discuss it."
Axell considered him. "What do you do if someone botches the job? Take him out, like Pfeiffer?"
"Do it myself," his prisoner exclaimed with disgust. "You know all about it, don't you? All you white boys stick together. Well, I took care of the problem. That crack head messed up, but I fixed it last night. You're working with a real professional. No one sees smoke at night. That heat just been smoldering until by now, the whole place is so hot, it will go up all at once. Even if it's daylight, the place will be in cinders before they can stop it."
Axell thought his lungs would collapse and his heart stop. If he understood right...
Heart beating wildly, he turned to Cleo. "Report a bomb threat at the school. Get the whole damned county out there." He kicked the thug on the floor. "Where did you plant it? You'll fry right now if you don't tell me." He reached to plug the extension cord into the socket—a useless maneuver, but he figured he could cut the wires and intimidate the hell out of the bastard if he didn't get the answer he wanted.
"Don't do that!" the dealer screamed, eyeing the cord and the socket. "The old man's dead. It ain't as if I'm hurtin' anyone."
"There's a house full of children out there!" Axell shouted back. "Now tell me where you planted it or you'll go to hell right here and now, without appeal."
Cleo was already yelling into the phone. The man looked terrified, then beaten. "Under the back porch, man. I didn't mean to hurt no kids. The place was empty last night."
D
ropping the cord, Axell dashed out the door.
Before Axell could reach the Rover, Ralph Arnold stopped in his path, blocking his way. "You said we'd talk about the school, Holm."
Wrapping both hands in the mayor's lapels, Axell lifted him from the sidewalk and dropped him to one side. "You can have the bar, Ralph. You can have the restaurant and the whole damned town. But you'll fry in hell before I'll let you have Maya's school."
Maya would have kicked his shins if she'd seen him roughing up the mayor. Maya. Axell's soul screamed in agony as he bent over the steering wheel and roared the engine into life.
He could almost smell the flames from here.
Chapter 37
We are born naked, wet, and hungry. Then things get worse.
Axell saw the smoke billowing over the forest of trees long before he reached the school. His gut clenched and a cold chill spread through him. If he didn't think about it, he wouldn't feel it. Don't think, Axell. Do. That always worked. Keep moving, keep an eye on the road ahead, don't feel, don't imagine life without Maya...
God. Maya. His insides cracked and memories poured out of him despite his best efforts. Maya grinning proudly over a spinning dragon treasure. Maya frustrated, with Baby Alexa beating at her breast. Alexa! Damn and triple damn. Shudders rippled through him. He couldn't bear it. Couldn't think of another tiny infant...
He couldn't do this. He couldn't lose any more people he loved. He should never have dared bring Maya into his home, to open up to her, to love her...
To love her. Oh, God, how he loved her. He'd never known it hurt so much. Agony crawled around under his skin. He should have told her. He might never get the chance to tell her.
A Buick pulled in front of him and slowed to a crawl as its driver gaped at the black clouds of smoke spewing into the cloudless blue sky. Axell cursed. He slammed his horn. The smoke billowed higher. Was that a flame shooting up?
"Lord, give me a giant bat to swat these damn Yankees off the road," Axell growled as the Buick continued its crawl on the winding back road.
Abruptly, Axell shot the Rover off the road, slammed across a drainage ditch, and plowed through an old tobacco field. Ahead rose the fence line of trees with black smoke mushrooming higher. The utility vehicle bucked and swayed as it hit erosion ruts and old furrows, but Axell concentrated on doing and not thinking. Mercifully cold numbness replaced rampaging panic.
Flames shot through the smoke.
Thoroughly focused now, he swung the Rover between tall Georgia pines, over sumac and willow oak saplings, through thick beds of brown pine needles, screeching to a halt only when he reached the row of sycamores and azaleas on the outskirts of the property. The tires skidded in the debris and the Rover's front bumper crumpled against a sweetgum trunk. He shot out of the car before the tires stopped spinning and the air bag exploded.
Children milled in the front yard, and as he ran toward them, Axell strained to count heads, searching for the faces etched on his heart. Maya had an entire school full of children on her hands this time. How many teachers did she have? Three? Could they get all the kids out?
And Baby Alexa, who couldn't walk on her own. Who had Alexa?
Mind screaming in anguish, Axell burst through the forest of trees and shrubs into the swarm of terrified, crying children in the drive. He finally located Matty clutching a squirming guinea pig and staring with huge dark eyes at the flames leaping from the back of the house. One of the teachers held a wailing Alexa, and Axell's stomach dropped to his feet. If Maya wasn't holding Alexa...
Two of the older children stumbled out the front door, one carrying a rabbit cage and the other a fishbowl. Axell didn't even have to question the teachers shepherding the children down the stairs—he knew at once who was inside, organizing the retreat, looking after everyone but her own damned self.
All the icy shards of his frozen insides splintered and crumbled as another spurt of flame erupted on the back roof and children shrieked. Maya is inside. Not stopping to think, to calculate logistics, or use any rationale whatsoever, Axell dashed up the porch stairs. As he hit the smoke-filled hall, his only thought was that the children needed Maya. He was expendable, but he had to save Maya. The world didn't need another yuppie bar. The world needed Maya. Constance needed her.
He would die without her.
Saying his prayers and screaming her name in the murky dimness, he fought his way down the wide hall—and nearly crashed into her.
"Axell!" she screamed in joy, before shoving a cage in his arms. "Thank God. Muldoon ran back in here, and I can't find him." She sounded frantic.
With relief so bone deep tears formed in his eyes, Axell crushed her in his grip, cage and all. Smoke poured from the back of the house as he hauled her toward the door. If he was expendable, so was the damned cat. Maya was not.
"Muldoon!" she wept, nonsensically. The whole damned building was going up in flame, and she cried over a cat.
Attacked by a snaking sensation around his ankles and refusing to release Maya, Axell shoved the cage at her and leaned down to scoop up a terrified ball of fur. Hero of the year, he'd saved the life of a cat with a father fixation.
"I'll kill you for this, but not now. Where are your damned teacups?" he shouted, coughing on smoke, shoving her toward the door while the cat clung to his shirt. He damned well wouldn't have her running back in here for china. She might do what she wanted the rest of the time, but he was still bigger than her right now, and he wasn't letting her out of his grip.
"They're in the car." Exchanging crying cat for cage, Maya fought through the smoke toward the front door. "All my stuff is in the car."
In the car. The words chimed like church bells in his ears as Axell finally saw daylight ahead. In the car. She'd already packed her teacups in the car. She wouldn't have done that because of the fire. Maya would never have carried out material things first. Had she been coming home to him?
Or leaving forever?
Maybe those chiming bells tolled doom.
They gasped as they fell through the front door and stumbled down the steps to the lawn. Fire trucks screamed up the drive as the teachers steered the children to safety, away from trees and shrubs that might ignite. Maya hurried toward them, her arms full of yowling cat. Axell followed. This time, the damned school could burn. He'd rebuild it personally. He wasn't letting her out of his sight, not even for Cleo and her damned dealer. Let Cleo figure out what to do with him.
Shoving the rabbit cage into the outstretched arms of one of Constance's playmates, Axell grabbed Muldoon from Maya, plunked the cat into Matty's arms, and caught his wife by the elbow. As the fire engines slammed to a halt near the porch steps and rubber-coated men leapt out to swarm over the lawn for the second time in twenty-four hours, he steered Maya to the outskirts of the crowd and wrapped her securely in his arms so she couldn't bolt. He wasn't surprised to discover she was sobbing with huge gulps of air.
"It's all right," he murmured, stroking her back, wishing he knew something, anything, about comforting women in moments of disaster. "No one's hurt."
That wasn't enough. He had more to say, but didn't know how to say it.
She nodded against his chest, hiccups shaking her through the sobs. "I can't look, Axell. Tell me they're all okay."
"Muldoon's on Matty's head, yowling. There's a teenager rocking Alexa. Your teachers are explaining to the kids what the firemen are doing. They're all fine. You're the one who scared me out of my wits. So help me, Maya, if you ever do anything like that again..." He still shook with fear. This isn't what he'd meant to say. The words pounded at his chest and screamed in his heart, needing release.
"The school is a loss," she whispered what they both already knew.
"I'll build you another," he promised. "We'll make it look just like this one, if you like. I know contractors, architects..."
He couldn't help it, her quiet hiccups tore at his already shredded insides. Axell pulled her into his arms, for all the world to see. As sh
e buried her face against his shirt, the fear of never being able to say the words caused them to pour out in a rush. "I love you, Maya. I love you, and I don't want to lose you, too."
She looked up at him through tear-glazed eyes. All the wonder and excitement he so prized shone back at him now. "You love me?" she whispered, then hiccuped again. Embarrassed, she buried her head against his shirt. "No one's ever told me they loved me before."
"I do. I love everything about you. I love your purple hair and purple flowers and kaleidoscope eyes. I don't want to live without you, Maya. It's been driving me crazy, trying to pretend I don't care when it's tearing me apart. I couldn't bear it if I lost you."
"If you love me, you can't lose me," she said insensibly, her words muffled as she swung her head back and forth. "You can't lose the ones you love, Axell," she announced more emphatically, lifting her head and defying him to argue. "Haven't you learned that?"
She rubbed her eyes and tried to speak firmly, but her voice cracked. "I was only ten when I lost my mother, but I can remember how her hair bobbed up and down when she laughed, how she loved pushing us in the swings, how the wind felt blowing through my hair as I swung higher and higher and she laughed with such joy..."
She gulped on a sob and Axell crushed her closer. Just to hear her voice was Beethoven's Fifth and a child's laughter all wrapped into one. He understood joy again. Ice shards of his heart melted into warm, rainbowed puddles.
"And my father," she continued brokenly. "He used to wear ten-gallon hats and cowboy boots and swing me up in his arms and call me his cowgirl. He'd put his hat on my head and it would cover me up to the shoulders and we'd laugh and laugh. He bought me cowboy boots of my own. God, I loved him so much. And he's still here. He is," she insisted when he didn't respond soon enough.
"What happened to them?" Axell asked, absorbing her words, working them around inside himself to see how they fit, pulling out memories of his own parents and trying to put them into the picture.
She wiped her eyes on his shirt. "My mother died of appendicitis. We were poor. We didn't have insurance. She figured it was just a stomach ache. By the time she collapsed and the neighbors called an ambulance, it was too late."
Dixie Rebel (The Carolina Magnolia Series, Book 1) Page 31