by Deb Donahue
Both Miranda and the man she ran into shouted in pain. His voice sounded familiar.
“Luke!”
He was bending over, one hand to his wounded shoulder. In his other hand, he held his rifle.
“Miranda,” he said, breathless. “You’re all right. I— Duck!” He pulled her down just as a bullet whizzed over their heads. It hit one of the crates piled by the stairs with a small explosion.
“No,” Harlan yelled. He was standing where she had left him, gun pointed in their direction, mouth agape at what he had done. The fire from the explosion ran up the old wooden steps like it was following a trail of gunpowder. More flames ran up the door frame to the exit. They were trapped inside.
Another shot exploded near her ear. This time it was Luke. Harlan cried out and his gun went flying before he could fire again. He fell to the floor, writhing in pain.
“We have to get out of here,” Luke yelled. The roar of the fire sounded loud in Miranda’s ears. The heat pushed both of them back into the root cellar, unable to make it past the fire to run outside. “This way,” Luke yelled, pulling her toward the tunnel entrance.
“No,” Miranda screamed. “I can’t, please.”
But before she could stop him, he had pulled them both inside the tunnel and shut the door behind them. Even with the light from the fire leaking through the cracks in the door the darkness was palpable. From the other side of the door came the sound of another explosion. Miranda fell to the ground, hands over her head.
She was a child again, crouched in the damp, musty tunnel trying desperately to get back into the root cellar. “Daddy! Daddy!” Pounding on the door with her fists. “I won’t explore no more, Daddy. Tell your friend I won’t. I promise. Where are you? Find me, please. Find me.”
With the dark pressing around her now, Miranda’s memory seemed so clear she didn’t know why she hadn’t remembered it before. As a curious four-year-old, she’d followed her father everywhere, getting in the way more often than not. When she heard someone in the basement, she’d thought it was him and naturally trekked down to see what he was doing. Instead, she’d found his friend, Harlan Hunter, snooping through the new tool box her father had brought. Angry at being discovered, he’d locked her in the tunnel, only letting her out when she agreed to tell no one.
“You don’t understand,” the adult Miranda sobbed now. “I’m afraid. I’m afraid.”
Luke squatted beside her and wrapped his good arm around her. The scent of him replaced the smell of decay and mold, pushing aside the memory of her childhood terror. For one moment it was as if they existed in a small quiet bubble. A respite from the frenzy and flurry of the scene they’d just left.
“You are the bravest woman I have ever met,” he whispered in her ear. “I need you to be brave for me now, too. I can’t do this without you.” He gave a painful sounding laugh. “I’m full of holes here. First my shoulder, and now my leg. The guy outside got a good shot in before I took them down. I need your help to get out of here.”
“Out of here?” Miranda took her hands away from her face and strained to look into his eyes. Enough light leaked through the cracks in the door for her to see he was in pain, to see blood oozing from a hole in his thigh. “We can’t get out. The fire—”
“This was used as an escape tunnel during the Underground Railroad,” he said. “There’s an exit at the far end, doors that are hidden by the roots of an old tree.”
“An—an exit?” Miranda suddenly remembered the door she’d found in the woods that she’d thought was the remains of an old cellar.
“But I can’t get there without you,” Luke was saying. “I barely made it to the basement to find you. I need to lean on you.”
And that was how they made it down the long twisted tunnel, Luke leaning on Miranda, Miranda concentrating on the weight of his body, the warm strength of his arm around her shoulder. The blackness pressed in around them and made her breathing labored but she wasn’t alone, wasn’t afraid anymore.
Soon the smell of smoke from behind them lessened and not long after that, she thought she could smell fresh air. That was when she stopped short.
“Harlan,” she said. “We shouldn’t have left him. I know what he was, but we left him in that fire to die.”
“He deserved it,” Luke said gruffly, his hand tightening on her shoulder. “For what he did to my brother. What he was about to do to you. Here, we’re almost there.”
She’d expected there would be some light at the end, but they were still in as much darkness as before. Reaching with her hands, she felt steps ahead of them, and above that the slanted wooden doors leading out.
“It’s locked,” she sobbed, pushing hard against them. “We’re trapped.”
“Cover your ears.”
Even though she did so, the echo of his rifle going off in the small space made her ears ring. But the blast did the trick. The lock was broken and they were able to push open the doors to let in a great rush of fresh air and the comparative brightness of a star-filled night sky.
Miranda helped Luke up the stairs and they both collapsed on the ground, exhausted. On the horizon, behind the trees, came a warm glow that at first Miranda didn’t understand. When it finally hit her, she exclaimed, “Rufus! Oh my God, the house! The house is on fire. My poor dog!”
Luke’s voice was weak when he answered with a small laugh. “Some watch dog you have there,” he said. “The little guy was barking like crazy when I snuck up to see what was going on. Your car was parked along the lane and he was inside, shivering with fear but ready to rip throats out if he had to. I shut him up in my truck with Butch.”
Miranda threw her arms around him with a shout of glee. “Thank you, thank you! Oh, I’m sorry,” she said as he grunted with pain. She kissed him, quickly, and placed a careful hand on his cheek. “Thank you,” she said softly. “For saving Rufus. For saving me.”
“You were doing a pretty good job of saving yourself when I got there. Where did you learn to kick like that?”
“Martial arts training. Suggested by my psychiatrist to empower me so I could shake my nyctophobia.”
“Nyctophobia? What’s that?”
Miranda looked around them. The night sky was beautiful above them, but the tree limbs cast dark shadows from the myriad stars. They were surrounded by velvety night, by darkness. And yet instead of fear, she felt ecstatic, liberated.
“It’s nothing,” she said, suddenly realizing it was true. “It’s nothing at all anymore.”
Chapter 19
Miranda thought they would have to drive into Greenville to alert the fire department, but by the time they managed to walk back to the farm, the volunteer firemen were already aiming hoses at the blazing building. A neighbor had seen the billowing smoke and orange glow on the horizon and called it in.
The trek had been excruciatingly slow, with Luke leaning heavily on her and having to stop several times to rest. He was extremely weak, having lost so much blood in the last two days. Miranda was relieved when one of the firemen saw them approaching the buildings and ran up to help her. Paramedics took Luke into the ambulance they had on site. Miranda waved them off when they tried to minister to her, also.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she assured them.
But really she wasn’t. Luke had parked his truck right behind her car, which apparently Harlan had brought back and pulled to the side of the road along the orchard. Both dogs were in the cab of the truck, barking and scratching at the windows. Miranda opened the passenger side door and pushed them out of the way so she could get in with them. Then she pulled Rufus into her lap, put her face against his rough, warm fur, and began to cry.
The light from the fire danced across the orchard and the heat from the flames made the tire swing from her childhood sway in the warm and cold air currents. Her home was destroyed. She could tell the fire was beyond their control now and the storm clouds that still threatened above seemed in no hurry to help. All the firefighters could do w
as keep the garage and surrounding fields from catching fire as well. All that work she’d put into making the house livable again, gone. All those memories she’d been sorting through, mementos of the last of her family. Gone, all gone.
What was she going to do now? Where would she go? She was all alone.
Butch whined and began to howl. At the sound, Miranda looked up to see the ambulance that had been treating Luke drive slowly down the lane. How badly was he hurt? Did she even care? He had lied to her again, it seemed. An ex-con, Harlan had called him. Was it true? And if it was, did it matter? He had saved her life.
A tap on the window at her side made her jump. It was the sheriff. She rolled the window down.
“Can you tell us what happened here, miss?”
Such a good question. What had happened? Her father’s friend had tried to kill her. An ex-con had saved her. Guns. Thugs. So many unanswered questions. Miranda felt like she was having another nightmare, a waking dream that just wouldn’t let her go.
“Harlan Hunter was dealing in illegal firearms,” she said. That much she knew was true.
It took some convincing, however. She accompanied the sheriff into town, insisting both dogs stay with her as she sat in the sheriff’s office at the county jailhouse in Riverside. Harlan Hunter had built such a solid reputation as a landowner and anti-firearms advocate that she could tell the sheriff was suspicious of her account of what had happened in the basement.
“He’s been trying to buy the farm from me since the first day I got there,” she blurted out, frustrated. “Ask Sissy, she was there.” Although, now that she thought about it, Sissy had already been in the car when Harlan approached Miranda with his offer that first time. She probably hadn’t heard anything. “He had some sort of legal document he wanted me to sign. His lawyer must know about it. Ask him.”
There was no way to ask Harlan. His body was buried beneath tons of still smoldering rafters. They would have to wait until the embers cooled to look for his remains. The stranger who’d urged Harlan to kill her had been arrested and was in the hospital in critical condition. Thanks to Luke, he had a collapsed lung, but the bullet had been removed and he would recover. A second man, who had apparently run from the scene, had been apprehended a mile down the road.
After questioning, Miranda was asked to wait in the lunchroom at the station. She sat there for hours, Rufus in her lap, a dejected Butch supine at her feet with head on paws, and an armed officer guarding the door. Miranda’s stomach was growling since she hadn’t eaten anything since Patty’s lunch. Her temper was growling as well. She was the victim here. How dare they not believe her. The morning sun shone fully through the one window in the room before the sheriff finally returned.
“You’re free to go,” he told her, dismissing the man at the door with a nod.
Miranda stood up, anger boiling over. “That’s it? No apology. No explanation of why you suddenly finally believe me?”
The sheriff sighed and put his hands on his hips. “Ma’am, the county would like to offer their apologies for holding you here for so long. You have to understand, however,” he added, completely spoiling any pretense at apology, “that in cases like this we have to cross every T and dot every I. Especially when one of the persons involved is an ex-con.”
“Luke?” Miranda’s heart sank. “Are you talking about Luke Gregario?”
“Yes, Ma’am. And his brother didn’t have too spotless a record, neither. Harlan Hunter has been a model member of our community for years. A person can’t just lightly besmirch a dead man’s reputation like that without making sure, if you know what I’m saying.”
“So what finally convinced you, since my word apparently means nothing to you?”
That part stung. She could understand why they were skeptical about Luke’s role in the whole incident—just thinking about his past saddened her, so she pushed the thought away quickly. But there was nothing in her own past that should have made them doubt her.
“Is this what small towns are like?” Miranda added bitterly. “Just because I’m new to the area I’m an outsider who can’t be trusted?”
“It’s not a matter of trust, Ms. Sullivan. It’s just police procedure. Don’t matter to me how long you been living here. You were treated respectfully, I think you’ll admit to that. It ain’t like we put you behind bars or anything. We apologize for the wait, of course, and we did our best to make you as comfortable as we could.”
Miranda relented. She could see his point and realized she was actually misdirecting her misery and anger.
“I’m sorry. I’m just exhausted,” she apologized. And upset that she’d believed Luke’s lies—twice. “Can you tell me what you found out and how? How long has Harlan been smuggling guns? What happened to Luke’s brother?”
The sheriff hesitated, then invited Miranda to have a seat again. He crossed to the coffee pot and took a mug out of the cupboard. He tipped it at her with a questioning eyebrow.
“Yes, please,” she said.
The sheriff set a steaming cup in front of her and joined her at the table. He pushed the sugar bowl and powdered creamer in her direction before taking a sip of his all black java and starting his story.
“The man you saw was from Chicago and has been wanted by the ATF for months now for gun running. He and the driver who brought the weapons out here lawyered up as soon as they opened their mouth. Bob, though—Bob Meeks, you know—he sung pretty as a canary as soon as he saw what kind of trouble he was in.” He grinned and took another sip. “Bob never was the sharpest tool in the shed but he knew a plea deal was his best bet. Prob’ly end up in witness protection at the end of it all. Some mighty big time gangsters are not going to be very happy partners when the word gets out.”
“How long has Harlan been doing this?” Miranda asked.
“Been a few months, from the sound of it. Sometime in the spring. Since right after your granny’s death, seemed like.”
Miranda remembered Patty’s confusing words when they first met. Dropping her eyes to her coffee cup, she asked quietly, “Did he kill her? Harlan, I mean. Did he kill my grandmother?”
“We might never know that for sure. He sure did take advantage of her death, though. Bob did say he was pretty sure Harlan doped you up some. Used some old vet medicine he had on hand. Phene— Phency-clidine or -clone. Something like that. PCP they call it on the streets.”
PCP? Didn’t that cause a person to see a distorted reality, feel panic and fear? Exactly the way she’d felt the first time she explored the basement.
Miranda nodded. “The chicken casserole.” Then, when the sheriff looked at her quizzically, she explained. “Sissy said Harlan helped her prepare some food they brought over to me as a house warming present. I had terrible nightmares every time I ate it. It almost killed poor Rufus here.” She reached down to pat the dog’s head and his tail thumped on the floor in appreciation.
“I don’t think Bob knew the details,” the sheriff said. “But he did say Harlan had him sneaking into your house at night through that tunnel you were telling me about. Said he was playing creepy music and such trying to make you think the place was haunted. Chase you away, he said. Guess you don’t scare too easy, though, do you?”
Easier than you might think, Miranda said, taking another drink of coffee. His words, though, reflected Luke’s when he’d called her the bravest woman he knew. The memory of that thrilled her.
“Bob admitted to killing Gregorio,” the sheriff continued. “Not the one we got in the hospital here—his brother, Zeke. Says it was an accident. Although, I suppose he would, now, wouldn’t he? They were moving out a shipment of guns. Down in the timber where you escaped. Seems any time they were worried somebody might see the truck, they’d drive all the way back there under cover and take the crates out that way. Anyways, Bob claims there was a fight between Harlan and Gregorio. Kid lit into Harlan and knocked him flat so Bob starts tussling with him. Ends up with the kid falling into the creek bed there an
d hitting his head on a rock. An autopsy should tell us the truth of that, I suspect. My men are out there right now, retrieving the body.”
There wasn’t much left to tell after that. The sheriff took her empty cup from her and put it in the sink, then turned with more sympathy than she expected after she’d been so rude to him earlier.
“We have an officer waiting outside to take you back into Greenville. Your car has been taken there and Patty Carmichael has offered to let you stay with her until you decide what you want to do.”
“And Luke?”
“Doc says he’ll be fine. He did ask if you’d be willing to look after his dog here till he gets out of the hospital. Butch, is it? We got a vet here in Riverside that can kennel him if you don’t want to, though.”
Butch’s ears had perked up at the sound of his name and he lifted his head expectantly, first looking at the sheriff, then Miranda, then the sheriff again. His eyebrows twitched inward, as if in a worried frown. Miranda laughed.
“No, that’s okay, I’ll hold on to him. He and Rufus seem to have bonded after being locked up in the truck for so long last night.” Miranda shuddered as she remembered the devastating scene last night, the heat and flames and flying ash. “And that’s nice of Patty, but there’s no need. There are bunk beds in the barn at my place. I can stay there tonight while I decide what to do.”
The sheriff shrugged. “You and Mrs. Carmichael can work that out amongst yourselves. We left your car keys with her. From the little I’ve talked with her, she seems to be a very persuasive woman, though.”
They both chuckled as they remembered their encounters with Patty Carmichael, postmistress. There was some comfort for Miranda in the fact that an invitation had been extended, but on the other hand, she had a lot of thinking to do, a lot of decisions to make. And staying with Patty meant finding enough quiet moments to do that might be few and far between.