Not a Moment Too Soon

by Linda O. Johnston

  He came up holding the biggest gun Shauna had ever seen, and she remembered the ending from her story, verbatim:

  Big T swooped down and reached behind a couch in the middle of the warehouse floor, lifting his Uzi. Before he could begin spraying bullets, Hunter ducked, rolled and came up shooting. His first volley got the guy in the gut.

  The kidnapper fell to the hard concrete floor, moaning, as Hunter ran to kneel beside him, his weapon still leveled on him.

  “Tell me where Andee is, you perverted bastard. Now.”

  Blood spurted from between Big T’s fingers as he clutched his middle. “Too late.” His gasp was a ghastly laugh. “Good luck finding her.”

  Only, he didn’t shoot.

  Hunter ducked, grabbed his gun from his ankle holster and aimed, but unlike in the story, he didn’t shoot, either. Aitken pointed his huge weapon toward Hunter but looked somewhere over his shoulder. “Margo, why didn’t you c—”

  He was cut off by the sound of a weapon firing from behind Hunter, behind Shauna.

  Aitken went down.

  Only then did Shauna turn to see who had shot him.

  It was Margo Masters, holding an automatic pistol larger than Hunter’s in a stance worthy of a police officer—the way Shauna had seen the Phoenix police do years before, when Hunter was part of them.

  Margo was crying hysterically, and the weapon in her hands shook. “He took Andee. He was going to shoot you, Hunter. I couldn’t lose both of you. I love you, Hunter.”

  “How the hell did you get here, Margo?” Hunter demanded.

  “She came with me.” Banger stalked out from the hallway that Shauna had assumed contained bedrooms or an exit from the apartment. “I should have known better, damn it all.” He knelt at Aitken’s side. “I didn’t think about checking her purse for weapons.”

  “Is Andee back there?” Shauna pointed behind him.

  “No. I looked.”

  Shauna’s mind whirled. Why were things so different from in her story?

  And what had Aitken been saying when he was shot?

  She thought she knew, and it made perfect, if horrifying, sense.

  “It’s over now, Margo,” Hunter said. Shauna watched Hunter put an arm around his ex-wife reassuringly. Or was it? She saw his cold expression as he reached for Margo’s gun. “By the way, where’s Andee?”

  He knew, too.

  “How should I know?” Margo wailed.

  “Were you supposed to call and warn Aitken?” Hunter asked quietly. “Is that what he was about to say when you shot him?”

  Margo pulled away, swinging her weapon so it aimed at Hunter. “No, of course not.”

  “You were in this with him, weren’t you?” Hunter’s voice remained soft, but the glint in his eyes told Shauna how angry he was. “You’ve warned him the other times.”

  “How can you say that? Andee’s my daughter. I would never put her in danger, or help anyone who did.”

  “Then give me your gun and we’ll talk about it.”

  “No.” Margo moved quickly, and Shauna hadn’t anticipated it. Margo threw an arm around Shauna’s neck and held the gun against her temple. “You can’t say such terrible things about me, Hunter, not with Banger here. He’ll believe you.”

  Shauna could barely breathe, let alone think, with the hard, cold metal digging into her. When she spoke, it came out in a rasp because of the pressure against her throat, “We need to find Andee, Margo. Then we can sort this all out.”

  “You come with me.” Margo’s voice was flat. “I’ll let you go when I’m free, and then you can find the kid. You two, put your guns on the floor and stay out of the way.”

  Shauna saw Banger take his place beside Hunter. Both men laid their weapons down. And then Margo started pulling Shauna, by the throat, toward the apartment door.

  Shauna had to do something. Margo wouldn’t let her go unharmed, no matter what she’d said.

  She met Hunter’s eyes. There was fear in them, but encouragement, too. He glanced down toward the floor, where Aitken lay, motionless, then back toward Shauna.

  She thought she understood. “No, John!” she shouted. “Don’t try it.”

  Margo swung the gun away from Shauna’s head and toward the floor, at Aitken. That was distraction enough for Shauna to slam her heel into Margo’s shin and tear out of her grasp.

  The two men dashed forward and grabbed Margo before she fired a shot.

  It was over.

  But not all of it.

  Shauna had, in fact, noticed Aitken move, but ever so slightly. She ran and knelt beside him as Banger took Margo into custody.

  Shauna expected the worst: “Too late.” His gasp was a ghastly laugh. “Good luck finding her.”

  His eyes closed. He was dead.

  Somewhere close by, but not near enough for Hunter to find her, Andee Strahm weakly cried “Daddy” for the last time.

  But Shauna wouldn’t give up. For Hunter’s sake. And Andee’s. She gently shook Aitken, and his eyes opened.

  “Margo?” he rasped.

  “They have her,” Shauna said. “And now we have to help Andee. I’ll bet all you wanted was the money, and to help Margo. I know you didn’t want to hurt a child. Please, tell me where Andee is.”

  “My car,” he rasped. “Sleeping pills. So she couldn’t cry. Would give me away.”

  Oh, Lord. Had he given her an overdose? Shauna looked up and met Hunter’s bleak gaze. There were tears in his eyes.

  It was midafternoon. Even a child who hadn’t been drugged who was locked in a hot car could die quickly from dehydration. “Where’s your car, John?” Shauna asked.

  “Three blocks.” He shuddered and looked up at Shauna. “So sorry I—”

  And that was all.

  Shauna bent her head. Tears rolled down her cheeks. No matter what he had done, someone needed to mourn this man. It shouldn’t be her. She’d hardly known him. But he’d been a living, breathing human being—

  And a kidnapper.

  “What did he say?” Hunter demanded. “I couldn’t hear. Did he say where Andee was?”

  Shauna repeated John’s last words, including the apology.

  “Let’s go find her,” Hunter shouted.

  “Yes.” Shauna rose to her feet.

  She only hoped they wouldn’t be too late.

  They’d quizzed the sobbing Margo before rushing out of the warehouse-apartment.

  She wasn’t saying much, but she had described John’s seventies-vintage, dented car. Banger and Tennyson sent their troops out with Hunter and Shauna, along with some local Burbank cops.

  The next problem was finding the car in this industrial area, where cars that should have been junked ages ago sat in parking lots and along the streets. They had already run a check and had his plate number.

  “Can you write something?” Hunter whispered in her ear after the first futile ten minutes of looking.

  “No time,” she told him. Even if she could produce on demand. Plate number or not, she peered into back seats of one car after another. Most were empty, though some held junk.

  None contained a small child.

  Ignoring the cops who had scattered for the hunt, Hunter dashed from one car to the next. His face was a frozen mask of determination, yet Shauna saw the fear in his eyes.

  Shauna heard a shout and pivoted to look at Hunter. He’d pulled open a car door.

  Could this be it?

  But he pulled out a pile of clothes and slammed them to the ground. He kicked the door shut.

  Rested the top of his head on the grungy old car’s roof.

  Shauna’s heart ached for him. But the best thing she could do was keep looking.

  She looked inside cars parked nearest her on the street.

  Nothing in this old sedan. The wrecked SUV. The stripped late-model luxury car.

  And then—a few cars beyond, she spotted one from the seventies.

  What really caught her attention, though, was that it was cleaner t
han the heaps surrounding it. And the plate number? Yes!

  She rushed toward it. Peered into the back seat.

  Shauna screamed jubilantly, “Hunter! I’ve found her!”

  A child lay on the floor, her head propped on the seat—a beautiful child with curly, dark hair. She looked asleep.

  Please, just let her be asleep…

  The car was a four-door. The rear passenger-side door didn’t open. Neither did the front door. By the time Shauna had rushed to the other side, Hunter was there.

  “Andee!” he shouted, pounding on the window.

  He couldn’t get the driver’s-side rear door open either, for he grabbed at the driver’s door. Nothing.

  Ignoring the approaching cops, Hunter hurried to a piece of metal on the ground. The old axle was big and heavy, and he carried it to the car where his daughter lay.

  Unmoving.

  He used the metal bar to smash in the windshield, far from where the child lay. Though pieces of safety glass rained into the vehicle, they didn’t reach the back seat. Hunter grabbed the edge of the roof and used it to lever himself in, feetfirst. He dove over the console between the two front seats and lifted the child, at the same time opening one of the rear doors.

  He exited the car cradling Andee.

  Shauna ran to Hunter’s side, afraid to reach out.

  Almost afraid to ask, “How is she?”

  She looked at Hunter, and his huge smile gave her the answer she’d craved.

  “She’s alive,” he said, pulling Andee up so he could kiss her cheek. And then he shouted so loud the whole world could hear, “She’s alive!”

  The little girl stirred in Hunter’s arms. Thank heavens! Another hour, even another minute, she could have been gone. They’d found her not a moment too soon.

  Tears rolling down her cheeks, Shauna stayed back, watching the reunion between father and daughter as Andee’s eyes opened.

  She swallowed sobs of emotion and relief when the little girl looked right into Hunter’s face, gave a wide smile that was the image of her father’s happiest, and said in the sweetest voice Shauna had ever heard, “I knew you would come, Daddy.”

  Chapter 18

  “So what are you doing back here?” Kaitlin asked the next afternoon.

  “I own this place,” Shauna retorted.

  They were seated at a booth at Fantasy Fare, sipping hot and fragrant herbal tea. Since it was midafternoon, between lunch and dinner, the restaurant wasn’t busy, so Shauna intended to catch up with all that happened in her absence.

  Instead, she’d wound up spilling the tale of Andee’s kidnapping and rescue to her friend and manager.

  Not to mention the evolution of her story about the saga.

  And that other little story she’d written about Hunter and her.

  Shauna crossed her legs beneath the table. Because she planned to tell stories at her regular story time that evening, she wore a long yellow skirt and white peasant blouse that she would spruce up with a pinafore later to look like a Bo-peep shepherdess outfit.

  “Of course all this is yours.” Kaitlin swept the restaurant with a flippant gaze. She wore one of her typical short skirts and tank tops that worked well in Oasis desert weather. Her long chestnut hair was drawn into a pearly clip at the back of her head, and the look emphasized the oval shape of her face and ethereal glow in her pale blue eyes. One finger swirled about the rim of her teacup as she studied Shauna critically. “But you know full well I could handle it for another few days. Weeks or months, for that matter. Why didn’t you stay in L.A. to settle things with Hunter?”

  “Things were already settled.” Shauna spiked her voice with cheerfulness when what she wanted to do was fade into a puddle of grief.

  Losing Hunter once had been hard enough. Twice was an unbearable agony. But she would survive it. Somehow.

  “Sure they were settled,” Kaitlin scoffed. “You want him, he wants you, and here you are.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Shauna protested.

  “You’re telling me,” Kaitlin agreed. “Remember who you’re talking to. I can’t tell you the number of times I felt you over the last few days, heard your emotions go gaga. But if I’d called more, I knew I’d interrupt some pretty hot stuff. ‘Simple’ isn’t the word for what’s between Hunter Strahm and you, honey. Wasn’t before, and certainly isn’t now.”

  Shauna suddenly saw a slide show of herself and Hunter in her mind, a mélange of one scene after another of yelling at each other, ignoring each other…kissing each other and more.

  Courtesy of Kaitlin and her ability both to read others’ emotions and implant images in their minds.

  “Cut it out,” Shauna demanded.

  “Okay.”

  The last vision, one of Hunter and her sharing a long, hot, sex-laden kiss, suddenly popped like a balloon and disappeared.

  Leaving Shauna feeling as bereft as if the real Hunter had suddenly stopped kissing her and run from the restaurant.

  “Better?” Kaitlin asked slyly.

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “So, like I asked before, what are you doing here?”

  Shauna sighed, glancing around Fantasy Fare. The main restaurant room had potted plants everywhere, like Shauna’s home, and the storytelling room had even more. There were more customers than usual at this hour.

  “I couldn’t stay,” she finally said to Kaitlin. “Once everything was over, I just added to the confusion. So, I came home.”

  Was it the right decision? Of course. But she reviewed it quickly in her thoughts—for both Kaitlin and her to consider.

  After he’d rescued Andee, Hunter took her straight to the nearest hospital to be checked over. Other than disorientation from the mild sedative Aitken had given her and minor dehydration from being left in the car that long, she was fine. She was kept overnight, though, for observation.

  Shauna had sat with her for a while in the hospital while Hunter gave his official statement about Margo’s shooting of Aitken, her subsequent actions and the search for Andee.

  Andee was every bit as adorable and precocious as Hunter had said. Shauna talked as a therapist and friend to the small imp with curly black hair. She told Andee that her daddy loved her and that soon a very nice person she didn’t know yet—a counselor—would want to hear all about her adventure over the last few days. She urged the child to talk about it, and even draw pictures about it.

  “Okay, Shauna,” Andee had said. A small frown darkened her face, and she said, “Johnny said I should call him ‘T’. He wasn’t nice to me. I didn’t want to go in his car but he made me. A lot.” And then she smiled. “But he gave me lots of cookies to eat.”

  “Do you like cookies?” Shauna had asked.

  Andee gave a decisive nod, then her expression grew solemn again. “T said bad things about my daddy.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. You know your daddy’s a very nice man.”

  Hunter had returned while Shauna was in the middle of telling Andee one of her favorites of the tales she had written for story time at Fantasy Fare. He had waited while she finished, then hurried to the bed to fuss over his child.

  Shauna had gone through an agony of indecision. She figured that returning as soon as possible to how things were before would be best for the child.

  She had left for Hunter names of noted child therapists in the area. She’d borrowed his car keys and removed her computer from the trunk. In the note she left for him there, she urged him to get counseling for Andee and asked him to ship the rest of her things when he got around to it. She left cash in the glove compartment to cover the cost.

  She’d returned his keys to him, then slipped away on another pretext, called a cab and headed for the airport.

  Her story’s ending hadn’t come true, and no one could be happier about it than her. She wished, though, that she understood why this story had been so different from all others she’d ever written.

  Or maybe she knew.

  And now she w
as home.

  “What about the story about Hunter and you?” Kaitlin interjected. “Where’d it come from? What do you think it meant?”

  “I’ve struggled with that,” Shauna admitted. “I don’t know.”

  “Sure you do.” Kaitlin cocked her head admonishingly. “Think it through aloud. Right now.”

  Shauna sighed. “Sometimes I wish you were just a normal human being.”

  “Then you wouldn’t have hired me to keep you in line. Now, don’t change the subject. I think you know not only why you wrote that story, but also why you could save all those changes to the tale about Andee. Tell Auntie Kaitlin.”

  “Okay, it’s Hunter,” Shauna stormed.

  “What about him?” Kaitlin prompted.

  “Everything!” Shauna stared at the liquid in her teacup and said, “You know I’ve always written stories about milestones in his life. I somehow pick up on his emotions, even from this far away. Before, the emotions of bad guys he was responsible to stop got my fingers tingling. This time, it wasn’t his feelings that triggered my writing about Andee’s kidnapping, but hers—probably since she’s his daughter. I gathered the kidnapper’s emotions, too, once I started writing.”

  “And Hunter’s?” Kaitlin asked.

  “That’s…it’s never happened before, but I was able to save some changes I made to my story about Andee. I think it was because they emanated from Hunter’s emotions. I couldn’t change the ending, though, which of course generated most of his emotions. But I knew my caring about what happened to him and his daughter wouldn’t have been enough to do it, since I could never save changes I made in the story about my father.”

  “I still think that, by then, your dad was ready to die, don’t you?” Kaitlin asked gently. They’d discussed this before, but Shauna had never quite accepted Kaitlin’s theory.

  “I know you believe that if my emotions were the important thing, he’d have rallied under treatment and survived longer.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Shauna blurted. “I’ve never wanted to give you the satisfaction of admitting it, but—”

  “But you know I’m right.”

  “I guess I do. And now, Hunter’s emotions were the important thing, so by his force of will he changed my story. Even what was supposed to happen at the end. You know, I think I’ll take one more stab at that story. See if I can save the ending as it really turned out, just for closure.”